B-Berry and I Look Back by Dornford Yates

his shifty eyes. After all, he had betrayed a solemn trust, robbed his employers right and left and helped to his death the young man committed to his charge.
    “And now for the tail-piece, which I remember well.
    “About three months later I dined in Cavendish Square. Among the guests was a man who resided abroad, whom the hostess had been asked to receive by a very old friend. ‘You’ll find him very amusing.’
    “So we did. He made us all laugh very much. But I found him hard to place. As the women were leaving the table, I managed to ask my host who the stranger was. He whispered back, ‘He’s a fashionable GP – practises in Honolulu.’ When we sat down again, I found myself next to the man.”
    “I’ll bet you did,” said Berry.
    I laughed.
    “I admit I probably worked it. I can’t remember now. Be that as it may, after some general conversation, he and I were talking quietly by ourselves. Presently, ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘have you ever heard of a lady called Margery Daw?’
    “My words might have been a spell. I can see the fellow now. He had been about to drink; and there he sat, still as death, with his glass halfway to his lips. With the tail of my eye, I watched the blood leave his face. Then he pulled himself together and set down his glass. ‘Never,’ he said, ‘What makes you think…I should have?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I know she lives in Honolulu, and I thought you might know her name.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve never heard of her.’ Then he drank up his port and wiped his face.
    “I never saw a change so sudden and so pronounced in all my life. All his assurance had left him, as if it had never been. I had shocked him – raised some spectre he’d never expected to see. Fate, in my innocent person, had tapped him upon the shoulder. And he had been unready – had never dreamed that Fate could so dog his steps.
    “As I entered the drawing-room, I saw him approach his hostess and bid her goodbye. She protested, of course, but he made some excuse or other and took his leave.
    “So I cut short a very good evening, so far as he was concerned.
    “Now what was the explanation, I have no idea. As like as not, it had nothing to do with our case. I can’t remember his name, but it was not that of the doctor who gave the death certificate. And I never pursued the matter. To tell the truth, I felt very guilty about it.”
    “Darling, it wasn’t your fault.”
    “In a way, it wasn’t. But Margery Daw was clearly a lady of ill report. And since I knew nothing of the stranger, I ought not, perhaps, to have mentioned her name as I did. I mean, I might have led up to it.”
    “I don’t blame you at all,” said Berry. “He was clearly a man of the world and you gave him every chance. He could perfectly well have replied, ‘No, I don’t think I know anybody of that name.’ You might not have believed him, but the matter would have been closed. As it was, he lost his nerve – and gave himself clean away. Did you mention the occurrence to Harker?”
    “No, indeed. I thought I’d done enough harm. By asking an idle question I’d raised some dreadful ghost, which the poor fellow thought was laid.”
    “Very curious,” said Jonah. “Whatever the trouble was, he must have been pretty deep in to take it so hard. Speculation, of course, is vain: but yours was the sort of question that someone from the Yard might have asked.”
    “That occurred to me at once. And I am inclined to believe that when I, er, spoke out of turn, he thought he was under surveillance and that he had been asked to dinner at my request. Which would account for his manifest consternation.
    “Well, there we are. I’m sorry I can’t remember more of the proceedings themselves; and I fear that, as a story, it’s rather disappointing. But the tail-piece does go to show that truth can be just as strange as fiction; and, in fact, the stage was set for a thriller that might have been worth reading,