ly important."

The door was opened by Sloane's man, Jarvis, who had in queer
combination, Hastings thought, the salient aspects of an undertaker and
an experienced pick-pocket. He was dismal of countenance and alert in
movement, an efficient ghost, admirably appropriate to the twilit gloom
of the room with its heavily shaded windows.

Mr. Sloane was in bed, in the darkest corner.

"Father," Lucille addressed him from the door-sill, "I've asked Mr.
Hastings to talk to you about things. He's just back from Washington."

"Shuddering saints!" said Mr. Sloane, not lifting his head from the
pillows.

Lucille departed. The ghostly Jarvis closed the door without so much as
a click of the latch. Hastings advanced slowly toward the bed, his eyes
not yet accustomed to the darkness.

"Shuddering, shivering, shaking saints!" Mr. Sloane exclaimed again, the
words coming in a slow, shrill tenor from his lips, as if with great
exertion he reached up with something and pushed each one out of his
mouth. "Sit down, Mr. Hastings, if I can control my nerves, and stand
it. What is it?"

His hostility to the caller was obvious. The evident and grateful
interest with which the night before he had heard the detective's
stories of crimes and criminals had changed now to annoyance at the very
sight of him. As a raconteur, Mr. Hastings was quite the thing; as
protector of the Sloane family's privacy and seclusion, he was a
nuisance. Such was the impression Mr. Hastings received.

At a loss to understand his host's frame of mind, he took a chair near
the bed.

Mr. Sloane stirred jerkily under his thin summer coverings.

"A little light, Jarvis," he said peevishly. "Now, Mr. Hastings, what
can I do for--tell you?"

Jarvis put back a curtain.

"Quivering and crucified martyrs!" the prostrate man burst forth. "I
said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a
moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday
sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than
an inch at a time, Jarvis. How many times have I told you that? Never
give me a shock like that again; never more than an inch of light at a
time. Frantic fiends! From cimmerian, abysmal darkness to Sahara-desert
glare!"

"Yes, sir," said Jarvis, as if on the point of digging a grave--for
himself. "Beg pardon, sir."

He effaced himself, in shadows, somewhere behind Hastings, who seized
the opportunity to speak.