eminder of the spectacles that were gone. As Magee entered the
old man looked up, and a very obvious expression of fright crossed his
face.

"Good evening, Professor," said Magee easily. "Don't you find it rather
cool with the window open?"

"Mr. Magee," replied the much wrapped gentleman, "I am that rather
disturbing progressive--a fresh air devotee. I feel that God's good air
was meant to be breathed, not barricaded from our bodies."

"Perhaps," suggested Magee, "I should have left the window open?"

The old man regarded him narrowly.

"I have no wish to be inhospitable," he replied. "But--if you please--"

"Certainly," answered Magee. He threw open the window. The professor
held up his book.

"I was passing the time before dinner with my pleasant old companion,
Montaigne. Mr. Magee, have you ever read his essay on liars?"

"Never," said Magee. "But I do not blame you for brushing up on it at
the present time, Professor. I have come to apologize. Yesterday morning
I referred in a rather unpleasant way to a murder in the chemical
laboratory at one of our universities. I said that the professor of
chemistry was missing. This morning's paper, which I secured from Mr.
Peters, informs me that he has been apprehended."

"You need not have troubled to tell me," said the old man. He smiled his
bleak smile.

"I did you an injustice," went on Magee.

"Let us say no more of it," pleaded Professor Bolton.

Mr. Magee walked about the room. Warily the professor turned so that the
other was at no instant at his back. He looked so helpless, so little,
so ineffectual, that Mr. Magee abandoned his first plan of leaping upon
him there in the silence. By more subtle means than this must his
purpose be attained.

"I suppose," he said, "your love of fresh air accounts for the strolls
on the balcony at all hours of the night?"

The old man merely blinked at him.

"I mustn't stop," Magee continued. "I just wanted to make my apology,
that's all. It was unjust of me. Murder--that is hardly in your line. By
the way, were you by any chance in my room this morning, Professor
Bolton?"

Silence.

"Pardon me," remarked the professor at last, "if I do not answer. In
this very essay on--on liars, Montaigne has expressed it so well. 'And
how much is a false speech less sociable than silence.' I am a sociable
man."

"Of course," smiled Magee. He stood looking down at the frail old
scholar before him, and considered. Of what avail