but you
are not, Mr. Heyst. To tell you the truth, I don't know precisely
where he is. He has been a little mysterious of late; but he has my
confidence. No, don't get up, Mr. Heyst!"

The viciousness of his spectral face was indescribable. Heyst, who had
moved a little, was surprised by the disclosure.

"It was not my intention," he said.

"Pray remain seated," Mr. Jones insisted in a languid voice, but with a
very determined glitter in his black eye-caverns.

"If you were more observant," said Heyst with dispassionate contempt,
"you would have known before I had been five minutes in the room that I
had no weapon of any sort on me."

"Possibly; but pray keep your hands still. They are very well where they
are. This is too big an affair for me to take any risks."

"Big? Too big?" Heyst repeated with genuine surprise. "Good Heavens!
Whatever you are looking for, there's very little of it here--very
little of anything."

"You would naturally say so, but that's not what we have heard,"
retorted Mr. Jones quickly, with a grin so ghastly that it was
impossible to think it voluntary.

Heyst's face had grown very gloomy. He knitted his brows.

"What have you heard?" he asked.

"A lot, Mr. Heyst--a lot," affirmed Mr. Jones. He was vying to recover
his manner of languid superiority. "We have heard, for instance, of a
certain Mr. Morrison, once your partner."

Heyst could not repress a slight movement.

"Aha!" said Mr. Jones, with a sort of ghostly glee on his face.

The muffled thunder resembled the echo of a distant cannonade below the
horizon, and the two men seemed to be listening to it in sullen silence.

"This diabolical calumny will end in actually and literally taking my
life from me," thought Heyst.

Then, suddenly, he laughed. Portentously spectral, Mr. Jones frowned at
the sound.

"Laugh as much as you please," he said. "I, who have been hounded out
from society by a lot of highly moral souls, can't see anything funny in
that story. But here we are, and you will now have to pay for your fun,
Mr. Heyst."

"You have heard a lot of ugly lies," observed Heyst. "Take my word for
it!"

"You would say so, of course--very natural. As a matter of fact I
haven't heard very much. Strictly speaking, it was Martin. He collects
information, and so on. You don't suppose I would talk to that Schomberg
animal more than I could help? It was Martin whom he took into his
confidence."

"The stupidity of that creat