id, even if I slept
under a hedge. Again he ordered me out of the house. I was firm; I
refused. Then he struck me, there was a quarrel, and he fell. I thought
at first that he was unconscious, but when I examined him--he was dead."

Johnson finished his speech in a stealthy whisper, leaning half way
across the table. Jean le Roi poured himself out more brandy, but he was
unmoved.

"The old trick, I suppose," he remarked carelessly, making a swift
movement with his hand.

"No! no!" Johnson declared earnestly. "I used no weapon! It was an
accident, a pure accident. Remember that this is his son. He would not
be here if it was not quite certain that it was accident--and accident
alone."

Jean le Roi lifted his head and gazed curiously at Stephen Hurd.

"So you," he murmured, "are my brother-in-law?"

Johnson leaned once more across the table.

"It is where you, where we all have been deceived," he said
impressively. "Listen. She was never the daughter of Stephen Hurd at
all. It was a schoolgirl's freak to take that name, when she was eluding
her chaperon and amusing herself in Paris. Stephen Hurd was her
servant."

"And she?" Jean le Roi asked softly.

Johnson spread out his yellow-stained fingers. His voice trembled, his
eyes shone. It was like speaking of something holy.

"She is a great lady," he said. "She goes to Court, she has houses, and
horses and carriages, troops of servants, a yacht, motor-cars. She is
rich--fabulously rich, Jean. She has--listen--forty thousand pounds,
livres mind, a year."

"More than that," Hurd muttered.

"More than that," Johnson repeated.

Jean le Roi was no longer unmoved. He drew a long breath and his teeth
seemed to come together with a click.

"There is no mistake?" he asked softly. "An income of forty thousand
pounds?"

"There is no mistake," Stephen Hurd assured him. "I will answer for
that."

Jean le Roi's face was white and vicious. Yet for a time he said nothing
and his two companions watched him anxiously. There was something
uncanny about his silence.

"It is a great deal of money," he said at last. "Often in prison I was
hungry, I had no cigarettes. I was forced to drink water. A great deal
of money! And she is my wife! Half of what she has belongs to me! That
is the law, eh?"

"I don't know about that," Stephen Hurd said, "but she has certainly
treated you very badly."

Jean le Roi struck the table with his fist, not violently, and yet
somehow with