tisfaction. It
was meat to his soul to see this lordly young aristocrat racked with
misery and dread, to hold him in his power as a cat holds a mouse, which
it can crush and crunch at any moment if it will. Alan Massey's mood
filled Jim Roberts with exquisite enjoyment, enjoyment such as a gourmand
feels on setting his teeth in some rare morsel of food.

"I know," he nodded. "It works like that often. They say a murderer can't
keep away from the scene of his crime if he is left at large. There is an
irresistible fascination to him about the spot where he damned his
immortal soul."

"I'm not a criminal," snarled Alan. "Don't talk to me like that or you
will never see another cent of my money."

"Money!" sneered the sick man. "What's that to me now? I've lost my taste
for money. It is no good to me any more. I've got enough laid by to bury
me and I can't take the rest with me. Your money is nothing to me, Alan
Massey. But you'll pay still, in a different way. I am glad you came. It
is doing me good."

Alan made a gesture of disgust and got to his feet, pacing to and fro,
his face dark, his soul torn, between conflicting emotions.

"I'll be dead soon," went on the malicious, purring voice from the bed.
"Don't begrudge me my last fling. When I am in my grave you will be safe.
Nobody in the living world but me knows young John Massey's alive. You
can keep your money then with perfect ease of mind until you get to where
I am now and then,--maybe you will find out the money will comfort you no
longer, that nothing but having a soul can get you over the river."

The younger man's march came to a halt by the bedside.

"You shan't die until you tell me what you know about John Massey," he
said fiercely.

"You're a fool," said James Roberts. "What you don't know you are not
responsible for--you can forget in a way. If you insist on hearing the
whole story you will never be able to get away from it to your dying day.
John Massey as an abstraction is one thing. John Massey as a live human
being, whom you have cheated out of a name and a fortune, is another."

"I never cheated him of a name. You did that."

The man grunted.

"Right. That is on my bill. Lord knows, I wish it wasn't. Little enough
did I ever get out of that particular piece of deviltry. I over-reached
myself, was a darned little bit too smart. I held on to the boy, thinking
I'd get more out of it later, and he slid out of my hands like an eel and
I had not