ct
deductions about the cause of the fire....

When Archie came from the orangery, he saw Clark standing on the terrace
beside the ruins, examining the scene of his already famous exploit of
the night before. He may well have been wondering how he had ever
succeeded in keeping his balance and in crawling like a fly over the
surface of the wall he had helped to put up. There were a number of
other people loitering about the ruins, some of them from neighboring
estates, who had motored over to offer help and lingered to discuss the
disaster. Archie joined a group of these, among whom was the stone
mason. He was feeling unhappy about many things, especially about his
responsibility for the fire. He began to talk out his theory, turning
first to Clark.

"You didn't happen to see any of the men hanging about the place when
you came up last night?" he asked.

"No," the mason replied shortly.

"I thought maybe those Italians might have been sneaking about here.
They're ugly fellows," Archie remarked.

"I didn't see nobody around."

"Some of those fellows are regular anarchists," Archie persisted. "They
wouldn't stop at firing a house to get even with a man they're down on."

The mason stared at him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing.
He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust
for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap
falsehood to "save his face," filled the mason's soul. The others had
instinctively drawn away from them, and Clark himself looked as if he
wanted to turn on his heel. But he listened.

"I shouldn't be surprised if the house had been set on fire," Archie
continued confidentially. "I'm going to have detectives look into it. It
must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the
drawing-room."

The mason's lips twitched ominously.

"But I think it was set on purpose!" Archie asserted.

"Oh, go to hell!" the mason groaned, his emotions getting the better of
him. "Set, nothing!... Spontaneous combustion! You know how it got on
fire better than anybody."

"What do you mean?" Archie demanded.

But the mason strode away from him around the corner of the wall and
disappeared. Archie followed him with his eyes, dazed and scowling. He
had never liked the fellow, and resented the fact that he had been the
hero of the disaster, while he himself, as he was well enough aware, had
presented a sorry figure. Now this common workman had insulted hi