d their pipes. Sime, in common with many young and
enthusiastic medical men, had theories--theories of that revolutionary
sort which only harsh experience can shatter. Secretly he was disposed
to ascribe all the ills to which flesh is heir primarily to a
disordered nervous system. It was evident that Cairn's mind
persistently ran along a particular groove; something lay back of all
this erratic talk; he had clearly invested the Mask of Set with a
curious individuality.

"I gather that you had a stiff bout of it in London?" Sime said
suddenly.

Cairn nodded.

"Beastly stiff. There is a lot of sound reason in your nervous theory,
Sime. It was touch and go with me for days, I am told; yet,
pathologically, I was a hale man. That would seem to show how nerves
can kill. Just a series of shocks--horrors--one piled upon another,
did as much for me as influenza, pneumonia, and two or three other
ailments together could have done."

Sime shook his head wisely; this was in accordance with his ideas.

"You know Antony Ferrara?" continued Cairn. "Well, he has done this
for me. His damnable practices are worse than any disease. Sime, the
man is a pestilence! Although the law cannot touch him, although no
jury can convict him--he is a murderer. He controls--forces--"

Sime was watching him intently.

"It will give you some idea, Sime, of the pitch to which things had
come, when I tell you that my father drove to Ferrara's rooms one
night, with a loaded revolver in his pocket--"

"For"--Sime hesitated--"for protection?"

"No." Cairn leant forward across the table--"to shoot him, Sime, shoot
him on sight, as one shoots a mad dog!"

"Are you serious?"

"As God is my witness, if Antony Ferrara had been in his rooms that
night, my father would have killed him!"

"It would have been a shocking scandal."

"It would have been a martyrdom. The man who removes Antony Ferrara
from the earth will be doing mankind a service worthy of the highest
reward. He is unfit to live. Sometimes I cannot believe that he does
live; I expect to wake up and find that he was a figure of a
particularly evil dream."

"This incident--the call at his rooms--occurred just before your
illness?"

"The thing which he had attempted that night was the last straw, Sime;
it broke me down. From the time that he left Oxford, Antony Ferrara
has pursued a deliberate course of crime, of crime so cunning, so
unusual, and based upon such amazing and unholy know