, that you had been to her this
morning I felt sure that it would not be more than a few hours before
you would come to me."

"Why, Mr. Elphick, should you suppose that I should come to you at
all?" asked Spargo, now in full possession of his wits.

"Because I felt sure that you would leave no stone unturned, no corner
unexplored," replied Mr. Elphick. "The curiosity of the modern pressman
is insatiable."

Spargo stiffened.

"I have no curiosity, Mr. Elphick," he said. "I am charged by my paper
to investigate the circumstances of the death of the man who was found
in Middle Temple Lane, and, if possible, to track his murderer,
and----"

Mr. Elphick laughed slightly and waved his hand.

"My good young gentleman!" he said. "You exaggerate your own
importance. I don't approve of modern journalism nor of its methods. In
your own case you have got hold of some absurd notion that the man John
Marbury was in reality one John Maitland, once of Market Milcaster, and
you have been trying to frighten Miss Baylis here into----"

Spargo suddenly rose from his chair. There was a certain temper in him
which, when once roused, led him to straight hitting, and it was roused
now. He looked the old barrister full in the face.

"Mr. Elphick," he said, "you are evidently unaware of all that I know.
So I will tell you what I will do. I will go back to my office, and I
will write down what I do know, and give the true and absolute proofs
of what I know, and, if you will trouble yourself to read the
_Watchman_ tomorrow morning, then you, too, will know."

"Dear me--dear me!" said Mr. Elphick, banteringly. "We are so used to
ultra-sensational stories from the _Watchman_ that--but I am a curious
and inquisitive old man, my good young sir, so perhaps you will tell me
in a word what it is you do know, eh?"

Spargo reflected for a second. Then he bent forward across the table
and looked the old barrister straight in the face.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I will tell you what I know beyond doubt. I
know that the man murdered under the name of John Marbury was, without
doubt, John Maitland, of Market Milcaster, and that Ronald Breton is
his son, whom you took from that woman!"

If Spargo had desired a complete revenge for the cavalier fashion in
which Mr. Elphick had treated it he could not have been afforded a more
ample one than that offered to him by the old barrister's reception of
this news. Mr. Elphick's face not only fell, but chan