ure, but which seemed to me
of great duration, there was silence between us. Then Ray leaned over
towards me.

"I think," he said, "that it is my turn to talk. You have come to me
like a hysterical schoolboy, you seem ignorant of the primeval elements
of justice. After all it is not wonderful. As yet you have only looked
in upon life. You look in, but you do not understand. You have called
me a coward. It is only a year or so since His Majesty pinned a little
cross upon my coat--for valour. I won that for saving a man's life.
Mind you, he was a man. He was a man and a comrade. To save him I rode
through a hell of bullets. It ought to have meant death. As a matter
of fact it didn't. That was my luck. But you mustn't call me a coward,
Ducaine. It is an insult to my decoration."

"Oh, I know that you are brave enough," I answered, "but this man was a
poor weak creature, a baby in your hands."

"So are the snakes we stamp beneath our feet," he answered coolly. "Yet
we kill them. In Egypt I have been in more than one hot corner where we
fought hand to hand. I have killed men more than once. I have watched
them galloping up with waving swords, and their fine faces ablaze with
the joy of battle, and all the time one's revolver went spit, and the
saddles were empty. Yet never once have I sent a brave man to his last
account without regret, enemy and fanatic though he was. I am not a
bloodthirsty man. When I kill, it is because necessity demands it. As
for that creature whom you found in the marshes, well, if there were a
dozen such in this room now, I would do my best to rid the earth of
them. Take my advice. Dismiss the whole subject from your mind. Go
back to Braster and wait. Something may happen within the next
twenty-four hours which will be very much to your benefit. Go back to
Braster and wait."

"You will tell me nothing, then?" I asked. "It is treating me like a
child. I am not a sentimentalist. If the man deserved death the matter
is between you and your conscience. But he came to Rowchester to see
me. I want to know why."

"Go back to Rowchester and wait," Ray said. "I shall tell you nothing.
Depend upon it that his business with you, if he had any, was evil
business. He and his whole brood left their mark for evil wherever they
crawled."

"His name?" I asked.

"Were there no papers upon him?" Ray demanded.

"None."

"So much the better," Ray declared grimly. "Now, my young friend, I
have given you all t