had been temporarily deranged.

The testimony, expertly advanced by a novelist who was not an expert,
the reporters grabbed before the court could rule it out. The grabbing
was natural. The decedent's declaration had been made to Jones who,
though not an alienist, was the teller of tales that have been
translated into every polite language, including the Japanese, which is
the politest of all. Moreover, have not the mendacious been properly
subdivided into liars, damned liars and expert witnesses? To Verdun with
the lot! Mr. Ten Eyck Jones was certainly not an expert, but certainly
too he was somebody, he was a best-seller and in the way we live now,
the testimony of the best-seller is entitled to every editorial respect.
The court might rule his testimony out, city editors saluted it.

Jones' little invention did wash therefore and, in the washing, poured
balm by the bucket over the father of the murdered man.

Then, gradually, like everything else, except war and the taxes, both
murderer and murdered were dropped in the great dust-bin of oblivion
that awaits us all.

In the rotunda, meanwhile, Jones sat kicking his heels. It was in the
morning, and always in the morning Jones was invisibly at work. Now, his
routine upset, loathingly he kicked his heels. But Jones had ways of
consoling himself that were very commonplace.

I am doing all the evil I can, he vindictively reflected, and it was
with the comfort of his animosity about him that, ultimately, he was
shown into an office--bright and, on this May forenoon, very airy--that
gave on Broad Street.

Dunwoodie, twisting in a chair, glared at him.

"Ecce iterum Crispinus!" Jones tritely began. "What price retainers
to-day?"

"I hoped to God I had seen the last of you," Dunwoodie, with elaborate,
old-fashioned courtesy, replied.

Jones, disdaining to be asked, drew a chair.

Viciously Dunwoodie eyed him. "What the devil do you want?"

Jones smiled at him. "That decision."

"What decision, sir?"

"The one I cited when I brought you the paper that secured Lennox'
discharge."

"Damme, sir, nothing of the kind. I would have had him discharged any
way."

Jones' smile broadened. "You seem capable of anything. It is a great
quality. Believe me, if I thought you lacked it, you would not now be
enjoying my society."

"You flatter yourself strangely, sir. If you have nothing to say, don't
keep on saying it."

"On the contrary, I am here to listen to you," J