nzil. Have you met her?"

"No, but I have heard of her. She was the woman who visited Wrent in
Jersey Street. No doubt Ferruci was waiting for her in the back yard."

"Who is Wrent?" asked Jorce, looking puzzled.

"Don't you know the name, Doctor?"

"No."

"Did Mrs. Clear never mention it?"

"Never."

"Nor Ferruci?"

"No. I never heard the name before," replied Jorce complacently.

"Strange!" said Denzil reflectively. "Yet Wrent seems to be at the
bottom of the whole plot. Well, never mind, just now. Please continue,
my dear Doctor. What did Mrs. Clear say?"

"Oh, she repeated Ferruci's story, amplified in a feminine fashion. She
was afraid of Michael, who, when excited with morphia or drink, would
snatch up a knife to attempt her life. Twice she had disarmed him, and
now she was tired and frightened. She was willing for him to go into my
asylum since Count Ferruci had so kindly consented to bear the expense,
but she wished to give him one more chance. Then, as it was late, she
stayed here all night. So did the Count, and on Christmas Day they went
away."

"When did they come back?"

"About a fortnight later, and they brought with them the man they both
called Michael Clear."

"What is he like?"

"An old man with a white beard."

"Is he mad?" asked Lucian bluntly.

"He is not mad now, only weak in the head," replied Jorce
professionally, "but he was certainly mad when he arrived. The man's
brain is wrecked by morphia."

"Not by drink?"

"No; although it suited Mrs. Clear and Ferruci to say so. But Clear, as
I may call him, was very violent, and quite justified Mrs. Clear's
desire to sequester him. She told me that he often imagined himself to
be other people. Sometimes he would feign to be Napoleon; again the
Pope; so when he, a week after he was in the asylum, insisted that he
was Mark Vrain, I put it down to his delusion."

"But how could you think he had come by the name, Doctor?"

"My dear sir, at that time the papers were full of the case and its
mystery, and as we have a reading-room in this asylum, I fancied that
Clear had seen the accounts, and had, as a delusion, called himself
Vrain. Afterwards he fell into a kind of comatose state, and for weeks
said very little. He was most abject and frightened, and responded in a
timid sort of way to the name of Clear. Naturally this confirmed me in
my belief that his calling himself Vrain was a delusion. Then he grew
better, and one day told me