the other telling, in language garnished with strange and horrible
oaths, of those dark and lurid terrors which once had driven him from
this very place, leaving it ablaze behind. A strange couple they would
make, and strange would be their conversation!

Yet the tenement which had housed the old man's deranged spirit, empty as
now it was--aye, emptier than Duggle's tomb--was still to be witness of
one more earthly scene and unwittingly bear part in it.

CHAPTER XIII

RIGHT OF CONQUEST

What has been related of Mr. Saffron's life before he ascended the throne
on which he still sat in the Tower represented all that Beaumaroy knew of
his old friend before they met--indeed he knew scarcely as much. He told
the brief story to Doctor Mary in the parlor. She heard him listlessly;
all that was not much to the point on which her thoughts were set, and
did not answer the riddle which the scene in the Tower put to her. She
was calm now--and ashamed that she had ever lost her calmness.

"Well, there was the situation as I understood it when I took on the
job--or quite soon afterwards. He thought that he was being pursued; in a
sense he was. If these Radbolts found out the truth, they certainly would
pursue him, try to shut him up, and prevent him from making away with
his money or leaving it to anybody else. I didn't at all know at first
what a tidy lot he had. He hated the Radbolts; even after he ceased to
know them as cousins, he remained very conscious of them always; they
were enemies, spies, secret service people on his track--poor old boy!
Well, why should they have him and his money? I didn't see it. I don't
see it to this day."

Mary was in Mr. Saffron's armchair. Beaumaroy stood before the fire. She
looked up at him.

"They seem to have more right than anybody else. And you know--you
knew--that he was mad."

"His being mad gives them no right! Oh, well, it's no use arguing. In the
end I suppose they had rights--of a kind; a right by law, I
suppose--though I never knew the law and don't want to--to shut the old
man up, and make him damned miserable, and get the money for themselves.
That sounds just the sort of right the law does give people over other
people--because Aunt Betsy married Uncle John fifty years ago, and was
probably infernally sorry for it!"

Mary smiled. "A matter of principle with you, was it, Mr. Beaumaroy?"

"No--instinct, I think. It's my instinct to be against the proper thing,
the