at. Nor will any one be
the wiser. She is not my daughter. I know nothing of her."

"You know everything," I cried, as anger made me reckless. "It will not
pay you to flourish that weapon. Listen!"

"Some one else coming!" he whispered.

"Yes," I shouted. "You have seen him before. It is young Estabrook."

The wizened creature immediately hid the revolver under the folds of the
blanket and began to play nervously with the chessmen. Both of us
waited, listening to the approach of the footsteps which came so
cautiously behind the pendant canvas.

To see at last that I was right, that the newcomer was Estabrook, was a
relief.

"Well," said the young man, appearing suddenly around the corner. "I
came. I thought I heard your voice, Doctor. You were talking?"

I pointed.

The worn, colorless face of the other man gazed up at us pathetically;
his body had relaxed into the hollows of his disordered cot. Against the
scene of regal gardens which was luminous as if the painted sky itself
bathed all in the soft light of a spring evening, the man and his face
were ridiculous and incongruous. His presence in that half-real setting
seemed a satire upon the beauties achieved by man and God.

"Who?" asked Estabrook involuntarily.

"The Sheik of Baalbec," I said.

The man looked up at me again.

"Mortimer Cranch," said I.

He fell forward on his face. It was several moments before any of us
moved. Cranch spoke first. He had arisen, and now stood with his sad
eyes fixed upon Estabrook, and I noticed for the first time that his
mouth and lips showed suffering and, perhaps, strength.

"It is this, above all things, I hoped would never come," said he. "You
have resurrected me from the dead. I was buried. You have dug me up.
Whatever good you may get from this strange meeting, make the most of
it. If it will help to guard against the danger spoken of by this man
you address as Doctor, I will be satisfied."

"You dog!" cried Estabrook, hot with emotions of violence. "It is you
who were responsible for the death of Judge Colfax."

The other held out his knotted hands toward me.

"The whole story!" he cried. "Not a part. You must know the whole
story."

"Briefly," I commanded.

He nodded, and began to pace the foreground of the Gardens of
Versailles, back and forth like a tethered beast in a park. His voice
was dispassionate. The narrative proceeded in a monotone. But if fiends
could conceive a tale more dark, they would