What more can I tell?

You have heard.

I am a miserable man.

BOOK VII

THE PANELED DOOR

CHAPTER I

THE SCRATCHING SOUND

Estabrook listened to the story of Mortimer Cranch, sometimes staring
into the wizened face of the speaker, sometimes gazing into the depths
of the painted Gardens of Versailles. When at last, in a hollow voice
which reverberated through the scene loft, Cranch had ended, the younger
man jumped forward with his eyes blazing, his hands clenched, his
nostrils distended.

"What is wrong with my wife now?" he roared. "You know. Tell me or I'll
tear you to pieces!"

There was a moment in which the place was as still as a tomb. I myself
drew no breath, but watched the half-bald head of the criminal shake
sadly.

Then suddenly he looked up. With one claw-like finger, he pointed at
Estabrook. Hate and distrust were in his eyes.

"You know!" he piped in a thin but terrible voice. There was no doubting
the sincerity of his accusation.

"I know?" cried Estabrook, falling back. "I know?"

"It began when you left the house!" cried Cranch. "I've always watched
on and off since you married her. I'm her father. I've loved her as no
one knows. It was my right to watch. I've been nearly mad with worry.
What have you done to her? You have dug me out of the grave, I tell you.
Now we're face to face. What have you done with my girl?"

The lonely, ruined man had thrown his arms forward. He wore dignity. For
a passing second he became a figure to inspire awe; for a moment he
seemed the incarnation of a great self-sacrifice. And in that pause he
saw that Estabrook's expression had suddenly filled with sympathy, as if
in a flash a warmer circulation of blood stirred in his veins; as if,
suddenly, his sight had been cleared so that he could picture all the
suffering which Cranch had been forced to keep locked up within himself,
through dragging years. He reached for the extended, bare, and bony
wrist of the older man and grasped its cords in his strong fingers.

"Come," said he softly, "there is no time for us who have loved her so
much, each in his own way, to misunderstand."

Cranch did not answer. He did not move a muscle. But his eyes filled
with the thin tears of aged persons.

"And now, Doctor," said Estabrook, wheeling toward me, "we must find
out if Margaret has se