out to
me. "Help yourself."

"Thank you, Sir Gilbert," I answered, "but I haven't started that yet."

"Well, then, I will," he laughed, and he picked out a cigar, lighted it,
and flinging himself into an easy chair, motioned me to take another
exactly opposite to him. "Now, then, fire away!" he said. "Nobody'll
interrupt us, and my time's yours. You've some message for me?"

I took a good look at him before I spoke. He was a big, fine, handsome
man, some five-and-fifty years of age, I should have said, but uncommonly
well preserved--a clean-shaven, powerful-faced man, with quick eyes and a
very alert glance; maybe, if there was anything struck me particularly
about him, it was the rapidity and watchfulness of his glances, the
determination in his square jaw, and the extraordinary strength and
whiteness of his teeth. He was quick at smiling, and quick, too, in the
use of his hands, which were always moving as he spoke, as if to
emphasize whatever he said. And he made a very fine and elegant figure as
he sat there in his grand evening clothes, and I was puzzled to know
which struck me most--the fact that he was what he was, the seventh
baronet and head of an old family, or the familiar, easy, good-natured
fashion which he treated me, and talked to me, as if I had been a man of
his own rank.

I had determined what to do as I sat waiting him; and now that he had
bidden me to speak, I told him the whole story from start to finish,
beginning with Gilverthwaite and ending with Crone, and sparing no detail
or explanation of my own conduct. He listened in silence, and with more
intentness and watchfulness than I had ever seen a man show in my life,
and now and then he nodded and sometimes smiled; and when I had made an
end he put a sharp question.

"So--beyond Crone--who, I hear, is dead--you've never told a living soul
of this?" he asked, eyeing me closely.

"Not one, Sir Gilbert," I assured him. "Not even--"

"Not even--who?" he inquired quickly.

"Not even my own sweetheart," I said. "And it's the first secret ever I
kept from her."

He smiled at that, and gave me a quick look as if he were trying to get a
fuller idea of me.

"Well," he said, "and you did right. Not that I should care two pins, Mr.
Moneylaws, if you'd told all this out at the inquest. But suspicion is
easily aroused, and it spreads--aye, like wildfire! And I'm a stranger,
as it were, in this country, so far, and there's people might think
things