hey? We, I suppose, know more than anybody--and we
know just a few bare facts."

"I think you'll have to let me know what these bare facts are," remarked
Mr. Lindsey. "And Moneylaws, too. Moneylaws has a definite charge to
bring against this man--and he'll bring it, if I've anything to do with
it! He shall press it!--if he can find Carstairs. And I think you'd
better tell us what you know, Portlethorpe. Things have got to come out."

"I've no objection to telling you and Mr. Moneylaws what we know,"
answered Mr. Portlethorpe. "After all, it is, in a way, common
knowledge--to some people, at any rate. And to begin with, you are
probably aware that the recent history of this Carstairs family is a
queer one. You know that old Sir Alexander had two sons and one
daughter--the daughter being very much younger than her brothers. When
the two sons, Michael and Gilbert, were about from twenty-one to
twenty-three, both quarrelled with their father, and cleared out of this
neighbourhood altogether; it's always believed that Sir Alexander gave
Michael a fair lot of money to go and do for himself, each hating the
other's society, and that Michael went off to America. As to Gilbert, he
got money at that time, too, and went south, and was understood to be
first a medical student and then a doctor, in London and abroad. There
is no doubt at all that both sons did get money--considerable
amounts,--because from the time they went away, no allowance was ever
paid to them, nor did Sir Alexander ever have any relations with them.
What the cause of the quarrel was, nobody knows; but the quarrel itself,
and the ensuing separation, were final--father and sons never resumed
relations. And when the daughter, now Mrs. Ralston of Craig, near here,
grew up and married, old Sir Alexander pursued a similar money policy
towards her--he presented her with thirty thousand pounds the day she was
married, and told her she'd never have another penny from him. I tell
you, he was a queer man."

"Queer lot altogether!" muttered Mr. Lindsey. "And interesting!"

"Oh, it's interesting enough!" agreed Mr. Portlethorpe, with a chuckle.
"Deeply so. Well, that's how things were until about a year before old
Sir Alexander died--which, as you know, is fourteen months since. As I
say, about six years before his death, formal notice came of the death of
Michael Carstairs, who, of course, was next in succession to the title.
It came from a solicitor in Havana, where M