r what
bearing that insignificant fact has upon your amazing charge this
morning."

"You are the only son of Gerald Cecil Rockamore, third son of the Earl
of Stafford?" The detective did not appear to have heard the protest
of the man he was interrogating.

"Precisely. But what--"

"There were, then, four lives between you and the title," Blaine
interrupted, tersely. "But two remain, your father and grandfather.
Your uncles died, both of sudden attacks of heart-disease, and
curiously enough, both deaths occurred while they were visiting at
Handsworth Castle."

"That is quite true." The cynical banter was gone from Rockamore's
tones, and he spoke with a peculiar, hushed evenness, as if he waited,
on guard, for the next thrust.

"Lord Ashfrith, your father's oldest brother, and next in line to the
old Earl, was seated in the gun-room of the castle, sipping a brandy
and soda, and carving a peach-stone. Twenty minutes before, you had
brought the peaches in from the garden, and eaten them with him. He
was showing you how, in his boyhood, he had carved a watch-charm from
a peach-stone, and you were close at his side when he suddenly fell
over dead. Two years later, your Uncle Alaric, heir to the earldom
since his older brother was out of the way, dropped dead at a hunt
breakfast. You were seated next him."

"Are you trying to insinuate that I had anything to do with these
deaths?" Rockamore still spoke quietly, but there was a slight tremor
in his tones, and his face looked suddenly gray and leaden in the glow
of the leaping flames.

"I am recalling certain facts in your family history. When your Uncle
Alaric died, he had just set down his cordial glass, which had
contained peach brandy. An odd coincidence, wasn't it, that both of
these men died with the odor of peaches about them, an odor which
incidentally you had provided in both cases, for it was you who
suggested the peach brandy as a cordial at the hunt breakfast, and
induced your uncle to partake of it."

"It was a coincidence, as you say. I had not thought of it before."
The Englishman moistened his lips nervously, as if they suddenly felt
dry. "Uncle Alaric was a heavy, full-blooded man, and he had ridden
hard that morning, contrary to the doctor's orders. I suggested the
brandy as a bracer, I remember."

"An unfortunate suggestion, wasn't it?" Blaine asked, significantly.
The other man made no reply.

"There was another coincidence." The detective pur