in. I tried to get the baby, but he held it as a
hostage. I could never trace the child after it was two years old. It
was only a month ago I learnt the reason. The man was an international
swindler and was wanted by the police. He was arrested in Paris and
charged in his true name--the name he had married in was false. When he
came out of prison he took his own name--and of course the child's name
changed, too."

The lawyer nodded.

"You want me to----?"

"Get the will proved and begin your search for Oliva Predeaux. There is
no such person. The girl's name you know, and I have told you where she
is living. You'll find nobody who knows Oliva Predeaux--her father
disappeared when she was six--he's probably dead, and her stepmother
brought her up without knowing her relationship to me--then she died and
the girl has been working ever since she was fifteen."

"She is not to be found?"

"Until she is married. Watch her, Jim, spend all the money you
wish--don't influence her unless you see she is getting the wrong kind
of man...."

His voice, which had grown to something of the old strength, suddenly
dropped and the great head rolled sideways on the pillow.

Kitson rose and crossed to the door. It opened upon a spacious
sitting-room, through the big open windows of which could be seen the
broad acres of the Sussex Weald.

A man was sitting in the window-seat, chin in hand, looking across to
the chequered fields on the slope of the downs. He was a man of thirty,
with a pointed beard, and he rose as the lawyer stepped quickly into the
room.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

"I think he has fainted--will you go to him, doctor?"

The young man passed swiftly and noiselessly to the bedside and made a
brief examination. From a shelf near the head of the bed he took a
hypodermic syringe and filled it from a small bottle. Baring the
patient's side he slowly injected the drug. He stood for a moment
looking down at the unconscious man, then came back to the big hall
where James Kitson was waiting.

"Well?"

The doctor shook his head.

"It is difficult to form a judgment," he said quietly, "his heart is all
gone to pieces. Has he a family doctor?"

"Not so far as I know--he hated doctors, and has never been ill in his
life. I wonder he tolerated you."

Dr. van Heerden smiled.

"He couldn't help himself. He was taken ill in the train on the way to
this place and I happened to be a fellow-passenger. He asked me to br