His thin countenance relaxed into a pleasant smile as he replied in a
calm, suave voice:

"I am Sir Digby Kemsley, and you--I believe--are Mr. Edward Royle--my
friend--my very intimate friend--are you not?"

"You!" I gasped, staring at him.

And then, for several seconds I failed to articulate any further words.
The imposture was so utterly barefaced.

"You are not Sir Digby Kemsley," I went on angrily at last. "What trick
is this?"

"No trick whatever, my dear Royle," was the man's quiet reply as he stood
upon the hearthrug in the same position in which my friend had stood an
hour before. "I tell you that my name is Kemsley--Sir Digby Kemsley."

"Then you assert that this flat is yours?"

"Most certainly I do."

"Bosh! How can you expect me to believe such a transparent tale?" I cried
impatiently. "Where is my friend?"

"I am your friend, my dear Royle!" he laughed.

"You're not."

"But did you not, only an hour ago, promise him to treat his successor in
the same manner in which you had treated himself?" the man asked very
slowly, his high, deep-set eyes fixed upon me with a crafty, almost
snake-like expression, an expression that was distinctly one of evil.

"True, I did," was my quick reply. "But I never bargained for this
attempted imposture."

"I tell you it is no imposture!" declared the man before me. "You will,
perhaps, understand later. Have a cigar," and he took up Digby's box and
handed it to me.

I declined very abruptly, and without much politeness, I fear.

I was surveying the man who, with such astounding impudence, was
attempting to impose upon me a false identity. There was something
curiously striking in his appearance, but what it was I could not exactly
determine. His speech was soft and educated, in a slightly higher pitch
than my friend's; his hands white and carefully manicured, yet, as he
stood, I noted that his left shoulder was slightly higher than the other,
that his dress clothes ill-fitted him in consequence; that in his
shirt-front were two rare, orange-coloured gems such as I had never seen
before, and, further, that when I caught him side face, it much resembled
Digby's, so aquiline as to present an almost birdlike appearance.

"Look here!" I exclaimed in anger a few moments later. "Why have you
called me over here? When you spoke to me your voice struck me as
peculiar, but I put it down to the distortion of sound on the telephone."

"I wanted to see if you recogn