operty up, so that mischance can't
touch it. You have no children, it is true, but one never knows.
Honestly, I think you would be well advised if you were to take
precautions."

"Don't worry," said Jones brightly. "I'll give the whole lot to--my
wife--when I can come to terms with her."

"That's good hearing," replied the other. Then Jones took his departure,
leaving the precious documents in the hands of the lawyer.

He was elated. He had proved the facts which he had only guessed by
instinct up to this, that a rogue is the weakest person in the world
before a plain dealer, if the plain dealer has a weapon in his hand. The
almost instantaneous collapse of Voles and Mulhausen was due to the
fact that they stood on rotten foundations. He told himself now as he
walked along homeward that he need not have eaten that document.
Mulhausen would never have used it. If he had just gone out and called
in a policeman, Mulhausen, seeing him in earnest, would have collapsed.

However the thing was eaten and done with and there was no use in
troubling any more on the matter. He had other things to think of. He
had made good. He had saved the Rochester name and estates, he had
recaptured one million, eight thousand pounds, reckoning that the coal
bearing lands were worth a million, and, more than that; he was a sane
man, able to look after what he had recaptured.

The Rochester family, if they knew, would have no cause to grumble at
the interloper and the substitution of new brains and push in the place
of decadence, craziness and sloth. The day when he had changed places
with Rochester was the best day that had ever dawned for them.

He was thinking this when all of a sudden that horrible, unreal feeling
he had suffered from once before, came upon him again. This time it was
not a question of losing his identity, it was a shuffle of his own taxed
brain between two identities. Rochester--Jones--Jones--Rochester. It
seemed to him for the space of a couple of seconds that he could not
tell which of those two individuals he was, then the feeling passed and
he resumed his way, reaching Carlton House Terrace shortly after six.

He gave his hat and cane and gloves to the flunkey who opened the door
for him--He had obtained a latch-key from Church that morning but forgot
to use it--and was crossing the hall when a strain of music brought him
to a halt. The tones of a piano came from a door on the right. Someone
was playing Chaminade