“I came down to thank you for what you did for us last night, Mr. Brant. My daughter has told me the circumstances, and it was exceedingly good of you to interest yourself in my poor boy.” Brant said “Not at all,” meaning thereby that the service had been freely rendered, and the judge went on: “It was a great relief to us all to find William safe at home this morning. He left us in anger, and I feel quite sure that we have you to thank for his return, though I am wholly in the dark as to how you managed it.” Brant answered the implied question frankly. “It was a very simple matter. I found your son in company with a man whose influence over him seems to be quite as great as it is sure to be bad. I happened to know this man, and I persuaded him to take the boy home.” The judge leaned back in his chair and matched his finger ends reflectively. “William mentions a Mr. Harding as having accompanied him home in a carriage. Is he the man?” Brant bowed. “Then the boy must be very much mistaken in his estimate of Harding. He seems to think he is a gentleman.” “I don’t doubt that in the least. Harding has probably been at some pains to make him think so. Just the same, you may believe me when I say that he is the worst possible companion for your son, or for any young man.” “H’m; that is a little odd.” The judge was fairly surprised into saying so much, but since he did not go on, how was Brant to know that the odd thing was the exact coincidence of his opinion of Harding and Harding’s opinion of him as reported by William Langford? And not knowing this, he went on straightway to his own undoing. “Odd that he should try to mislead your son? Knowing the man and his kind as well as I do, I should say that any other proceeding on his part would be odd. Harding is a professional gambler.” The judge began to put two and two together. “You say you know him well?” “Yes; I have known him a long time, and I owe him an ill turn or so on my own account,” said Brant, whose throat still ached from the pressure of Harding’s fingers. “Ah.” The judge’s mind began to lay hold of something like a sequence of threads in the mystery tangle. “Pardon me, Mr. Brant, if I am dull: but what possible use could a professional gambler make of my son? Surely William’s pocket money would be scarcely worth plotting for.” “Certainly not. Harding would be much more likely to give him money than to take it from him. Here is the layout,” Brant went on, dropping unconsciously into the jargon of the craft in describing its processes; “Harding poses, let us say, as a gentleman of leisure. He lays siege to some tenderfoot with more money than brains, perhaps, but who isn’t altogether blind, and proposes a quiet game for amusement. If he worked it alone the rawest greenhorn of the lot might suspect a trap, but with your son as a third party the thing looks perfectly square. Don’t you see?”