Mr. Masters laughed genially. "I like a good liar. You don't want to tell me anything about yourself. Very likely you are wise, but all the same I am very curious to know all about you--who you are, and how you came to the Astons, and who was your mother, and when and where Aymer met her. You see," he added confidentially, "I used to be about with Aymer a good bit and I thought I knew all----" He stopped abruptly. If he were being purposely tactless he realised he had gone far enough. "I do not think Aymer ever met my mother. I am certain you haven't. Mr. Aston used to know her, and suggested Aymer's adopting me when he heard I was left stranded in a workhouse. I was just a workhouse boy. Now, are you satisfied as to my private history, sir?" "No," retorted the inquisitor good-humouredly as ever, "you must have had a father, you know." "It seems possible. I do not remember him." He began to resign himself to fate and this Juggernaut of a man who rolled other people's feelings flat with no more compunction than a traction engine. "Fathers are useful. You may want to remember, some-day." "I'm quite satisfied at present." "I'm not suggesting you have anything to complain of. Aymer doesn't do things by halves. Christopher is as much a family name as Aston, for example." Something in his tone caught Christopher's attention and he looked at him sharply. Peter Masters was gazing straight before him with that same cynical smile on his face it had worn when Christopher was first introduced to him six years ago. "I wonder why on earth they did that?" ruminated the Juggernaut. "Cousin Charles is capable of any unworldly folly, but Aymer was a man of the world once. It looks like colossal bluff." And then the meaning of all this swept over Christopher's mind like a wave of fire, scorching his soul, desecrating and humiliating the very mainspring of his life. Aymer's son! He knew Masters believed it as surely as if he had blurted it out in his own unbearable way, and it was not to save him, it was from no sense of decency Masters had not said it audibly. Christopher longed to fling the unspoken lie back to him, to refuse the collaboration of detail that the passing minutes crowded on his notice. He put on speed; tried to outstrip the evil thought of it, to think only of Caesar, the dear companion of his days, the steady friend, the unobtrusive mentor and guide. But a thought he could not outstrip slipped into his mind so insidiously and stealthily, he could not tell how or whence it came. "You only know Caesar; you never knew Aymer Aston of the silent past." Faster and faster rushed the car in futile attempt to outpace the whispered treason. The speed indicator stood at 40 and still mounted. "I should like to remark," said Peter Masters thoughtfully, "that I have not yet made my will and it would cause some inconvenience to a vast number of people to have several millions left masterless."