“Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give you leave to reveal it.” Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as if this man had always been in his life--as if he would never go out of it again. “I am not sure that I care to hear it,” he wavered. “You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were requesting me to tell you this.” “You promise that that is true?” Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice or deceit in others to trouble him. “I promise,” replied Seymour Michael. Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man was almost a panic. “Then tell me,” he said. Michael leant back in his chair, fixing his pleasant eyes on Arthur's pale face. “The estate is not yours,” he said. “Your step-brother, Jem Agar, is not dead.” “Not dead!” repeated Arthur, without any joy in his voice. “Not dead! Then who are you? Tell me who you are!” “Ah! That I cannot tell you.” And Seymour Michael sat smiling quietly on Anna Agar's son. CHAPTER XVI THE SPIDER AND THE FLY How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done! He is a wise liar who makes use of the truth at times. Seymour Michael was clever enough to stay his fantastic tongue in his further explanation to Arthur Agar. “It is a long story,” he said, “and in order to fully state the case to you I must go into some matters of which perhaps you have heard little. Do you happen to be anything of a politician? Are you, I mean, interested in foreign affairs?” Arthur confessed that he knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded, characteristic room. “You perhaps know,” Seymour Michael went on, in a tone of which the sarcasm was lost upon its victim, “that Russia is living in hopes of some day possessing India?” “Oh--ah--yes!” Arthur Agar was obviously not at all interested. There were so many things of a similar nature to be remembered--things which did not really interest him--and those nearer home had precedence in his mind. He knew, for instance, that Trinity Hall lived in hopes of heading the river that year, and that the Narcissus Club were going to give a narcissus-coloured dance in May week, at which entertainment even the jellies were to be yellow. The General now launched into an explanation, couched carefully in language suitable to his hearer's limited knowledge of the facts.