"Nice chap, too! Too bad to offend him that way," Mr. Boller pursued meditatively. "Friends are few and far between in this sad old world, Anthony, and a queer dick like you--rich or poor--has trouble hanging on to the few he makes. Oh, I don't mean to be nasty, you know; I'm just telling you. Well, come and have your head rubbed." Anthony collapsed into his chair. "There's nothing wrong with my head," he said. "That was the first lie I could think of, Johnson, to get him out of here. He had to go!" "Why?" "She said so," Anthony informed him, with a ghastly little smile. "She's engaged to him!" "To Bob Vining?" "Yes!" Johnson Boller whistled softly and, elevating his eyebrows, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and looked at Anthony with new commiseration. "Too bad, that!" said he. "Too bad for you that it should have been a chap of the Vining type." "What does that mean?" "Well, sooner or later, he may find out. The chances are that he _will_ find out just what you've done to that girl," Boller went on contemplatively. "It's just about as she says, too. If he was a fool, you could fool him, one way or another. Or if he was a little snide, Anthony, you could talk him off or bribe him off--but it'll never be like that with Bob. He'll never take any account of the circumstances; he'll just snatch out the gun and let fly!" "Rot!" Anthony said thinly. Johnson Boller's face grew grave and more grave. He sighed and looked over Anthony's head for a little and then, reaching a decision, he looked at him suddenly. "Old chap," he said kindly. "Well?" "I don't want to worry you, but perhaps it is better for you to know--now. And I wish you wouldn't mention it, because Bob told me once, two years ago, and showed it to me in a sort of burst of confidence." "Showed you what?" "Down at the base of his thumb, Bob Vining's got _the murderer's cross_!" Johnson Boller said huskily. "Nonsense!" Anthony said sharply. "It's a fact! The little mark is there, clear as if it had been drawn in with a knife!" said Mr. Boller. "And for another fact--I don't know whether you know this or not, but virtually every murderer who has been executed in the last twenty years in this State, has shown that cross in some form and----" He stayed the pleasant flow abruptly. From the direction of David's doorway a rustle was coming, very softly and cautiously, yet quite distinctly. It paused in the corridor while Mary drew aside a corner of the curtain and looked in--and then Mary was with them and asking: "Is he gone?" "Yes," Anthony sighed. "Was he excited while he was here?" "Not at all, apparently." "Then he doesn't know yet that I've disappeared," Mary said calmly, returning to her place at the cleared table. "Isn't he a darling?" "He is--a very charming fellow," Anthony muttered, thinking of the murderer's cross. "Did your man take my coffee away?" Mary pursued.