“We meet again, Sam, my trusted counsellor and cherished friend. With your mask torn off, you look more changed to me than I possibly can to you. Oh, don’t waste time with denials! I’d need to be blinder than mustard gas could make me not to see you as you are. For years you traded upon the gullibility of my father. You persuaded him that fortune would build bigger and faster if he withheld proof of title to our Bronx estates and let the Guarantee Investors develop a property that has belonged to the Lauderdales since the grant of King James. You overcame his needs and his children’s needs with false promises of rich reward when he eventually would claim the improved acreage. And after letting him die in half-crazed poverty, with his mysterious instructions unfound and our title proofs buried with them, you advised me to raise money from the collateral heirs and institute a court fight to establish our rights. And it was you, I feel sure, who brought these heirs before the Grand Jury that indicted me for fraud just after I had sailed for Somewhere in France.” A moment Lauderdale paused in the controlled fury of his accusation, brushed a hand across his eye-lids and moistened his lips. “But the crookedest lane has its end, Sam Allen. My chief treasure you could not take from me—a glorious girl child born to retribution. To her aid came this real-man sample from out the West. Working together they have recovered every necessary document, even to my parent’s last will and testament. We are ready and able now to right the most grievous wrong ever perpetrated in the medium of New York real estate—to force your company to turn over a thousand acres in the heart of the Bronx and to make restitution, under your guarantee, to innocent purchasers, even if it breaks you as you would have broken——” He was stopped by the grasp which Pape had put on his arm. “Don’t dump all the onus on the judge, Mr. Lauderdale,” he advised. “We mustn’t forget that he is a lawyer, hence full of wriggles. Best leave his punishment to me and that more easily proved charge of the Montana Gusher oil-stock fraud. There is one among those present, to approach the subject guardedly, who is more directly responsible for the Bronx realty steal than His Honor.” Even Jane, close as she had been to the queer questioner throughout recent developments, was startled by his statement. What sort of a lone hand was he playing? Allen’s pudgy palms clasped. Aunt Helene eyed one, then another of the group, as though bewildered. Only Pape’s gaze did not wander. It turned from the blind man’s face to fix upon that of Mills Harford. At the silent accusation, Irene sprang toward him, no longer a kitten, but a flare-eyed mother-cat in defense of her own. “Don’t you dare accuse my Harfy, you cave-brute!” she cried. “Just because he makes _money_ out of real-estate isn’t any reason to jump at the _conclusion_ that he——”