The likeness between the twins went even deeper than the surface. Both owed their success in life to a certain hardness of character coupled with an abundance of energy. Neville, going to the Bar, had made himself feared from the first as a brutal and domineering cross-examiner; and his criminal practice had done little to soften his professional manners. Roger’s rise to prosperity had been more mysterious. It was vaguely known that he had made money in South Africa and South America; but the exact methods which had led to his fortune were never discussed by him. He had come home at the age of forty-five to find his brother one of the leading lights of the Bar. The purchase of the little Whistlefield estate had followed, and Roger had apparently been content to settle down in the countryside and make a clean break with the interests of his past. The third brother, Ernest, seemed hardly to belong to the same family as the twins. Though five years younger, he had none of the vitality and energy which were so manifest in his elders; and the contrast was accentuated by the weakness of his eyes, which gazed incuriously at the world from behind the concave lenses of his pince-nez. Left to fend for himself by the time he was twenty, and with a couple of hundred a year of his own, he had simply vegetated without even attempting to go into any business; and when his brothers had made their fortunes, he had slipped into the role of parasite without a thought, had transferred himself to Whistlefield, and had continued to live there ever since. Roger had fallen into the habit of giving him a fluctuating allowance, which he eked out as best he could by betting on a small scale. “What’s this Hackleton case that you were talking about?” he inquired with a certain dull interest. Neville looked at his brother with an expression half quizzical and half contemptuous. For days the Hackleton case had extended in sordid detail over a good many columns of most daily newspapers, for its intricacy had been enlivened by frequent dramatic interchanges between witnesses and counsel. It had shown Neville Shandon at his best, relentlessly driving the defendants into one damaging admission after another. “Do you never read newspapers, Ernest?” the barrister demanded, quite unnettled by his brother’s ignorance of one of the greatest cases in which he himself had taken a leading part. Ernest’s interests were limited, as Neville knew; and it was useless to expect him to go outside his normal range merely from family concern. Wide-ranging curiosity was the last quality one could expect from him. Ernest blinked, took off his glasses and cleaned them, then replaced them carefully before replying.