“Oh, I don’t mind,” I answered. “It has been rather amusing and—well—illuminating.” Orrington chuckled. “The devil tempted me, and I didn’t resist him unduly. As a matter of fact, it has been quite as illuminating to me as to you. I’ve been wishing for a dozen or fifteen years to try out the experiment.” “What experiment?” I was puzzled. “Oh, putting it up to Reynolds, of course. I’ve wondered why he did it and why he didn’t do it and, moreover, how he did it.” “If you got light on a complication like that, you did better than I did. Do you mind explaining?” “Reynolds has explained sufficiently, hasn’t he? Of course I knew long ago that he faked his story, but—” “Then you knew it was Reynolds?” I interrupted. “Knew? Of course I knew. Later, of course, much later. I never inquired, as I told you, but I spotted him after he made his first big hit. The man who had hired him to do those articles bragged about it to me—said he’d given him his start, but allowed me some credit for establishing the connection. I blinked, but didn’t let on I hadn’t known that Reynolds and my supposedly starving young author were one and the same person. By that time, of course, everybody was fully aware that Reynolds had emerged from heavily gilded circles of dulness. I don’t know why I’ve never had it out with him before. I suppose I shouldn’t have sailed in to-day if he hadn’t been so snippy about the boy of whom I was telling you. I couldn’t stand that.” “I’m afraid,” I ventured to say, “that it won’t do Reynolds any special good.” Orrington rose ponderously from his chair and spread his hands in a fantastic gesture of disclaim. “Who am I,” he asked, “to teach ethics to a genius who is also a moralist—‘with perhaps a cosmic significance’? The devil tempted me, I tell you, and I fell, for the sake of a little fun and a little information. I’ve never known Reynolds’s side of the story. Lord, no, it won’t do him any good. All the same, it will take him a week to explain to himself all over again just why he acted with perfect propriety in not acknowledging my little boost. I dare say his book may be a few days later on account of it, and I shall have to nurse Speedwell through an attack of the fidgets. A dreadful life, mine! No wonder the business man is tired. You ought to thank God on your knees every night that you haven’t been sitting all day in a publisher’s office.” He held out his hand very solemnly, and very solemnly waddled across the big room, nodding every now and then to acquaintances who smiled up at him as he passed. IN MAULMAIN FEVER-WARD _By_ GEORGE GILBERT _Copyright, 1918, by The Story-Press Corporation._