"I want you to attend carefully, Miss Lawton. I am speaking from my office. A man will be here with me in a few minutes, and I shall seat him close to the transmitter of my 'phone, leaving the receiver off the hook. Please listen carefully to his voice. I only wish you to hear a phrase or two, when I will hang up the receiver, and call you up later. Try to concentrate with all your powers, and tell me afterward if you have ever heard that voice until now; if it is the voice of the man you did not see, who was in the library with your father just before he died." He heard her give a quick gasp, and then her voice came to him, low and sweet and steady. "I will listen carefully, Mr. Blaine, and do my best to tell you the truth." The detective pulled a large leather chair close to the telephone, and Herbert Armstrong was ushered in. The man was pitiful in appearance, but scarcely demented, as the operative had described him. He was tall and shabbily clothed, gaunt almost to the point of emaciation, but with no sign of dissipation. His eyes, though sunken, were clear, and they gazed levelly with those of the detective. "Come in, Mr. Armstrong." Blaine waved genially toward the arm-chair. "What can I do for you?" The man did not offer to shake hands, but sank wearily into the chair assigned him. "Do? You can stop hounding me, Henry Blaine! You and Pennington Lawton brought my tragedy upon me as surely as I brought it upon myself, and now you will not leave me alone with my grief and ruin, to drag my miserable life out to the end, but you or your men must dog my every foot-step, spy upon me, hunt me down like a pack of wolves! And why? Why?" The man's voice had run its gamut, in the emotion which consumed him, and from a menacing growl of protest, it had risen to a shrill wail of weakness and despair. Henry Blaine was satisfied. "Excuse me, Mr. Armstrong," he said gently. "The receiver is off my telephone, here at your elbow. It would be unfortunate if we were overheard. If you will allow me--" But he got no further. Quick as he was, the other man was quicker. He sprang up furiously, and dashed the telephone off the desk. "Is this another of your d--d tricks?" he shouted. "If it is, whoever was listening may hear the rest. You and Pennington Lawton between you, drove my wife to suicide, but you'll not drive _me_ there! I'm ruined, and broken, and hopeless, but I'll live on, live till I'm even, do you hear? Live till I'm square with the game!" His violence died out as swiftly as it had arisen, and he sank down in the chair, his face buried in his bony hands, his thin shoulders shaken with sobs. Blaine quietly replaced the telephone and receiver, and seated himself.