"Come, man, pull yourself together!" he said, not unkindly. "I'm not hounding you; Lawton never harmed you, and now he is dead. He was my client and I was bound to protect his interests, but as man to man, the fault was yours and you know it. I tried to keep you from making a fool of yourself and wrecking three lives, but I only succeeded in saving one." "But your men are hounding me, following me, shadowing me! I have come to find out why!" "And I would like to find out where you were on a certain night last month--the ninth, to be exact," responded Blaine quietly. "What affair is it of yours?" the other man asked wearily, adding: "How should I know, now? One night is like another, to me." "If you hate Pennington Lawton's memory as you seem to, the ninth of November should stand out in your thoughts in letters of fire," the detective went on, in even, quiet tone. "That was the night on which Lawton died." "Lawton?" Herbert Armstrong raised his haggard face. The meaning of Blaine's remark utterly failed to pierce his consciousness. "The date doesn't mean anything to me, but I remember the night, if that's what you want to know about, although I'm hanged if I can see what it's got to do with me! I'll never forget that night, because of the news which reached me in the morning, that my worst enemy on earth had passed away." "Were you in Illington the evening before?" asked Blaine. "I was not. I was in New Harbor, where I live, playing pinochle all night long with two other down-and-outs like myself, in a cheap hall bed-room--I, Herbert Armstrong, who used to play for thousands a game, in the best clubs in Illington! And I never knew that the man who had brought me to that pass was gasping his life away! Think of it! We played until dawn, when the extras, cried in the street below, gave us the news!" "If you will give me the address of this boarding-house you mention, and the names of your two friends, I can promise that you will be under no further espionage, Mr. Armstrong." "I don't care whether you know it or not, if that's all you want!" The gaunt man shrugged wearily. "I'm tired of being hounded, and I'm too weak and too tired to oppose you, even if it did matter." He gave the required names and addresses, and slouched away, his animosity gone, and only a dull, miserable lethargy sagging upon his worn body. When the outer door of the offices had closed upon him, Henry Blaine again called up Anita Lawton. This time her voice came to him sharpened by acute distress. "I did not recognize the tones of the person's voice, Mr. Blaine, only I am quite, quite sure that he was not the man in the library with my father the night of his death. But oh, what did he mean by the terrible things he said? It could not be that my father brought ruin and tragedy upon any one, much less drove them to suicide. Won't you tell me, Mr. Blaine? Ramon won't, although I am convinced he knows all about it. I must know."