And then it all happened very quickly. In a frenzy we raced across the room, to get at him—but we weren’t in time. There was a rending of wood—a dreadful crash—a sprawling figure on the floor below. To me it seemed as if he had hurled himself against the balustrade, had literally dived downwards. The others did not notice it—so they told me later. But I did. And then we were kneeling beside him on the floor. “Dear God!” I heard Drage say in a hoarse whisper. “He’s dead; he’s broken his neck.” · · · · · Such is my story. Jack Drage blames himself for the rottenness of the woodwork, but I feel it was my fault. Yes—it was my fault. I ought to have known, ought to have done something. Even if we’d only locked the dining-room door. And the last link in the chain I haven’t mentioned yet. The vicar supplied that—though to him it was merely a strange coincidence. The baby-girl—born in the gallery—a strange, imaginative child, so run the archives, subject to fits of awful depression and, at other times, hallucinations—married. She married in 1551, on the 30th day of October, Henry, only son of Frank Sibton and Mary his wife. God knows: I don’t. It may have been an accident. _VIII_ _When Greek meets Greek_ I “BUT, Bill, I don’t understand. How much did you borrow from this man?” Sybil Daventry looked at her brother, sitting huddled up in his chair, with a little frown. “I borrowed a thousand,” he answered, sulkily. “And like a fool I didn’t read the thing he made me sign—at least, not carefully. Hang it, I’ve only had the money six months, and now he’s saying that I owe him over two. I saw something about twenty-five per cent., and now I find it was twenty-five per cent. a month. And the swine is pressing for payment unless——” He broke off and stared into the fire shamefacedly. “Unless what?” demanded his sister. “Well, you see, it’s this way.” The boy stammered a little, and refused to look at her. “I was jolly well up the spout when this blighter told me what I owed him, and I suppose I must have showed it pretty clearly. Anyway, I was propping up the bar at the Cri., getting a cocktail, when a fellow standing next me started gassing. Not a bad sort of cove at all; knows you very well by sight.” “Knows me?” said the girl, bewildered. “Who was he?” “I’m coming to that later,” went on her brother. “Well, we had a couple more and then he suggested tearing a chop together. And I don’t know—he seemed so decent and all that—that I told him I was in the soup. Told him the whole yarn and asked his advice sort of business. Well, as I say, he was bally sporting about it all, and finally asked me who the bird was who had tied up the boodle. I told him, and here’s the lucky part of the whole show—this fellow Perrison knew him. Perrison was the man I was lunching with.”