I left him sitting in his study with reassuring words upon his lips, but with horror upon his face. My heart was heavy for my little employer as I started off once more for town. As I looked back from the gate at the square of light which marked the window of my colleague, I suddenly saw the black outline of Dr. McCarthy’s figure passing against the lamp. He had hastened from his study then to tell St. James what he had heard. What was the meaning of it all, this atmosphere of mystery, this inexplicable terror, these confidences between two such dissimilar men? I thought and thought as I walked, but do what I would I could not hit upon any adequate conclusion. I little knew how near I was to the solution of the problem. It was very late--nearly twelve o’clock--when I returned, and the lights were all out save one in the Doctor’s study. The black, gloomy house loomed before me as I walked up the drive, its sombre bulk broken only by the one glimmering point of brightness. I let myself in with my latch-key, and was about to enter my own room when my attention was arrested by a short, sharp cry like that of a man in pain. I stood and listened, my hand upon the handle of my door. All was silent in the house save for a distant murmur of voices which came, I knew, from the Doctor’s room. I stole quietly down the corridor in that direction. The sound resolved itself now into two voices, the rough bullying tones of St. James and the lower tone of the Doctor, the one apparently insisting and the other arguing and pleading. Four thin lines of light in the blackness showed me the door of the Doctor’s room, and step by step I drew nearer to it in the darkness. St. James’s voice within rose louder and louder, and his words came plainly to my ear. “I’ll have every pound of it. If you won’t give it me I’ll take it. Do you hear?” Dr. McCarthy’s reply was inaudible, but the angry voice broke in again. “Leave you destitute! I leave you this little goldmine of a school, and that’s enough for one old man, is it not? How am I to set up in Australia without money? Answer me that!” Again the Doctor said something in a soothing voice, but his answer only roused his companion to a higher pitch of fury. “Done for me! What have you ever done for me except what you couldn’t help doing? It was for your good name, not for my safety, that you cared. But enough cackle! I must get on my way before morning. Will you open your safe or will you not?” “Oh, James, how can you use me so?” cried a wailing voice, and then there came a sudden little scream of pain. At the sound of that helpless appeal from brutal violence I lost for once that temper upon which I had prided myself. Every bit of manhood in me cried out against any further neutrality. With my walking cane in my hand I rushed into the study. As I did so I was conscious that the hall-door bell was violently ringing. “You villain!” I cried, “let him go!”