Again he allowed some seconds to go by. "So I've heard." I fished out of my memory such tag ends of gossip as had reached me, I could hardly tell from where. "Didn't Mr. Brokenshire attack his interests--railways and steel and things--and nearly ruin him?" "I believe there was some such talk." I admired the way in which he refused to lend himself to the spread of the legend; but I insisted on going on, because the idea of this conflict of modern giants, with a beautiful maiden as the prize, appealed to my imagination. "And didn't old Mrs. Billing shift round all of a sudden from the man who seemed to be going under to--?" He cut the subject short by giving it another twist. "Grainger's been unlucky. His whole family have been unlucky. It's an instance of tragedy haunting a race such as one reads of in mythology and now and then in modern history--the house of Atreus, for example, and the Stuarts, and the Hapsburgs, and so on." I questioned him as to this, only to learn of a series of accidents, suicides, and sudden deaths, leaving Stacy as the last of his line, lonely and picturesque. At the foot of the steps leading up to the Rossiter lawn Larry Strangways paused again. The children and dogs having preceded us and being safe on their own grounds, we could consider them off our minds. "What do you know about old books?" he asked, suddenly. The question took me so much by surprise that I could only say: "What makes you think I know anything?" "Didn't your father have a library full of them? And didn't you catalogue them and sell them in London?" I admitted this, but added that even that undertaking had left me very ignorant of the subject. "Yes; but it's a beginning. If you know the Greek or Russian alphabet it's a very good point from which to go on and learn the language." "But why should I learn that language?" "Because I know a man who's going to have a vacancy soon for a librarian. It's a private library, rather a famous one in New York, and the young lady at present in command is leaving to be married." I smiled pleasantly. "Yes; but what has that got to do with me?" "Didn't I tell you I was going to look you up another job?" "Oh! And so you've looked me up this!" "No, I didn't. It looked me up. The owner of the library mentioned the fact as a great bore. It was his father who made the collection in the days of the first great American splurge. Stacy Grainger has added a rug or a Chinese jar from time to time, but he doesn't give a hang for the lot." "Oh, so it's his." "Yes; it's his. He says he feels inclined to shut the place up; but I told him it was a pity to do that since I knew the very young lady for the post." I dropped the subject there, because of a new inspiration. "If Mr. Grainger has places at his command, couldn't he do something for poor Hugh?" "Why poor Hugh? I thought he was--"