“Quite so, Mr. Pickering,” said Larry, nodding his head gravely. He was not, to be sure, a presentable member of any bar, for a smudge detracted considerably from the appearance of one side of his face, his clothes were rumpled and covered with black dust, and his hands were black. But I had rarely seen him so calm. He recrossed his legs, peered into the bowl of his pipe for a moment, then asked, as quietly as though he were soliciting an opinion of the weather: “Will you tell me, Mr. Pickering, whether you yourself are a debtor of John Marshall Glenarm’s estate?” Pickering’s face grew white and his eyes stared, and when he tried suddenly to speak his jaw twitched. The room was so still that the breaking of a blazing log on the andirons was a pleasant relief. We stood, the three of us, with our eyes on Pickering, and in my own case I must say that my heart was pounding my ribs at an uncomfortable speed, for I knew Larry was not sparring for time. The blood rushed into Pickering’s face and he turned toward Larry stormily. “This is unwarrantable and infamous! My relations with Mr. Glenarm are none of your business. When you remember that after being deserted by his own flesh and blood he appealed to me, going so far as to intrust all his affairs to my care at his death, your reflection is an outrageous insult. I am not accountable to you or any one else!” “Really, there’s a good deal in all that,” said Larry. “We don’t pretend to any judicial functions. We are perfectly willing to submit the whole business and all my client’s acts to the authorities.” (I would give much if I could reproduce some hint of the beauty of that word authorities as it rolled from Larry’s tongue!) “Then, in God’s name, do it, you blackguards!” roared Pickering. Stoddard, sitting on a table, knocked his heels together gently. Larry recrossed his legs and blew a cloud of smoke. Then, after a quarter of a minute in which he gazed at the ceiling with his quiet blue eyes, he said: “Yes; certainly, there are always the authorities. And as I have a tremendous respect for your American institutions I shall at once act on your suggestion. Mr. Pickering, the estate is richer than you thought it was. It holds, or will hold, your notes given to the decedent for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars.” He drew from his pocket a brown envelope, walked to where I stood and placed it in my hands. At the same time Stoddard’s big figure grew active, and before I realized that Pickering had leaped toward the packet, the executor was sitting in a chair, where the chaplain had thrown him. He rallied promptly, stuffing his necktie into his waistcoat; he even laughed a little. “So much old paper! You gentlemen are perfectly welcome to it.” “Thank you!” jerked Larry. “Mr. Glenarm and I had many transactions together, and he must have forgotten to destroy those papers.” “Quite likely,” I remarked. “It is interesting to know that Sister Theresa wasn’t his only debtor.”