'Who is going to turn you out? What do you mean, Checkley? What the devil do you mean by going on like this? Am I not master here? Who can turn you out?' 'You can, sir, and you will--and I'd rather, if you'll excuse the liberty, go out of my own accord. I'm a small man--only a very small man--but, thank God! I've got enough to give me a crust of bread and cheese to live upon.' 'I tell you what, Checkley: you had better go home and lie down and rest a little. You are upset. Now, at our age we can't afford to be upset. Go home, and be easy. Old friends don't part quite so easily as you think.' Mr. Dering spoke kindly and gently. One must be patient with so old a servant. Checkley sobbed and choked. Like a child he sobbed. Like a child of four, Checkley choked and sniffed. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'Oh, no--you can't understand. It's what I saw last night.' 'This is very wonderful. What did you see? A ghost?' 'Worse than a ghost--who cares for a ghost? Ghosts can't turn a man out of his place and bring him to be a laughingstock. No--no. It was a man that I saw, not a ghost.' 'If you can find it possible to talk reasonably'--Mr. Dering took his chair and tore open an envelope--'when you can find it possible to talk reasonably, I will listen. Meantime, I really think that you had better go home and lie down for an hour or two. Your nerves are shaken; you hardly know what you are saying.' 'I was in Gray's Inn yesterday evening. By accident, at eight.' He spoke in gasps, watching his master curiously. 'By accident--not spying. No--by accident. On my way to my club--at the _Salutation_. Walking through South Square. Not thinking of anything. Looking about me--careless-like.' 'South Square, Gray's Inn. That is the place where the man Edmund Gray lives: the man we want to find and cannot find.' 'Oh! Lord! Lord!' exclaimed the clerk. 'Is it possible?' He lifted his hand and raised his eyes to heaven and groaned. Then he resumed his narrative. 'Coming through the passage, I looked up to the windows of No. 22--Mr. Edmund Gray's Chambers, you know.' 'I believe so.' Mr. Dering's face betrayed no emotion at all. 'Go on; I am told so.' 'In the window I saw Mr. Edmund Gray himself--himself.' 'Curious. You have seen him--but why not?' 'The man we've all been so anxious to find. The man who endorsed the cheque and wrote the letters and got the papers--there he was!' 'Question of identity. How did you know him, since you had never seen him before?' This question Checkley shirked. 'He came down-stairs five minutes afterwards, while I was still looking up at the windows. Came down-stairs, and walked out of the Square--made as if he was going out by way of Raymond's Buildings--much as if he might be going to Bedford Row.' 'These details are unimportant. Again--how did you know him?'