Gerald made a hurried move. The piece rattled upon the board as if he had been playing the castanets. His father made him take it back. I sat watching the two in wonder and silence. What did it all mean? Why should Barnes--doubtless behind the screen, listening--read the outer letter? Why must Laura be employed to read the inner? Why could not this cultivated and refined gentleman before me read his---- Ah! that much was disclosed to me. A mere turn of the hand did it. He had made another of those passes over the board, and I learned from it what an ordinary examination would not have detected. He, the old soldier with the placid face and light-blue eyes, was blind! Quite blind! I began to see more clearly now, and from this moment I took up, at any rate in my own mind, a different position. Possibly the servant who had impelled me into the middle of this had had his own good reasons for doing so, as I now began to discern. But with a clew to the labyrinth in my hand, I could no longer move passively at any other's impulse. I must act for myself. For a while I sat still and made no sign. My suspicions were presently confirmed. The elder man more than once scolded his opponent for playing slowly. In one of these intervals he took from an inside pocket of his dress waistcoat a small package. "You had better take your letter, George," he said. "If there are, as you mentioned, originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can tell me all about it, _viva voce_, now you are here. Gerald will leave us alone presently." He held the papers toward me. To take them would be to take an active part in the imposture, and I hesitated, my own hand half outstretched. But my eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald's face, and my scruples took themselves off. He was eying the packet with an intense greed and a trembling longing--a very itching of the fingers and toes to fall upon the prey--that put an end to my doubts. I rose and took the papers. With a quiet, but I think significant look in his direction, I placed them in the breast pocket of my evening coat. I had no safer receptacle about me, or into that they would have gone. "Very well, sir," I said, "there is no particular hurry. I think the matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow." "To be sure. You ought not to be out with such a cold at night, my boy," he answered. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon, George? The servants are all at the theater--Gerald begged a holiday for them--but Barnes will get you the things in a minute." "Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted--time to think; five minutes to myself while they played. But I was out of my reckoning. "I will have mine now, too," he said. "Will you mix it, Gerald?"