"For whom this sorrow?" he enquired coldly. "For the tutor or his charge?" "For the boy," Rose declared. "After all, he was very young." "I'm sorry for Duncombe," Leonard admitted frankly. "Whatever he'd been up to, it was the most horrible death any one could die." "I'm sorry for both," I insisted. "I think that somehow we ought to have prevented it." Mr. Thomson looked at us, one by one, out of his bright piercing eyes. It was obvious that he was out of sympathy with us. "I continually forget," he said coldly, "that I have to deal with sentimentalists. No person who looked upon life from a sane point of view, and who possessed full knowledge of all the facts, could possibly regret the departure of either of them." "Was Duncombe's story really true?" Rose asked. "This one is, at any rate," our host replied. "Arthur Dompers was the orphan son of a Welsh miner. When he was fourteen years of age, a relative in America died intestate and this boy was discovered to be the heir. Some lawyers in London were entrusted with the charge of him. He was sent to four private schools, from each one of which he was expelled. Three tutors one by one relinquished the task of training him up in the way he should go. Duncombe was the fourth." "Tell us about Mr. Duncombe, please," Rose begged. "Duncombe was one of those criminals who are too clever to come under the ban of the law," Thomson continued. "He was also a person against whom I had a very strong grievance. When I heard that the boy, Arthur Dompers, had been committed to his charge, I felt that, if carefully watched, Duncombe's time had come at last. By some irony of fate, the fortune left to Arthur Dompers became trebled and quadrupled in the hands of his trustees. Duncombe's appetite for plunder, already insatiable, must have become a fever. He was clever, though. He bided his time. For three years he had charge of Arthur Dompers, and during that three years he improved him immensely. It was perfectly clear what he was waiting for--for the only period when the boy could be of real service to him--namely after his twenty-first birthday. He made his plans a long way ahead. With great cunning he kept secret the day of the boy's majority. You attended a picnic, I think--a birthday party?" "It was supposed to be his twentieth birthday," Leonard observed.