"He was one of the greatest scientists living--and he was a dear! That goes far to explain him--a gentle, wise, child-like, old man--with imagination and a Heaven-seeking soul. He picked me up as a boy, and was a father to me. I was his scientific assistant until he was killed, murdered by the foulest band of pirates. Life passes; and that is long ago." He fell silent a moment; and the girl looked on this unprecedented betrayal of feeling with eyes at once startled and sympathetic. "Doctor Schermerhorn," went on Darrow in his usual faintly tired, faintly cynical tone, "worked off and on for five years on a certain purely scientific discovery, the nature of which you would not understand. In conversation he told its essentials to this Eldridge. Doctor Schermerhorn fell sick of a passing illness. When he had recovered, the discovery had been completed and given to the scientific world." "Oh!" cried Helen. "What a trick!" "So I think. The discovery was purely theoretic and brought no particular fame or money to Eldridge. It was, as he looked at it, and as the doctor himself looked at it, merely carrying common knowledge to a conclusion. Perhaps it was; but I never forgave Eldridge for depriving the old man of the little satisfaction of the final proof. It is indicative of the whole man. He lacks humanity, and therefore imagination." "Still, I wish you wouldn't be quite so bitter when I'm around," pleaded Helen, "though I love your feeling for dear old Doctor Schermerhorn." "I wish you could arrange to get out of town for a little while," urged Darrow. "Isn't there some one you can visit?" "Do you mean there is danger?" "There is the potentiality of danger," Darrow amended. "I am almost confident, if pure reason can be relied on, that when the time comes I can avert the danger." "Almost--" said Helen. "I may have missed one of the elements of the case--though I do not think so. I can be practically certain when I telephone a man I know--or see the morning papers." "Telephone now, then. But why 'when the time comes'? Why not now?" Darrow arose to go to the telephone. He shook his head. "Let Eldridge do his best. He has always succeeded--triumphantly. Now he will fail, and he will fail in the most spectacular, the most public way possible." He lifted his eyes, usually so dreamy, so soft brown. Helen was startled at the lambent flash in their depths. He sauntered from the room. After a moment she heard his voice in conversation with the man he had called. "Hallowell?" he said, "good luck to find you. Did our friend leave on the _Celtic_? No? Sure he didn't sneak off in disguise? I'll trust you to think of everything. Sure! Meet me at Simmons' wireless in half an hour." Helen heard the click as he hung up the receiver. A moment later he lounged back into the room. "All right," he said. "My job's done." "Done!" echoed Helen in surprise.