"No. I think not," was his slow reply, his dark eyes gazing full into mine as he still stood astride upon the hearthrug. Then he fidgeted uneasily, stroked his well-clipped grey beard with his strong, bronzed hand, and strode across the room and back again. "Look here, Royle," he exclaimed at last. "You're my friend, so I may as well speak straight out. Will you help me?" "Certainly--if I can." "I'm in a hole--a confounded hole. I've been worried ever since I got back from Egypt just before Christmas. Only you can save me." "Me! Why?" "I want you to remain my friend; to still believe in me, when--well--when I've gone under," he answered brokenly, his brows contracting as he spoke. "I don't understand you." "Then I'll speak more plainly. To-night is the last time we shall meet. I've played the game, I tell you--and I've lost!" "You seem horribly hipped about something to-night, my dear fellow!" I exclaimed in wonder at his strange words. In all my circle of friends no man was more level-headed than Sir Digby Kemsley. "Yes, I'm not quite myself. Perhaps you wouldn't be, Royle, in the same circumstances." Halting, he stood erect with his hands clasped behind his back. Even then, at that moment of despair, he presented the fine figure of a man in his well-cut dinner clothes and the single ruby in his piqué shirt-front. "I want to entrust a secret to you--a great secret," he went on a few seconds later. "I tell you that to-night is the last occasion we shall ever meet, but I beg--may I implore you to judge me with leniency, to form no unjust conclusions, and when you remember me to regard my memory as that of a man who was not a rogue, but a victim of untoward circumstances." "Really, my dear fellow," I said, "you speak in enigmas. What do you mean--you intend what?" "That matters nothing to you, Royle," was his hoarse reply. "I merely ask for your continued friendship. I ask that you will treat my successor here in the exact manner in which you have treated me--that you will become his firm friend--and that you will perform for me one great and most important service." "Your successor! Who will succeed you? You have no son!" "No, I have no male relation whatever," he replied. "But we were speaking of the favour I am begging of you to perform for me. On the fourteenth of January I shall not be here, but it is highly necessary that on that evening, at eight o'clock, a secret message should be delivered into the hands of a certain lady--a message from myself. Will you do it?" "Certainly. Are you going abroad again?" "I--well, I can hardly tell. I may be dead by then--who knows?" And he smiled grimly. He returned to his writing-table, unlocked a drawer, and took therefrom a letter which was carefully sealed with black wax.