“No, I can’t say I do. I called on him once, but he didn’t seem anxious that there should be any intimacy.... Why do you ask? What has Mr. Bradley to do with――――” “Has it never struck you that nobody _does_ know him?” Palmer interrupted. “Nobody knows, for instance, except me and Grif whom I told, that his name isn’t Bradley.” “_Isn’t_ Bradley! What is it then?” “His name is Tennant.” Doctor O’Neill stared. “You aren’t――――? This isn’t a game, is it?” Palmer shook his head. “Not so far as I am concerned.” “Then why on earth――――?” “For the same reason that brought him here――among strangers. He doesn’t want to be recognized. Have you ever heard of his having had a friend to stay with him――I mean anyone who knew him before he came here?” “I don’t remember. I was never particularly interested in the matter.” “Canon Annesley says he has never had a visitor.” The doctor considered. “But what has all this to do with Grif?” “I think it has something to do with what you want to know,” said Palmer. “And is that all you have to tell me?” “It is all I have a definite proof for. I have only a theory of what the rest may be.” The doctor waited. “Would you like to hear my theory?” asked Palmer sweetly. “I would like to pull your ear,” answered the doctor. Palmer smiled. “Mr. Bradley is peculiar,” he said slowly, “and peculiar in a very unpleasant way. I had an interview with him in the church, and found him a good deal too handy with that stick of his. In fact I don’t mind admitting that at one time, when he got me cornered, I was pretty badly scared.... I thought over it afterwards and added it to one or two other things I had picked up about him, and I tried to find an explanation which would cover everything.” “I see.... Well?” “It mayn’t be the right explanation of course, but it does cover a good deal.” “And what is it?” “Perhaps you will only think it silly,” said Palmer, “but it seemed to me that a man who had been put under restraint for something he had done in a fit of insanity might, on coming out, want to live in a place where nobody would know anything about him, and might even want to drop his surname. Also, after a time, he might begin to drift back again towards the condition he had been in before, and under such circumstances he might want to talk to somebody――to talk about things more or less bordering on the subjects that interested him.” The doctor nodded, and Palmer, encouraged by the attention with which his theory was received, developed it still further. “There would be no use talking to you, or even to me. He would have to find a listener with whom he would be safe; a listener whom he might possibly bring round to look at things in his own way. You’ll get chaps like that at school, as of course you know.... And he naturally would be delighted when he found such a person――even if he was only a kid.” “Grif?”