“You can call it an explanation or an excuse, whichever you like,” Hamel replied steadily, “but the fact is that this little building, which some one else seems to have appropriated, is mine. If I had not been a good-natured person, I should be engaged, at the present moment, in turning out its furniture on to the beach.” “What is your name?” Mr. Fentolin asked suddenly. “My name is Hamel--Richard Hamel.” For several moments there was silence. Mr. Fentolin was still leaning forward in his strange little vehicle. The colour seemed to have left even his lips. The hard glitter in his eyes had given place to an expression almost like fear. He looked at Richard Hamel as though he were some strange sea-monster come up from underneath the sands. “Richard Hamel,” he repeated. “Do you mean that you are the son of Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often? He was my brother’s friend.” “I am his son.” “But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake. I saw his name in all the lists. It was copied into the local papers here.” Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe. “I take a lot of killing,” he observed. “I was in that earthquake, right enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named Hamel of Philadelphia who died.” Mr. Fentolin sat quite motionless for several moments. He seemed, if possible, to have shrunken into something smaller still. A few yards behind, Meekins had alighted from his bicycle and was standing waiting. “So you are Richard Hamel,” Mr. Fentolin said at last very softly. “Welcome back to England, Richard Hamel! I knew your father slightly, although we were never very friendly.” He stretched out his hand from underneath the coverlet of his little vehicle--a hand with long, white fingers, slim and white and shapely as a woman’s. A single ring with a dull green stone was on his fourth finger. Hamel shook hands with him as he would have shaken hands with a woman. Afterwards he rubbed his fingers slowly together. There was something about the touch which worried him. “You have been making use of this little shanty, haven’t you?” he asked bluntly. Mr. Fentolin nodded. He was apparently beginning to recover himself.