"Good Lord." Browne collapsed into a chair near the desk. He found it difficult to believe that Herries the outcast was now Herries the millionaire. "Fifty thousand a year," gasped the doctor, his red hair almost standing on end. "What will he do with it?" "Buy his freedom, I expect," said Ritson grimly. "What do you mean by that?" "Well," the lawyer took up a quill pen, and began to play with it. "Mr. Herries is certainly entitled to fifty thousand a year, but he has to do something to earn it." "Do what?" asked Browne more and more perplexed. Ritson bent forward. "He has to find out who killed Sir Simon, and thereby earn his freedom, and the money." "I am still in the dark. Will you explain?" "I have told you enough." "You will have to tell me more," said Browne, determinedly. "My duty to my dead client----" "See here," the little doctor jumped up, and slapped his hand down on the desk, "there was no need for you to have told me anything, so it is too late to talk of your duty to your dead client; but as you have told me so much, you must tell me everything." "Yes," Ritson nodded his silvery-white head, "you are right. I have committed a breach of legal etiquette. Miss Tedder should have been the first to hear the will, which has to be read after the funeral at 'The Moated Hall.' But then Mr. Herries, who inherits, should also be present, and he is accused of the crime." "He has escaped the immediate consequences," said Browne, meaningly. "Do you know where he is?" "Good Lord, how should I know?" cried Browne explosively. He was not quite sure as to the truth of Ritson's statement, and thought that it might be a trap to lure Herries from his hiding-place. "You are a friend of Mr. Herries, and you went to Desleigh, as Inspector Trent told me." "Quite so. But I was with Inspector Trent at the time Herries escaped out of the window of his bedroom." "Then you do not know where he is?" "No!" said the doctor, lying manfully. Ritson looked depressed. "That is a pity," he muttered, "for unless I can see him, I don't know how to put things right." "Explain them to me." The lawyer turned on his visitor in the twinkling of an eye. "You do not know where he is?" Browne was not at all disconcerted, having had one moment in which to think of a plausible answer. "If Herries communicates with anyone it will be with me," he said, quietly, "as he knows that I am his firm friend, and believe in his innocence." "You do,--you really do?" "Certainly. Herries did not even know that his uncle was in the inn, and certainly could not have known that he was the heir." "No, No," Ritson rapped his teeth with the feathered end of the quill-pen, "yet the evidence is dead against him." "I am with you there. All the same," here Browne shamelessly pilfered Kyles' ideas, "the evidence is so clear that I believe my friend to be innocent."