"And why not?" cried Hill, turning fiercely on him. "I am in danger. Haven't I the right to take all measures I can for my own safety? I _did_ listen, I tell you, and I overheard all. Had you not proved to Mask here, that the bullet which caused the death could not have been fired out of your revolver, I'd not have come in. I should have run away. But you know I am innocent----" "Quite so," said Mask, looking searchingly at the speaker, "therefore the reason for your disguise is at an end." Hill passed his tongue over his dry lips and crouched again. "No, it isn't," he said faintly, "there's something else." "In heaven's name, what is it?" asked Allen. "Leave me alone," snarled his father, shrinking back in his chair and looking apprehensively at his tall, white-faced son, "it's got nothing to do with you." "It has everything to do with me," said his son with calm firmness, "for my mother's sake I intend to have an explanation." "If my wife were here she would never let you treat me in this way, Allen," whimpered the miserable father. "Sarah"--he did not call his wife Saccharissa now, the situation being too serious--"Sarah is always kind to me." Allen with folded arms leaned against the bookcase and looked at his father with deep pity in his eyes. Hill was alternately whimpering and threatening: at one moment he would show a sort of despairing courage, and the next would wince like a child fearful of a blow. The young man never loved his father, who, taken up with himself and his whims, had done nothing to make the boy love him. He had never respected the man, and only out of regard for his mother had he refrained from taking strong measures to curb the pronounced eccentricities of Hill. But the man, miserable coward as he seemed, was still his father, and it behoved him to deal with him as gently as possible. In his own mind, Allen decided that his father's troubles--whatever they were--had driven him insane. But the sight of that cringing, crawling figure begot a mixture of pity and loathing--loathing that a human creature should fall so low, and pity that his own father should suddenly become a 'thing' instead of a man. "I want to be kind to you, father," he said after a pause; "who will you trust if not your own son?" "You were never a son to me," muttered Hill. "Was that my fault?" asked Allen strongly. "I would have been a son to you, if you had let me. But you know, father, how you kept me at arm's length--you know how you ruled the house according to your whims and fancies, and scorned both my mother and myself. Often you have spoken to her in such a manner that it was only the knowledge that you are my father which made me refrain from interfering. My mother says she owes much to you----" "So she does--so she does."