“Good morning, Mr. Glenarm ! Rather damaging evidence, that costume. I suppose it’s the custom of the country for gentlemen in evening clothes to go out by the window and return by the door. You might think the other way round preferable.”

“Larry !” I shouted.

“Jack !”

“Kick that door shut and lock it,” he commanded, in a sharp, severe tone that I remembered well—and just now welcomed—in him.

“How, why and when—?”

“Never mind about me. I’m here—thrown the enemy off for a few days; and you give me lessons in current history first, while I climb into my armor. Pray pardon the informality—”

He seized a broom and began work upon a pair of trousers to which mud and briers clung tenaciously. His coat and hat lay on a chair, they, too, much the worse for rough wear.

There was never any use in refusing to obey Larry’s orders, and as he got into his clothes I gave him in as few words as possible the chief incidents that had marked my stay at Glenarm House. He continued dressing with care, helping himself to a shirt and collar from my chiffonnier and choosing with unfailing eye the best tie in my collection. Now and then he asked a question tersely, or, again, he laughed or swore direly in Gaelic. When I had concluded the story of Pickering’s visit, and of the conversation I overheard between the executor and Bates in the church porch, Larry wheeled round with the scarf half-tied in his fingers and surveyed me commiseratingly.

“And you didn’t rush them both on the spot and have it out ?”

“No. I was too much taken aback, for one thing—”

“I dare say you were !”

“And for another I didn’t think the time ripe. I’m going to beat that fellow, Larry, but I want him to show his hand fully before we come to a smash-up. I know as much about the house and its secrets as he does, —that’s one consolation. Sometimes I don’t believe there’s a shilling here, and again I’m sure there’s a big stake in it. The fact that Pickering is risking so much to find what’s supposed to be hidden here is pretty fair evidence that something’s buried on the place.”

“Possibly, but they’re giving you a lively boycott. Now where in the devil have you been ?”

“Well,—” I began and hesitated. I had not mentioned Marian Devereux and this did not seem the time for confidences of that sort.

He took a cigarette from his pocket and lighted it.

“Bah, these women ! Under the terms of your revered grandfather’s will you have thrown away all your rights. It looks to met, as a member of the Irish bar in bad standing, as though you had delivered yourself up to the enemy, so far as the legal situation is concerned. How does it strike you?”