“Yes, I was expecting you, Mr. Spargo,” he said, as he resumed his own chair.  “I have been expecting you at any time, ever since you took up your investigation of the Marbury affair, in some of the earlier stages of which you saw me, you will remember, at the mortuary.  But since Miss Baylis told me, twenty minutes ago, that you had been to her this morning I felt sure that it would not be more than a few hours before you would come to me.”

“Why, Mr. Elphick, should you suppose that I should come to you at all?” asked Spargo, now in full possession of his wits.

“Because I felt sure that you would leave no stone unturned, no corner unexplored,” replied Mr. Elphick.  “The curiosity of the modern pressman is insatiable.”

Spargo stiffened.

“I have no curiosity, Mr. Elphick,” he said.  “I am charged by my paper to investigate the circumstances of the death of the man who was found in Middle Temple Lane, and, if possible, to track his murderer, and——­”

Mr. Elphick laughed slightly and waved his hand.

“My good young gentleman!” he said.  “You exaggerate your own importance.  I don’t approve of modern journalism nor of its methods.  In your own case you have got hold of some absurd notion that the man John Marbury was in reality one John Maitland, once of Market Milcaster, and you have been trying to frighten Miss Baylis here into——­”

Spargo suddenly rose from his chair.  There was a certain temper in him which, when once roused, led him to straight hitting, and it was roused now.  He looked the old barrister full in the face.

“Mr. Elphick,” he said, “you are evidently unaware of all that I know.  So I will tell you what I will do.  I will go back to my office, and I will write down what I do know, and give the true and absolute proofs of what I know, and, if you will trouble yourself to read the Watchman tomorrow morning, then you, too, will know.”

“Dear me—­dear me!” said Mr. Elphick, banteringly.  “We are so used to ultra-sensational stories from the Watchman that—­but I am a curious and inquisitive old man, my good young sir, so perhaps you will tell me in a word what it is you do know, eh?”

Spargo reflected for a second.  Then he bent forward across the table and looked the old barrister straight in the face.

“Yes,” he said quietly.  “I will tell you what I know beyond doubt.  I know that the man murdered under the name of John Marbury was, without doubt, John Maitland, of Market Milcaster, and that Ronald Breton is his son, whom you took from that woman!”

If Spargo had desired a complete revenge for the cavalier fashion in which Mr. Elphick had treated it he could not have been afforded a more ample one than that offered to him by the old barrister’s reception of this news.  Mr. Elphick’s face not only fell, but changed; his expression of almost sneering contempt was transformed to one clearly resembling abject terror; he dropped his pipe, fell back in his chair, recovered himself, gripped the chair’s arms, and stared at Spargo as if the young man had suddenly announced to him that in another minute he must be led to instant execution.  And Spargo, quick to see his advantage, followed it up.