“Confusion! and you never told me you had ever heard of me before?  This explains the manner in which you seemed to study me at times on the steamer,” reproachfully.

“Just so.  I had reasons for my silence; she was one of them,” jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the parlor above, whence the voice of the amiable Gwendolin Makepeace floats to their ears.

“In haste, then, let me tell you a secret, John.  I was not always what you see me, a docile, hen-pecked man.  Twenty-five years ago Philander Sharpe, young, good-looking, conceited, and rich, had the world before him.”

“Cut it short, I beg, professor,” groans John, impatient to be off.

“I fell in love; my affection was returned; we were engaged; a friend in whose honor I fully believed stole her heart away from me, but all these years I have never forgotten—­never.  John Craig, the girl I loved and who was to have been my wife was—­your mother.”

The little man folds his arms and throws his head back in a peculiar way he has.  How strangely full of dignity these undersized people can be at times.

“Is it possible, and you never breathed a word of all this to me before?”

“Ah! my dear boy, the time was not ripe.  I said nothing but sawed wood.”

“Why do you speak now?”

“I have an idea that you are about to make a step in the dark, and after duly considering the matter, came to the conclusion that it was time to speak—­time to let you know my sympathies were with you, time to take a hand in this game myself.”

John hardly knows what to do or say, he is so amazed at such a strange happening.

“But, professor, I am only going now to see if I can learn anything about my mother at the house where she staid six weeks ago, when a line was sent to me.”

The little man wags his head wisely.

“That information was given to you by one whom you believed to be Signor Stucco, otherwise Luther Keene, the person having charge of the police of Valetta?”

“Yes,” replies John, wonderingly.

“At that hour the signer was in his own room, engaged in other business, and oblivious of the fact whether one John Alexander Craig, M.D., was in the land of the living or not.”

All of which excites the curiosity of the young man not a little.

“Since you know so much, professor, perhaps you can tell me who it is plays with me, the object he has, and whether my mother was ever in that house on the Strada Mezzodi.”

“I can answer in part.  I believe she was there.  These enemies of yours, dear boy, have baited a trap.  You are about to walk into it.”

“A trap, professor! why should they seek to harm me?”

“They have reasons.  I can’t mention them all, but perhaps some event in your past may give you a clew.  Have you ever heard of a person, by name Pauline Potter?”

The young man starts.