Let me see where the story begins. Perhaps I can date it from the telephone invitation to dinner which I received one Monday from my dear and kind friend Mrs. Whyte.

"And see that you are just as clever and agreeable as your naturally morose nature will permit," she said saucily. "I have a charming young lady here as my guest, and I want you to make a good impression."

"Another?" I gasped. "So soon?"

"I don\'t wonder that your voice is choked with surprise and gratitude," she retorted, and I could see with my mind\'s eye how her eyebrows went up. "You don\'t deserve it,--I\'ll admit that freely. But I am of a forgiving nature."

"You are so near to being an angel," I interrupted, "that it gives me genuine pleasure to suffer martyrdom at your behest. I welcome the opportunity to show you how devotedly I am your slave. Who is the young lady this time?"

"Miss Katherine Thurston. Now if you would only talk in that way to her,--"

"I won\'t," I said hastily. "At least, not until her hair is as white as yours is,--it can never be as lovely. But for your sake I will undertake to be as witty and amiable and generally delightful as I think it safe to be, having due regard for the young lady\'s peace of mind,--." I rang off just in time to escape the "You conceited puppy!" which I knew was panting to get on the wire. Mrs. Whyte\'s speech was at times that of an older generation.

So that was how I came to go to Mrs. Whyte\'s dinner that memorable Monday evening, and to meet Katherine Thurston.

But now that I come to look at it in this historical way, I see that I shall have to begin a little farther back, or you won\'t understand the significance of what took place that night.

I already had another engagement for that evening, but I thought I could fit the two appointments in, by getting away from Mrs. Whyte\'s by ten o\'clock. Under the circumstances she would forgive an early departure. My other engagement was of a peculiar and unescapable nature. It had come about in this way.

There was a man in our town who had always interested me to an unusual degree, though my personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest. He was an architect, Kenneth Clyde by name, and he had done some of the best public buildings in the State. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and was related to half a dozen of the "Old families" of the town. (I am comparatively new myself. But I soon saw that Clyde belonged to the inner circle Of Saintsbury.) And yet, with all his professional success and his social privileges, there was something about the man that expressed an excessive humility. It was not diffidence or shyness,--he had all the self-possession that goes with good breeding. But he held himself back from claiming public credit or accepting any public place, though I knew that more than once it had been pressed upon him in a way that made it difficult for him to evade it. He persistently kept himself in the background, until his desire to remain inconspicuous almost became conspicuous in turn. He was the man, for instance, who did all the work connected with the organization of our Boat Club, but he refused to accept any Office. He was always ready to lend a hand with any public enterprise that needed pushing, but his name never figured on the committees that appeared in the newspapers. And yet, if physiognomy counts for anything, he was not born to take a back seat. He was approaching forty at this time, and in spite of his consistent modesty, he was one of the best known men in Saintsbury.

As I say, he had always interested me as a man out of the ordinary, and when he walked into my law office a few days before that telephone call from Mrs. Whyte, I was uncommonly pleased at the idea that he should have come to me for legal advice when he might have had anything he wanted from the older lawyers in town whom he had known all his life. I guessed at a glance that it was professional advice he wanted, from the curiously tense look that underlay his surface coolness.

"I have come to you, Mr. Hilton," he said directly, "partly because you are enough of a stranger here to regard me and my perplexities in an impersonal manner, and so make it easier for me to discuss them."

"Yes," I said encouragingly. He had hesitated after his last words as though he found it hard to really open up the subject matter.

"But that is only a part of my reason for asking you to consider my case," he went on with a certain repressed intensity. "I believe, from what I have seen of you, that you have both physical and moral courage, and that you will look at the matter as a man, as well as a lawyer."

I nodded, not caring to commit myself until I understood better what he meant.

"First, read this letter," he said, and laid before me a crumpled sheet which he had evidently been clutching in his hand inside of his coat pocket.

It was a half sheet of ruled legal cap, and in the center was written, in a bold, well-formed hand,----

"I need $500. You may bring it to my office Monday night at ten. No fooling on either side, you understand."

"Blackmail!" I said.

Clyde nodded. "What is the best way of dealing with a blackmailer?" he asked, looking at me steadily.

"That may depend on circumstances," I said evasively. I felt that, as he had suggested, he was trying to appeal to my sympathies as a man rather than to my judgment as a lawyer.

"I heard of one case," he said casually, "where a prominent man was approached by a blackmailer who had discovered some compromising secret, and he simply told the fellow that if he gave the story to the papers, as he threatened to do, he would shoot him and take the consequences, since life wouldn\'t be worth living in any event, if that story came out. I confess that course appeals to my common-sense. It is so conclusive."

"I infer, however, that you didn\'t take that tone with this fellow when he first approached you," I said, touching the paper on my desk. "This is not his first demand."

"No. The first time that it came, I was paralyzed, in a manner. I had been dreading something of that sort,--discovery, I mean,--for years. I had gone softly, to avoid notice, I had only half lived my life, I had felt each day to be a reprieve. Then he came,--and asked money for keeping my secret. It seemed a very easy way of escape. In a way, it made me feel safer than before. I knew now where the danger was, and how to keep it down. It was only a matter of money. I paid, and felt almost cheerful. But he came again, and again. He has grown insolent." He drew his brows together sternly as he looked at the written threat which lay before us. He did not look like a man afraid.

"Can you tell me the whole situation?" I asked. "If I know all the facts, I can judge better,--and you know that you speak in professional confidence."

"I want to tell you," he said. "I--he knew--the fact is, I was sentenced to be hanged for a murder some fifteen years ago in Texas. The sentence is still suspended over me. I escaped before it was executed."

A lawyer learns not to be surprised at any confession, for the depths of human nature which are opened to his professional eye are so amazing that he becomes accustomed to strange things, but I admit that I was staggered at my client\'s confidence. I picked up and folded and refolded the paper before I could speak quite casually.

"And no one knows that fact? Your name--?"

"I was known by another name at the time,--an assumed name. I\'ll tell you the whole story. But one word first,--I was and am innocent."

He looked at me squarely but appealingly as he spoke, and suddenly I saw what the burden was which he had been carrying for fifteen years,--nearly half his life.

"I believe you," I said, and unconsciously I held out my hand. He gripped it as a drowning man clutches a spar, and a dull flush swept over his face. His hand was trembling visibly as he finally drew it away, but he tried to speak lightly.

"That\'s what I couldn\'t induce the judge or jury to do," he said. "Let me tell you how it all came about. It was in August of 1895. I had graduated in June,--I was twenty-three,--and before settling down to my new profession I went off on a vacation trip with a fellow I had come to know pretty well at the University during my last year there. He was not the sort of a friend I cared to introduce to my family, but there are worse fellows than poor Henley was. He was merely rather wild and lawless, with an instinct for gambling which grew upon him. We went off avowedly for a lark,--to see life, Henley put it. I knew his tastes well enough to guess beforehand that the society to which he would introduce me would not be creditable. The Clydes are as well known in this State as Bunker Hill is in Boston, and I felt a responsibility toward the name. So I insisted that on our travels I should be Tom Johnson."

"I see. Then when the trouble came you were known by that name instead of your own?"

"Yes. That\'s how I was able to come back here and to go on living my natural life."

"That was fortunate. That situation was much easier to manage than if it had been the other way around."

Clyde had picked up a paper knife and was examining it with absent attention, and instead of answering my remark directly he looked up with a frank smile.

"You can\'t imagine what it means to me to be able to talk this over with you," he said. "All these years I have carried it--here. Why, it is like breathing after being half suffocated."

"I understand."

"You want to know the details, though," he went on more gravely. "We were together for several weeks, going from one city to another. Henley had a special faculty for striking up acquaintance with picturesque rascals, and for a time I found it very interesting as well as novel. It was a side of life I had never before come close to. But gradually I couldn\'t help seeing that Henley was helping out an uncommon knack with the cards by the tricks of a sharper. We quarrelled over it more than once, and things began to grow uncomfortable. The old irresponsible comradeship was chilled, though I didn\'t yet feel like cutting loose from him. One night we had been playing cards in a saloon in Houston, Texas,--Henley and I and two men we had picked up. They were rough and ready Westerners, and a sort to stand no fooling. We had all been drinking a little, but not enough to lose our heads. I saw Henley make a misdeal and I told him so. He was furious, and we all but came to blows in the quarrel that followed. I left him with the others and went off by myself. That evening had finally sickened me with the swine\'s husks I had been eating, and I suddenly determined to quit it then and there and get back to my own life, my own name, and my own people. I walked down to the station, found that a train for the north was just about to pull out, and jumped aboard. I was an hour away from Houston before I remembered something that made me change my hasty plan. I had left my bag in the room at the hotel, and though I didn\'t care about the clothes or the other things, there was-- Well, there is no reason why I should not tell you. There was a girl\'s picture in an inside compartment, and some letters, and I couldn\'t leave them to chance. I had simply forgotten all about that matter in my angry passion, but the thought now was like a dash of cold water, bringing me to my senses. I got out of the train at the next stop,--a place called Lester. It was just midnight. I found that the first train I could catch to take me back to Houston would go through at five in the morning, and I walked up and down that deserted platform,--for even the station agent went off to sleep after the midnight train went through,--for five mortal hours. I had time to think things over, and to realize that I had been playing with pitch as no Clyde had a right to."

He paused for an instant, as though he were living the moment over, but I did not speak. I wanted him to tell the story in his own way.

"I caught the five o\'clock train back and was in Houston soon after six. I went at once to the hotel and to my room. Henley\'s room communicated with mine. The door between them was ajar, and I pushed it open to speak to him. He was leaning over the table, on which cards were scattered about, and he was quite dead, from a knife thrust between the shoulders."

Clyde had been speaking in a composed manner, like one telling an entirely impersonal tale, but at this point he paused and a look of embarrassment clouded his face.

"I find it hard to explain to you or to myself why I did so foolish a thing as I did next, but I was rather shaken up by weeks of dissipation, and the racketing of the night before and my excited, sleepless night had thrown me off my balance. When I saw Henley dead over the cards, I realized in a flash how bad it would look for me after my row with him in the saloon the night before. I jumped back into my own room and began stuffing my things into my bag pell-mell to make my escape."

"The worst thing you could have done."

"Of course. And it proved so. I had left my room-door ajar, a sweeper in the halls saw my mad haste, and it made him suspicious. When I stepped out of my room, the proprietor stopped me. Of course the whole thing was uncovered. I was arrested, tried for murder, and, as I told you, sentenced to be hanged." He finished grimly. His manner was studiedly unemotional.

"And yet you had a perfect alibi, if you could prove it."

"But I couldn\'t. No one knew I took that train. The train conductors were called, but neither of them remembered me. The station agent at Lester, with whom I had had some conversation about the first train back, was killed by an accident the next day. The fact that I was out of Houston from eleven until six was something I could not prove. And it was the one thing that would have saved me."

"But neither could they prove, I take it, that you were in the hotel that night."

"They tried to. The clerk testified that four men came in shortly after eleven and went up to Henley\'s room. One of them was Henley, two were strangers, and the fourth he had taken for granted to be me. My lawyer pressed him on that point, of course, and forced him to admit that he had not noticed particularly, but had assumed that it was I from the fact that he was with Henley, and because he was about my size and figure. Drinks had been sent up, and an hour later two of the men had quietly come down and gone out. Nothing further had been heard from our room until the sweeper reported in the morning that he had seen me acting like a man distracted, through the partly open door. Everything seemed to turn against me. I was bent on saving my name at any rate, so I could not be entirely open about my past history, and that prejudiced my case."

"What is your own theory of the affair and of the missing third man?" I asked.

"I suppose the men whom I had left with Henley in the saloon had picked up a fourth man for the game and gone to Henley\'s room. He probably tried to cheat again, and they were ready for him. One of them stabbed him. Then the other two waited quietly in the room while the actual slayer walked out, to make sure that he had a clear passage, and then they followed after he had had time to disappear. They were hard-bitted men, but not thugs."

"You were tried and sentenced. How did you get away?"

"After the sentence, and while I was on the way back to jail, I made my escape. I have always believed that the deputy sheriff who had me in charge gave me the opportunity intentionally. Certainly he fired over my head, and made a poor show at guessing my direction. I think he had doubts of the justice of the verdict and took that way of reversing the decision of the court, but of course I can never know."

"Then you came back here? This had been your home before?"

"Yes. It was the way to avoid comment. Kenneth Clyde was well known here, and nobody in Saintsbury even heard of the trial of one Tom Johnson in Houston. I have thought it best to go on living my life just as I should have done in any event. And I have done so, except that I have never-- But that doesn\'t matter." From the expression that swept over his face I guessed what the exception was. He had never dared to marry.

"Then this man--?" I prompted.

A fleeting smile passed over Clyde\'s face. He spoke with light cynicism.

"As you say, then this man. I had almost come to believe that the past was dead and buried and that I would be justified in forgetting it myself. Then this man came into my office one day, affected surprise at seeing me, called me Tom Johnson, and laughed in my face when I denied the name. I was panic-stricken. I bought his silence. Of course he came again. As I said at the beginning, I am tired of the situation." There was a tone in his voice that would have held a warning for the blackmailer if he had heard it.

"How much does the man know? Do you know whether he has anything to prove his charges?"

"It seems that he was in the court-house as a spectator during the trial. He didn\'t know me at the time, though he might, for he seems to have been in this neighborhood time and again,--at least in the State. He is a trouble man himself,--some ten years ago he shot and killed a State senator here in Saintsbury. He was acquitted, because he got some friends to swear that Senator Benbow had made a motion as though to draw a gun, though he was found afterwards to be unarmed. But popular anger was so aroused against him, he had to leave the State, and he has drifted down stream ever since,--pretty far down, I imagine; fairly subterranean at times. All this I have found out since he forced his acquaintance upon me. I knew nothing of him before."

"What is his name? Where is he to be found?"

"Alfred Barker. He has an office in the Ph?nix Building at present. Whether he has any legitimate business I do not know. He hangs out under the shingle of the Western Land and Improvement Co., but I have a feeling that that is only a cover."

"A man who has lived that sort of a life is probably vulnerable," I said cheerfully. "I\'ll see what I can find out about him. In the meantime, I, as your attorney, will keep this appointment for you next Monday evening."

"I thought that would probably be your plan. But now that I have put it into your hands, I am more than half sorry I did not keep it to myself and meet him with a revolver."

I shook my head. "For a burnt child, you have curiously little respect for the fire of the law."

Clyde had risen, and he stood looking at me with an impersonal sternness that made his eyes hard.

"My life, and, what I value far more, my reputation, my name, are in that fellow\'s hands. And he is an unhung murderer,--his life is already forfeit."

"His time will come," I said hastily. My new client looked altogether too much as though he were disposed to hurry on the slow-paced law! I could not encourage such reflections.

Clyde nodded, but with an absent air, as though he were following his own thoughts rather than my words, and soon took his leave.

When I decided to take up the practice of the law, I had fancied, in my youthful ignorance, that it was a sort of glorified compound of a detective story and Gems of Oratory. I had now been at it for some years, and so far my detective instincts had been chiefly required in the search for missing authorities in the law books, and my oratorical gifts had been exercised almost exclusively on delinquent debtors who didn\'t want to pay their debts. You can therefore imagine that Clyde\'s interview left me pleasantly excited. This was the real thing! This was the case I long had sought and mourned because I found it not! Not for worlds would I have missed the opportunity of meeting his blackmailing correspondent. To face a rascal was no uncommon experience, unfortunately; but to face so complete and melodramatic a rascal, and to try to wrest from him some incriminating admission that would give me a controlling hold on him in my turn,--that was something that did not come often into the day\'s work.

Very much to my surprise, I found unexpected light upon the career of Alfred Barker not farther away than my own office. My first step was to set my clerk, Adam Fellows, to looking up the court and newspaper records of Barker\'s connection with the killing of Senator Benbow. When I mentioned his name to Fellows I saw by his sudden change of expression that I had touched some sore chord,--and if Fellows had an ambition it was to conceal his feelings, moreover.

"You know Barker, then?" I said abruptly.

"Yes," he said, in a very low voice,--and I guessed in what connection.

I may say here that Fellows was a souvenir of my first trial case and of an early enthusiasm for humanity. One day, not long after my admission to the bar, (this was before I came to Saintsbury,) the court assigned to me the defense of a young fellow who had no lawyer. He was a clerk in a city office, and was charged with embezzlement by his employers. The money had gone for race-track gambling, and he could not deny his guilt; but by bringing out the facts of his youth and his unfortunate associations, I was able to get a minimum sentence for him,--the best that could be expected under the circumstances. When his sentence expired, I was on the lookout for him, and took him into my own office as a clerk. I had nothing he could embezzle, for one thing, and the dogged stoicism with which he had met his fate interested me. Besides, I knew it would be difficult for him to get work, particularly as he did not have an engaging personality. I think that in a manner he was grateful, but he never could forget that he carried the stigma of a convict, and he imagined that everyone else was remembering it also. This moodiness had grown upon him instead of wearing off. It used to make me impatient,--but it is easy enough for one whose withers are unwrung to be impatient with the galled jade\'s tendency to wince.

"What do you know of him?" I asked.

"I know that where he is, there is deviltry, but no one ever catches him," he said bitterly. "Someone else will pay all right, but the law doesn\'t touch him."

"Did he get you into trouble?" I asked bluntly.

"He made me believe he could make a fortune for me. He kept me going with hopes that the next time, the next time, I would win enough to square things up. It was his doing, not mine, really. But he did nothing that the law takes note of." He spoke with unusual excitement and feeling, and I didn\'t think any good would come of a discussion of moral responsibility at that time.

"Well, look up everything possible about that affair when Benbow was killed," I said. "I want to see if there is anything in that which would give a hold on him."

"Oh, there won\'t be," he said, scornfully. "He plays safe. But if there is any justice in heaven, he will come a cropper some day. Only it won\'t be by process of law. No convict stripes for him."

"Let me know as soon as you find the record," I said, turning away. His bitterness only grew if you gave it opportunity.

I then took occasion to visit the Ph?nix Building, in order to locate the office which I expected to visit the Monday evening following. I wanted to know my way without wasting time.

As I entered, I noticed a man standing before the building directory which hung opposite the elevators. He was a tall, athletic fellow, in clothes that suggested an engineer or fireman. His hat was pulled down over the upper part of his face, but his powerful, smooth-shaven jaw showed the peculiar blue tint of very dark men. All this I saw without consciously looking, but in a moment I had reason to notice him more closely. The elevator gate opened, and a man stepped out,--a rather shabby, untidy man, with a keen eye. He glanced at me carelessly, then his eye fell upon the tall young fellow before the bulletin board, and he smiled. He stepped up near him.

"Hello! You here?" he said, softly. Then, deliberately, "Are you married yet?"

The tall fellow turned and lunged toward him, but the other ducked and slipped adroitly out of his way and ran down to the open doorway and so into the street. The tall fellow made no attempt to follow. I think that lurch toward the other had been partly the result of surprise. But not wholly. He stood now, leaning against the wall, apparently waiting for the elevator, but I saw that his two fists had not yet unclenched themselves, and his blue-black jaw was squared in a way that told of locked teeth. He jerked his hat down farther over his face as he saw me looking at him, and turned away. He was breathing hard.

"Can you direct me to Mr. Barker\'s office?" I asked the elevator man.

"His office is in No. 23, second floor, but he ain\'t in. That was he that came down with me and went out."

"Oh, all right. I\'ll come again," I said, and turned away.

The tall young fellow had gone. Had he, too, come to look up Mr. Barker? At any rate, I should know Barker when we met again.