"Well," he continued, with a visible effort, "my father has been ailing lately, and this morning his usual doctor made him see Bristowe. He is an authority on heart-disease, as you doubtless know; and his opinion is," he added in a lower voice and with some emotion, "that even a slight shock may prove fatal."

I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. What was I to think? The packet was becoming as lead in my pocket.

"Of course," he resumed more briskly, "that threw our difficulties into the shade at once; and my first impulse was to get these papers from him. Don't you see that? All day I have been trying in vain to effect it. I took Barnes, who is an old servant, partially into my confidence, but we could think of no plan. My father, like many people who have lost their sight, is jealous, and I was at my wits' end, when Barnes brought you up. Your likeness," he added in a parenthesis, looking at me reflectively, "to George put the idea into his head, I fancy? Yes, it must have been so. When I heard you announced, for a moment I thought you were George."

"And you called up a look of the warmest welcome," I put in dryly.

He colored, but answered almost immediately, "I was afraid that he would assume that the governor had read his letter, and blurt out something about it. Good Lord! if you knew the funk in which I have been all the evening lest my father should ask either of us to read the letter!" and he gathered up his handkerchief with a sigh of relief, and wiped his forehead.

"I could see it very plainly," I answered, going slowly in my mind over what he had told me. If the truth must be confessed, I was in no slight quandary what I should do, or what I should believe. Was this really the key to it all? Dared I doubt it, or that that which I had constructed was a mare's nest,--the mere framework of a mare's nest. For the life of me I could not tell!

"Well?" he said presently, looking up with an offended air. "Is there anything else I can explain? or will you have the kindness to return my property to me now?"

"There is one thing about which I should like to ask a question," I said.

"Ask on," he replied; and I wondered whether there was not a little too much of bravado in the tone of sufferance he assumed.

"Why do you carry--" I went on, raising my eyes to his, and pausing on the word an instant--"that little medicament--you know what I mean--in your waistcoat pocket, my friend?"

He perceptibly flinched. "I don't quite--quite understand," he began to stammer. Then he changed his tone and went on rapidly, "No! I will be frank with you, Mr.-- Mr.--"

"George," I said, calmly.

"Ah, indeed?" a trifle surprised, "Mr. George! Well, it is something Bristowe gave me this morning to be administered to my father--without his knowledge, if possible--whenever he grows excited. I did not think that you had seen it."

Nor had I. I had only inferred its presence. But having inferred rightly once, I was inclined to trust my inference farther. Moreover while he gave this explanation, his breath came and went so quickly that my former suspicions returned. I was ready for him when he said, "Now I will trouble you, if you please, for those papers!" and held out his hand.

"I cannot give them to you," I replied, point blank.

"You cannot give them to me now?" he repeated.

"No. Moreover the packet is sealed. I do not see, on second thoughts, what harm I can do you--now that it is out of your father's hands--by keeping it until to-morrow, when I will return it to your brother, from whom it came."

"He will not be in London," he answered doggedly. He stepped between me and the door with looks which I did not like. At the same time I felt that some allowance must be made for a man treated in this way.

"I am sorry," I said, "but I cannot do what you ask. I will do this, however. If you think the delay of importance, and will give me your brother's address in Liverpool, I will undertake to post the letters to him at once."

He considered the offer, eyeing me the while with the same disfavor which he had exhibited in the drawing-room. At last he said slowly, "If you will do that?"

"I will," I repeated. "I will do it immediately."

He gave me the direction--"George Ritherdon, at the London and North-Western Hotel, Liverpool," and in return I gave him my own name and address. Then I parted from him, with a civil good-night on either side--and little liking I fancy--the clocks striking midnight, and the servants coming in as I passed out into the cool darkness of the square.

Late as it was, I went straight to my club, determined that as I had assumed the responsibility there should be no laches on my part. There I placed the packet, together with a short note explaining how it came into my possession, in an outer envelope, and dropped the whole duly directed and stamped into the nearest pillar box. I could not register it at that hour, and rather than wait until next morning, I omitted the precaution, merely requesting Mr. Ritherdon to acknowledge its receipt.

Well, some days passed during which it may be imagined that I thought no little about my odd experience. It was the story of the Lady and the Tiger over again. I had the choice of two alternatives at least. I might either believe the young fellow's story, which certainly had the merit of explaining in a fairly probable manner an occurrence of so odd a character as not to lend itself freely to explanation. Or I might disbelieve his story, plausible in its very strangeness as it was, in favor of my own vague suspicions. Which was I to do?

Well, I set out by preferring the former alternative. This notwithstanding that I had to some extent committed myself against it by withholding the papers. But with each day that passed without bringing me an answer from Liverpool, I leaned more and more to the other side. I began to pin my faith to the tiger, adding each morning a point to the odds in the animal's favor. So it went on until ten days had passed.

Then a little out of curiosity, but more, I gravely declare, because I thought it the right thing to do, I resolved to seek out George Ritherdon. I had no difficulty in learning where he might be found. I turned up the firm of Ritherdon Brothers (George and Gerald), cotton-spinners and India merchants, in the first directory I consulted. And about noon the next day I called at their place of business, and sent in my card to the senior partner. I waited five minutes--curiously scanned by the porter, who no doubt saw a likeness between me and his employer--and then I was admitted to the latter's room.

He was a tall man with a fair beard, not one whit like Gerald, and yet tolerably good-looking; if I say more I shall seem to be describing myself. I fancied him to be balder about the temples, however, and grayer and more careworn than the man I am in the habit of seeing in my shaving-glass. His eyes, too, had a hard look, and he seemed in ill-health. All these things I took in later. At the time I only noticed his clothes. "So the old gentleman is dead," I thought, "and the young one's tale is true after all!" George Ritherdon was in deep mourning.

"I wrote to you," I began, taking the seat to which he pointed, "about a fortnight ago."

He looked at my card, which he held in his hand. "I think not," he said slowly.

"Yes," I repeated. "You were then at the London and North-Western Hotel, at Liverpool."

He was stepping to his writing-table, but he stopped abruptly. "I was in Liverpool," he answered in a different tone, "but I was not at that hotel. You are thinking of my brother, are you not?"

"No," I said, "it was your brother who told me you were there."

"Perhaps you had better explain what was the subject of your letter," he suggested, speaking in the weary tone of one returning to a painful matter. "I have been through a great trouble lately, and this may well have been overlooked."

I said I would, and as briefly as possible I told the main facts of my strange visit in Fitzhardinge Square. He was much moved, walking up and down the room as he listened, and giving vent to exclamations from time to time, until I came to the arrangement I had finally made with his brother. Then he raised his hand as one might do in pain.

"Enough!" he said abruptly. "Barnes told me a rambling tale of some stranger. I understand it all now."

"So do I, I think!" I replied dryly. "Your brother went to Liverpool, and received the papers in your name?"

He murmured what I took for "Yes." But he did not utter a single word of acknowledgement to me, or of reprobation of his brother's deceit. I thought some such word should have been spoken; and I let my feelings carry me away. "Let me tell you," I said warmly, "that your brother is a--"

"Hush!" he said, holding up his hand again. "He is dead."

"Dead!" I repeated, shocked and amazed.

"Have you not read of it in the papers? It is in all the papers," he said wearily. "He committed suicide--God forgive me for it!--at Liverpool, at the hotel you have mentioned, and the day after you saw him."

And so it was. He had committed some serious forgery--he had always been wild, though his father, slow to see it, had only lately closed his purse to him--and the forged signatures had come into his brother's power. He had cheated his brother before. There had long been bad blood between them, the one being as cold, business-like, and masterful as the other was idle and jealous.

"I told him," the elder said to me, shading his eyes with his hand, "that I should let him be prosecuted--that I would not protect or shelter him. The threat nearly drove him mad; and while it was hanging over him, I wrote to disclose the matter to Sir Charles. Gerald thought his last chance lay in recovering this letter unread. The proofs against him destroyed, he might laugh at me. His first attempts failed; and then he planned with Barnes's cognizance to get possession of the packet by drugging my father's whiskey. Barnes's courage deserted him; he called you in, and--and you know the rest."

"But," I said softly, "your brother did get the letter--at Liverpool."

George Ritherdon groaned. "Yes," he said, "he did. But the proofs were not enclosed. After writing the outside letter I changed my mind, and withheld them, explaining my reasons within. He found his plot laid in vain; and it was under the shock of this disappointment--the packet lay before him re-sealed and directed to me--that he--that he did it. Poor Gerald!"

"Poor Gerald!" I said. What else remained to be said?

It may be a survival of superstition, yet when I dine in Baker Street now, I take some care to go home by any other route than that through Fitzhardinge Square.

The Invisible Portraits.

On a certain morning in last June I was stooping to fasten a shoe-lace, having taken advantage for the purpose of the step of a corner house in St. James's Square, when a man passing behind me stopped.

"Well!" said he, aloud, after a short pause during which I wondered--I could not see him--what he was doing, "the meanness of these rich folk is disgusting! Not a coat of paint for a twelvemonth! I should be ashamed to own a house and leave it like that!"

The man was a stranger to me, and his words seemed as uncalled for as they were ill-natured. But being thus challenged I looked at the house. It was a great stone mansion with a balustrade atop, with many windows and a long stretch of area railings. And certainly it was shabby. I turned from it to the critic. He was shabby too--a little red-nosed man wearing a bad hat. "It is just possible," I suggested, "that the owner may be a poor man and unable to keep it in order."