He said it in a hostile tone that ought to have silenced Mr. Oxford for ever, but it did not.  Mr. Oxford curved away, like a skater into a new figure, and began to expatiate minutely upon the merits of the Volterra picture.  He analyzed it in so much detail, and lauded it with as much justice, as though the picture was there before them.  Priam was astonished at the man’s exactitude.  “Scoundrel!  He knows a thing or two!” reflected Priam grimly.

“You don’t think I overpraise it, do you, cher maitre? Mr. Oxford finished, still smiling.

“A little,” said Priam.

If only Priam could have run away!  But he couldn’t!  Mr. Oxford had him well in a corner.  No chance of freedom!  Besides, he was over fifty and stout.

“Ah!  Now I was expecting you to say that!  Do you mind telling me at what period you painted it?” Mr. Oxford inquired, very blandly, though his hands were clasped in a violent tension that forced the blood from the region of the knuckle-joints.

This was the crisis which Mr. Oxford had been leading up to!  All the time Mr. Oxford’s teethy smile had concealed a knowledge of Priam’s identity!

* * * * *

CHAPTER X

The Secret

“What do you mean?” asked Priam Farll.  But he put the question weakly, and he might just as well have said, “I know what you mean, and I would pay a million pounds or so in order to sink through the floor.”  A few minutes ago he would only have paid five hundred pounds or so in order to run simply away.  Now he wanted Maskelyne miracles to happen to him.  The universe seemed to be caving in about the ears of Priam Farll.

Mr. Oxford was still smiling; smiling, however, as a man holds his breath for a wager.  You felt that he could not keep it up much longer.

“You are Priam Farll, aren’t you?” said Mr. Oxford in a very low voice.

“What makes you think I’m Priam Farll?”

“I think you are Priam Farll because you painted that picture I bought from you this morning, and I am sure that no one but Priam Farll could have painted it.”

“Then you’ve been playing a game with me all morning!”

“Please don’t put it like that, cher maitre,” Mr. Oxford whisperingly pleaded.  “I only wished to feel my ground.  I know that Priam Farll is supposed to have been buried in Westminster Abbey.  But for me the existence of that picture of Putney High Street, obviously just painted, is an absolute proof that he is not buried in Westminster Abbey, and that he still lives.  It is an amazing thing that there should have been a mistake at the funeral, an utterly amazing thing, which involves all sorts of consequences!  But that’s not my business.  Of course there must be clear reasons for what occurred.  I am not interested in them—­I mean not professionally.  I merely argue, when I see a certain picture, with