Only the Judge!...  Yet, for all her horror, a new phase of the general predicament filtered into such consciousness as she now possessed.  Judge Harvey, irate purchaser of autograph letters, and Mr. Pyecroft, alias Thomas Preston, profuse producer of the same, were under the same roof and were about to meet.  What would happen when they came face to face?—­for she remembered now that a bad likeness of Thomas Preston had several times appeared in the papers.  She turned her head toward the doorway and peered through her veil, waiting.

When Judge Harvey entered, Mr. Pyecroft started.  Upon the instant he had recognized Judge Harvey.  But the next moment Mr. Pyecroft was himself.  Jack gave the necessary introductions, the one to Angelica Simpson Jones at long distance, and gave a brief explanation of the presence of the two guests.  During this while Judge Harvey repeatedly glanced at Mr. Pyecroft, a puzzled look on his countenance.

“Excuse me, Mr. Simpson,” he remarked presently, “but your face seems elusively familiar to me.  I seem to know it, yet I cannot place it.  Haven’t I met you somewhere?”

“Perhaps you were a lay delegate to the recent Episcopal Convention in New York?” politely suggested Mr. Pyecroft.

“No.  I did not even attend any of the sessions.”

“Then, of course, it could not have been there that you saw me,” said Mr. Pyecroft.

“Perhaps it will come to me,” said Judge Harvey.

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Pyecroft.

Mrs. De Peyster, for all her personal apprehension, could but marvel at this young man of the sea who had fastened himself upon her back.  Most amazing of all, he seemed to like the taste of his danger.

“Judge Harvey, Mr. De Peyster was remarking when you came in,” Mr. Pyecroft continued without permitting a lull, “that he wished his presence in this house to remain unknown.  Also I had just told him and his young wife that my earlier years were given over to a life for which I have been trying to atone by good works.  Now I have a very humiliating further confession to make to you all.  Recently there has been—­may I call it a recrudescence?—­an uncontrollable recrudescence of my former regrettable self.  For a disastrous moment the Mr. Hyde element in me, which I thought I had stifled and cast out, arose and possessed me.  In brief, I have been guilty of an error which the police consider serious; in fact, the police are this moment searching for me.  So you see, I am in the same situation as Mr. De Peyster:  I prefer my whereabouts to remain unknown.  Since we are in each other’s hands, and it is in our power each to betray the other, shall we not all, as a quid pro quo, agree to preserve Mr. De Peyster’s and my presence in this house a secret?  For my part, I promise.”

“I’m willing,” said Jack.

“And I,” said Mary.  “Anyhow, I never get a chance to tell, for I haven’t been out of this house once.”