“So that’s it, is it!  You take me for that Thomas Preston.  I’ve read about him.  He must be a clever fellow, in his own way.”

He sobered.  “But, gentlemen, if I had the clever qualities attributed to Mr. Preston, I am sure I could apply those qualities to some more useful, and even more profitable, occupation.”

“You don’t do it bad at all, Preston,” observed the lieutenant.  “Only, you see, it don’t go down.”

“I trust,” Mr. Pyecroft said good-humoredly, “that it isn’t going to be necessary to explain to you that I am not Thomas Preston.”

“No, that won’t be necessary at all,” replied the waggish lieutenant.  “Not necessary at all.  For you can’t.”

Mr. Pyecroft raised his eyebrows.

“Gentlemen, you really seem to be taking this matter seriously!  Why, you two officers in uniform saw me only last night here with my two sisters, and any one in the neighborhood can tell you my sister Matilda has been housekeeper in this house for twenty years.”

That tone was most plausible.  The two uniformed policemen looked at their superior dubiously.

“Never you mind what they seen last night,” the lieutenant commented dryly.  “And never you mind about Matilda.”

“But you are forgetting that I am Matilda’s brother,” said Mr. Pyecroft.  “Matilda, I am your brother, am I not?”

“Y—­yes,” testified Matilda, who by the corpulent pressure of four crowded officers was almost being bisected against the edge of the stationary wash-bowl.

“And you, Angelica; I’m your brother, am I not?”

“Yes,” breathed Mrs. De Peyster from beneath the bedclothes.

Mr. Pyecroft turned in polite triumph to the lieutenant.

“There, now, you see.”

“But, I don’t see,” returned that officer.  “I know you’re Thomas Preston.  Jim, just slip the nippers on him.  And there’s something queer about these women.  Just slip the bracelets on Matilda, too, and carry downstairs the party in bed.  We’ll call the police ambulance for her, and take the whole bunch over to the station.”

The party in bed suddenly stiffened as if from a stroke of some kind, and Matilda fairly wilted away.  Mr. Pyecroft alone did not change by so much as a hair.

“One moment, gentlemen,” he interposed in his even voice, “before you go to regrettable extremes.  I believe that an even better witness to my identity can easily be secured.”

“And who’s that, Tommie?”

“I refer to Judge Harvey.”

“Judge Harvey!” The lieutenant was startled out of his ironic exultation.  “You mean the guy that was stung by them forged letters—­the complainant who’s making it so damned hot for Preston?”

“The same,” said Mr. Pyecroft.  “Judge Harvey is at this moment in this house.”

“In this house!”

“I believe he is downstairs some place going over some bills Mrs. De Peyster asked him to examine.  Matilda, you doubtless know in what room the Judge is working.  Will you kindly knock at his door and ask him to step up here for a moment?”