“It’s all right, professor.  Not a thing is going to happen.”

The old man licked his lips.  “You ... will stay on here?”

And Queed’s voice answered:  “As long as you want me.”

Nicolovius, who had been born Surface, suffered a moment of collapse.  He fell back in his chair, and covered his face with his hands.

The dying efforts of the June sun still showed in the pretty sitting-room, though the town clocks were striking seven.  From without floated in the voices of merry passers; eddies of the day’s celebration broke even into this quiet street.  Queed sat down in a big-armed rocker, and looked out the window into the pink west.

So, in a minute’s time and by a wholly chance happening, the mystery was out at last.  Professor Nicolovius, the bland recluse of Mrs. Paynter’s, and Henry G. Surface, political arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of false friends, were one and the same man.

The truth had been instantly plain to Queed when the name had blazed up at him from the envelope on the floor.  It was as though Fate herself had tossed that envelope under his eyes, as the answer to all his questionings.  Not an instant’s doubt had troubled him; and now a score of memories were marshaling themselves before him to show that his first flashing certainty had been sound.  As for the book, it was clearly from the library of the old man’s youth, kept and hidden away for some reason, when nearly everything else had been destroyed.  Between the musty pages the accusing letter had lain forgotten for thirty years, waiting for this moment.

He turned and glanced once at the silent figure, huddled back in the chair with covered eyes; the unhappy old man whom nobody had ever trusted without regretting it. Henry G. Surface—­whose name was a synonym for those traits and things which honest men of all peoples and climes have always hated most, treachery, perfidy, base betrayal of trust, shameful dishonesty—­who had crowded the word infamy from the popular lexicon of politics with the keener, more biting epithet, Surfaceism.  And here—­wonder of wonders—­sat Surface before him, drawn back to the scene of his fall like a murderer to the body and the scarlet stain upon the floor, caught, trapped, the careful mask of many years plucked from him at a sudden word, leaving him no covering upon earth but his smooth white hands.  And he, Queed, was this man’s closest, his only friend, chosen out of all the world to live with him and minister to his declining years....

“It’s true!” now broke through the concealing hands.  “I am that man....  God help me!”

Queed looked unseeingly out of the window, where the sun was couching in a bed of copper flame stippled over with brightest azure.  Why had he done it?  What crazy prompting had struck from him that promise to yoke his destiny forever with this terrible old man?  If Nicolovius, the Fenian refugee, had never won his liking, Surface, the Satan apostate, was detestable to him.  What devil of impulse had trapped from him the mad offer to spend his days in the company of such a creature, and in the shadow of so odious an ill-fame?