“Perfectly true, chevalier.  The late baron’s solicitors have been advertising for some time for news regarding the whereabouts of Peter Janssen Pullaine, and if you had not so successfully hidden your real name under that of your professional one, no doubt some of your colleagues would have put you in the way of finding it out long ago.  The baron did not go back on his word and did not act ungratefully.  His will, dated twenty-nine years ago, was never altered in a single particular.  I rather suspect that that letter and that gift of money which came to you in the name of his steward, and was supposed to close the affair entirely, was the work of his nephew, the gentleman whose exit has just been made.  A crafty individual that, chevalier, and he laid his plans cleverly and well.  Who would be likely to connect him with the death of a beast-tamer in a circus, who had perished in what would appear an accident of his calling?  Ah, yes, the lion’s smile was a clever idea—­he was a sharp rascal to think of it.”

“Sir!  You—­you do not mean to tell me that he caused that?  He never went near the beast—­never—­even once.”

“Not necessary, chevalier.  He kept near you and your children; that was all that he needed to do to carry out his plan.  The lion was as much his victim as anybody else—­you or your children.  What it did it could not help doing.  The very simplicity of the plan was its passport to success.  All that was required was the unsuspected sifting of snuff on the hair of the person whose head was to be put in the beast’s mouth.  The lion’s smile was not, properly speaking, a smile at all, chevalier; it was the torture which came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the beast made that uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was simply the outcome of a sneeze.  The thing would be farcical if it were not that tragedy hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful human life, was destroyed by means of it.  Yes, it was clever, it was diabolically clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best laid schemes of mice and men.  There’s always a Power—­higher up—­that works the ruin of them.”

With that he walked by, and, going to young Scarmelli, put out his hand.

“You’re a good chap and you’ve got a good girl, so I expect you will be happy,” he said; and then lowered his voice so that the rest might not reach the chevalier’s ears.  “You were wrong to suspect the little stepmother,” he added.  “She’s true blue, Scarmelli.  She was only playing up to those fellows because she was afraid the ‘senor’ would drop out and close the show if she didn’t, and that she and her husband and the children would be thrown out of work.  She loves her husband—­that’s certain—­and she’s a good little woman; and, Scarmelli!”

“Yes, Mr. Cleek?”

“There’s nothing better than a good woman on this earth, my lad.  Always remember that.  I think you, too, have found one.  I hope you have.  I hope you’ll be happy.  What’s that?  Owe me?  Not a rap, my boy.  Or, if you feel that you must give me something, give me your prayers for equal luck, and—­send me a slice of the wedding cake.  Good-night!”