Kilbride uttered a startled oath.  Shaken out of his habitual stern composure he stared at the man before him in sheer amazement.  “Good God!” he cried, “The ‘Jameson Raid!’ . . .  Now I know you, man!—­you’re—­you’re—­wait a bit!  I’ve got it on the tip of my tongue—­Mor—­Mor—­Mordaunt, by gad! . . . that’s what you called yourself then.  Ever since I sat with you on that case I’ve been turning it over in my head where in ever I’d fore-gathered with you before.  It was your moustache which fooled me—­you were clean-shaven then. . .  Well, Well! . . .”

He was silent awhile, overcome by the discovery.  “Aye!” he resumed in an altered voice, “I’ve got good cause to remember you, Mor—­Gully, I mean.  You certainly saved my life that day . . . when we were lying in that donga together.  I was hit pretty bad, and you stood ’em off.  You were a wonderful shot, I recollect.  I saw you flop out six Doppers—­one after the other.”

He turned to Slavin.  “Sergeant!” he said quietly, “You’d better leave the leg-irons on, but remove his handcuffs—­for the time-being, anyway. . . .”  He addressed himself to the prisoner with a sort of sad sternness.  “It’s little I can do for you now, Gully . . . but I can do that, at least. . . .”

Slavin complied with his officer’s request.  Gully’s huge chest heaved once, and he bowed his head in silent acknowledgment of Kilbride’s act of leniency.

“All right! go ahead, Gully!” said the latter.

The prisoner took up his tale anew.  “As I was saying—­I left the Old Country when I was sixteen.  No need to drag in family troubles, but . . . that’s why. . . .  Well!  I hit for the States.  Montana for a start off, and it sure was a tough state in ’seventy-four, I can tell you.  That’s where I first learned to handle a gun.  I knocked around between there and Wyoming and Arizona for about nine years, and during that time I guess I tackled nearly every kind of job under the sun, but I punched and rode for range outfits mostly.

“Then I was struck with a fancy to see the South, and I drifted to Virginia.  I’d been there about two years, working as an overseer on a tobacco plantation, when I got a letter from our family’s solicitor recalling me home.  My eldest brother had died, and the estate had passed on to me.  Where, Inspector?—­why, it was at Castle Brompton, a quiet little country town in Worcestershire.

“Well!  I’d had a pretty rough training—­living the life of a roustabout for so many years, and I guess I kind of ran amuck when I struck home.  I played ducks and drakes with the estate, and the end of it was . . .  I got heavily involved in debt.  There seemed nothing for it but to up-anchor, and to sea again in my shirt.  So, my fancy next took me to Shanghai, where I obtained a poorly-paid Civil Service job—­in the Customs.  I stuck that for about a year, and then I pulled out—­disgusted.  The next place I landed