“So here we are, again, Jud!” he said.  “But with this change, that now it’s you who are the respectable member of the community, and I’m the—­well, we’ll call it the butterfly.”

There was unmistakable insult in his tone, and Dick caught it.

“Then I take it you’re still living off your sister?”

The contempt in Dick’s voice whipped the color to Gregory’s face and clenched his fist.  But he relaxed in a moment and laughed.

“Don’t worry, Bassett,” he said, his eyes on Dick.  “We haven’t any reason to like each other, but he’s bigger than I am.  I won’t hit him.”  Then he hardened his voice.  “But I’ll remind you, Clark, that personally I don’t give a God-damn whether you swing or not.  Also that I can keep my mouth shut, walk out of here, and have you in quod in the next hour, if I decide to.”

“But you won’t,” Bassett said smoothly.  “You won’t, any more than you did it last spring, when you sent that little letter of yours to David Livingstone.”

“No.  You’re right.  I won’t.  But if I tell you what I came here to say, Bassett, get this straight.  It’s not because I’m afraid of you, or of him.  Donaldson’s dead.  What value would Melis’s testimony have after ten years, if you put him on the stand?  It’s not that.  It’s because you’ll put your blundering foot into it and ruin Bev’s career, unless I tell you the truth.”

It was to Bassett then that he told his story, he and Bassett sitting, Dick standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece, tall and weary and almost detached.

“I’ve got to make my own position plain in this,” he said.  “I didn’t like Clark, and I kept her from marrying him.  There was one time, before she met Lucas, when she almost did it.  I was away when she decided on that fool trip to the Clark ranch.  We couldn’t get a New York theater until November, and she had some time, so they went.  I’ve got her story of what happened there.  You can check it up with what you know.”

He turned to Dick for a moment.

“You were drinking pretty hard that night, but you may remember this:  She had quarreled with Lucas at dinner that night and with you.  That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“She went to her room and began to pack her things.  Then she thought it over, and she decided to try to persuade Lucas to go too.  Things had begun all right, but they were getting strained and unpleasant.  She went down the stairs, and Melis saw her, the valet.  The living-room was dark, but there was a light coming through the billiard room door, and against it she saw the figure of a man in the doorway.  He had his back to her, and he had a revolver in his hand.  She ran across the room when he heard her and when he turned she saw it was Lucas.  Do you remember, Jud, having a revolver and Lucas taking it from you?”

“No.  Donaldson testified I’d had a revolver.”

“Well, that’s how we figure he’d got the gun.  She thought at once that Lucas and you had quarreled, and that he was going to shoot.  She tried to take it from him, but he was drunk and stubborn.  It went off and killed him.”