“Adam had a good many spells like that,” he said, “’specially when he was drinking hard.  Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair.  Mere coincidence.  As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken superstition.  But there wasn’t any money on his conscience.  Couldn’t be for there wasn’t any.  If he feared at all to have his sister revisit her home—­queer notion, that, Mr. O’Neill!  You Irish run to notions!—­it was simply because he hadn’t given her kids a square deal and he knew it.”

Again the doctor adjusted his glasses and went back to the will.

“Doctor,” flung out Kenny desperately, “I myself have seen indisputable proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser—­even the way he handled money.”

The doctor sighed and looked up.  And he smiled his weary, understanding smile.

“What you saw, Mr. O’Neill,” he said soberly, “was something very close to poverty.  He was selfish and he had to have his brandy.  His economy in every other way was horrible.  Horrible!  As for the way he handled money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser.  It seems,” added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, “that he was a grain too successful.”

“He hated his sister,” blurted Kenny.  “Why would he hate her and revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her?  Why did he have black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?”

“Adam,” said the doctor with weary sarcasm, “fancied his sister had brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig.  She was a good girl and clever.  But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional virtue—­for women.  Most men do.  And he knew the way folks feel up here about the stage.  The world’s queer, Mr. O’Neill.  And Adam was just a little queerer than the rest of it.  In a sense he had wronged her.  God knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters.  As for his passion for drinking himself to sleep—­well, when a man’s had straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam’s hits hard.

“He hated Joan and Donald,” said Kenny.  “Why?”

“He resented their drain upon his pocket-book.  He hadn’t enough left for them and brandy too.  Though the Lord knows they never cost him much.  Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died.  Good old soul, Nellie.  But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper.  I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn.  Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough.”

He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause pertaining to the residue of Adam’s wealth.

“Ah!” he said.

“Well?” choked Kenny.  “Is there some damned commonplace explanation for that, too?”

The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger.