“Tell us the story,” demanded Locke of Q.

For some moments Doctor Q seemed to be collecting his scattered thoughts, as though still a haze hung over his mind.  Then he began to speak, becoming more certain of his strange story.

“It was many years ago,” he began, as all drew closer about him, listening breathlessly to his narrative, “and all these years I have been quite mad.  The man now lying dead, Balcom, was the cause of all these years of misery.”

The old man passed his hand over his head as though to wipe away a recollection of hate and fear, then resumed: 

“I was an inventor in those days, and very successful.  I had built up a great fortune, had built a great house, and in that house I had a beautiful wife and two of the loveliest children, a boy and a girl, that ever man had.”

He paused again, then went on: 

“One day, a man entered my life and proposed to put my inventions on the market very advantageously.  He was suave, polished, and apparently a gentleman.  At any rate, I trusted him.  You all knew him.  It was Herbert Balcom.

“At the time I did not know that in order to give my inventions a clear field the inventions of hundreds of poor inventors were to be suppressed.  I know now, Miss Brent, that your own father was led along in the scheme, even as I was.  Balcom possessed the master mind and we were all as children in his hands.”

Doctor Q stopped a moment.  It was evident that he was speaking with restraint when it came to Peter Brent, perhaps glossing over what the man had done.  Though he did not say so, the mere fact that at last Brent had seen the light and had planned a wholesale restitution weighed supremely in Doctor Q’s mind.

“One day,” he resumed, “Balcom came to me in what I know now was merely feigned excitement and fear.  ‘They’re after us!’ he cried.  ’Brent and I have done our best—­but the government is after you, and we can’t protect you any longer.’

“Then for the first time Balcom told me of the real purposes of the company, told me that he had been drawn into it by Brent.  It was all a tissue of lies—­lies that drove me from my home and country.  I hated your father with an undying hate, Miss Brent.

“Well, to make the sad story short, I took my wife and children and sailed secretly for the farthermost parts of the world.  Off the coast of Madagascar, in the Straits, a typhoon came up.  The vessel was driven on the rocks and wrecked.  I was cast ashore, and I vaguely remember how, for days and weeks, I patrolled that beach, subsisting on shell-fish, imploring God, day and night, to restore my wife and children to me.  Then my mind gave way.

“The natives took me in, thinking me a god.  They took me many miles inland.  Savages, the world over, are superstitious about the demented, and so they treated me kindly.  They installed me in a thatched hut of my own and made me a leader.