“Then the telephone rang, and I had to get out pretty quick, before she came to answer it.  I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep much, and the next night I watched her again.  I watch every night.”

Derry considered the situation.  “I don’t like it at all, Bronson.  But perhaps it was just a woman’s vanity.  She wanted to see how she looked.”

“Well, she’s seen—­and she ain’t going to be satisfied with that.  She’ll want to wear them all the time—­”

“Of course, she can’t, Bronson.  She isn’t as silly as to think she can.”

“Perhaps not, sir.”  Bronson opened his lips and shut them again.

“There’s something else, sir,” he said, after a pause.  “I’ve found out that she’s giving the General things to drink.”

“Hilda?” Derry said, incredulously.  “Oh, surely not, Bronson, The Doctor has given her strict orders—.”

“She’s got a bottle behind the books, and she pours him a glass right after dinner, and another before he goes to sleep, and—­and—­you know he’d sell his soul for the stuff, Mr. Derry.”

Derry did know.  It had been the shame of all his youthful years that his father should stoop to subterfuge, to falsehood, to everything that was foreign to his native sense of honor and honesty, for a taste of that which his abnormal appetite demanded.

“If anyone had told me but you, Bronson, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“I didn’t want to tell you, but I had to.  You can see that, can’t you, sir?”

“Yes.  But how in the world did she know where the diamonds were?”

“He gave her his key one day when I was there—­made me get it off his ring.  He sent her for your picture—­the one that your mother used to wear.  I thought then that he wasn’t quite right in his head, with the fever and all, or he would have sent me.  But a woman like that—­”

“Dr. McKenzie has the greatest confidence in her.”

“I know, sir, and she’s probably played square with him—­but she ain’t playing square here.”

“It can’t go on, of course.  I shall have to tell McKenzie.”

Bronson protested nervously.  “If she puts her word against mine, who but you will believe me?  I’d rather you saw it yourself, Mr. Derry, and left my name out of it.”

“But I can’t sit on the steps and watch.”

“No, sir, but you can come in unexpected from the outside—­when I flash on the third floor light for you.”

Derry slept little that night.  Ahead of him stretched twenty-four hours of suspense—­twenty-four hours in which he would have to think of this thing which was hidden in the big house in which his mother had reigned.

In the weeks since he had met Jean, he had managed to thrust it into the back of his mind—­he had, indeed, in the midst of his happiness, forgotten his bitterness, his sense of injustice—­he wondered if he had not in a sense forgotten his patriotism.  Life had seemed so good, his moments with Jean so transcendent—­there had been no room for anything else.