Our enemy said nothing; but his little grey eyes slid round with a most murderous glance in our direction.

“After I had come here and seen my father I went down—­”

My uncle stopped him with a cry of astonishment.

“What did you say, young man?  You came here and you saw your father—­here at Cliffe Royal?”

“Yes, sir.”

My uncle had turned very pale.

“In God’s name, then, tell us who your father is!”

Jim made no answer save to point over our shoulders, and glancing round, we became aware that two people had entered the room through the door which led to the bedroom stair.  The one I recognized in an instant.  That impassive, mask-like face and demure manner could only belong to Ambrose, the former valet of my uncle.  The other was a very different and even more singular figure.  He was a tall man, clad in a dark dressing-gown, and leaning heavily upon a stick.  His long, bloodless countenance was so thin and so white that it gave the strangest illusion of transparency.  Only within the folds of a shroud have I ever seen so wan a face.  The brindled hair and the rounded back gave the impression of advanced age, and it was only the dark brows and the bright alert eyes glancing out from beneath them which made me doubt whether it was really an old man who stood before us.

There was an instant of silence, broken by a deep oath from Sir Lothian Hume —

“Lord Avon, by God!” he cried.

“Very much at your service, gentlemen,” answered the strange figure in the dressing-gown.

CHAPTER XX—­LORD AVON

My uncle was an impassive man by nature and had become more so by the tradition of the society in which he lived.  He could have turned a card upon which his fortune depended without the twitch of a muscle, and I had seen him myself driving to imminent death on the Godstone Road with as calm a face as if he were out for his daily airing in the Mall.  But now the shock which had come upon him was so great that he could only stand with white cheeks and staring, incredulous eyes.  Twice I saw him open his lips, and twice he put his hand up to his throat, as though a barrier had risen betwixt himself and his utterance.  Finally, he took a sudden little run forward with both his hands thrown out in greeting.

“Ned!” he cried.

But the strange man who stood before him folded his arms over his breast.

“No Charles,” said he.

My uncle stopped and looked at him in amazement.

“Surely, Ned, you have a greeting for me after all these years?”

“You believed me to have done this deed, Charles.  I read it in your eyes and in your manner on that terrible morning.  You never asked me for an explanation.  You never considered how impossible such a crime must be for a man of my character.  At the first breath of suspicion you, my intimate friend, the man who knew me best, set me down as a thief and a murderer.”