away from her that thought. He spoke, quietly ironic at first.

"Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive idiots--the ruthless
adventurer--the ogre with a future. That was a parrot cry, Miss
Moorsom. I don't think that the greatest fool of them all ever
dared hint such a stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing.
No, I had noticed this man in a hotel. He had come from up country
I was told, and was doing nothing. I saw him sitting there lonely
in a corner like a sick crow, and I went over one evening to talk
to him. Just on impulse. He wasn't impressive. He was pitiful.
My worst enemy could have told you he wasn't good enough to be one
of Renouard's victims. It didn't take me long to judge that he was
drugging himself. Not drinking. Drugs."

"Ah! It's now that you are trying to murder him," she cried.

"Really. Always the Renouard of shopkeepers' legend. Listen! I
would never have been jealous of him. And yet I am jealous of the
air you breathe, of the soil you tread on, of the world that sees
you--moving free--not mine. But never mind. I rather liked him.
For a certain reason I proposed he should come to be my assistant
here. He said he believed this would save him. It did not save
him from death. It came to him as it were from nothing--just a
fall. A mere slip and tumble of ten feet into a ravine. But it
seems he had been hurt before up-country--by a horse. He ailed and
ailed. No, he was not a steel-tipped man. And his poor soul
seemed to have been damaged too. It gave way very soon."

"This is tragic!" Felicia Moorsom whispered with feeling.
Renouard's lips twitched, but his level voice continued