cannot always be commiserating the unfortunate. "Of course, all
this happened before his time, and Monsieur de Gemosac does not want
to learn from hearsay, you understand, but at first hand. I fancy
he would, for instance, like to know when the woman, the--mother
died."

Clubbe was looking straight in front of him. He turned in his
disconcerting, monumental way and looked at his questioner, who had
imitated with a perfect ingenuousness his own brief pause before the
word mother. Colville smiled pleasantly at him.

"I tell you frankly, Captain," he said, "it would suit me better if
she wasn't the mother."

"I am not here to suit you," murmured Captain Clubbe, without haste
or hesitation.

"No. Well, let us say for the present that she was the mother. We
can discuss that another time. When did she die?"

"Seven years after landing here."

Colville made a mental calculation and nodded his head with
satisfaction at the end of it. He lighted another cigarette.

"I am a business man, Captain," he said at length. "Fair dealing
and a clean bond. That is what I have been brought up to.
Confidence for confidence. Before we go any further--" He paused
and seemed to think before committing himself. Perhaps he saw that
Captain Clubbe did not intend to go much further without some quid