She never returned.

“I refused to divorce her, but when, nearly a year later, she applied for a divorce in some middle-western state, on a false charge of desertion, I did not contest the suit. I still loved her - or rather, the girl I thought I had married - but I realized she was lost to me for ever. I balanced the account and closed the books.”

He turned to the doctor. “Doctor Swan - won’t you try that brandy again? Just help yourself, please. So far, gentlemen, you can see no reason for my story. But there is something more - and only within the past ten days have I come upon the trail of it.

“I have been told, by some one who ought to know, that when Ellen Landini left my house she carried with her a secret which she had not seen fit to divulge to me. I have heard, from a source I believe reliable, that less than seven months after she left this place, she gave birth to a child, in a New York hospital. A son. Her son - and mine.”

He did not go on for a moment. All the men about the table were looking at him, some with pity, some with amazement.

“I have said,” Ward went on, “that Ellen hated me. Perhaps with reason - oh, I want to be just. She hated me so much, evidently, that she was determined I must never have the satisfaction of knowing about - my boy. Perhaps she feared it would start the old argument all over again. Perhaps it was just - hate. I - I think it was rather cruel.”

“She was always cruel,” said Ryder harshly. He laid a sympathetic hand on Dudley Ward’s arm.

“At any rate,” Ward went on, “she gave this child for adoption to some wealthy friends of hers. It wasn’t legal adoption, of course. But she agreed to give him up for ever, to let him be known by another name, never to try to see him. She could do that. Her career was everything.

“That, gentlemen, ends my story. You can see my position. I am not - not so young as I was. My brother and sister are both dead, childless. Somewhere in this world, if the story is true, and the boy lived, I have a son, now nearly eighteen. All this - is his. I intend to find him.” His voice grew louder. “By heaven, I will find him. As far as Landini is concerned, bygones are bygones. I have no more hatred. But I want my boy.

“That is why,” he continued in a lower tone, “I have sent for Inspector Chan.