that any stranger had gone to so much trouble to play a trick on him was absurd.

He had no lack of enemies—he knew that. Had one of them chosen this fantastic method of declaring war on him? In that case he could certainly afford to ignore the letter as coming from a source unworthy of serious consideration. A worth-while enemy does not give a warning; he strikes. The cheapest thing about a rattlesnake is its rattle. Varr started to run over a list of recognized foemen who might have done this ill-natured deed, but presently desisted; their name was legion.

He did not overlook a third, quite reasonable theory. The whole business might have sprung from the unbalanced mind of a lunatic—some person who believed himself appointed to right the wrongs of the world—the victim of religious mania. That would account for the choice of a monastic costume in which to masquerade—and it would also account for the queer language of the letter, savoring as it did of the Bible. Again, the type of person most likely to suffer from that form of mental affliction would be a poorly educated person—and Simon entertained grave doubts as to the orthography of some of the words in the letter.

He reached into a pigeonhole of the desk and took out a small dictionary that he always kept at hand. He selected the dubious spellings that had caught his attention and ran them down one by one. "Oppresor" was wrong. "Defensless" was fearful. "Neighbor" started out brilliantly but came a cropper at the end. And that curious phrase, "Who hast"; what about that? Simon was a trifle hazy over this, so he gave the writer the benefit of the doubt. It sounded queer, though. Anyway, he had established to his satisfaction that the fellow was illiterate—naïvely passing by the fact that he had himself resorted to a dictionary to confirm his belief.

He congratulated himself frankly on one score—he had laid the ghost! He could admit now—though with a blush of shame—that he had been badly shaken for just a few minutes, what with his own nerves and Ocky's confounded chattering! A man without a face! A "familiar" from the Spanish Inquisition! What rot a man's imagination can trick him into crediting. But that was over and done with now; he was back on solid ground, self-confident, secure—

He jumped quite half a foot in his chair at a muffled tap on the door—and swore at Bates for announcing dinner.