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"You are a fool," said Mr. Bellamy calmly. "You're lovely, but you're a fool. My God! What a fool you are!"

He had opened the folder and was looking down at a large cabinet portrait of a woman. She was wearing the costume of twenty years before, and it looked singularly old-fashioned and quaint; but the face was very young and sweet, and the calm eyes, that seemed to be searching his, had a beauty that was almost unearthly. Abe Bellamy licked his dry lips and gazed at the picture through narrowed lids. Then he turned it over calmly.

The second photograph was of a man of between thirty and forty.

"A fool," said Abe calmly; "you were just that, Mick."

The third photograph was of a child, little more than a baby. This he turned in his hand. At the back was pasted a newspaper cutting:

"The undermentioned officer was killed in air fighting on or about May 14, 1918. Lieutenant J. D. Bellamy, United States Army."

He turned the photograph over again and was closing the folder when something attracted his attention, and he bent his head closer to the desk. Ash—cigarette ash! Mr. Bellamy did not smoke cigarettes. Julius Savini, on the contrary, did. He stretched out his hand for the bell, but thought better of it. After all, it was his own fault; he knew the character of the man, and if he could not keep his private documents from the curious eyes of a lock-picking crook he only had himself to blame. Before he left the library that night he put the folder in a wall-safe that the panelling hid and locked the door. He did this every night. For the space of two hours nobody could enter the library.