"A lie fouls the mouth of the one who utters it, Jack. A lie may torture and kill. It may ruin a life. It is the weapon of the coward—and never be a coward, Jack, never be afraid!"
At the New England preparatory school which he had attended after he came home, a lie was the abomination on which the discipline of student comradeship laid a scourge. Out on the desert, where the trails run straight and the battle of life is waged straight against thirst and fatigue and distance, men spoke straight.
And nothing had been explained, after all! The phantom was back, definite of form and smiling in irony. For it had a face, now, the face of John Prather! How was he connected with the story of the mother? the father? the Doge?
Then, like a shaft of light across memory, came the recollection of a thing that had been so negligible to Jack at the time. It was Dr. Bennington's first question in Jack's living-room; a question so carelessly put and so dissociated from the object of his visit! Jack remembered Dr. Bennington's curious glance through his eyebrows as he asked him if he had met John Prather. And Dr. Bennington had brought Jack into the world! He knew the family history! The Jack that now rose from the chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather's smile into obsession with the one idea which was crying: "I will know! I will know!"
Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Bennington had just gone out on a call. It would be possible to see him yet to-night! An hour later, as the doctor entered his reception-room he was startled by a pacing figure in the throes of impatience, who turned on him without formality in an outburst:
"Dr. Bennington, you asked me in Little Rivers if I had ever met John
Prather. I have met him! Who is he? What is he to me?"
The doctor's suavity was thrown off its balance, but he did not lose his presence of mind. He was too old a hand at his profession, too capable, for that.
"I refuse to answer!" he said quickly and decisively.
"Then you do know!" Jack took a step toward the doctor. His weight was on the ball of his foot; his eyes had the fire of a command that was not to be resisted.
"Heavens! How like the ancestor!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily.