“Not in the least, Sire,” came the quick answer. “I feel as well as ever I did in my life.”
“Why, then,” retorted the King, “should you question your ability? Is it not true that upon one occasion you detected the writer of certain letters from among a whole cityful of people?”
“I had so many cases in my time, Sire,” answered Kearns, with some hesitancy, “that I scarcely recollect the particular case you seem to have in mind. My memory has grown a little faint after this lapse of time. If you could give me a few details as to the circumstances——”
“The circumstances,” exclaimed the King, “were, as we remember them, as follows: An ancestor of one of our most distinguished subjects—Baron Gold—had been the recipient of a number of letters, written by some unknown writer, threatening him with assassination. He sent to you for aid in his peril and, it is recorded, within forty-eight hours, by a most ingenious plan, you had detected and apprehended the malefactor. Is this true?”
Kearns with difficulty restrained himself from laughing outright. Well he remembered the case now and the shrewd face of the ancestor of the distinguished Baron Gold rose with startling vividness before his mental vision.
“Quite true, Sire,” he answered gravely; “but the case was a rather simple one.”
“A rather simple one! We would have you tell us how you accomplished these things.”
“In this way, Sire,” replied Kearns. “As you have said, our friend—that is, I should say, the—ah—distinguished ancestor of the distinguished Baron Gold had been in receipt of letters threatening him with death, unless he paid a certain money tribute. He was a man of wealth—of very great wealth—but he had a constitutional aversion to parting with it. Almost equally he disliked the possibility of sudden death.”
Again the King smiled his peculiar smile of mingled sunshine and frost.
“How the characteristics of the ancestor are carried down through the generations!” he remarked to Lord Ashley.