"Well, from all accounts," said Scanlon, "they have a pretty good argument on their side—neglect and all that. Burton wasn't your idea of a family man, was he?"
"Well, no, not exactly," confessed Dennison. "But then, I don't put myself up as a judge of such things. However, I've got a notion it would be hard to live with a silent, religious wife, a son you knew hated you, and a daughter who had—er—well—spells."
Ashton-Kirk bent his head forward a trifle and a look of interest glinted in his keen eyes.
"Spells?" asked he. "What do you mean?"
Dennison smiled broadly.
"That's an expression I got from an old colored man who used to work for my father years ago. Queer how such things stick to one, isn't it? But I don't just know how to describe what Burton told me about his daughter in any other way. She wasn't an epileptic. That's a thing one goes down under; and her case was just the reverse. She was, as a rule, propped up in a chair, as weak as a kitten; but when these things took her, she grew immensely strong and sort of wild."
"I see," said Ashton-Kirk. And Scanlon, as he watched, saw him, so to speak, store the fact carefully away in his memory. "Can you remember anything else Burton talked about that night?"
"Why, yes, to be sure." Dennison looked at the still figure of the investigator through the light rifts of smoke. "You seem to have a fair-sized interest in the matter," he added.
Ashton-Kirk nodded.
"Yes," he replied. "There is more to it than the police have shown; and I'm interested in the son's predicament."