When the curtain fell the audience gave Ruthven a call which shook the theatre. It was his success, not mine; his acting which told, not that of his companions. I went on to the stage to shake him by the hand; but he walked past me as though he did not see that I was there.
“Ruthven!” I cried.
If he heard he paid no heed. Walking straight on, he vanished out of sight. His demeanour was so strange that I hardly knew what to make of it. Trotter was standing by me; he had been acting the lawyer.
“He is either a genius of the first water, er else the Old Gentleman himself. When I was telling him that story about the fortune which had been left to him, the look upon his face made my blood run cold.”
“I believe,” said Gordon, “that he is the Old Gentleman.”
“He has made me all of a tremble,
