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Rh treated every stranger as an impostor until he had proved himself otherwise. Matthew Regan had known the world and his daughter both too well to select as his executor a man of pleasant and agreeable manners, but Hereford was a strong man who did things by direct methods. He had got so he could classify and frustrate scheming strangers as they entered his door.

But he could not classify the man who entered with a swinging step in answer to his summons. An American—sallow-skinned, lithe, with sun-bleached hair and brows—Hereford guessed he had spent many years away from the States. He saw by the careful grooming and new clothes that Annis had prosperous pockets now at least. He divined that Annis had spent more than a little of his life where one