show you exactly how that fellow put us off the scent here,"
their guide proceeded. "He seems to have picked up something, Edgar, in
those South American trips of yours, for a cleverer thing I never saw. You
see all these bullrushes everywhere--clouds of them, all along the river?"

"We call them tules," Quest muttered. "Well?"

"When Craig arrived here," Lord Ashleigh continued, "he must have heard
the baying of the dogs in the distance and he knew that the game was up
unless he could put them off the scent. He cut a quantity of these
bullrushes from a place a little further behind those trees there, stepped
boldly into the middle of the water, waded down to that spot where, as you
see, the trees hang over, stood stock still and leaned them all around
him. It was dusk when the chase reached the river bank, and I have no
doubt the bullrushes presented quite a natural appearance. At any rate,
although the dogs came without a check to the edge of the river, where he
stepped off, they never picked the scent up again either on this side or
the other. We tried them for four or five hours before we took them home.
The next morning, while the place was being thoroughly searched, we came
upon the spot where these bullrushes had been cut down, and we found them
caught in the low boughs of a tree, drifting down the river."

The Professor's tone was filled with something almost like admiration.

"I must confess," he declared, "I never realised for a single moment that
Craig was a person of such gifts. In all the small ways of life, in
campaigning, camping out, dealing with natural difficulties incidental to
our expeditions, I have found him invariably a person of resource,
ready-witted and full of useful suggestions. But that he should be able to
apply his gifts with such infinite cunning, to a suddenly conceived career
of crime, I must admit amazes me."

Quest had lit a fresh cigar and was smoking vigorously.

"What astonishes me more than anything," he pronounced, as he stood
looking over the desolate expanse of country, "is that when one comes face
to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and
broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences
of the most amazing, the most diabolical resource.... Who's this, Lord
Ashleigh?"

The latter turned his head. An elderly man in a brown velveteen suit, with
gaiters and thick boots, raised his hat respectfully.

"This is my head-k