enough and the
problem raised by the present discovery was quite another. He went about
the place trying side doors and windows, but everywhere his house was
closed against him--and that meant a complete revision of plan, and the
relinquishment of the tremendous force of climax to be gained by
slipping in unannounced and holding over confounded evil-doers the
irrefutable proof of demonstration.

He must knock on his door, and give them time to slip back into their
disguise of hypocrisy. It meant that, in the principal feature, his
whole carefully laid plan had failed, but at least now he knew the truth
and was ready to let the avenging bolt fall. They would meet him with
smiles of innocence: they with sinful kisses yet warm on their lips.
They, fresh from their interrupted love, would talk casually. Very
well, for a little while yet he could smile and be casual, too, meeting
their guile with counter dissembling--until he was ready.

* * * * *

If Stuart Farquaharson had been sitting most of that evening in a
darkened room, it was because his misery was so great that the light
seemed to make clearer the wretchedness of his future. For a time he had
tried to read; even to write, but that was before Eben had come. In all
those efforts he had failed and now for more than an hour he had been
gazing dejectedly out of the window, listening to the wind as it
buffeted itself out and died in an exhausted moaning among the pines. He
had heard the wailing of the harbor sirens but his eyes had been
unseeing--at least unrecognizing.

And Conscience had been writing the letter which she meant to leave
under the door of Stuart's room. He would find it there in the morning,
and when he said good-by, he would understand the things which she had
left unsaid before they parted in the hall.

She _had_ gone and left the letter at the door: had even listened there
a moment, unknown to the room's occupant, and it was that crossing of
her threshold which her husband saw.

Then Stuart had switched on his light, and thrown off his clothes. If he
seemed calm as he lighted his pipe, it was a calm of spent emotion, and
not the complacency of a man who awaits a tryst.

Through the stillness of the house the hammering of the brass knocker
sounded loudly. Stuart Farquaharson in his room and Conscience in hers,
both heard it, with a sense of astonishment. The man opened his door and
hurried to the stairhead, where