behind his back. It was managed by my old friend
Espado; he was the bright-clad fop, whose hook nose got him called the
Vulture. Posing as a sort of philanthropist at the front, he felt his
way through the English Army, and at last got his fingers on its one
corrupt man--please God!--and that man at the top. St. Clare was in foul
need of money, and mountains of it. The discredited family doctor was
threatening those extraordinary exposures that afterwards began and
were broken off; tales of monstrous and prehistoric things in Park Lane;
things done by an English Evangelist that smelt like human sacrifice and
hordes of slaves. Money was wanted, too, for his daughter's dowry; for
to him the fame of wealth was as sweet as wealth itself. He snapped the
last thread, whispered the word to Brazil, and wealth poured in from the
enemies of England. But another man had talked to Espado the Vulture as
well as he. Somehow the dark, grim young major from Ulster had guessed
the hideous truth; and when they walked slowly together down that road
towards the bridge Murray was telling the general that he must resign
instantly, or be court-martialled and shot. The general temporised with
him till they came to the fringe of tropic trees by the bridge; and
there by the singing river and the sunlit palms (for I can see the
picture) the general drew his sabre and plunged it through the body of
the major."

The wintry road curved over a ridge in cutting frost, with cruel black
shapes of bush and thicket; but Flambeau fancied that he saw beyond it
faintly the edge of an aureole that was not starlight and moonlight, but
some fire such as is made by men. He watched it as the tale drew to its
close.

"St. Clare was a hell-hound, but he was a hound of breed. Never, I'll
swear, was he so lucid and so strong as when poor Murray lay a cold lump
at his feet. Never in all his triumphs, as Captain Keith said truly, was
the great man so great as he was in this last world-despised defeat. He
looked coolly at his weapon to wipe off the blood; he saw the point he
had planted between his victim's shoulders had broken off in the body.
He saw quite calmly, as through a club windowpane, all that must follow.
He saw that men must find the unaccountable corpse; must extract
the unaccountable sword-point; must notice the unaccountable broken
sword--or absence of sword. He had killed, but not silenced. But his
imperious intellect rose against the facer; there was