he takes very good care there's no possibility of his finding out."

"Well," remarked the stranger, "that's what I fear has happened, or may
one day happen. The fact is, _caro mio_, we are in a quandary at the
present moment. You were a bit too confident in dealing with those
documents you found at Glencardine. You should have taken her ladyship
into your confidence and got her to pump her husband concerning them. If
you had, we shouldn't have made the mess of it that we have done."

"I must admit, Krail, that what you say is true," declared the
well-dressed man. "You are such a philosopher always! I asked you to
come here in secret to explain the exact position."

"It is one of peril. We are checkmated. Goslin holds the whole position
in his hands, and will keep it."

"Very fortunately for you he doesn't, though we were very near exposure
when I went out to Athens and made a fool of myself upon the report
furnished by you."

"I believed it to be a genuine one. I had no idea that the old man was
so crafty."

"Exactly. And if he displayed such clever ingenuity and forethought in
laying a trap for the inquisitive, is it not more than likely that there
may be other traps baited with equal craft and cunning?"

"Then how are we to make the _coup_?" Flockart asked, looking into the
colourless eyes of his friend.

"We shall, I fear, never make it, unless----"

"Unless what?" he asked.

"Unless the old man meets with an accident," replied the other, in a
low, distinct voice. "_Blind men sometimes do, you know!_"

CHAPTER XXIII

WHICH SHOWS A SHABBY FOREIGNER

Felix Krail, his cigarette held half-way to his lips, stood watching the
effect of his insinuation. He saw a faint smile playing about Flockart's
lips, and knew that it appealed to him. Old Sir Henry Heyburn had laid a
clever trap for him, a trap into which he himself believed that his
daughter had fallen. Why should not Flockart retaliate?

The shabby stranger, whose own ingenuity and double-dealing were little
short of marvellous, and under whose watchful vigilance the Heyburn
household had been ever since her ladyship and her friend Flockart had
gone south, stood silent, but in complete satisfaction.

The well-dressed Riviera-lounger--the man so well known at all the
various gay resorts from Ventimiglia along to Cannes, and who was a
member of the Fetes Committee at San Remo and at Nice--merely exchanged
glances with his friend and smiled. Quickly,