ys before Sir Henry met
with that terrible affliction. The room in which the pair stood had been
the scene of many a private and momentous conference, and in the big
drawing-room upstairs many a Cabinet Minister had bent over the hand of
the fair Lady Heyburn.

Into the newly decorated room, with its original Adams ceiling, its
dead-white panelling and antique overmantel, shone the morning sun, weak
and yellow as it always is in London in the spring-time.

Lady Heyburn, dressed in a smart walking-gown of grey, pushed her fluffy
fair hair from her brow, while upon her face was an expression which
told of combined fear and anger.

Her visitor was surprised. After that watchful afternoon in the
Boulevard des Capucines, he had sat in a corner of the Cafe Terminus
listening to Krail, who rubbed his hands with delight and declared that
he now held the most powerful group in Europe in the hollow of his hand.

For the past six years or so gigantic _coups_ had been secured by that
unassuming and apparently third-rate financial house of Lenard et
Morellet. From a struggling firm they had within a year grown into one
whose wealth seemed inexhaustible, and whose balances at the Credit
Lyonnais, the Societe Generale, and the Comptoir d'Escompte were
possibly the largest of any of the customers of those great
corporations. The financial world of Europe had wondered. It was a
mystery who was behind Lenard et Morellet, the pair of steady-going,
highly respectable business men who lived in unostentatious comfort, the
former at Enghien, just outside Paris, and the latter out in the country
at Melum. The mystery was so well and so carefully preserved that not
even the bankers themselves could obtain knowledge of the truth.

Krail had, however, after nearly two years of clever watching and
ingenious subterfuge, succeeded, by placing the group in a "hole" in
calling them together. That they met, and often, was undoubted. But
where they met, and how, was still a complete mystery.

As Flockart had sat that previous afternoon listening to Krail's
unscrupulous and self-confident proposals, he had remained in silent
wonder at the man's audacious attitude. Nothing deterred him, nothing
daunted him.

Flockart had returned that night from Paris, gone to his chambers in
Half-Moon Street, breakfasted, dressed, and had now called upon her
ladyship in order to impart to her the good news. Yet, instead of
welcoming him, she only treated him with