you
of this, Dartrey. It was Miller's branch of the Labour Party who sent
him to Switzerland to confer with enemy Socialists and for the last
eighteen months of the war he practically lived under the espionage of
our secret service--a suspected traitor."

"It's a lie!" Miller fumed.

"It is the truth and easily proved," Tallente retorted. "When peace
came, however, Miller's party altered their tactics and the hatchet was
to have been buried. My article was directed against the trades unions
as they were at that time, not as they are to-day, and I still claim
that if public opinion had not driven them into an arrangement with the
Government, my article would have been published and would have done
good. To publish it now could answer no useful purpose. Its
application is gone and the conditions which prompted its tone
disappeared."

"I am beginning to understand," Dartrey admitted. "Tell me, how did the
manuscript ever leave your possession, Tallente?"

"I will tell you," Tallente replied, pointing over at Miller. "Because
that man paid Palliser, my secretary, five thousand pounds out of his
secret service money to obtain possession of it."

Miller was plainly discomfited.

"Who told you that lie?" he faltered.

"It's no lie--it's the truth," Tallente rejoined. "You used five
thousand pounds of secret service money to gratify a private spite."

"That's false, anyhow," Miller retorted. "I have no personal spite
against you, Tallente. I look upon you as a dangerous man in our party,
and if I have sought for means to remove you from it, it has been not
from personal feeling, but for the good of the cause."

"There stands your leader," Tallente continued. "Did you consult him
before you bribed my secretary and hawked about that article, first to
Horlock and now to heaven knows whom?"

"It is the first I have heard of it," Dartrey said sternly.

"Just so. It goes to prove what I have declared before--that Miller's
attack upon me is a personal one."

"And I deny it," Miller exclaimed fiercely. "I don't like you,
Tallente, I hate your class and I distrust your presence in the ranks of
the Democratic Party. Against your leadership I shall fight tooth and
nail. Dartrey," he went on, "you cannot give Tallente supreme control
over us. You will only court disaster, because that article will surely
appear and the whole position will be made ridiculous. I am strong
enough--that is to say, those who are behind me will t