concerned with your private life, but we have come to
something of a crisis. It is necessary that I should know the worst.
Is there anything else Miller could bring up against you?"

"To the best of my belief, nothing," Tallente replied calmly

"That is not sufficient," Dartrey persisted. "Have you any knowledge,
Tallente, which the world does not share, of the disappearance of this
man Palliser? It is inevitable that if you discovered his treachery
there should have been hard words. Did you have any scene with him? Do
you know more of his disappearance than the world knows?"

"I do," Tallente replied. "You shall share that knowledge with me to a
certain extent. I had another cause for quarrel with Palliser to which
I do not choose to refer, but on my arrival home that night I summoned
him from the house and led him to an open space. I admit that I chose a
primitive method of inflicting punishment upon a traitor. I intended to
thrash Palliser, a course of action in which I ask you, Dartrey, to
believe, as a man of honour, I was justified. I struck too hard and
Palliser went over the cliff."

Neither Nora nor Dartrey seemed capable of speech. Tallente's cool,
precise manner of telling his story seemed to have an almost paralysing
effect upon them.

"Afterwards," Tallente continued, "I discovered the theft of that
document. A faithful servant of mine, and I, searched for Palliser's
body, risking our lives in vain, as it turns out, in the hope of
recovering the manuscript. The body was neither in the bay below nor
hung up anywhere on the cliff. One of two things, then, must have
happened. Either Palliser's body must have been taken out by the tide,
which flows down the Bristol Channel in a curious way, and will never
now be recovered, or he made a remarkable escape and decided, under all
the circumstances, to make a fresh start in life."

Nora came suddenly over to Tallente's side. She took his arm and
somehow or other the strained look seemed to pass from his face.

"Dear friend," she said, "this is very painful for you, I know, but your
other cause of quarrel with Palliser--you will forgive me if I ask--was
it about your wife?"

"It was," Tallente replied. "You are just the one person in the world,
Nora, in whom I am glad to confide to that extent."

She turned to Dartrey.

"Stephen," she said, "either Palliser is dead and his death can be
brought to no one's door, or he is lying hidden and there is no one to