but supposing, Robert, he should have wandered in that mist the wrong
way--turned to the left, for instance, outside this window, instead of
to the right--he might very easily have fallen over the cliff."

"The walk is very unsafe in the dark, sir," Robert acquiesced, looking
down at the carpet.

"It was not my intention," Tallente remarked thoughtfully, "to kill the
young man. A brawl in front of the windows was impossible, so I took
him with me to the lookout. I suppose he was tactless and I lost my
temper. I struck him on the chin and he went backwards, through that
piece of rotten paling, you know, Robert--"

"I know, sir," the man interrupted, with a little moan. "Please don't!"

Tallente shrugged his shoulders.

"I took him at no disadvantage," he said coolly. "He knew how to use
the gloves and he was twenty years younger than I. However, there it is.
Backwards he went, all legs and arms and shrieks. And with him went the
papers he had stolen.--At twelve o'clock to-night, Robert, I must go
down after him."

"It's impossible, sir! It's a sheer precipice for four hundred feet!"

"Nothing of the sort," was the cool reply. "There are heaps of ledges
and little clumps of pines and yews. All that you will have to do is to
pull up the rope when I am ready. You can fasten it to a tree when I go
down."

"It's not worth it, sir," the man protested anxiously. "No one will
ever find the body down there."

"Send the boy home to stay with his parents to-night," Tallente
continued. "Your wife, I suppose, can be trusted?"

"She is living up at the garage, sir," Robert answered. "Besides, she
is deaf. I'll tell her that I am sleeping in the house to-night as you
are not very well. And forgive me, sir--her ladyship left a message.
She hoped you would lunch with her to-morrow."

Tallente strolled out again in a few minutes, curiously impatient of the
restraint of walls, and clambered up the precipitous field at the back
of the Manor. Far up the winding road which led back into the world, a
motor-car was crawling on its way up over. He watched it through a pair
of field glasses. Leaning back in the tonneau with folded arms, as
though solemnly digesting a problem, was Inspector Gillian. Tallente
closed the glasses with a little snap and smiled.

"The Bucket type," he murmured to himself, "very much the Bucket type."

CHAPTER V

The moon that night seemed to be indulging in strange vagaries, now
dimly visible beh