of the lawn; but he was not sure if the sound came
from out there in the garden or from inside the room. It was an
ill-defined sound, that might have been the intake of a heavy breath or
the stirring of leaves gently moved by the sluggish air. The chair he
sat in backed on to a beautifully-carved sandalwood screen which covered
the angle at one side of the hearth, and he was smiling, half
contemptuously, at an impulse to rise and look behind the screen, when
it was checked and driven clean out of his head by quite a different
sort of noise.

From the back premises, prolonged and imperative, there reached him the
metallic clamour of the electric bell--the bell at the front door. He
glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve. Who
could be calling upon him at that time of night?

A moment later Sinnett knocked and entered, and the man's usually
imperturbable face, white and quivering, struck the keynote of danger.
With an apologetic gesture, as though to convey that his outer defences
had been forced, he stood aside and announced--

"Mr. Mallory, sir, and Sergeant Bruce. I told them I didn't think you
would see them so late, but they insisted."

Nugent rose, somewhat heavily, to greet his visitors. He was wondering
where was the flaw in the web he had woven. There must be a loose thread
somewhere, or these men would not be here. That little devil Enid must
have been complaining about Tuke's behaviour, and if that was all there
was no harm done. So there was no trace of disquiet in the sleepy smile
and stifled yawn which he affected.

"Ah, my dear Mallory; I was dozing, I think. And you, Bruce," he
murmured, with a pleasant nod for the police-officer. "This looks very
formidable. What is wrong? If it is nothing urgent, perhaps you will sit
down."

Vernon Mallory ignored the civility. "I have just seen my daughter," he
began, with a quiet directness that duly impressed its hearer. "She has
been shut up in the grotto in your grounds all the afternoon--whether
with or without your knowledge is immaterial. The point is this: her
imprisonment led to her learning that you had planned to entrap some
female on to a vessel to-night, using Chermside in some unexplained
manner, which, however, I can guess at, as a decoy. Now, a few moments
before she escaped from your grotto Enid heard Violet Maynard's voice in
your garden, apparently on the way down to the shore. I have telephoned
to the Manor House, by