favour of the exchange, and I am informed that
Miss Maynard cannot be found in or about the house. What have you to
say?"

Travers Nugent felt as if an icy finger had touched his spine. The
indictment put forward with such inexorable precision comprised the very
core of his whole vile plot. This terrible old man had even hinted that
the means employed to drive Chermside on to the _Cobra_ were no secret
to him. This was a bolt from the blue which only a bold front could
avert. Everything depended on the source of Enid Mallory's amazing
discovery; till he had ascertained that, it would be childish to abandon
his position.

He gave an amused little laugh. "Really it is too bad that I should be
dragged into Miss Enid's home-made romance," he protested. "Did she give
you chapter and verse, may I ask?"

"My daughter is not a fool," Mr. Mallory replied quietly. "She happened
to have a fellow-prisoner in the grotto, who had earlier in the day
heard you discussing your plans for this evening with one of your
creatures--the same man who shut her into the grotto. To be quite frank
with you, Mr. Nugent, the sergeant accompanies me because I intend to
charge you with serious crime."

"And anything you say will be taken down and used against you," the
policeman interjected with official gravity. This was the first time the
worthy man had had to arrest a gentleman, and he hardly knew whether he
liked the job or not.

"Serious crime is a comprehensive phrase," sneered Nugent. "Means
anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter. Come, sir! What do you
charge me with?"

"With a crime one degree more heinous than the worst of those you have
named--with murder, as an accessory before the fact," the accuser's
clear voice cut the silence. "I charge you with indirectly inciting one
Pierre Legros to kill Levi Levison under circumstances that would throw
suspicion on Mr. Chermside. I charge you with using the state of terror
to which you reduced that unhappy man in order to induce him to fly in
such a manner that he might be deemed to have eloped with the lady whom
you have been suborned to snatch from her home and friends for----"

Mr. Mallory checked himself. His ancient training in international
politics saved him from the indiscretion of naming the Indian prince who
was behind the culprit. And, sub-consciously, he was also checked by a
movement behind Nugent's chair. The great carved sandal-wood screen
swayed, and was surely going