helpless _Cobra_, her poison-fangs drawn, lay on the swell like
a wilted weed while the _Snipe_, vomiting black fury from her three
funnels, swooped down.

* * * * *

Mr. Montague Maynard passed the decanter, and beamed upon his
guests--Mr. Vernon Mallory and Reggie Beauchamp. Through the open window
they could catch glimpses of Leslie Chermside, who had taken a lover's
privilege to leave the dessert table early and join Violet on the Manor
House lawn. Somewhere out there in the twilight there were also Aunt
Sarah and Enid Mallory, the elder lady listening for about the twentieth
time to the adventure of the younger in the grotto at The Hut--an
adventure which had been the direct cause of her great-niece's rescue.

"Roughly speaking, then, this is what you make of it," Mr. Maynard was
saying. "From first to last Levison's murder was a job put up by Travers
Nugent in order to render my future son-in-law the bait for getting
Violet on to the _Cobra_?"

"That is established from the mouth of Pierre Legros, from Brant's
brutal frankness to Violet, and by Nugent's evident intention to kill
Sergeant Bruce, Legros and myself the other night," replied Mr. Mallory.
"He would not have embarked on wholesale murder, which must have been
brought home to him, unless he had known that the game was up, and that
his only resource was flight."

"Yes, that is all clear enough," the Birmingham magnate assented. "But
what I am most concerned with, as I like the chap and he is going to
marry my daughter, is Chermside's extraordinary conduct in being
frightened into bolting on to that infernal steamer. There seems to be
no rhyme or reason to it, he being obviously innocent of the crime. I
shouldn't like to think that Violet was going to marry a fool or a
coward."

The old civil servant made patterns on his plate with walnut shells
before replying. He was thinking of an interview he had had with Leslie
Chermside that morning, at which the young ex-Lancer had made full
confession to him of his early implication in the plot, and had sought
advice as to what as a man of honour he ought to do. Mr. Mallory, after
very earnest consideration, had given that advice, and it was in
sustentation of it that he now replied--

"My view is this--that Chermside was duped by Nugent into becoming an
accomplice in this atrocious scheme, without in the least understanding
the enormity of the offence he was to aid, that he d