iscovered how and
for what a vile purpose he had been duped, and that in the meanwhile,
having fallen in love with your daughter, he was terrified lest his
complicity should come out. Nugent then deliberately engineered the
murder of Levison so that he might play upon Chermside's fear--not of
the legal consequences of arrest for murder, but of the revelations that
would follow, Levison, I have reason to believe, having played a minor
part in the conspiracy. The affair fell out exactly as Nugent
anticipated, and Chermside lost his head and ran away--with the results
we know."

Montague Maynard puckered his brows in a judicial frown quite unsuitable
to his jovial features. But the cloud passed.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "the boy has acted straight enough, though he would
have been wiser to put us on our guard instead of trusting that Nugent
had abandoned the plot. He tells me, however, that he intended to write
me about it at the first opportunity, and I have not found him other
than truthful. I remember when I tackled him first about Violet, he
confessed that the yacht, waiting to take him on that accursed cruise,
and credited to him by local gossip, was not his property. No false
pretence about that."

"I am sure he tried to act for the best in a very difficult position,"
Mr. Mallory interposed quietly.

"And his behaviour on the _Cobra_ in tackling, single-handed and
unarmed, the crew of the launch, shows he's got grit," Maynard continued
warmly. "I reckon we'll leave it at that. He has tried to chuck away his
life to save Vi; he has suffered the tortures of the damned for her, and
as he's good enough for her, he shall be good enough for me."

Mr. Mallory heaved a sigh of content, which, coming from him, was not of
the kind that is noticed. He had achieved his purpose without betraying
a confidence.

"You arranged the hushing-up process deuced cleverly," the screw
manufacturer went on. "All that transpired at the adjourned inquest on
Levison, I understand, and at those on Legros and Nugent, was that
Nugent, had been engaged in a plot to kidnap Violet, and that it had
failed. Some idiot in Parliament might have raised Cain if Bhagwan
Singh's connection with it had been made public."

Mr. Mallory smiled. "I was certainly careful not to let the worthy
sergeant into the secret of the Maharajah's iniquity," he said. "But we
have chiefly Beauchamp here to thank for the veil we have been able to
draw over the inner histo