that night.

CHAPTER VI

THE CRY FROM THE TRAIN

"Oh, good morning, Chermside. So you have not, after all, left
Ottermouth yet, as you led me to infer would be the case."

Leslie Chermside looked up from his newspaper to meet the steady gaze of
Travers Nugent, who had just entered the reading room at the club. It
was before the hour when the morning frequenters were wont to assemble,
and for the moment they had the apartment to themselves.

"No," said Leslie shortly. "I have changed my mind, and shall stay on
for a while."

Nugent carefully closed the door and came and stood with his back to the
mantelpiece looking down at his late accomplice. "Does that mean that
you have returned to your allegiance?" he asked softly.

"Certainly not," came Leslie's flash of indignation.

"Ah! then I presume that you found Levison amenable to reason, or, at
least, that you persuaded him to grant you a reprieve when you kept your
appointment with him last night?" said Nugent. Though he spoke with a
great assumption of carelessness, applying a light to his cigarette the
while, his eyes never left the younger man's face for an instant,
seeming to burn with a snake-like glitter.

Under this keen scrutiny Leslie reddened, and his reply came haltingly
at first, as though he picked his words with deliberation. "I asked no
favours of Levison. He--he can do his worst for all I care." And then,
moved by a sudden impulse, the ex-Lancer added hotly: "See here, Mr.
Nugent. My association with you, which I deeply regret, has not been an
honourable one. It is not my province to blame you, seeing how culpable
I have been myself, but the subject is distasteful to me, and at least I
have the right to ask that you will not again refer to the disgraceful
affair that brought us together. I shall hope shortly to obtain
employment which will enable me to repay the money advanced by the
Maharajah for my passage home, and, so far as I am concerned, that will
be an end of the business. I do not consider that I am legally or
morally bound to recognize the debts which his Highness gave me to
understand he had paid voluntarily. As the bribe with which he tempted
me was only a sham, I owe him no allegiance whatever."

Nugent listened with upraised brows to the angry outbreak, the flicker
of a frosty smile playing about his lips. But if he had meditated a
rejoinder he checked it. His quick ears had caught the click of the hall
door, and the hum