Cain brooded over its cold, white walls and deep-set
windows like sunken eyes in a dead face.

Langholm found the room to which he had been directed; in fact, he knew
it of old. And there were the two new Beeston Humbers; but their
lustrous plating and immaculate enamel did not shame his own old
disreputable roadster, for the missing machine certainly was not there.
Langholm was turning away when the glazed gun-rack caught his eye. Yes,
this was the room in which the guns were kept. He had often seen them
there. They had never interested him before. Langholm was no shot. Yet
now he peered through the glass--gasped--and opened one of the sliding
panels with trembling hand.

There on a nail hung an old revolver, out of place, rusty, most
conspicuous; and at a glance as like the relic in the Black Museum as
one pea to another. But Langholm took it down to make sure. And the
maker's name upon the barrel was the name that he had noted down at the
Black Museum; the point gained, the last of the cardinal points
postulated by the official who had shown him round.

The fortuitous discoverer of them all was leaving like a thief--more and
more did Langholm feel himself the criminal--when the inner door opened
and Steel himself stood beaming sardonically upon him.

"Sorry, Langholm, but I find I misled you about the bicycle. They had
taken it to the stables. I have told them to bring it round to the
front."

"Thank you."

"Sure you won't wait till the rain is over?"

"No, thank you."

"Well, won't you come through this way?"

"No, thank you."

"Oh, all right! Good-by, Langholm; remember my advice."

It was an inglorious exit that Langholm made; but he was thinking to
himself, was there ever so inglorious a triumph? He knew not what he had
said; there was only one thing that he did know. But was the law itself
capable of coping with such a man?

CHAPTER XXVII

THE WHOLE TRUTH

"Have the ladies gone?"

Langholm had ridden a long way round, through the rain, in order to
avoid them; nor was there any sign of the phaeton in the lane; yet these
were his first whispered words across the wicket, and he would not
venture to set foot upon the noisy wet gravel without Mrs. Brunton's
assurance that the ladies had been gone some time.

"And they've left him a different man," she added. "But what have you
been doing to get wet like that? Dear, dear, dear! I do call it foolish
of yer! Well, sir, get out o' them nasty