t would
be just as true to say I sent Travers in charge of Boyle."

"You don't mean to say you suspect Tom Travers?" cried the other.

"He was a deal bitterer against the general than Boyle ever was,"
observed Horne Fisher, with a curious indifference.

"Man, you're not saying what you mean," cried Grayne. "I tell you I
found the poison in one of the coffee cups."

"There was always Said, of course," added Fisher, "either for hatred
or hire. We agreed he was capable of almost anything."

"And we agreed he was incapable of hurting his master," retorted
Grayne.

"Well, well," said Fisher, amiably, "I dare say you are right; but I
should just like to have a look at the library and the coffee cups."

He passed inside, while Grayne turned to the policeman in attendance
and handed him a scribbled note, to be telegraphed from
headquarters. The man saluted and hurried off; and Grayne, following
his friend into the library, found him beside the bookstand in the
middle of the room, on which were the empty cups.

"This is where Boyle looked for Budge, or pretended to look for him,
according to your account," he said.

As Fisher spoke he bent down in a half-crouching attitude, to look
at the volumes in the low, revolving shelf, for the whole bookstand
was not much higher than an ordinary table. The next moment he
sprang up as if he had been stung.

"Oh, my God!" he cried.

Very few people, if any, had ever seen Mr. Horne Fisher behave as he
behaved just then. He flashed a glance at the door, saw that the
open window was nearer, went out of it with a flying leap, as if
over a hurdle, and went racing across the turf, in the track of the
disappearing policeman. Grayne, who stood staring after him, soon
saw his tall, loose figure, returning, restored to all its normal
limpness and air of leisure. He was fanning himself slowly with a
piece of paper, the telegram he had so violently intercepted.

"Lucky I stopped that," he observed. "We must keep this affair as
quiet as death. Hastings must die of apoplexy or heart disease."

"What on earth is the trouble?" demanded the other investigator.

"The trouble is," said Fisher, "that in a few days we should have
had a very agreeable alternative--of hanging an innocent man or
knocking the British Empire to hell."

"Do you mean to say," asked Grayne, "that this infernal crime is not
to be punished?"

Fisher looked at him steadily.

"It is already punished," he said.

Aft