After letting himself in through the door from the moor into the grounds of The Hut, Travers Nugent paused irresolute. Should he punish that impudent hussy Enid Mallory by keeping her in the grotto all night and have her accidentally "found" in the morning, or should he go and release her now?

In either case he meant to throw the blame on Tuke, whom he could describe as an irresponsible lunatic—or anything else that came into his head at the time. He need not be too nice about his excuses, for, after all, the girl, as a trespasser on his private property, was the real offender. It would be interesting to know what account she would give of herself.

On the whole he decided that it would be wiser to go and let her out at once, and so have done with an incident which he regretted as a blunder on the part of his too zealous follower. Mr. Vernon Mallory was a dangerous man to annoy, and, conscious as he was of his veiled antagonism, Nugent did not want to give him cause for open quarrel. Till the Cobra had reached her destination, and all traces of her had been obliterated, Bhagwan Singh's agent knew that he would have to walk warily indeed.

So he struck into the shrubbery, and on coming to the grotto unlocked the door with the key which Tuke had left in the keyhole. With a curious qualm that was not exactly alarm he saw that his kind offices would not be needed, and that the lies he had framed might remain unspoken. For the electric torch which he flashed on the gloomy interior showed it to be untenanted, while the gaping hole in the roof told of the way of escape.

Nugent stared at the improvised ladder of fertilizer kegs, and at the aperture overhead, with a thoughtful frown.

"That is hardly girl's work, yet she cannot have had help," he muttered. "If she had contrived to attract attention, no one would have been at the pains of breaking open the roof for her when the key was on the outside of the door all the time. Certainly she had hours to do it in; and she's more than half a boy."

He turned away, and, crossing the dewy lawn, entered his library by the unfastened French window. The shaded lamp had been lit, shedding a pleasant glow over the cosy bachelor room, and he gave a little sigh of content. He was fain to admit that he was tired with the day's exertions, and glad to be home again. He rang the bell, and the soft-footed Sinnett appeared.

"Mix me some whisky and soda water and give me a cigar," he said. "You have nothing out of the common to report?"

"Nothing that you do not know already, sir," was the reply. "Tuke will have informed you about Miss Mallory and the stone grotto."

"That is why I asked," rejoined Nugent. "The young lady has gone, and part of the roof of the grotto has been removed. You have heard or seen nothing that would account for it?"

"Nothing at all, sir. I have not been in the garden, but no sound reached me in the house. And I have been listening—in case she called out."

Nugent nodded, knowing the man's ways. "And that mad French seller of onions, he has not been here to-day?" he continued.

"No, sir; I haven't seen him for a day or two."

"Thank you, Sinnett. Then that will be all now I think. Don't go to bed just yet. I may want you to go out and post a letter for the early collection."

The butler having retired, Nugent lay back in his luxurious lounge-chair and sipped his drink and watched the blue wreaths from his Havana coiling upwards. He was filled with a delightful sense of achievement. The thing which had seemed so easy at first, and had then threatened dire failure through Chermside's defection, had been carried out in spite of the temporary obstacle. That band of electric light stealing away across the dark sea had been the signal that he had won the game, the stakes of which were the Maharajah's twenty thousand pounds. Not bad pay for six months' work, of which his pawns had taken the most arduous share.

He did not anticipate any trouble from these pawns, except perhaps, from one. Leslie Chermside was safe on board the Cobra, and Bhagwan Singh might be trusted to see to it that he was never heard of again. That vain puppet, Louise Aubin, could do him no harm if she would, since she would believe, as all the world would believe, that Violet had voluntarily fled with her lover. And if the flighty French maid was disappointed in her preposterous aims with regard to himself—well, a little palm-grease would effectually staunch the bleeding of her fickle heart. Simon Brant, Bully Cheeseman, Tuke, and Sinnett were his accomplices rather than his tools, and they might be trusted to keep silence for their own sakes; if not, he knew enough to hang each or all of them. The crew of the Cobra were to be paid off in India, whence they would doubtless be scattered to the four winds of heaven; and, besides the captain and the mate, not one of them was aware of his connection with the affair.

The remaining exception, which had cost him more uneasiness than all the rest combined, was Pierre Legros. The onion-seller's insane and vindictive jealousy of himself in respect of Louise might grow into a factor to be reckoned with, entailing unpleasant, if not actually perilous, consequences. Well, it would be surprising if he, Travers Nugent, the finished schemer, were not equal to dealing with a half-demented foreign sailor, whose position was, to put it mildly, somewhat insecure.

"A hint to the fair Louise to revert to her original suspicion would satisfactorily settle Monsieur Pierre Legros, without my having to make an open move myself," he mused aloud, as he summed up the situation.

Sitting there lazily in the lamp-glow, he felt like a general reviewing a victorious battlefield—"cleaning up the mess," as he put it to himself, with the advantage that there was no visible mess to clean up. He had scored another of those easy wins in the great game of life—the game he had played so long and so successfully, with men and women as counters and gold as the final stake.

But as he murmured that last self-gratulation there came a sudden sound, very faint, but near at hand, to break his train of thought. He had left the long window open so that he could watch the fire-flies on the dew-frosted grass of the lawn; but he was not sure if the sound came from out there in the garden or from inside the room. It was an ill-defined sound, that might have been the intake of a heavy breath or the stirring of leaves gently moved by the sluggish air. The chair he sat in backed on to a beautifully-carved sandalwood screen which covered the angle at one side of the hearth, and he was smiling, half contemptuously, at an impulse to rise and look behind the screen, when it was checked and driven clean out of his head by quite a different sort of noise.

From the back premises, prolonged and imperative, there reached him the metallic clamour of the electric bell—the bell at the front door. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve. Who could be calling upon him at that time of night?

A moment later Sinnett knocked and entered, and the man's usually imperturbable face, white and quivering, struck the keynote of danger. With an apologetic gesture, as though to convey that his outer defences had been forced, he stood aside and announced—

"Mr. Mallory, sir, and Sergeant Bruce. I told them I didn't think you would see them so late, but they insisted."

Nugent rose, somewhat heavily, to greet his visitors. He was wondering where was the flaw in the web he had woven. There must be a loose thread somewhere, or these men would not be here. That little devil Enid must have been complaining about Tuke's behaviour, and if that was all there was no harm done. So there was no trace of disquiet in the sleepy smile and stifled yawn which he affected.

"Ah, my dear Mallory; I was dozing, I think. And you, Bruce," he murmured, with a pleasant nod for the police-officer. "This looks very formidable. What is wrong? If it is nothing urgent, perhaps you will sit down."

Vernon Mallory ignored the civility. "I have just seen my daughter," he began, with a quiet directness that duly impressed its hearer. "She has been shut up in the grotto in your grounds all the afternoon—whether with or without your knowledge is immaterial. The point is this: her imprisonment led to her learning that you had planned to entrap some female on to a vessel to-night, using Chermside in some unexplained manner, which, however, I can guess at, as a decoy. Now, a few moments before she escaped from your grotto Enid heard Violet Maynard's voice in your garden, apparently on the way down to the shore. I have telephoned to the Manor House, by favour of the exchange, and I am informed that Miss Maynard cannot be found in or about the house. What have you to say?"

Travers Nugent felt as if an icy finger had touched his spine. The indictment put forward with such inexorable precision comprised the very core of his whole vile plot. This terrible old man had even hinted that the means employed to drive Chermside on to the Cobra were no secret to him. This was a bolt from the blue which only a bold front could avert. Everything depended on the source of Enid Mallory's amazing discovery; till he had ascertained that, it would be childish to abandon his position.

He gave an amused little laugh. "Really it is too bad that I should be dragged into Miss Enid's home-made romance," he protested. "Did she give you chapter and verse, may I ask?"

"My daughter is not a fool," Mr. Mallory replied quietly. "She happened to have a fellow-prisoner in the grotto, who had earlier in the day heard you discussing your plans for this evening with one of your creatures—the same man who shut her into the grotto. To be quite frank with you, Mr. Nugent, the sergeant accompanies me because I intend to charge you with serious crime."

"And anything you say will be taken down and used against you," the policeman interjected with official gravity. This was the first time the worthy man had had to arrest a gentleman, and he hardly knew whether he liked the job or not.

"Serious crime is a comprehensive phrase," sneered Nugent. "Means anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter. Come, sir! What do you charge me with?"

"With a crime one degree more heinous than the worst of those you have named—with murder, as an accessory before the fact," the accuser's clear voice cut the silence. "I charge you with indirectly inciting one Pierre Legros to kill Levi Levison under circumstances that would throw suspicion on Mr. Chermside. I charge you with using the state of terror to which you reduced that unhappy man in order to induce him to fly in such a manner that he might be deemed to have eloped with the lady whom you have been suborned to snatch from her home and friends for——"

Mr. Mallory checked himself. His ancient training in international politics saved him from the indiscretion of naming the Indian prince who was behind the culprit. And, sub-consciously, he was also checked by a movement behind Nugent's chair. The great carved sandal-wood screen swayed, and was surely going to fall forward on the man who was fingering his long moustache in a vain effort to frame an answer. But no, the screen righted itself, and Nugent's tongue moistened his dry lips into power of utterance.

"Very pretty, very pretty," he said, striving for calm. "But don't you see, my dear Mallory, that all your midnight madness topples down like a house of cards unless your daughter's informant—her fellow-prisoner, as you call him—is a credible witness. I will make you a small wager that he will never come forward and tell the public the wonderful pack of lies with which he gulled that charming little girl of yours. I——"

Again that movement in the screen behind Nugent's chair, and this time with results that shifted the centre of interest with startling suddenness. Round the corner of the screen came Pierre Legros, gaunt and haggard, his fierce eyes in accord with the furious spasms that made a battle-ground of his unshaven face. Nugent, half turning in his chair to look up at the apparition which had drawn the gaze of the other two, broke off in the midst of his sneer with a sobbing catch in his throat.

"You say I not come forward to spik the truth?" the Frenchman began, in a voice that shook with emotion. "I was hide here to do that to you, and now these gentlemens shall hear the truth also. I only now learn it myself, for it is different from what I think till now. I say to myself, messieurs, that this scÉlÉrat desire to depart in steamer with Louise Aubin, but I was wrong. What you say about Ma'amselle Maynard and that poor Jermicide, monsieur, show me all his wickedness as by flash of lightning. It is true, gentlemens, that I kill Levison, and that this Nugent tempt me to it."

The sergeant made a movement, but changed his mind. The man was in the mood to confess, and confession implied that he meant surrender. No need to lay hands on him till he had made a little more evidence. Mr. Mallory stood like a graven image watching Nugent, who, still preserving the half-turn he had made in his lounge chair, was staring up as if fascinated by the man at his shoulder.

"It is that I desire to make clean the name of a man who is innocent," Legros went on. "This Jermicide—I not know him, I nevair spik with him, but he do me no wrong, and Pierre Legros is not cruel, messieurs. I would not that Jermicide suffer for me, who am guilty. Nugent, he send for me, and pretend he wish to save Louise from the so deceitful Levison, who made to admire her. He say, did Nugent, that Louise, whom as a boy in Brittany I love, will meet Levison on the marsh, and that he will persuade her to fly with him to London, where Levison will leave her in disgrace. Messieurs, I was mad—my brain was hot like fire—Nugent he gave me the place and time of meeting, and I was there first—with my knife—that was all."

The tragedy in the concluding words was dramatic; even more so the silence that followed. The sergeant, good man, felt that the next move was with him, but he was single-handed, and had not bargained for having to convey two murderers to the station when he consented to accompany Mr. Mallory to The Hut. He coughed nervously to attract the attention of his two prospective prisoners, who seemed to have no eyes for any one but each other. Nugent, with his head twisted round, was looking up at Legros; Legros, behind the chair, was looking down at Nugent, his nostrils twitching strangely. The Frenchman, with innate politeness, understood, and obeyed the policeman's claim on his attention, turning a mild and friendly gaze on him.

"You know, you'll have to come along with me, both of you, after this," said the sergeant haltingly. "You won't give any trouble, Legros?" It did not occur to his mind that the gentleman would otherwise than "go quietly."

"Oh, yes," Legros answered gently. "We shall both of us give you nothing of the trouble, monsieur. I myself, Pierre Legros, will see that this wolf in the clothes of the sheep will go from this apartment with complacence the most profound."

Nugent essayed to rise, unsteadily, to his feet, but Legros shot out a brown hand on to his shoulder, and firmly pressed him back into a sitting posture.

"Stay there, chien, till you have the orders to move," he snarled.

The eyes of the master of the house glittered balefully. "Really, sergeant, if you persist in coupling us in this absurd charge, I must ask your protection against this man," he protested. "I was going to ring the bell for my servant to arrange matters before leaving; perhaps you will kindly do it for me."

In answer to the summons Sinnett appeared, furtively scanning his employer's face for some sign of his wishes other than what he might hear in words. A quick look of intelligence passed between them, though Nugent's request sounded simple enough.

"There has been a stupid misunderstanding, Sinnett, which will entail my going with Sergeant Bruce till it has been explained," he said quietly. "I want you to put a few things in my handbag, please—just absolute necessaries, such as a change of linen and a tooth brush. You will know what I am most likely to need. Don't keep us waiting, there's a good fellow."

The silent-footed servitor bowed and retired, and with an air of contemptuous resignation Nugent lay back in his chair. As he fingered his fair moustache his gaze, lazily contemplative, was all for the observant face of Mr. Mallory, whose attention was directed at the supple form of the French sailor. Legros himself had no eyes for any one but the man over whose chair he hovered, expectant and menacing. The sergeant kept shifting from one foot to another, emphasizing the silence with deprecatory coughs. He was probably the most uncomfortable man in the room.

The tableau was not unduly prolonged, for in less than three minutes Sinnett reappeared, carrying a small leather bag, which he brought to his master. Nugent placed it on his lap, and, idly fingering the catch, proceeded to instruct his servant on various household matters. The gardener was to be careful to attend to the heating of the orchid house; Nugent was minutely particular about ordering his dinner for the following night, as he had no doubt that after explaining to the magistrates at Exmouth he should be at home in good time to enjoy it. Dixon, the chauffeur, was to have the car at the police court at noon, so as to be ready to bring him back.

"And now, sergeant, I think I am ready to end this business," he concluded, looking blandly round. "It really galls me to give you so much trouble, but you, like my dear friend Mallory, have brought it on yourself, you see."

As he spoke the fingers which had been toying with the catch of the bag closed, snapping it open and diving swift as lightning into the interior. At the same moment Pierre Legros thrust his hand into the bosom of his blue blouse, and withdrew it just as Nugent lifted a revolver from the bag. There was a gleam of steel, and a great sheath-knife shot downwards like a streak of fire into the back of Nugent's neck ere he could level the weapon. The point of the knife came out above the collar-stud, and the Frenchman dragged it out with a vicious wrench as the corpse fell forward on to a magnificent tiger-skin rug.

"He make to shoot us all," said Legros calmly. "But most he make to shoot you, Monsieur Mallory, and I glad to save the father of the brave ma'amselle. But I have no love for the Ingleesh rope or the Ingleesh madhouse—so bon voyage, messieurs."

And before they could guess his intention the big knife was driven home, through the blue blouse, into his own tumultuous heart.