The cinders fell with a clatter among the pistons and the fly-wheels, and Nettle Jimpson, too absorbed in watching results, forgot to notice that the ruffian on the bridge had not fired a second shot at her. For almost immediately there began a jarring and a scrunching in the engines which told that the delicate mechanism was trying to assimilate in its vitals the rough food she had fed it with, and found it indigestible. Cold-blooded murder was quite in Mr. Cheeseman's line as a preventive, equally so as a cure had that been possible. But those ominous sounds were eloquent of mischief done, and he was not the man to run his neck into a noose for the empty pleasure of revenge.

Three feeble revolutions followed, and then the engines stopped altogether, and the Cobra, quickly exhausting the way on her, lay like a log on the oily swell. Brant came running from his cabin, and at the foot of the bridge stairs met Cheeseman, who had descended, and the chief engineer, who had hurried up from below.

"How long will it take to pick the stuff out?" asked Brant, when he had been informed of what had happened.

"It will be from two to three hours before we can get a move on the ship," was the engineer's verdict. "A lot of the muck has got into the governors and cylinders. If I hadn't shut off steam sharp there'd have been such a mix up that the steamer would have had to dock for repairs."

This meant that the Snipe would be up with them in twenty minutes. Brant cocked a wicked eye at the oncoming destroyer, and then began to walk to where Nettle was still standing by the engine-room hatch. So diabolical was the menace on the horrible hairless face that the girl was fascinated as by a snake, and could not fly, though she knew that her fate was trembling in the balance. Brant addressed her very quietly.

"Will you jump overboard yourself, or shall I shoot you first and then throw you over?" he said, drawing a vicious Derringer from his hip.

Unflinchingly Nettle returned his stare. She even laughed a little. "I am certainly not going to commit the crime of suicide to save you from committing the crime of murder. I don't love you well enough for that," she replied.

And then the swift thought came to her that the wretch meant to slake his thirst for revenge and trust to his cunning to avoid the penalty for it. When the warship's men boarded the Cobra he would have to explain the kidnapping of Violet Maynard and his treatment of Chermside as best he could, and he would doubtless have to suffer for it. But he had been guilty of no capital offence against them, and might contrive to throw much of the blame on other shoulders.

"I'll give you thirty seconds to reconsider that decision," said Brant, cocking and raising the pistol.

"It will be about long enough for you to reconsider yours," Nettle rejoined promptly. "You are relying on the crew of that destroyer not being aware that there are two women on board your ship. You think that if they saw me on deck they will have taken me for Miss Maynard, and that with her rescue assured they will ask no questions about me."

"And they won't," said Brant, though there was a note of interrogation in the assertion. "How are they to know that I shipped a d——d wild-cat at Weymouth?"

"That is the hole you have dug for yourself to tumble into," returned Miss Nettle Jimpson sweetly. "You thought you were being funny at my expense in allowing the torpedo-boat to nearly catch you, but you overdid your joke, Captain Brant. That ship is the Snipe, with my young man as acting gunner. You let her come so close that we were blowing kisses to each other half an hour ago. When my Ned steps on to your deck five minutes hence he'll ask for me, if he's still the affectionate youth I've educated him into. And you won't be able to gammon him with any yarn about my having jumped overboard. He knows jolly well I'm not built that way."

Brant looked up at her, mouthing and gibbering; then he spat on the deck, and, turning away without a word, flung his Derringer over the rail into the sea.

And the helpless Cobra, her poison-fangs drawn, lay on the swell like a wilted weed while the Snipe, vomiting black fury from her three funnels, swooped down.

Mr. Montague Maynard passed the decanter, and beamed upon his guests—Mr. Vernon Mallory and Reggie Beauchamp. Through the open window they could catch glimpses of Leslie Chermside, who had taken a lover's privilege to leave the dessert table early and join Violet on the Manor House lawn. Somewhere out there in the twilight there were also Aunt Sarah and Enid Mallory, the elder lady listening for about the twentieth time to the adventure of the younger in the grotto at The Hut—an adventure which had been the direct cause of her great-niece's rescue.

"Roughly speaking, then, this is what you make of it," Mr. Maynard was saying. "From first to last Levison's murder was a job put up by Travers Nugent in order to render my future son-in-law the bait for getting Violet on to the Cobra?"

"That is established from the mouth of Pierre Legros, from Brant's brutal frankness to Violet, and by Nugent's evident intention to kill Sergeant Bruce, Legros and myself the other night," replied Mr. Mallory. "He would not have embarked on wholesale murder, which must have been brought home to him, unless he had known that the game was up, and that his only resource was flight."

"Yes, that is all clear enough," the Birmingham magnate assented. "But what I am most concerned with, as I like the chap and he is going to marry my daughter, is Chermside's extraordinary conduct in being frightened into bolting on to that infernal steamer. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, he being obviously innocent of the crime. I shouldn't like to think that Violet was going to marry a fool or a coward."

The old civil servant made patterns on his plate with walnut shells before replying. He was thinking of an interview he had had with Leslie Chermside that morning, at which the young ex-Lancer had made full confession to him of his early implication in the plot, and had sought advice as to what as a man of honour he ought to do. Mr. Mallory, after very earnest consideration, had given that advice, and it was in sustentation of it that he now replied—

"My view is this—that Chermside was duped by Nugent into becoming an accomplice in this atrocious scheme, without in the least understanding the enormity of the offence he was to aid, that he discovered 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 history of the conspiracy. His prompt action in putting to sea, and his judicious handling of Brant after boarding the Cobra, crowned my humble efforts with success. The idea of letting Brant and his crew of cut-throats go scot-free, with the advice to finish their voyage and demand payment and explanations from Bhagwan Singh, was a masterpiece which augurs well for our young friend's career. One can imagine the kind of payment that the Maharajah will mete out when he gets that pack of failures into his dominions."

"I had to handle the wicked little demon judiciously to save my own skin," said Reggie modestly. "I had no orders to rove the seas in search of lost heiresses or eloping couples, and my career might have been nipped in the bud if I'd taken the Cobra into Devonport as a prize. My lords of the Admiralty are not kind to independent action by junior officers, and if I had pleaded that I had been ordered to sea by Enid it would hardly have mended matters. But as we are apportioning rewards and punishments, we mustn't forget the real heroine of the piece—Nettle Jimpson, my gunner's best girl. If she hadn't fired that bucketful of cinders into the engines we shouldn't be all sitting here shaking hands with ourselves to-night."

Montague Maynard filled his glass and drained it incontinently. "Grigg and Wynter, drapers, of Weymouth, ceased to exist as a firm to-day," he remarked oracularly.

"As to how?" demanded Reggie, genuinely puzzled.

"I have bought their business as a little reward for Miss Jimpson," the man of money replied. "She will have the transfer as soon as ever my lawyers can put it through."

"Then you've done his gracious Majesty an ill turn in losing him the most promising acting-gunner in the service," said Reggie. "Ned Parsons, as his wife's principal shop-walker, will be a standing disgrace to you, Mr. Maynard, to the end of your days. His only prospect of safety is that his future spouse is not, from what I saw of her, the sort of person to tolerate flirtations with the girls behind the counter. But while you are making everybody happy with that magic touch of yours, sir, what are you doing for Mr. Lazarus Lowch, the champion juryman. I hear that he was foreman at the other two inquests, as well as finishing up Levison."

The millionaire laughed boisterously—so boisterously that it devolved upon Mr. Mallory to explain.

"Mr. Lazarus Lowch is as tame as a sucking dove," he said, with mock solemnity. "He has had his claws clipped and has been taken into custody by that sly little mischief-maker, Mademoiselle Louise Aubin."

"Good Lord!" cried Reggie. "Miss Maynard's maid?"

"Yes; she is a very astute young lady, and the only actor in our drama whose actions have been not quite clear to me, except that she was a bone of contention between Pierre Legros and Levison, and also figured as one of Nugent's puppets. Be that as it may, she contrived to get hold of Lowch, who, as you know, is a widower, as he was hanging about outside the police-station ready to get summoned on the two later inquests. She set her cap at him so effectually that he gave the coroner no trouble, and proposed to her the same evening."

"It must have been her figure that fetched him," said Reggie, with the air of a connoisseur. "She's great on corsage."

"And the figures in old Lowch's pass-book fetched her, I expect," roared Montague Maynard, rising. "Come, let's go and cool off on the lawn. It is time some one put a stopper on old Sally Dymmock. She's worrying the love-birds, and demoralizing that girl of yours, Mallory."

THE END