As Despard and Aylmer passed out of the dark of the Waterport into the sunlight of the square, two men, who walked in front of them, halted, shook hands, appeared to exchange an informal farewell, and separated. One, clad in gray flannels and a gray sombrero, turned to the left and began to mount the ramp behind the barracks. The other strolled slowly on.

The two soldiers fresh from their crossing of the straits from Africa were hailed and questioned more than once by comrades or friends who had not been fortunate enough to share in leave for the Tent Club meeting and were anxious for the last details of sport. How did pig run this time? Had such and such coverts been burned as was reported? What luck had they had personally? Despard and Aylmer had to halt half a dozen times within the first two furlongs. They began to regret that they had not taken a cab.

The man who strolled along in front of them halted, too, here and there. He did not appear to look round, but whenever acquaintances buttonholed the pair behind him it was noticeable that shop windows or Moorish curio sellers claimed his attention. He lingered, indeed, opposite a well-known book shop till his sudden resumption of his stroll brought him into collision with the others at the exact moment of their passing.

He started, muttered a perfunctory apology, and then made an exclamation.

"Jack!" he cried gladly, and held out his hand.

Aylmer met his cousin's glance, first with surprise, then with a sudden stiffening of his lips, finally with frowning. He gave a side glance at Despard.

The major's face was transfigured with wrath and loathing. He was looking at Landon as he might have looked at a poisonous reptile. He drew back a step of instinctive repulsion.

Landon gave a bitter little laugh. He still held out his hand defiantly.

"Isn't it fit to be shaken, Jack?" he asked. "Have I to thank the Galahad at your side for that?"

Despard's eyes grew grim and set. He turned to Aylmer and nodded coldly.

"See you later," he suggested, without another look in Landon's direction, and passed on his way with unhesitating strides. Venomously, malignantly, Landon watched him go.

"I don't wonder he won't face me!" he cried with well-simulated passion. "By God, I don't!"

He turned and stared at his cousin. Aylmer met his gaze coolly, unhesitatingly, and without a trace of relenting. For the second time Landon's bitter laugh escaped him.

"You've had his version?" he said. "Well, I don't altogether wonder at you in that case."

"I don't understand you," said Aylmer, quietly. "The public prints have made it quite evident that you're not fit for the society of decent men, if that is what you mean."

"No!" snarled Landon. "It isn't what I mean. What I mean is that that blackguard who's just left us, curse him! has won all round. He took my wife from me and now he's taken my reputation, my honor, and he's gone far to take every friend I have. But by the Lord who made me, Jack, I thought that you might be left with some sense of justice!"

"Justice?"

Aylmer's voice made an echo to Landon's. "Justice?" he repeated. "You got that, or less than that in most men's opinion, in the divorce court."

"I didn't!" said Landon, fiercely. "Ah, they made a pretty story of it! The blackguard who knocked his wife about, who thrashed his child, who took his wife's allowance and flung it under a dunghill of drink and devilry. That was me! Who gave evidence? The wife herself, who has since gone into a lunatic asylum. Servants who were bought with that old miser's gold. The man who wanted her—Despard!"

In spite of himself Aylmer gave an almost imperceptible quiver of surprise.

Landon laughed again.

"Does that touch you?" he cried. "He wouldn't tell you that. Not of how he schemed, and laid traps, and sunk pitfalls for me, to catch me, as I was caught. I'm no saint, Lord knows, but I've never sunk to that. I've had my game and paid my price, but, by God, I've never cheated!"

Aylmer's eyes still met his with level contempt.

"I know Despard, I've known him since boyhood," he answered. "He does not do these things."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course! I'm down and you're all stamping me into the mud, lower and lower. You've all taken the accepted view, and when I cry out against it I'm told I've had my chance. So I did, but it was never a fair one."

"You have still six months in which to give your version to the King's Proctor if you have any new facts to support your statement," said Aylmer, coldly.

"Facts! How am I to get the benefit of facts when the other side can manufacture answers for them with a dollar for my every penny? I've supplied 'facts' to the King's Proctor till I'm sick of the sight of his office paper assuring me that he has 'no evidence to justify my contentions.' I can give facts enough. It's a hearing I want—an impartial hearing!"

Aylmer shook his head.

"You got it," he said doggedly. "You got it!"

Landon rapped his stick upon the pavement.

"I tell you I didn't!" he cried. "I tell you that I could tell you things that would prove to you—yes, prove—that the whole job was got up by that scoundrel who's just left us—got up by him to steal my wife from me. I ask you to hear me; I appeal to you to listen to my side; I appeal to your sense of justice!"

Aylmer turned up the street.

"If you think there is anything to be gained by it, say on!" he answered. "You can walk with me as far as my quarters."

"You won't ask me in?" sneered Landon. "That's more than I can expect."

"Some of the fellows might look in on me—decent fellows," explained Aylmer, drily.

Landon gave a little gasp, halted, and leaned suddenly against the wall. He looked up at his cousin. His lips worked, he stammered, he broke into a panting storm of sobs.

"I didn't deserve that! My God! I didn't deserve that!" he cried.

Aylmer looked down at him and a tiny thrill of compunction shot through him. He hesitated. He did not believe in Landon's protestations. He knew, in every instinct of his nature, that Landon was a scoundrel. But he began to remember that it had not always been so. Things that had brought them together as boys came back to him. His memory suddenly framed a picture of that wedding nine years ago. Landon had gone to meet his bride gallantly, adoringly, that day. He had loved her then. Yes, he could not have acted that, he had loved her then.

And Landon, watching narrowly his cousin's face, read the emotions as they chased each other across it as if they had been writ upon an open page. He hugged himself mentally.

"That's what knocks him!" he told himself triumphantly. "The abased ingenuous sinner! A little more of that and, Great Nicholas! I have him by the short hairs!"

He pulled himself together with a well-acted effort. He turned and drew back.

"You cur!" he cried. "You cur, to hit at a man who's down!"

Aylmer's tanned cheek showed through it a tiny flush. The dart had gone home.

"When you prove that an apology's due, I'll make it."

"In the street!" sneered Landon. "I'm to shout my wrongs, tell you all the intimate story of my provocation before the town. Thank you for nothing!"

Aylmer made a little movement of the hand which implied irritation.

"You can come to my quarters," he said, "but—"

"This evening?"

"No, this evening I'm dining out. You can come to my quarters. Until you give me reason to alter my opinion I don't introduce you to my friends. Is that understood?"

Landon stood silent for another instant before he answered slowly.

"Yes," he agreed. "You've read and been told enough to excuse you. Yes, I'll come. And in half an hour you'll be begging my pardon, or—"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Or what?" said Aylmer, quietly.

"Or I shall know you've made up your mind not to be convinced."

And then a sudden taciturnity overtook him. He marched along at his cousin's side, his eyes bent upon the pavement, his brows contracted. He had the appearance of one who considers deeply. John Aylmer made no attempt to resume conversation. He concluded that Landon was either piecing together a story out of unpromising material which would leave considerable gaps to be filled or, which was more likely, evolving one out of his vivid imagination. In either case he was content to leave the issue to be ascertained in the privacy of his quarters.

They gained them uninterrupted. Aylmer made a sign towards a chair. Landon, after an expressive glance towards the Tantalus on the sideboard, sat down. Aylmer did not take the hint; he was in no mood to offer hospitality to this man, even to the inconsiderable extent of a whisky and soda.

He looked at Landon.

"Well?" he demanded curtly.

Landon gave another look towards the sideboard.

"I've hinted once," he said, with a laugh which he tried to make genial and offhand. "This time I'll ask bluntly for it."

"For what?"

There was no encouragement in Aylmer's voice, and his eyes were hard and unrelenting.

"For a drink."

Aylmer shook his head.

"Suppose I hear your statement first," he suggested. "Then you can have a drink here, or elsewhere."

Landon rose to his feet with a dramatic jerk. He turned abruptly towards the door.

"That's enough, by God! that's enough!" he swore savagely. "I've taken your insolence once; I'll not take it again. I'm not fit to be offered a drink in your rooms; I'm to sit like some damned flunkey giving his character while you cross-examine me. I'll see you on the far side of Hell first."

He reached the door, halted, and stood with hand on it, looking round.

"You'll be sorry for this," he said. "I tell you that, when the truth of it comes to be known, as it'll be known some day, you'll be sorry for it."

Aylmer looked at him with a steady contemplation which showed no signs of clemency. Landon flung open the door and passed out.

"Cursed prig!" he snapped and descended the stairs into the street. Aylmer, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, turned towards his dressing-room.

Ten minutes later Landon was enjoying his drink in Mr. Miller's pleasantly furnished apartments. His host had supplied it this time without any demur—with alacrity. He watched his guest dispose of it and hastened to offer another. This, too, disappeared down Landon's throat and a third was placed solicitously at his elbow. Not till these arrangements had been completed did Mr. Miller smirch his hospitality with any hint of business. But though he differed from Aylmer in this, he imitated him in the directness of his pour-parlers. He, indeed, used the same monosyllable.

"Well?" he said inquiringly.

Landon nodded with much satisfaction.

"I got in," he said briefly. "I was only there two minutes, at a liberal computation, but I've found out and done all I required. He's dining out to-night. The books, as you expected, are in an ordinary bookcase, glass fronted, with an ordinary padlock on it. What fools these War Office experts are! There was a spare latch-key of his rooms hanging on a hook on the wall, for the servant, I suppose. I nicked it as I went out. I met the servant on the stairs—just as well, if I run across him to-night. There will be nothing rummy in my returning to see his master. I purposely dragged my coat against the passage whitewash, and after he offered to brush it for me I gave him half a crown. So he's all right; he thinks I'm a worthy gentleman who ought to be encouraged to call often. Is that all right?"

Mr. Miller smiled.

"You show such talents and attention to detail, my dear Lord Landon," he answered, "that I grieve that I am not the happy partner of such a colleague permanently."

Landon looked across at him with a grin.

"Seriously?" he demanded.

"Quite seriously," replied the impassive Mr. Miller.

Landon meditated.

"If there is good money in it—?" he mused slowly, but his host hastened to interrupt him energetically.

"Excellent money," he assured him, "and we have always a use for a lord."

Landon grinned again.

"Perhaps my value will increase after this evening," he suggested. "When do you purpose going?"

"Would half-past nine suit you?" said Miller, affably, and Landon nodded.

"Charmed, I'm sure," he grinned again, and tossed off his third glass with unction. "Here's luck!" he cried, and Mr. Miller, who used spirits sparingly, and in the afternoon not at all, was forced to include himself in the aspiration with the good fellowship which is implied in a courteous bow.

At half-past nine Aylmer's soldier servant found, as Landon had prophesied, nothing extraordinary in his master's guest's return. The glint of a second half crown shone persuasively in that guest's hand as he expressed his desire to write a note to await the master's coming. He was shown without any demur into the sitting-room, and supplied with pen and paper.

But Landon's talents were not wasted on literary composition when he was left alone. He produced a pair of pliers and dealt very drastically with the padlock on the bookcase, opened the glazed doors, and ran his fingers down the numbers engraved upon the morocco-bound volumes. He selected one, opened it, flipped the pages, and finally came to a halt, his finger-tip poised above a plan.

He closed the book and went to the window. He opened it noiselessly.

"Number 34 North Front. Elevation of gun platforms with angles to east and south," he enunciated very quietly but very distinctly into the night.

A grayness stirred in the shadow below the window. There was a whispered reply.

"Right!" answered Miller's voice laconically, and Landon poised the book in mid-air.

"Can you see it?" he asked, still below his breath. There was an affirmative grunt from below.

The book left Landon's hand and fell through the night. There was a faint shock as it reached the waiting grip in the darkness.

Landon quietly and methodically shut the window and turned to the desk. He leaned, pen in hand, over the note-paper.

There was the click of a latch-key. He swung round to confront his cousin.

For a second the two eyed each other in silence. Then Landon rose slowly to his feet.

"I came, forgetting that you were dining out," he said. "I came because I reasoned that by now ... you would be wanting ... to offer me an apology."

Aylmer looked at the desk. Landon followed the glance.

"I was going to explain—why?" he added, pointing at the unsullied note-paper.

And then Alymer's gaze, which had been concentrated on his cousin's face, slipped past it and found, by chance, the bookcase.

His brows met in a puzzled frown; he made a step forward; he bent to examine the fractured padlock. Then he straightened himself and gave an exclamation.

Landon was ready. He drew a revolver from his pocket; he held it by the muzzle. And the butt came down with business-like vigor on Aylmer's temple. He seemed to crumple up rather than fall. He slid against the bookcase to the floor.

The dawn was breaking before, confusedly, achingly, consciousness wavered back to him again—the same dawn which saw a Spanish steamer drop anchor in Tangier's roads and Landon, with a satisfied smile, swing down the ladder into the boat which was to take him ashore.