can one make of it?"

"Well, the logical conclusion is that Bates has an accomplice. I fail to
see any other way of accounting for it."

Fenwick still sat there mopping his heated face and turning a disgusted
eye upon the little object on the table. He seemed to be terribly
distressed and upset, though there was nothing like the scene on the
previous occasion, and, doubtless, few diners besides Venner and Gurdon
knew that anything out of the common was taking place there. But they
were watching everything carefully; they noted Fenwick's anxious face,
they could hear his stertorous breathing. Though he had dined so freely
he called for brandy now, a large glass of which he drank without any
addition whatever. Then his agitation became less uncontrollable and a
little natural color crept into his cheeks. Without glancing at it he
slipped the little object on the table into his pocket and rose more or
less unsteadily to his feet.

"I have had a shock," he muttered. "I don't deny that I have had a
terrible shock. You don't understand it, Vera, and I hope you never will.
I wish I had never touched that accursed mine. I wish it had been fathoms
under the sea before I heard of it, but the mischief has been done now,
and I shall have to go on to the end. You can stay here if you like--as
to me, I am going to my own room. I want to be alone for a bit and think
this matter out."

Fenwick lurched across the room with the air of a man who is more or less
intoxicated, though his head was clear enough and his faculties undimmed.
Still, his limbs were trembling under him and he groped his way to the
door with the aid of a table here and there. It was perhaps rather a