"Come up if you like," said Harry, shortly; and Lowndes turned to the man in the shadow.
"When I throw up a window," Harry heard him say, and he led the way upstairs, feeling once more as though he were walking into a trap with his eyes open.
"Leave the key in the door," whispered Lowndes again as they stood on the mat. "Then he will be able to come and help us if necessary."
There was something strangely trustworthy in his face and his voice; something new in Harry's knowledge of the man. He left the key in the door, and he felt next moment that he had done right. Scrafton had leapt to his feet with fear and ferocity in his face, and the empty spirit-bottle caught up in his hand.
"What do you want?" he roared. "What are you doing here? You fool, I've told him everything! Shut the door, you, young fellow; now he's come we won't let him slip."
Harry humoured him by shutting it. He had only to look on their two faces to see which was the villain now.
"I've told him!" repeated Scrafton, in a loud, jeering voice. "I told you I'd round on you if ever you went back on me, and I've been as good as my word. He knows now who persuaded his father to go abroad, and he knows why. He knows who went with him. He knows who pushed him overboard and took the money."
"It's pretty plain, isn't it?" said Lowndes to Harry. "Be prepared to close with him the moment he lifts that bottle higher than his shoulder, and I'll tell you honestly what I did do. It will save time, however, if you first tell me what this fellow says I did."
Harry did so in the fewest words, while they both stood watching Scrafton, grinning in their faces as he held the empty bottle in rest. His grin broadened as the tale proceeded. And so strange was the growing triumph in the fierce blue eyes, if it were all untrue, that at the end Harry turned to Lowndes and asked him point-blank whether there was any truth in it at all.
"Heaps," was the reply. "It's nothing but the truth up to a certain point. I am not here to exonerate myself from fault, Ringrose, and not even altogether from crime. It is perfectly true that it was at my instigation your father consented to go abroad and put his faith in this fellow's system. It was a wild scheme, if you like, but it was either that or certain ruin, and I'd have risked it myself without the slightest hesitation. I firmly believe, too, that it would have come off if we'd kept cool and played well together—for make no mistake about the mere ability of our friend with the bottle—but it never came to that. Your father weakened on it halfway across the Channel, and vowed he'd go back by the next boat and fail like a man. That's true enough, and it's also true that after reasoning with him in vain I went to send Scrafton to reassure him about the system; and here's where the lies begin. I didn't go back with him to the empty cabin. I followed him in a few minutes, and there he was alone, and there and then he started accusing me of what he'd obviously done himself."