"Just this: Mowbray evidently is an archvillain, but he could not do all his dirty work alone."
"You think he has accomplices, then?"
"Exactly. And of the most dangerous sort."
"For instance?"
"I have been thinking the matter over, and I am convinced that Mowbray has got about him the most dangerous sort of a gang to carry on his work for him. Do you know if he is a man of any particular force and cleverness?"
"When I knew him, which was before I went to India, he was already beginning to practice his shady transactions in England, but he had never been directly caught at it. This led to the greatest opposition on the part of my family to his marriage to my sister."
"But, in spite of it, she married him?"
"Yes; she had an idea that he was abused and misrepresented, and flew to his defense by secretly marrying him. After that he got worse and bolder until he was caught not only cheating at cards, but actually stealing by means of forgery and in other ways, and they had to flee from England."
"Then, of course, he is a master in crime by this time."
"It would not surprise me to learn it. But you spoke of his being especially dangerous because of the men he had gathered about him?"