Lord Clanfield looked from his nephew to his sons.
“So you’ve been mixing yourselves up in this business! What mischief will you be up to next?” he asked, addressing Edgar, and speaking in a voice which betrayed the agitation which he felt at the unpleasant affair in which he was being forced to take part.
“Well, it’s more surprising still to find you mixed up in it!” retorted Geoffrey from behind his brother. “When there’s a scrape to be got into, you expect to see us on in that scene. And for once we’ve not been so much getting into a scrape ourselves as helping Gerard out of one.”
“Indeed! And what has been your share?” asked his father incredulously.
“Well, I knocked that Candover down when he was going to shoot Gerard,” replied Geoffrey coolly.
And he related the story of that event, while Gerard himself, having heard the news of the arrest of the confederates, stood silently by, waiting for Mr. Masson to speak.
The solicitor’s keen face wore a look which told him that he knew a good deal more than Gerard himself did about the confederacy which had just been broken up.
“I’m afraid your wife thought me very unsympathetic this morning,” said he. “But I had to guard against the chance of any betrayal of my plans. As a matter of fact, I had no sooner heard her story of last night’s pretended arrest of herself than I telephoned to Scotland Yard, and when I made her repeat the tale, she did so in the hearing of one of our cleverest detectives, whose near neighbourhood she never suspected.”
“I suppose you had known something before?” suggested Gerard.
Mr. Masson smiled.