"Ah, my dear Mallory; I was dozing, I think. And you, Bruce," he murmured, with a pleasant nod for the police-officer. "This looks very formidable. What is wrong? If it is nothing urgent, perhaps you will sit down."
Vernon Mallory ignored the civility. "I have just seen my daughter," he began, with a quiet directness that duly impressed its hearer. "She has been shut up in the grotto in your grounds all the afternoon—whether with or without your knowledge is immaterial. The point is this: her imprisonment led to her learning that you had planned to entrap some female on to a vessel to-night, using Chermside in some unexplained manner, which, however, I can guess at, as a decoy. Now, a few moments before she escaped from your grotto Enid heard Violet Maynard's voice in your garden, apparently on the way down to the shore. I have telephoned to the Manor House, by favour of the exchange, and I am informed that Miss Maynard cannot be found in or about the house. What have you to say?"
Travers Nugent felt as if an icy finger had touched his spine. The indictment put forward with such inexorable precision comprised the very core of his whole vile plot. This terrible old man had even hinted that the means employed to drive Chermside on to the Cobra were no secret to him. This was a bolt from the blue which only a bold front could avert. Everything depended on the source of Enid Mallory's amazing discovery; till he had ascertained that, it would be childish to abandon his position.
He gave an amused little laugh. "Really it is too bad that I should be dragged into Miss Enid's home-made romance," he protested. "Did she give you chapter and verse, may I ask?"
"My daughter is not a fool," Mr. Mallory replied quietly. "She happened to have a fellow-prisoner in the grotto, who had earlier in the day heard you discussing your plans for this evening with one of your creatures—the same man who shut her into the grotto. To be quite frank with you, Mr. Nugent, the sergeant accompanies me because I intend to charge you with serious crime."
"And anything you say will be taken down and used against you," the policeman interjected with official gravity. This was the first time the worthy man had had to arrest a gentleman, and he hardly knew whether he liked the job or not.
"Serious crime is a comprehensive phrase," sneered Nugent. "Means anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter. Come, sir! What do you charge me with?"
"With a crime one degree more heinous than the worst of those you have named—with murder, as an accessory before the fact," the accuser's clear voice cut the silence. "I charge you with indirectly inciting one Pierre Legros to kill Levi Levison under circumstances that would throw suspicion on Mr. Chermside. I charge you with using the state of terror to which you reduced that unhappy man in order to induce him to fly in such a manner that he might be deemed to have eloped with the lady whom you have been suborned to snatch from her home and friends for——"
Mr. Mallory checked himself. His ancient training in international politics saved him from the indiscretion of naming the Indian prince who was behind the culprit. And, sub-consciously, he was also checked by a movement behind Nugent's chair. The great carved sandal-wood screen swayed, and was surely going to fall forward on the man who was fingering his long moustache in a vain effort to frame an answer. But no, the screen righted itself, and Nugent's tongue moistened his dry lips into power of utterance.
"Very pretty, very pretty," he said, striving for calm. "But don't you see, my dear Mallory, that all your midnight madness topples down like a house of cards unless your daughter's informant—her fellow-prisoner, as you call him—is a credible witness. I will make you a small wager that he will never come forward and tell the public the wonderful pack of lies with which he gulled that charming little girl of yours. I——"