"But you are entirely in the dark as to the purport of all this plot and counterplot?" said Reggie.
"Entirely; all I have been able to elucidate is that Nugent finds it necessary to threaten Chermside with implication in a murder which he may or may not have committed."
"Can't Reggie and I capture The Bootlace Man and stick red-hot needles into him till he confesses?" suggested Enid.
But her father smiled with grim tolerance. "You don't know Mr. Travers Nugent, my child," he said. "You may be very sure that 'the bootlace man,' as you call him, has not been admitted to the inner precincts of the mystery. Nugent, while pretending to trust his agents, never does so really. He is even capable of wiping them out of existence when they have served their purpose—or failed in it."
"Then what is your game, sir? I should like to take a hand in it, whatever it is," said Reggie with the zest of the good sportsman he was. "To head off Nugent and give a shake up to old Lazarus Lowch too would afford me the greatest pleasure."
Mr. Mallory took a turn up the room and came back. "The game," he said slowly, "is to find proof against the actual slayer of Levison before Nugent's blow, whatever it is, falls. As your leave is up to-morrow morning I am afraid there will be no time for you to help me in that."
"I hope that your researches won't lead you into danger, sir."
"Oh dear no," rejoined Mr. Mallory carelessly. "They are chiefly concerned with the movements on the night in question of a French onion vendor belonging to a lugger lying at Exmouth."
"Why not drop a hint to the sergeant of police?"
But Mr. Mallory made a gesture of dissent. "Because I am far from sure that I am right," he said. "If the police were to push inquiries in that direction Nugent would get wind of it and make a counter-move. It isn't as if the catching of Levison's murderer was the chief desideratum. It is the cunningly veiled scheme in which that crime was only a detail that I have set myself to discover and foil. Given positive proof against the murderer, be he Chermside or any one else, and I would be at the police station with it inside five minutes. But it must be clear evidence, justifying an immediate arrest."