"Thank you, I shall be obliged if you will take that course," he had said, though he hated to be placed under an obligation to the man whose cunning greed had brought him to this pass.
"Not at all," Nugent had answered glibly, as if divining his thoughts. "I regard it as a kind of atonement to smooth matters as best I can, for I have come to see the heinousness of our joint offence, Chermside. I have been filled with remorse for some time that I did not repent of it as soon as you did, and I can sympathize the more readily with you, who have, I think, a keener pang than that of remorse to bear."
The little touch of right feeling from such an unexpected quarter had broken down Leslie's last guard, and he had placed himself unreservedly in Nugent's hands. Quite early in the day he had left his lodgings, and had sought temporary refuge at The Hut, entering the grounds with due precautions by the secluded garden door from the moor, there to remain till nightfall, when his host would see to it that he was smuggled on board the Cobra. Nugent had stayed in and about the house till late in the afternoon, when he had started out in his motor car, informing Chermside, however, that he would not be long away, and enjoining upon him the advisability of not on any account leaving the library.
In the meanwhile Sinnett, the noiseless butler, who alone of the indoor servants was aware of his presence in the house, was to be depended on to preserve the secret; while outside watch and ward would be kept by a trustworthy man who had come down from London to help in the emergency—an old hanger-on, as Nugent described him, by the name of Bill Tuke. Several times during the day Leslie had noticed from the window this individual prowling about the grounds and coming in and out of the door on to the moor. It was not for him to know that Tuke, with whose raffish appearance he was not favourably impressed, had been dubbed by Enid "The Bootlace Man."
And now, at something after seven o'clock, he saw this unprepossessing ally approach the window at which he stood brooding. The coarse features wore a look of cunning satisfaction as he came and drummed on the pane, requesting admission. Mastering his repulsion, Leslie undid the catch and opened to him, reflecting that as he was supposed to be benefiting by the man's services, it would be unfair to show antipathy.
"Is the boss, Mr. Nugent, back?" Tuke asked, as he stepped over the threshold of the French window into the comfortable apartment.
Leslie was beginning to reply in the negative, when the whirr of a car was heard on the other side of the house, where the approach from the road led to the front door.
"I expect that will be him," he said, as the sound ceased; and a minute later Nugent entered the room, brushing the dust from his coat. He was fresh from his interview with Violet Maynard in the rose-garden at the Manor House. He started at sight of his unsavoury henchman.
"Anything wrong?" he demanded of him.
"I ain't seen any cops, if that's what you mean," replied Tuke with a slight wink that called a quick scowl to his employer's face. "But I've got a prisoner in the stone grotto in the shrubbery. The moor her into the garden through the door from. Watched, and nabbed her clean as a whistle as she was hiding from me——"