"That girl, Louise Aubin—you let her out of the grotto, I hope?" said Leslie. "I should be sorry if she was ill-treated on my behalf."
"Chivalrous as ever!" Nugent could not resist the sneer. "Oh, yes; she's half-way to the Manor House by now, reduced to a proper sense of her misdemeanour. A little palm-grease works wonders with a Frenchwoman."
Presently the silent Sinnett served dinner, and during the meal Nugent unobtrusively continued to work the repentant vein he had developed earlier in the day. He waxed eloquent on his own difficult position as a man of birth and expensive tastes, thrown by force of adverse circumstances into a social groove that was really beyond his means.
"I had not, perhaps, your excuse of abject misery, Chermside," he remarked pathetically, "but the Maharajah's bribe was an enormous temptation, and I yielded to his importunities the more readily as I had incurred obligations to him. I shall look back upon our association with shame to the end of my days."
The proper feeling shown by his former accomplice called forth Leslie's sympathy. "I hope that Bhagwan Singh has no hold on you?" he said. "He is a vengeful beast, and from my knowledge of him he is not likely to overlook your aiding my escape in his yacht after throwing him over. He has the long arm of boundless wealth."
"I am aware of that," Nugent replied gravely. "If he strikes at me, I must pay the penalty. I must regard it as a just retribution."
At ten o'clock Nugent went to the window, opened it, and called softly into the darkness of the summer night for Tuke.
"Have you got the flares?" he asked, when the mottled countenance of his retainer appeared in the stream of lamplight. "That is well. Show the blue first, remember, and then green. Now, Chermside—least said, soonest mended. I am not going with you myself, but this man will see you through. The captain of the Cobra has orders as to your destination. Good-bye, and may your next venture end in happier fashion."
He held out his hand, and, conquered by his seeming mood, Leslie returned the grasp. A moment later he was following his guide across the lawn, and so out of the door on to the moor. The night air was heavy with the scent of the dew-laden heather, across which they had to grope their way, and the croak of a fern owl alone broke the stillness as they skirted the golf links and came to the head of the chine at the foot of which they were to flash the signals that would summon the Cobra's launch.
They were about to descend the steps cut in the cliff, when from the house they had just left, a quarter of a mile away, the "teuf-teuf" of a motor car was heard. Leslie found himself idly wondering what could have taken Nugent from home again so late. Possibly he was going down to the club for an hour or two, to drown the memory of his villainy in the congenial company of gentlemen who would have spurned him from their midst could they have known the manner of man he was.