"I believed it to be a genuine one. I had no idea that the old man was so crafty."
"Exactly. And if he displayed such clever ingenuity and forethought in laying a trap for the inquisitive, is it not more than likely that there may be other traps baited with equal craft and cunning?"
"Then how are we to make the coup?" Flockart asked, looking into the colourless eyes of his friend.
"We shall, I fear, never make it, unless——"
"Unless what?" he asked.
"Unless the old man meets with an accident," replied the other, in a low, distinct voice. "Blind men sometimes do, you know!"
CHAPTER XXIII
WHICH SHOWS A SHABBY FOREIGNER
Felix Krail, his cigarette held half-way to his lips, stood watching the effect of his insinuation. He saw a faint smile playing about Flockart's lips, and knew that it appealed to him. Old Sir Henry Heyburn had laid a clever trap for him, a trap into which he himself believed that his daughter had fallen. Why should not Flockart retaliate?
The shabby stranger, whose own ingenuity and double-dealing were little short of marvellous, and under whose watchful vigilance the Heyburn household had been ever since her ladyship and her friend Flockart had gone south, stood silent, but in complete satisfaction.