"Do you allege, then, that Lady Heyburn is privy to all this?" asked the blind man in distress.
"It is not for me to judge, sir," was Hamilton's reply.
"I know! I know how I have been befooled!" cried the poor helpless man, "befooled because I am blind!"
"Not by me, Sir Henry," protested Flockart.
"By you and by every one else," he cried angrily. "But I know the truth at last—the truth how my poor little daughter has been used as an instrument by you in your nefarious operations."
"But——"
"Hear me, I say!" went on the old man. "I ask my daughter to forgive me for misjudging her. I now know the truth. You obtained by some means a false key to my safe, and you copied certain documents which I had placed there in order to entrap any who might seek to learn my secrets. You fell into that trap, and though I confess I thought that Gabrielle was the culprit, on Murie's behalf, I only lately found out that you and your accomplice Krail were in Greece endeavouring to profit by knowledge obtained from here, my private house."
"Krail has been living in Auchterarder of late, it appears," Hamilton remarked, "and it is evidently he who, gaining access to the house one night recently, used his friend's false key, and obtained those confidential Russian documents from your safe."
"No doubt," declared Sir Henry. Then, again addressing Flockart, he asked, "Where are those documents which you and your scoundrelly accomplice have stolen, and for the return of which you are trying to make me pay?"
"I don't know anything about them," answered Flockart sullenly, his face livid.