“You!” gasped Chisholm, springing from his chair. “You! Archibald Cator!”
“Yes,” answered the other gravely, closing the door behind him. “We have met before, and, doubtless, you know my errand.”
“I do,” groaned the despairing man. “Alas! I do.”
“The truth is out, Mr Chisholm!” exclaimed his visitor, in slow, deep tones. “Our inquiries are complete, and there has been discovered against you evidence so plain as to be altogether indisputable. There need be no ceremony between us. You, esteemed by the world, and held in high honour by the Government, are both a traitor and a murderer. Do you deny it?”
There was a silence, deep and painful.
“No, I do not,” was the low, harsh rejoinder of the wretched man, who had sunk back into his chair with his chin upon his breast.
His visitor deliberately drew from the inner pocket of his overcoat a big, official-looking envelope, out of which he took several unmounted photographs.
These he spread before the man whose brilliant career had thus been so suddenly ended.
“Do you recognise these as reproductions of documents handed by you to a certain friend of yours—copies of confidential despatches from Sir Henry Lygon, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople?”
Chisholm, his face livid, nodded in the affirmative. Denials were, he knew, utterly useless. The whole ingenious network of the British Intelligence Department on the Continent had been diligently at work piecing together the evidence against him, and had, under the active direction of that prince of spies, Archibald Cator, at last succeeded in unravelling what had for years remained a profound mystery.