The keen Scotchman smiled and tapped his broad chest with his finger. “Scotland Yard has got something to do with that. We have been years trying to get him, as I told you, but he was so devilish cunning that we might have gone on for years longer but for a lucky accident. We got one of his gang and the fellow split. We have plenty of evidence against the gentleman now. I suppose he got wind of it before we could get a warrant out. It’s astonishing what a freemasonry there is among these scoundrels. But he won’t escape us now. Clever as he is, we shall have him by the heels before he is much older.” “Have you found any evidence that involves the young man known as Archie Brookes?” queried Lane. “No, we can’t find that he has any connection with this particular ‘stunt’—I shouldn’t say Sir George was a man to share more than he could help with anybody.” MacKenzie’s prophecy was fulfilled. Within three weeks from that date the baronet was arrested in Italy, and brought back to England after the observance of the usual formalities. As he now disappears from these pages, it is only necessary to say that he was put upon his trial, found guilty, and awarded an exemplary sentence. It was a nine days’ wonder in Clubland and the circles in which he had been a prominent figure; and then other startling events occurred and drove him out of the public mind, and the plausible, well-mannered, smartly-groomed baronet who had led such a chequered existence became a memory. But much to the relief of Rupert Morrice and his niece, nothing came out at the trial which could in any way connect him with the robberies at Deanery Street. Morrice’s friends and acquaintances were, of course, very grieved at the reflected disgrace cast upon him by the fact that, through his wife, the financier and the criminal were some sort of distant connection. CHAPTER XXX RUPERT MORRICE MAKES AMENDS It was a very subdued man who, shortly after breakfast, walked into Rosabelle’s sitting-room. It cannot be said that Morrice was in any sense of the words arrogant or overbearing, but his innate strength of mind and character gave him a certain feeling of superiority over ordinary men which reflected itself in his general bearing, the incisiveness of his utterances, the vigour of his gestures, as he talked. To-day, all these symptoms were absent. He had passed a sleepless night, bitterly upbraiding himself with having committed a grave injustice, he of all men, who prided himself on being inflexibly just. His face was drawn and white, his heavy eyes showed the want of rest. He stood before the girl almost humble, filled with remorse and self-accusation. “Rosabelle, I want you to do me an immediate favour.”