She nodded. "Thanks, I would like a drink." While he mixed it she stared round the room. "I’ve not been here before. Rather a nice place. You have made a lot of money, haven’t you?" She spoke nervously, in short, sharp sentences. Despard realised something was wrong. He wondered what. He looked at her more critically as he handed her the tumbler. She was smartly dressed. Her face looked very white, her eyes large and brilliant. If anything, she was more beautiful than when he had last seen her. She had always attracted him. He remembered how once he had wanted to marry her. And the thought crossed his mind that if Marjorie did not come Ruby Strode would not make a bad travelling companion for an enforced holiday. "It’s a long time since we’ve met," he said easily. "Though your friends have been busy on your behalf—or perhaps I should say on behalf of your quondam convict lover." He saw her face grow scarlet for a moment, her eyes flash, then she veiled them, and, shrugging her shoulders, laughed easily. "It’s about my quondam lover, as you call him, that I’ve come to see you." Despard yawned, and, taking a fresh cigar, lit it. "How disappointing! I thought you had come to see me for myself alone. You are just as beautiful as ever you were, Ruby." She emptied the glass he had given her, then pulled her chair closer to his and looked at him eagerly. "Mr. Despard—Bob—you are rich now and powerful. You’ve got everything you want in the world." "Not quite," he said, leaning towards her. "Nearly everything," she continued. "You’ve got money, and that buys most things." "Yes," Despard grinned. There was a moment’s pause, and again he leaned towards her. "Have you anything you want to sell?" Once more the colour mounted her cheeks. "Perhaps," she stammered. "I’ll tell you straight out. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do in order to clear Rupert Dale’s name." Despard leaned back and flicked the ash off his cigar. "The same old subject. Gad, one would think you believed I altered the cheque, I’m the guilty person. I’ve told you and your pal, Jim Crichton, that I can do nothing, that I know nothing." Ruby drew still a little closer to him. In the dimly-lit room she looked exceedingly beautiful. Yes, he admitted that she still fascinated him as she had done a year or two ago. "Listen," she whispered. "I know if you had spoken at the trial you would have saved Rupert." "Supposing for the sake of argument that I could have. What then?" CHAPTER XXVII. RUBY’S HEROISM. Despard knew exactly what Ruby Strode had come to ask. He saw his opportunity "for getting a little of his own back," as he would have put it. He smiled to himself as he watched her sitting there, nervously twisting up the gloves she had taken off, and, obviously, at a loss to continue.