A vision of that furtive, sinister figure hanging about outside Mr. Drayton's office rose vividly in my mind. "Yes," I said, with intentional carelessness, "I should think they were a very nicely matched pair. How did Craill manage to break his nose?" "Someone done it for 'im, I reckon. Pity they didn't break his neck too while they was about it." Lifting the tray, Bascomb marched off through the side door, and after a moment's hesitation Satan got up and followed him. I crossed the room to the window and sat down on the sill. I felt like a man who by pure accident has suddenly picked up the very piece of a jig-saw puzzle for which he has long been vainly hunting. Ever since my first meeting with Manning I had had a suspicion that in some way or other he was chiefly responsible for that impromptu swimming exhibition of mine in the East India Dock. Bascomb's description of Craill placed the matter beyond doubt. Unless there was an epidemic of broken noses, the latter was certainly the man I had seen loafing about Bedford Row, and the odds were a hundred to one that it was his hand which had so nearly put an end to my troubles. As to what possible motive or motives could have possessed this precious pair, I was as much in the dark as ever. They could not have been acting on behalf of de Roda, for I had Christine's assurance that until she and her uncle had arrived in England neither of them had had the least notion that such a person as Dr. Manning existed. My attempted murder must, therefore, have been a strictly private enterprise, and the only reason I could see for it was the fact that I had refused to sell the island. Now, annoying as it is to be thwarted in a scheme of land purchase, people generally stop short of assassination as a method of expressing their disappointment. There must have been some very powerful inducement to lead Manning to such a desperate step, for, utterly unscrupulous as I believed him to be, he was too intelligent to run his neck into danger unless the stake at issue was well worth the risk. Could it be possible that while he was on the island he had stumbled independently upon my uncle's secret? It was a new idea, but the more I thought it over the more feasible it seemed. It at least gave some explanation for his extraordinary anxiety to get hold of Greensea, and it might account for the curious dread with which Christine seemed to regard him.