"It would be so simple and so safe to settle you for ever," he remarked pleasantly, "that I wonder I don't do it... Denzil, just hobble those left-overs from the Ark. We shall need them presently. They look as though they'd stand till the crack of doom, but there's just a chance that if this revolver should happen to go off we might lose them, and that would be awkward. When you have done that you can relieve long-eared Grit of what he sneaked from you." Lawless set his teeth and said nothing. He was beginning to understand that while he had been busy trying to devise a trap for Van Bleit, the Dutchman had got ahead of him, and that in so wily a manner that he had not had the faintest suspicion of trickery when he had listened at the partition with his eye to the crack. And yet the mere lighting of the candle should have warned him... There would have been no need for a light had it not been intended that he should see. He cursed his folly for tumbling into a pit the digging of which he had been permitted to witness. And the letters! ... The letters that he had been allowed to handle, that he believed he had got so secure... When Denzil bent over him and drew the sealed packet from his pocket, he made a frantic but futile effort to burst the bonds that fastened his wrists. The rope, already uncomfortably tight, cut into the flesh and caused such pain he was fain to desist. Denzil dangled the packet before his face, jeering, then he gripped it tighter and struck him with it across the eyes. "One day," Lawless said grimly, "when my hands aren't tied, you'll pay for that." Van Bleit laughed loudly. The bully in him enjoyed watching aggression that feared no retaliation. To strike a man with his hands tied was infinitely amusing. "Thought you had a wonderful find in that packet, eh?" he sneered. "Going to make your fortune--were you?--in another man's gold mine." "I shouldn't have objected to that idea so much," Denzil interposed in a tone of deep disgust. "But he wouldn't confess to that... He was posing virtuous." "Ah!" returned Van Bleit, grinning. "Looks virtuous, don't he? ... Job on his rubbish heap! Well, it may ease his virtuous mind to know that so far as the value of that packet is concerned he might be allowed to keep it. It's a fake, old man... got up for your amusement, and that of other fellows of an inquiring turn of mind. Almachtig! you don't imagine I'm so green as to carry around letters that are worth a fortune?" He snapped his fingers in derision. "For a cute boy, Grit, you are surprisingly credulous. Those letters that so many mouths are watering for are safe--where you won't get them. I don't cart them round in my suit-case." He laughed again at the expression of Lawless' face. "Sold all round, eh? Lord! ain't it funny?" Then, his mood changing suddenly, he fell to scowling, and eyed Lawless malevolently above the revolver that still pointed direct at his heart.