“Lisette,” I continued, seeing him still silent. “Lisette is charged with the possession of certain jewels once the property of Lady Mordant. I am the witness who has identified those jewels. Your dupe, Harry Avenhill, who came up to rob my house in Suffolk, is the man who will charge this woman with her crime and establish the case against her. Whether we go to Vienna or persuade Lady Mordant to withdraw the charge, it is for you to say. I will give you just ten minutes by that clock upon your chimney. Use them well, I implore you. Think what you are doing before it is too late to think at all—the liberty this woman craves or the charge and punishment. Which is it to be, old man? Speak quickly, for my time is precious.” For a little while he sat, his hands drumming the table, his eyes half closed. I knew that he was asking himself what would be the gain or the loss should he beckon some one from the shadows to enter the house and kill me. One witness would thus be removed from his path—but who would answer for the others? And was it possible that his old enemy, who had outwitted him so often, would be outwitted to-night? This seemed to me his argument. I watched him rise suddenly from his chair, peer out to the darkness, and as suddenly sit again. Whether his courage had failed him or this were the chosen moment for the attack, I shall never be able to say with certainty. For me it was an instant of acute suspense, of nervous listening for footsteps, of quick resolution and prompt decision. Let there be an echo of a step, but one sound without, I said, and I would shoot the man where he sat. Thus was I determined. In this dread perplexity did the instant pass. “I cannot write,” he gasped at last. “Put your questions to me, and I will answer them.” “And sign the document I have brought with me. So be it—the questions are here, in order. Let your answers be as brief.” I sat at the head of the table and spread the document before me. The lamp shed a warm aureole of light upon the paper, but left the outer room in darkness. My words were few, but deliberate; his answers often but a mutter of sounds. “Joan Fordibras, whose daughter is she?” “The daughter of David Kennard of Illinois.” “Her mother?” “I am not acquainted with her name—a French Canadian. The records in Illinois will tell you.” “How came she to be the ward of this man Fordibras?” “His cowardice—his conscience, as men call it. Kennard was charged with the great safe robberies of the year 1885—he was innocent. They were my planning—my agents executed them. But Kennard—ah, he betrayed me, he would have stood in my path, and I removed him.” “Then he was convicted?”