The face of the detected crook went livid: “We can’t talk here,” he said hoarsely. “Come down to my room and let us have it out.” They went into the handsomely furnished study. As soon as they got there, he opened the door of a small sideboard, from which he extracted a bottle of uncorked brandy. He filled a tumbler half full of the raw spirit and gulped it down. For the moment, the potent draught steadied his nerves, and he sank into a chair, and looked with a certain amount of hardihood at his brother. “Now let me hear what you do know, or think you know.” He had made no attempt to repel Jasper’s charge. He knew the man’s cautious character too well to think he would speak as he had done, except on evidence that was satisfactory and convincing. “I know of your association with the woman known at present as Mrs. Edwards, who has gone under the different names of Elise Makris, Zillah Mayhew, Zillah Glenthorne, the woman who was connected with the tragedy at Nice in which poor Hugh Craig figured, the woman you dispatched to Paris along with the man Edwards to carry out your designs against the rich jeweller Calliard, who was robbed and murdered.” Howard Stormont interrupted in a choking voice. He knew it was useless to protest innocence. “Murder was never intended. The fool who carried out the job exceeded his instructions.” “Do you think I should believe a word you said?” was Jasper’s scornful comment. “Lying, even perjury, would be a venial offence in the eyes of one so steeped in crime. But even if the murder of Calliard cannot be laid directly at your door, what have you to say to your own attempt on the life of your old Australian associate, Newcombe, the man whom you feared for his knowledge of your past?” “I made no attempt upon his life,” was the dogged reply. “I only wanted to give the drunken fool a fright.” “A miserable lie,” said Jasper sternly. “You miscalculated the dose of your devilish poison, or the man would be dead now. For some days he hung between life and death. And I also know that you were concerned in this last dastardly attempt to extort money from young Wraysbury, with the help of the two confederates who had carried out your schemes in Paris.” Stormont rose and helped himself to another dose of brandy. “And how did you find all this out?” he asked presently. “That is my business,” was the curt answer. It was some time before the wretched man spoke again. “I think I can guess how the information came. That young Lydon had his suspicions from the day he met Zillah here, and put a detective on our track. My sister told me she had given him some letters to post which I had forgotten to take with me; one of them was to her. He opened it and what he read gave him the clue, and he set this fellow Grewgus to work. But what beats me is how he suspected Zillah; he had never seen her. When he and Craig were at Nice, she took good care to keep out of his way.”