Sir Charles held out his hands helplessly. He always expected other people to do things for him. Beatrice began to see her side of the case. Richford was dead, and the large sum of money that he had promised Sir Charles was no longer available. And Beatrice recalled the night of the dinner party, when her father had taken her to the window, and had shown her the two men watching silently below. The danger was just as great as ever; it was just as imperative that Sir Charles should leave the country. Out of the whirling emotion in Beatrice's head order began to be restored. Everybody, so far as the girl knew, believed her father to be dead. The body had been spirited away for some reason known to Sartoris and his colleagues; nobody ever expected to see Sir Charles again. If he could slip out of the country now, and go abroad, the danger would be averted. Beatrice began to see her way to manage the thing. "I will do what I can," she said. "You have that L500 intact? Very good. But there are some things that I am bound to tell you. People who are in a position to know, say that your mining concessions are very valuable indeed." "Worth absolutely nothing," Sir Charles said. "Tried it before. Besides, if they were worth a lot of money, it is impossible to work the mine. The country is too disturbed and dangerous for anything of that kind. Besides, I have sold the concessions, and there is an end of it. Even without a business mind you can see that." "All the same, I feel pretty sure that I am right," Beatrice said. "My dear father, you have been the victim of a strange conspiracy. You had not taken too much wine that night, but you were drugged by some mineral or vegetable in such a manner that the next day you were taken for dead. I did not know that fact till I was married; indeed, the news was kept from me and brought to me at church. The man whom you regard as your benefactor wanted certain papers of yours, and the doctor, Bentwood, was going to do the drugging. It was done too well; you were regarded as dead. Then, for some reason or other, probably because it was necessary for you to sign certain papers--your body was stolen, and you were taken, still in a state like death, to the house of Carl Sartoris at Wandsworth." "God bless my soul, you don't really mean it?" Sir Charles cried. "Indeed I do," Beatrice went on. "This Bentwood is a doctor who is an expert in the miracles and the hocus pocus of the East. The drug they administered to you is not known in England; the thing has never been seen here. I understand that they could have kept you in a state of suspended animation as long as they pleased. But they desired to see you in the flesh again so that you could sign that paper relating to those mines." "I signed the paper this very morning," Sir Charles cried. "But I don't understand it all. Begin at the beginning and tell me all over again."