"In such circumstances as you suggest it is by no means easy to predict what course a man would take. If Monkton had got into some entanglement that, to put it bluntly--although, mind you, I don't believe such a thing occurred--reflected some doubt either on his character or on his intelligence, it is just as likely as not that his old friend would be the last person to whom he would care to expose himself. He would be equally likely to go to a stranger." Wingate was fain to admit the force of the argument. "One can never be sure of any man, even if you have known him all your life," he added, as they shook hands. "Nobody knows that better than our profession. But I would stake my existence that there were no skeletons in Monkton's cupboard. The man was as straight as a die, and he was passionately attached to his beautiful wife. Well, Mr Wingate, give my best regards to dear Miss Sheila. I will send those boxes round to-day." He was as good as his word. Late in the afternoon they arrived, and Sheila at once set to work reading the various papers, not, it must be confessed, in a very hopeful spirit. But when Wingate came round in the evening he found her in a state of greatest excitement. She took from an envelope a letter containing only a few words and passed it to him. "Read that, and tell me what you make of it," she said. "There is no formal beginning, and no signature. But you see it is addressed to my father, and was evidently delivered by hand." Upon the flap of the faded envelope Wingate saw some initials, two C's in a cipher scroll embossed in black, an old-fashioned monogram such as was in vogue in the early "sixties." Then he read upon the half-sheet of notepaper, traced in a bold hand in ink that was brown, as follows: "You have ruined and disgraced me, and forced me to fly the country and become a wanderer on the face of the earth. Well, I will be even with you. I will wait, if necessary all my life, till my turn comes. Then, when it does, I will strike you at the zenith of your career, and mete out to you the suffering you have dealt to me." CHAPTER FIFTEEN. IN WHICH SMEATON MAKES A DISCOVERY. Wingate laid down the letter and looked at Sheila, who was regarding him expectantly. "What do you make of it?" she repeated. "It is evident that he had an enemy, and a very bitter one," answered her lover. "The sentences are deliberate, but they appear to have been written by a man who was in a white heat of passion when he penned them." "Smeaton ought to see that letter, without loss of time, dear," she said. "I quite agree. His trained intelligence may get more out of it than we can. I will make an appointment with him for to-morrow morning, and I will be here when he comes." Smeaton arrived next morning, hoping that at last he might discover a substantial clue. He read the brief note carefully and deliberately. "Is it important, do you think?" inquired Sheila eagerly.