"Know! I don't know... And yet I do know. Where would _you_ keep important papers that you feared might be stolen? ... where would I? ... In the Bank, of course. I wonder we never thought of it before. It was Hayhurst misled us. Because he got hold of them, we took Van Bleit for a fool--which he isn't... Scoundrel every inch of him, but no fool. I had it from himself that the letters were safe from us. He didn't mean to give me a clue... I jumped to it. I've had him staying with me since his acquittal." He laughed mirthlessly at the expression of astonishment in his listener's face, and, as though the recollection of his recent meeting with Van Bleit excited him, got up from his chair and took a turn the length of the room, and then came back. "I thought I had a good game on... that I had only to get hold of Van Bleit and the letters were mine," he said. "You nearly upset my plans by that unexpected move of yours which cost so dear in the end... As it chanced, it wouldn't have mattered had you frustrated them altogether. What made you interfere, as you did, when you had entrusted me with the affair?" He paused in front of the Colonel, and waited for his answer, regarding him fixedly with his keen, penetrating eyes. The Colonel appeared, not so much unequal, as disinclined to reply. "I thought you had lost your head," he said at last. "Your manner of leaving Cape Town was not calculated to inspire confidence." "And that's the reason you failed to pay the amount agreed upon into my account last month?" "That was my reason--yes." He stared back into the dominating, inscrutable grey eyes, and his own were stern and unyielding. "You've come to me to-night with a request for more money, I suppose?" "I have. I'm short--in debt, in fact. I must have something at once to go on with." There was a perceptible pause. The Colonel ended it. "I'm not paying for work that isn't performed," was his curt response to this appeal. "You'll have to satisfy me that you are earning your pay before you get anything further. Suppose you give an account of what you have done up to the present,--of what you purpose doing in the near future that justifies a further outlay. There has been nothing but a verbal agreement between us, which is no more binding on one side than on the other--save for the final agreement you hold for a sum down when you deliver, or cause to be delivered, the packet of letters into my hands. When I undertook to make you a monthly allowance, it was on the understanding that you pursued your quest with conscientious persistence; there was no question of leisure for the following of your amusements. I have not been exacting in demanding hitherto a full account of service rendered in exchange for money received. It has occurred to me that you might have given a fuller account than you have done unasked."