“Prince Victor?  What was he doing, that you should—?”

“Dabbling in all manner of infamy, from financing a thieves’ fence to organizing an association of common criminals to bring it business; from maintaining a corps of agitators to foment social discontent to fostering this last, most imbecile scheme of all, which comes to naught to-night, an attempt to overthrow the British Empire and set up in its stead a Soviet England, with Victor Vassilyevski in the dual role of Trotsky and Lenine!”

The girl made a sign of bewilderment and incredulity.

“What are you telling me?  Are you mad?”

“No—­but Victor is, mad with lust for power, insane with illusions of personal aggrandizement.  You don’t believe?  Listen to me, then, appreciate to what demoniac lengths he was prepared to go to flatter his insane ambitions:” 

“Sturm has invented a new poison gas, odourless, colourless, the most deadly known, and easily manufactured in vast quantities by adding simple ingredients to ordinary illuminating gas.  Fanatic Bolshevist that he was, Sturm offered his formula to Victor, to be used to clear the way for social revolution; and Victor jumped at the offer—­has spent vast sums preparing to employ it.  His money paid for the recent strike at the Westminster works of the Gas Light and Coke Company, by means of which Victor was able to smuggle a round number of his creatures into its service.  His money has corrupted servants employed in Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, in the homes of the nobility, even in Buckingham Palace itself, men ready at a given signal secretly to turn on gas jets in remote corners and flood the buildings with the very breath of Death itself.  And that signal was to have been given to-night.  Well, it will not be.”

“But could any scheme be more grotesquely diabolical?  Do you ask more proof of the man’s madness?  Do you require more excuse for my permitting you to be deceived by Victor for a few weeks, rather than wreck our plans to frustrate his, when all the while Karslake and I were near you, watching over you, learning to love you—­he in his fashion, I as your father—­and both ready at all times to die in your protection, if it had ever come to that?”

Lanyard had drawn so near that only a few inches separated them, and had his voice in such control that at three paces’ distance a vague and inarticulate murmur at most might have been heard; but in Sofia’s hearing his accents rang with passionate sincerity, persuading her against the reason which would have rejected his indictment of Victor as too fantastic, too imaginative, and too hopelessly overdrawn to be given credence.  She believed him, knowing in her heart that he believed his statements to the last word; and knowing more, that he was surely what he represented himself to be, her father.

Inscrutable the processes of human hearts:  even as from the very first Sofia had instinctively yet unconsciously recognized the intrinsic falsity of Victor’s pretensions, so now she perceived the integral honesty that informed Lanyard’s every word and nuance of expression, and accepted him without further inquisition.