“You will be given due opportunity of disproving my allegations,” Hamilton said.  “You, coward that you are, placed the guilt upon an innocent, inexperienced girl.  Why?  Because, with Lady Heyburn’s connivance, you with your cunning accomplice Krail were endeavouring to discover Sir Henry’s business secrets in order, first, to operate upon the valuable financial knowledge you would thus gain, and so make a big coup; and, secondly, when you had done this, it was your intention to expose the methods of Sir Henry and his friends.  Ah! don’t imagine that you and Krail have not been very well watched of late,” laughed Hamilton.

“Do you allege, then, that Lady Heyburn is privy to all this?” asked the blind man in distress.

“It is not for me to judge, sir,” was Hamilton’s reply.

“I know!  I know how I have been befooled!” cried the poor helpless man, “befooled because I am blind!”

“Not by me, Sir Henry,” protested Flockart.

“By you and by every one else,” he cried angrily.  “But I know the truth at last—­the truth how my poor little daughter has been used as an instrument by you in your nefarious operations.”

“But——­”

“Hear me, I say!” went on the old man.  “I ask my daughter to forgive me for misjudging her.  I now know the truth.  You obtained by some means a false key to my safe, and you copied certain documents which I had placed there in order to entrap any who might seek to learn my secrets.  You fell into that trap, and though I confess I thought that Gabrielle was the culprit, on Murie’s behalf, I only lately found out that you and your accomplice Krail were in Greece endeavouring to profit by knowledge obtained from here, my private house.”

“Krail has been living in Auchterarder of late, it appears,” Hamilton remarked, “and it is evidently he who, gaining access to the house one night recently, used his friend’s false key, and obtained those confidential Russian documents from your safe.”

“No doubt,” declared Sir Henry.  Then, again addressing Flockart, he asked, “Where are those documents which you and your scoundrelly accomplice have stolen, and for the return of which you are trying to make me pay?”

“I don’t know anything about them,” answered Flockart sullenly, his face livid.

“He’ll know more about them when he is taken off by the two detectives from Edinburgh who hold the extradition warrant,” Hamilton remarked with a grim smile.

The fellow started at those words.  His demeanour was that of a guilty man.  “What do you mean?” he gasped, white as death.  “You—­you intend to give me into custody?  If you do, I warn you that Lady Heyburn will suffer also.”