And, that no ceremony should be lost between them, the host turned on his heel and disappeared through his own front door, leaving Langholm very angry in the rain.

But anger was the last emotion for such an hour; the judge might as well feel exasperated with the prisoner at the bar, the common hangman with the felon on the drop.  Langholm only wished that, on even one moment’s reflection, he could rest content in so primitive and so single a state of mind.  He knew well that he could not, and that every subtle sort of contest lay before him, his own soul the arena.  In the meantime let him find his bicycle and get away from this dear and accursed spot; for dear it had been to him, all that too memorable summer; but now of a surety the curse of Cain brooded over its cold, white walls and deep-set windows like sunken eyes in a dead face.

Langholm found the room to which he had been directed; in fact, he knew it of old.  And there were the two new Beeston Humbers; but their lustrous plating and immaculate enamel did not shame his own old disreputable roadster, for the missing machine certainly was not there.  Langholm was turning away when the glazed gun-rack caught his eye.  Yes, this was the room in which the guns were kept.  He had often seen them there.  They had never interested him before.  Langholm was no shot.  Yet now he peered through the glass—­gasped—­and opened one of the sliding panels with trembling hand.

There on a nail hung an old revolver, out of place, rusty, most conspicuous; and at a glance as like the relic in the Black Museum as one pea to another.  But Langholm took it down to make sure.  And the maker’s name upon the barrel was the name that he had noted down at the Black Museum; the point gained, the last of the cardinal points postulated by the official who had shown him round.

The fortuitous discoverer of them all was leaving like a thief—­more and more did Langholm feel himself the criminal—­when the inner door opened and Steel himself stood beaming sardonically upon him.

“Sorry, Langholm, but I find I misled you about the bicycle.  They had taken it to the stables.  I have told them to bring it round to the front.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure you won’t wait till the rain is over?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, won’t you come through this way?”

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, all right!  Good-by, Langholm; remember my advice.”

It was an inglorious exit that Langholm made; but he was thinking to himself, was there ever so inglorious a triumph?  He knew not what he had said; there was only one thing that he did know.  But was the law itself capable of coping with such a man?

CHAPTER XXVII

THE WHOLE TRUTH

“Have the ladies gone?”

Langholm had ridden a long way round, through the rain, in order to avoid them; nor was there any sign of the phaeton in the lane; yet these were his first whispered words across the wicket, and he would not venture to set foot upon the noisy wet gravel without Mrs. Brunton’s assurance that the ladies had been gone some time.