“We insist upon its acceptance,” said Chayne, quietly.

Garratt Skinner smiled.

“Insist perhaps!  But how enforce it, my friend?  That’s another matter.”

“I think we have the means to do that,” said Chayne.  “We can point out to Walter Hine, for instance, that your ascent from the Brenva Glacier was an attempt to murder him.”

“An ugly word, Captain Chayne.  You would find it difficult of proof.”

“The story is fairly complete,” returned Chayne.  “There is first of all a telegram from Mr. Jarvice couched in curious language.”

Garratt Skinner’s face lost its smile of amusement.

“Indeed?” he said.  He was plainly disconcerted.

“Yes.”  Chayne produced the telegram from his letter case, read it aloud with his eyes upon Garratt Skinner, and replaced it. “’What are you waiting for?  Hurry up!  Jarvice.’  There is no need at all events to ask Mr. Jarvice what he was waiting for, is there?  He wanted to lay his hands upon the money for which Hine’s life was insured.”

Garratt Skinner leaned back in his chair.  His eyes never left Chayne’s face, his face grew set and stern.  He had a dangerous look, the look of a desperate man at bay.

“Then there is a certain incident to be considered which took place in the house near Weymouth.  You must at times have been puzzled by it—­perhaps a little alarmed too.  Do you remember one evening when a whistle from the shadows on the road and a yokel’s shout drove you out of Walter Hine’s room, sent you creeping out of it as stealthily as you entered—­nay, did more than that, for that whistle and that shout drove you out of Dorsetshire.  Ah!  I see you remember.”

Garratt Skinner indeed had often enough been troubled by the recollection of that night.  The shout, the whistle ringing out so suddenly and abruptly from the darkness and the silence had struck upon his imagination and alarmed him by their mystery.  Who was the man who had seen?  And what had he seen?  Garratt Skinner had never felt quite safe since that evening.  There was some one, a stranger, going about the world with the key to his secret, even if he had not guessed the secret.

“It was I who whistled.  I who shouted.”

“You!” cried Garratt Skinner.  “You!”

“Yes.  Sylvia was with me.  You thought to do that night what you thought to do a few days ago above the Brenva ridge.  Both times together we were able to hinder you.  But once Sylvia hindered you alone.  There is the affair of the cocaine.”

Chayne looked toward his wife with a look of great pride for the bravery which she had shown.  She was sitting aloof in the embrasure of the window with her face averted and a hand pressed over her eyes and forehead.  Chayne looked back to Garratt Skinner, and there was more anger in his face than he had ever shown.

“I will never forgive you the distress you have caused to Sylvia,” he said.