Carrados smiled affectionately at his guest’s agile recovery and touched the secret spring of a drawer in an antique bureau by his side.  The little hidden receptacle shot smoothly out, disclosing a pair of dull-blued pistols.

“To-night, at all events, it might be prudent,” he replied, handing one to Carlyle and putting the other into his own pocket.  “Our man may be here at any minute, and we do not know in what temper he will come.”

“Our man!” exclaimed Carlyle, craning forward in excitement.  “Max! you don’t mean to say that you have got Mead to admit it?”

“No one has admitted it,” said Carrados.  “And it is not Mead.”

“Not Mead....  Do you mean that Hutchins—?”

“Neither Mead nor Hutchins.  The man who tampered with the signal—­for Hutchins was right and a green light was exhibited—­is a young Indian from Bengal.  His name is Drishna and he lives at Swanstead.”

Mr. Carlyle stared at his friend between sheer surprise and blank incredulity.

“You really mean this, Carrados?” he said.

“My fatal reputation for humour!” smiled Carrados.  “If I am wrong, Louis, the next hour will expose it.”

“But why—­why—­why?  The colossal villainy, the unparalleled audacity!” Mr. Carlyle lost himself among incredulous superlatives and could only stare.

“Chiefly to get himself out of a disastrous speculation,” replied Carrados, answering the question.  “If there was another motive—­or at least an incentive—­which I suspect, doubtless we shall hear of it.”

“All the same, Max, I don’t think that you have treated me quite fairly,” protested Carlyle, getting over his first surprise and passing to a sense of injury.  “Here we are and I know nothing, absolutely nothing, of the whole affair.”

“We both have our ideas of pleasantry, Louis,” replied Carrados genially.  “But I dare say you are right and perhaps there is still time to atone.”  In the fewest possible words he outlined the course of his investigations.  “And now you know all that is to be known until Drishna arrives.”

“But will he come?” questioned Carlyle doubtfully.  “He may be suspicious.”

“Yes, he will be suspicious.”

“Then he will not come.”

“On the contrary, Louis, he will come because my letter will make him suspicious.  He is coming; otherwise Parkinson would have telephoned me at once and we should have had to take other measures.”

“What did you say, Max?” asked Carlyle curiously.

“I wrote that I was anxious to discuss an Indo-Scythian inscription with him, and sent my car in the hope that he would be able to oblige me.”

“But is he interested in Indo-Scythian inscriptions?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” admitted Carrados, and Mr. Carlyle was throwing up his hands in despair when the sound of a motor-car wheels softly kissing the gravel surface of the drive outside brought him to his feet.