“Yes, I’ve finished!” John Martin said, catching his breath.  “I’ve found water!”

“Nonsense!”

“It’s true all the same.  We struck it at exactly the distance he said—­twenty feet.”

“Then of course he knew.”

“How?  How the deuce could he have known?”

“I can’t say,” Gladys replied.  “All I know is, that he’s not straight, and that there’s some underhand trickery going on.  But do have your tea now, and dismiss it from your mind.  Anyhow, he can do you no harm.”

“Here’s a letter for you, John,” Mrs. Templeton exclaimed, entering the room at that moment.

John Martin took it from her, and tore open the envelope curiously.  It was a handwriting he did not know, and did not like—­its characteristics were sinister.

“I knew it!” he cried; “I knew the fellow was a scoundrel.  What the deuce do you think he has the impertinence to do now?”

“He!” Gladys said, looking anxiously at her father.  “Whoever do you mean?”

“Why, that confounded young bounder who came here last night—­Leon Hamar he signs himself.  In this letter he declares that he can perform any of our tricks, and will accept the wager I offered for their solution some little time ago.  He also says that unless I consent to see him, and to listen courteously to what he has to say, he will publicly announce his intention of taking up the wager, at our Hall, in Kingsway, to-night.”

“Do you think there is any possibility of his having discovered the secrets of your tricks?” Gladys asked.  “Could he have bribed any one to tell him?”

“I don’t think so,” John Martin said.  “The only people who have any clue as to how they are done are my two attendants—­both as you know natives of Cashmere, and men who, I feel pretty certain, could not be ‘got at.’”

“In that case,” Gladys remarked, “I fail to see what there is to worry about.  Your course is perfectly clear—­take no notice of it.”

John Martin was silent—­dazed.  He did not know what to think or do!  There was something painfully ominous to him in the discovery of the money and the water—­something that accentuated the impression Hamar’s sinister appearance had made on him.  The man did not look ordinary—­his manner, gestures, walk and expression were decidedly abnormal—­in fact they put him in mind of the superphysical.  The superphysical!  Might not that account for his knowledge?  Bah!  There was no such thing as the superphysical.  The man was extraordinary—­but, after all, only a man—­his knowledge only that of a man.  And it must be as the shrewd Gladys conjectured—­he had put the money in the tree himself and had learned of the presence of water through some subtle artifice—­perhaps only guessed at it.  He would defy him—­let him do what he would!

This was John Martin’s decision as he finished tea.  An hour later he had changed his mind, and was speaking to Hamar on the telephone, expressing his willingness to grant him a brief interview if he came at once.