‘I knew it!’ The cry came from Camilla within the dome.

‘What?’ demanded Hugo, turning to her and ignoring Shawn.

’It was Louis Ravengar whom I saw hiding behind the door.  I felt all the time that it was he!’

And she put her hands to her face.

‘Ravengar!’ He was astounded to hear that name.  What had she, what had Tudor, to do with Ravengar?

‘That was why I thought you were in the plot, Mr. Hugo,’ she added.

‘Me?  Why?’

‘Can you ask?’

Her eyes met his, and it was his that fell.

‘I have no relations whatever with Ravengar, I assure you,’ he said gravely.  ‘But, by the dagger!  I’ll see this affair to the end.’  ’By the dagger’ was a form of oath, meaningless yet terrible in sound, which Hugo employed only on the greatest occasions.  He turned sharply to the window.  ‘Anything else, Shawn?’

’There was a gust of wind that shut the blessed window, sir.  I couldn’t hear any more, so I came to report.’

‘Go to the front entrance of the flat instantly,’ Hugo ordered him.  ’I will watch the balcony.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Camilla was crouching in the embrasure of the window.  Her body seemed to shake.

‘There is nothing to fear,’ Hugo soothed her.  ‘Stay here till I return.’  And he snatched up the revolver.

‘No,’ she said, straightening herself; ‘I must go with you.’

‘Better not.’

‘I must go with you,’ she repeated.

They passed together along the railed edge of the court of fountains under the stars, skirted the gay and melodious garden behind the trees in their huge wooden boxes, and so came to a second quadrangle, upon whose highest story the windows of Tudor’s flat gave.  Descending a stairway of forged iron to the balcony, they crept forward in silence to the window of Tudor’s drawing-room, and, still side by side, gazed, as Shawn had done, through the fine lacework of the blind into the splendid apartment.

The window was almost at a corner of the room, near a door; but Hugo had a perfect view of the two men within, and one was as certainly Louis Ravengar as the other was Francis Tudor.  They were gesticulating violently and angrily, and a heavy, ornate Empire chair had already been overturned.  The dispute seemed to be interminable; each moment heralded a fight, but it is the watched pot that never boils.  Suddenly Hugo became aware that Camilla was no longer at his elbow, and the next instant, to his extreme amazement, he saw her glide into the room.  She had removed her hat and cloak, and stood revealed in all her beauty.  The two men did not perceive her.  She softly opened the window, and the confused murmur of voices reached Hugo’s ear.

‘Give me the revolver,’ Camilla whispered.

And her whisper was such that he passed the weapon, as it were hypnotically, to her under the blind.  And then the blind slipped down, and he could see no more.  He heard a shot, and the next thing was that the revolver was pushed back to him, nearly at the level of the floor.