“If ever I accept any one’s offer to form a Government,” Tallente replied, “it will be on one condition and one condition only, which is that I choose my own Ministers.”

“If you become the head of the Democratic Party,” Horlock pointed out, “you will have to take over their pledges.”

“I do not agree with you,” was the firm reply, “and further, I suggest most respectfully that this discussion is not agreeable to me.”

An expression of hopelessness crept into Horlock’s face.

“You’re a good fellow, Tallente,” he sighed, “and I made a big mistake when I let you go.  I did it to please the moderates and you know how they’ve turned out.  There isn’t one of them worth a row of pins.  If any one ever writes my political biography, they will probably decide that the parting with you was the greatest of my blunders.”

He rose to his feet, swinging the key upon his finger.

“One more word, Tallente,” he added.  “I want to warn you that so far as your further progress is concerned, there is a snake in the grass somewhere.  The manuscript of which Williams spoke to you, and which would of course damn you forever with any party which depended for its existence even indirectly upon the trades unions, was offered to me, without any hint at financial return, on the sole condition that I guaranteed its public production.  It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that there is some one stirring who means harm.  I speak to you now only as a friend and as a well-wisher.  Did I understand Williams to say that the document was stolen from your study at Martinhoe?”

“It was stolen,” Tallente replied, “by my secretary, Anthony Palliser, who disappeared with it one night in August.”

“‘Disappeared’ seems rather a vague term,” Horlock remarked.

“A trifle melodramatic, I admit,” Tallente assented.  “So were the circumstances of his—­disappearance.  I can assure you that I have had the police inspector of fiction asking me curious questions and I am convinced that down in Devonshire I am still an object of suspicion to the local gossips.”

“I remember reading about the affair at the time,” Horlock remarked, as he unlocked the door.  “It never occurred to me, though, to connect it with anything of this sort.  Surely Palliser was a cut above the ordinary blackmailer?”

Tallente shrugged his shoulders.  “A confusion of ethics,” he said.  “I dare say you remember that the young man conspired with my wife to boost me into a peerage behind my back However!—­”

“One last word, Tallente,” Horlock interrupted.  “I am not at liberty to tell you from what source the offer as to your article came, but I can tell you this—­Palliser was not or did not appear to be connected with it in any way.”

“But I know who was,” Tallente exclaimed, with a sudden lightning-like recollection of that meeting on the railway platform at Woody Bay.—­“Miller!”