“The British Embassy, I suppose?” said Hyde, complacently.

“Yes; and his Imperial Majesty has deigned to go personally into your case.”

“Then I can wait events calmly and without fear.”

Presently, when Hyde had been removed, Ledantec was introduced, and was received with the brutal harshness which was the judge’s habitual manner towards prisoners.

“Your name, profession, address?” he asked abruptly.

“Silas Hobson, an English journalist, residing in Duke Street, St. James’s, London.”

“It is false!  You have no right to the name of Hobson.  You are not an Englishman.  You may reside in London, but it is only temporarily.”

“Who am I then?” asked Ledantec with a sneer.

“In Paris, at your last visit, you passed as Hippolyte Ledantec, but your real name is Serge Michaelovitch Vasilenikoff.  You are a Russian by birth, by profession a gambler, a blackleg, a cheat.”

Ledantec, as I shall still call him, merely shrugged his shoulders in sarcastic helplessness at this abuse.

“You are worse.  You are a spy in the service of the enemies of the State; an unconvicted murderer—­”

He bent his eyes upon the prisoner with a piercing gaze, to watch the effect of this accusation.

Ledantec never blenched, and the judge presently continued—­

“You are the real author of the crime in Tinplate Street.”

“M.  Rupert Gascoigne is your informant, I presume,” said Ledantec sneering; “it is easy to rebut a charge by throwing it on another.  But you are too clever, M. le Juge, to be imposed upon.”

“You at least cannot hoodwink me.  We have the fullest evidence, let me tell you, of the crime—­all the crimes—­laid to your charge.  Your accomplice has confessed.”

This was said to try the prisoner, and it succeeded, for he started slightly at the word “crimes.”

“Accomplice!  Of whom do you speak?”

“There is a woman in custody who has been associated with you for years.  It was she who instigated you to the robbery and murder of the Baron d’Enot.  She joined you when you fled from the gambling-den in Tinplate Street, and shared your flight from Paris.  She was with you in St. Petersburg till you separated after a violent quarrel—­”

“The blame was hers,” interrupted Ledantec.

“Possibly, but you were equally to blame.  In any case she left you to shift for herself.  She entered a great English family by a false marriage, and, when next you met her, conspired with her to bring the wealth of that family within her grasp.  You again became her guilty partner, and plotted to take the life of the heir to a noble English title and great estates.”

He was referring now to McKay, but Ledantec, misled by a guilty conscience, was thinking of Lord Lydstone, and his mysteriously sudden death.

“That was her doing!” he cried remorsefully.  “In removing Lord Lydstone—­”