hat would be. Your husband a
felon, with a long term of imprisonment before him!"

"I see no dissimilarity," Beatrice said, "between the deed and the
punishment that fits it. After all I have gone through, a little thing
like that would make no difference to me."

"Then you are not going to part with those diamonds?"

Beatrice shook her head. Richford stood before her with one of his hands
on her arm and his other about her white slender throat. There was a
murderous look on his face, but the eyes that Beatrice turned upon him
did not for a moment droop. Then Richford pushed the girl away brutally
from him and walked as far as the door.

"You don't want for pluck," he growled. "I believe that if you had
flinched just now I should have killed you. And I was going to save you
from a danger. I shall do nothing of the kind. Go your own way, and I
will go mine."

Richford glanced at the letter on the table, then he passed out, banging
the door behind him. In the _foyer_ of the hotel he sat down as if
waiting for somebody. In reality he was trying to collect his scattered
thoughts. But it was hard work in that chattering, laughing mob, with
his own name on the lips of a hundred people there.

CHAPTER XXVI

The venerable-looking old cleric sat there for the better part of an
hour in the patient attitude of one who waits for a friend, but though
he puzzled his cunning brain he could see no way out of the difficulty.
He had no money, and the police were after him. He recognised only too
well that he had to thank Sartoris for this--he had measured his cunning
against that of the little cripple, and he had failed. He had played for
the greater part of the stake that was at the bottom of the mystery, and
he had paid the penalty. Bitterly he regretted his folly now.

Presently, his humming brain began to clear. He saw one or two people
there whom he knew; he saw Beatrice come down to the office and go out
presently, with a little flat case under her arm. Richford's eyes
gleamed, and a glow of inspiration thrilled him.

"As sure as fate she has the diamonds," he told himself. "She is afraid
that I should hit upon some scheme for getting them, and she is going to
dispose of them in some hiding-place. I'll follow her. Courage, my
boy--the game is not up yet."

As a matter of fact, Richford had summed up the situation correctly. In
some vague way Beatrice was a little alarmed. She had heard of such
things as injuncti