ong drink that morning at the college of Oxford. Yes, I
have heard it all. I, who am only a nigger! Dog and son of a dog, is not
thy soul blacker than my skin? And now the hour has struck. Thy breath
is already in thy mouth!"

Koda Bux snatched the handkerchief from his waist-band and began to
creep towards him, his Beard and moustache bristling like the back of a
tiger, and his big, fierce eyes gleaming red. Sir Reginald knew that if
he once got within throwing distance of that fatal strip of silk he
would be dead in an instant without a sound. He made a despairing spring
for the bell-rope, grasped it, and dragged it from its connection.

At the same moment there was a peal at the hall bell, followed by a
thunderous knocking. Enid, who was in the morning-room with her husband,
saw a two-horsed carriage come up the drive at a gallop, and the moment
it had stopped Vane jumped out and rang and knocked. Then out of the
carriage came Sir Arthur and a lady whom she had never seen before, but
whom Garthorne, looking over her shoulder out of the window, recognised
only too quickly.

"What on earth can Sir Arthur and Vane have come for in such a hurry as
that!" she exclaimed. "Why, it might be a matter of life and death, and
only such a short time after dear old Koda Bux, too. What can be the
matter, Reginald?"

But Garthorne had already left the room, his heart shaking with
apprehension. He ran up into the hall to open the door before one of the
servants could do it.

"Ah, Sir Arthur, Vane--and Miss Russell--I believe it is----"

"Yes, Mr. Garthorne," said Sir Arthur coldly but quickly, as they
entered the hall. "We have come to stop a murder if we can. I hope we
are in time. Where is your father, and has Koda Bux been here?"

"Koda Bux has been in the library with my father for about half-an-hour,
I believe," said Reginald. "What is the matter?"

"It is a matter of life or death," answered Vane, looking at him with
burning eyes and speaking with twitching lips. "Perhaps something worse
even than that. Where are they?--quick, or we shall be too late!"

"They are in the library," said Garthorne, as Enid came running out of
the morning-room, saying:

"Oh, Sir Arthur and Vane, good morning! How are you? What a very sudden
visit. I knew Sir Reginald asked you, but----"

"Never mind about that now, Enid," said Garthorne almost roughly. "Come
along, Sir Arthur, this is the library."

He crossed the great hall, and went