e passionate tears of hers seemed to him like
remorse.

"I'll leave her where she is," he decided again. "I can't help it; I
mustn't run any risks. My first duty is to get the police here and have
Deede Dawson arrested."

He went down the stairs still deep in thought, and when he reached the
landing below he would not even go to make sure that his captive was
still secure.

An obscure feeling that he did not wish to see her, and still more that
he did not wish her to see him, prevented him.

He descended the second flight of steps to the hall, taking fewer
precautions to avoid making a noise and still very deep in thought.

For some time he had had but little hope that young Charley Wright still
lived.

Nevertheless, the dreadful discovery he had made in the attic above had
affected him profoundly, and left his mind in a chaos of emotions so
that he was for the time much less acutely watchful than usual.

They had spent their boyhood together, and he remembered a thousand
incidents of their childhood. They had been at school and college
together. And how brilliantly Charley had always done at work and play,
surmounting every difficulty with a laugh, as if it were merely some new
and specially amusing jest!

Every one had thought well of him, every one had believed that his
future career would be brilliant. Now it had ended in this obscure and
dreadful fashion, as ends the life of a trapped rat.

Dunn found himself hardly able to realize that it was really so,
and through all the confused medley of his thoughts there danced and
flickered his memory of a young and lovely face, now tear-stained, now
smiling, now pale with terror, now calmly disdainful.

"Can she have known?" he muttered. "She must have known--she can't have
known--it's not possible either way."

He shuddered and as he put his foot on the lowest stair he raised his
hands to cover his face as though to shut out the visions that passed
before him.

Another step forward he took in the darkness, and all at once there
flashed upon him the light of a strong electric torch, suddenly switched
on.

"Put up your hands," said a voice sharply. "Or you're a dead man."

He looked bewilderedly, taken altogether by surprise, and saw he was
faced by a fat little man with a smooth, chubby, smiling face and eyes
that were cold and grey and deadly, and who held in one hand a revolver
levelled at his heart.

"Put up your hands," this newcomer said again, his