sn't he brought the things back
as he was told to do?"

Hinge said nothing, but looked from me to my visitor in some
bewilderment.

"You hear!" cried Brunow, rising and throwing the stump of his cigar
into the grate with a sickly pretence of anger.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Hinge; "there's Mr. Brunow's key, sir.
Seems to me I've been sent on a fool's errand. Mr. Brunow's man wants to
know what I mean by coming with a message like that. He says Mr. Brunow
hasn't been at home since half-past six this evening. Mr. Brunow's man,
sir," Hinge pursued, "seemed to think I was trying to make a fool of
him."

"That will do," I answered. "You have obeyed your orders, and that is
all you have to think about. Go and wait outside."

He went, but I could see that he nursed a little sense of injury. I
turned to Brunow and asked him: "Is the game played out yet, or have you
any other shift to show me?"

He made no answer at the minute, but fumbled in his pocket again for
his cigar-case, with the same shaky and uncertain motion as before. He
avoided my eyes, though every now and then he looked towards me as if in
spite of himself. For my own part, I could not look away from him, and
I do not know now whether I felt more rage or more contempt or more pity
for him. I had not thought him so cowardly as he showed himself to be.

"It is for you," I told him at last, "to explain your actions of
to-night. You know what the situation means. I charge you here with
having betrayed a comrade whom you had sworn, in common with the rest of
us, to stand by to the last. If I had brought the charge I am making now
against you a little more than half an hour ago it would have gone hard
with you. You are as well aware of that fact as I am, and you know that
nothing could have saved you from my just renunciation but the memory of
an old friendship, of which you have proved yourself utterly unworthy."

"I know you're talking nonsense," he responded, trying to brave it out
still. "What should I want to betray old Ruffiano for?"

A sudden gust of wrath swept through me, and blew away before it the
last sense of compunction in my mind.

"Understand," I said, "that I am in earnest in this matter, and that I
mean to carry out my threat at once. Unless I receive from you a full
confession of this night's infamy, I shall detain you here, and shall
send Hinge to summon a meeting here; and at that meeting I shall
denounce you as a traitor to the caus