a mountain of
information and evidence had piled itself up over his head all in twelve
hours. He would have been amazed and, if possible, even more frightened
than he was, but he was without question sufficiently frightened, for
here was Ste. Marie in the very house, he had seen Arthur Benham, and
quite obviously he knew all there was to know, or at least enough to
ruin Arthur Benham's uncle beyond all recovery or hope of
recovery--irretrievably.

Captain Stewart tried to think what it would mean to him--failure in
this desperate scheme--but he had not the strength or the courage. He
shrank from the picture as one shrinks from something horrible in a bad
dream. There could be no question of failure. He had to succeed at any
cost, however desperate or fantastic. Once more the spasm of childish,
futile rage swept over him and shook him like a wind.

"Why couldn't the fellow have been killed by that one-eyed fool?" he
cried, sobbing. "Why couldn't he have been killed? He's the only one who
knows--the only thing in the way. Why couldn't he have keen killed?"

Quite suddenly Captain Stewart ceased to sob and shiver, and sat still
in his chair, gripping the arms with white and tense fingers. His eyes
began to widen, and they became fixed in a long, strange stare. He drew
a deep breath.

"I wonder!" he said, aloud. "I wonder, now."

* * * * *

XVI

THE BLACK CAT

That providential stone or tree-root, or whatever it may have been,
proved a genuine blessing in disguise to Ste. Marie. It gave him a
splitting headache for a few hours, but it saved him a good deal of
discomfort the while his bullet wound was being more or less probed and
very skilfully cleansed and dressed by O'Hara. For he did not regain
consciousness until this surgical work was almost at its end, and then
he wanted to fight the Irishman for tying the bandages too tight.

But when O'Hara had gone away and left him alone he lay still--or as
still as the smarting, burning pain in his leg and the ache in his head
would let him--and stared at the wall beyond his bed, and bit by bit the
events of the past hour came back to him, and he knew where he was. He
cursed himself very bitterly, as he well might do, for a bungling idiot.
The whole thing had been in his hands, he said, with perfect
truth--Arthur Benham's whereabouts proved Stewart's responsibility or,
at the very least, complicity and the sordid motive therefor.