must ask every one in the house, for it must have been by some one here
that the thing was done, that the map was got out."

"I thought you said the table was locked?"

"It was locked, yes," said Rendel, "but I have learnt this morning that
papers can be pulled out from under the lid. Rachel got a piece of
foolscap paper for you in that way."

"Did she?" said Gore, feeling that he had unwittingly supplied one link
in the chain of evidence.

"There was only one person, so far as I know," said Rendel, "in the room
while that paper was in my desk, who could have pulled it out and looked
at it, and apparently made an unwarrantable use of it." The question
that he expected to hear from Gore did not follow. Rendel waited, then
he went on, "That person was--you."

"What do you mean?" said Gore, sitting up, his colour going and coming
quickly.

"My words, I think, are quite plain," Rendel said. "I mean that all the
evidence, circumstantial, I grant, points--you must forgive me if I am
wronging you--to your having taken out the map."

"Will you please give me your reasons for this extraordinary
accusation?" said Gore.

"Yes," said Rendel, "I will." And he spoke more and more rapidly as, his
self-control at length utterly broken down, and his emotion having
gained entire possession of him, he felt the fierce joy of those who,
habitually watchful of their words, yield once or twice in their lives
to the impulse of letting them flow out unchecked in an overwhelming
flood. "You alone were in the room with the papers; your prepossessions
are all against us; you spoke yourself just now of the value of a State
secret sold in the proper quarter; things are looking ugly about the
'Equator.'"

"Do you mean to hint----" said Gore.

Rendel interrupted him quickly. "No, not to hint," he said; "hinting is
not in my line. I dare to say it out. I dare to say that in one of those
moments of aberration, of deviation, whatever you choose to call it,
that sometimes descend upon the most unlikely people, you pulled that
paper out, from idle curiosity, I daresay, and finding out what it was
you sent it to the _Arbiter_."

"You did well," said Gore bitterly, "to keep your wife out of the room
while you were accusing me. I am old and defenceless," he said, with
lips trembling, and again an immense self-pity rushing over him. "I
can't answer; I can't reply to a young man's violence."

"I have no intention," Rendel said, still speaking w