ous _coup_, not only contrived to spirit away to the Continent a
sum of eighty thousand pounds in negotiable securities, but had also
sent to a long term of penal servitude the man who had attempted to
betray him.

CHAPTER V

CONCERNS MR. BLUMENFELD

The pleasant high road between Leamington and Coventry runs straight
over the hills to Kenilworth, but a few miles farther on there are
cross-roads, the right leading into Stoneleigh and the left to Kirby
Corner and over Westwood Heath into a crooked maze of by-roads by
which one can reach Berkswell or Barston.

It was over that left-hand road that I was driving Rayne and Lola in
the Rolls in the grey twilight of a wintry evening. We had driven from
London, and both Rayne and the girl I so admired were cramped and
tired.

"Look!" shouted Lola suddenly as we took a turn in the road. "There's
the lodge! On the left there. That's Bradbourne Hall!"

"Yes, that's it, Hargreave!" said Rudolph, and a few moments later I
turned the car through the high wrought-iron gates which stood open
for us, and we sped up the long avenue of leafless trees which led to
the fine country mansion at which we were to be guests.

Bradbourne Hall was a great old-world Georgian house, half covered
with ivy, and the appearance of the grave, white-haired butler who
opened the door showed it to be the residence of a man of wealth and
discernment.

That Edward Blumenfeld, its owner, was fabulously wealthy everyone in
the City of London knew, for his name was one to conjure with in high
finance, and though the dingy offices of Blumenfeld and Hannan in Old
Broad Street were the reverse of imposing, yet the financial influence
of the great house often made itself felt upon the Bourses of Paris,
Brussels and Rome.

I met the millionaire at dinner two hours later, a tall, loose-built,
sallow-faced man of rather brusque manners and decidedly cosmopolitan,
both in gesture and in speech. With him was his wife, a pleasant woman
of about fifty-five who seemed extremely affable to Lola. Mr.
Blumenfeld's sister, a Mrs. Perceval, was also present.

It appeared that a year before Rayne had met old Mr. Blumenfeld and
his wife in an hotel at Varenna, on the Lake of Como, and a casual
acquaintance had ripened into friendship and culminated in the
invitation to spend a few days at Bradbourne. Hence our journey.

As we sat gossiping over our port after the ladies had left the table,
I began to wonder