ters were crossed underneath and
supported at the centre by a stout beam. The rafters had been sawn
through at both ends, and the rotten floor had been piled high with
broken brick and stone to a weight of a ton or more. The end of a loose
beam had been wedged obliquely under the end of the one timber now
supporting the whole weight, so that a pull on the opposite end of this
long lever would force away the bricks on which the beam rested and let
the whole weight fall. It was the jar of the beam and the fall of the
first few loose bricks that had so far warned Hewitt as to enable him to
leap from under the floor almost as it fell.

Peytral's sudden appearance, when we had time to reflect on it, gave us
a suspicion as to some at least of the espionage to which Hewitt had
been subjected--a suspicion confirmed, later, by Peytral himself after
his recovery from the shock of the fall. For fresh news of his enemy had
re-awakened all his passion, and since he alone could not find him, he
was willing enough to let Hewitt do the tracking down, if only he
himself might clutch Mayes's throat in the end. This explained the
"business" that had called him away after the Barbican stronghold had
been captured; finding both Hewitt and Plummer somewhat uncommunicative,
and himself somewhat "out of it," he had drawn off, and had followed
Hewitt's every movement, confident that he would be led to his old enemy
at last. What I had told him of the cypher message had led him to hunt
out Channel Marsh in the afternoon, and to return at midnight. He, of
course, regarded the message, as I did myself at the time, as a
perfectly genuine instruction from Mayes to Sims, and he came to the
rendezvous wholly in ignorance as to what Hewitt was doing, and with no
better hope than that he might hear something that would lead him in the
direction of Mayes. He had entered the marsh after dark from the upper
end, and had lain concealed by the other channel till near midnight;
then he had crept to the rear of the ruin and climbed to where an
opening seemed to offer a good chance of hearing what might pass in the
hall. He had heard Hewitt approach from the front, and the crash that
followed. The rest we had seen.

V

Mayes never recovered consciousness, and was dead when we visited the
hospital the day after; both skull and spine were badly fractured. And
the very last we saw of the Red Triangle was the implement with which it
had been impressed, w