front of him, but his stare was wide and
vacant. He seemed to be thinking of something else.

There fell a dead silence in the room, a stillness in which the quiet
ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece became maddeningly obtrusive. For
seconds that dragged out interminably neither of the two men stirred. It
was as if they were mutely listening to that eternal ticking, as one
listens to the tramp of a watchman in the dead of night.

Then, at last, with a movement curiously impulsive, Trevor Mordaunt freed
himself from the spell. He laid his hand once more upon his secretary's
shoulder.

"Bertrand!" he said, and in his voice interrogation, incredulity, even
entreaty, were oddly mingled. "You!"

The Frenchman shivered, and came out of his lethargy. He threw a single
glance upwards, then suddenly bowed his head on his hands. But still he
spoke no word.

Mordaunt's hand fell from him. He stood a moment, then turned and walked
away. "So that was the reason!" he said.

He came to a stand a few feet away from the bent figure at the
writing-table, took out his cigarette-case, and deliberately lighted a
cigarette. His face as he did it was grimly composed, but there were
lines in it that very few had ever seen there. His eyes were keen and
cold as steel. They held neither anger nor contempt, only a tinge of
humour inexpressibly bitter.

Finally, through a cloud of smoke, he spoke again. "Have you nothing to
say?"

Bertrand stirred, but he did not lift his head. "Nothing," he muttered,
almost inarticulately.

"Then"--very evenly came the words--"that ends the case. I have nothing
to say, either. You can go as soon as you wish."

He spoke with the utmost distinctness. His head was tilted back, and his
eyes, still with that icy glint of amusement in them, watched the smoke
ascending from his cigarette.

There was a brief pause. Then Bertrand stumbled stiffly to his feet. He
seemed to move with difficulty. He turned heavily towards the Englishman.

"Monsieur," he said with ceremony, "you have--I believe--the right to
prosecute me."

Mordaunt did not even look at him. "I believe I have," he said.

"_Alors--_" the Frenchman paused.

"I shall not exercise it," Mordaunt said curtly.

"You are too generous," Bertrand answered.

He spoke without emotion, yet there was something in his tone--something
remotely suggestive of irony--that brought Mordaunt's eyes down to him.
He looked at him hard and straight.

But B