e quite by chance with the body."

"Oh!" said Grant, and turned to the captain. "Was it you then--"

"I?" interrupted Tremayne with sudden violence. He seemed now to become
aware for the first time of the gravity of his position. "Certainly not,
Colonel Grant. I heard a cry, and I came out to see what it was. I found
Samoval here, already dead."

"I see," said Grant. "You were with Sir Terence, then, when this--"

"Nay," Sir Terence interrupted. "I have been alone since dinner,
clearing up some arrears of work. I was in my study there when Mullins
called me to tell me what he had discovered. It looks as if there had
been a duel. Look at these swords." Then he turned to his secretary. "I
think, Captain Tremayne," he said gravely, "that you had better report
yourself under arrest to your colonel."

Tremayne stiffened suddenly. "Report myself under arrest?" he cried. "My
God, Sir Terence, you don't believe that I--"

Sir Terence interrupted him. The voice in which he spoke was stern,
almost sad; but his eyes gleamed with fiendish mockery the while. It
was Polichinelle that spoke--Polichinelle that mocks what time he
slays. "What were you doing here?" he asked, and it was like moving the
checkmating piece.

Tremayne stood stricken and silent. He cast a desperate upward glance
at the balcony overhead. The answer was so easy, but it would entail
delivering Richard Butler to his death. Colonel Grant, following his
upward glance, beheld Lady O'Moy for the first time. He bowed, swept off
his cocked hat, and "Perhaps her ladyship," he suggested to Sir Terence,
"may have seen something."

"I have already asked her," replied O'Moy.

And then she herself was feverishly assuring Colonel Grant that she had
seen nothing at all, that she had heard a cry and had come out on to the
balcony to see what was happening.

"And was Captain Tremayne here when you came out?" asked O'Moy, the
deadly jester.

"Ye-es," she faltered. "I was only a moment or two before yourself."

"You see?" said Sir Terence heavily to Grant, and Grant, with pursed
lips, nodded, his eyes moving from O'Moy to Tremayne.

"But, Sir Terence," cried Tremayne, "I give you my word--I swear to
you--that I know absolutely nothing of how Samoval met his death."

"What were you doing here?" O'Moy asked again, and this time the
sinister, menacing note of derision vibrated clearly in the question.

Tremayne for the first time in his honest, upright life found hims