ordinary. I
dressed in a moment in my smoking-clothes, lit a candle, and went out of
my room, listening. I walked along the gallery--'

'It was your candle that I saw as I crossed the lawn,' said Logan.

'When a door opened,' the Prince went on--'the door of one of the rooms
on the landing--and a figure, all in white,--it was Scremerston,--emerged
and disappeared down the stairs. I followed at the top of my speed. I
heard a shot, or rather two pistols that rang out together like one. I
ran through the hall into the long back passage at right-angles to it,
down the passage to the glimmer of light through the partly glazed door
at the end of it. Then my candle was blown out and three men set on me.
They had nearly pinioned me when you and Fenwick took them on both
flanks. You know the rest. They had the boat unmoored, a light cart
ready on the other side, and a steam-yacht lying off Warkworth. The
object, of course, was to kidnap me, and coerce or torture me into
renewing the lease of the tables at Scalastro. Poor Scremerston, who was
a few seconds ahead of me, not carrying a candle, had fired in the dark,
and missed. The answering fire, which was simultaneous, killed him. The
shots saved me, for they brought you and Fenwick to the rescue. Two of
the fellows whom we damaged were--'

'The Genoese pipers, of course,' said Logan.

'And you guessed, from the cry you gave, who my confessor (_he_ banged
the door, of course to draw me) turned out to be?'

'Yes, the head croupier at Scalastro years ago; but he wore a beard and
blue spectacles in the old time, when he raked in a good deal of my
patrimony,' said Logan. 'But how was he planted on _you_?'

'My old friend, Father Costa, had died, and it is too long a tale of
forgery and fraud to tell you how this wretch was forced on me. He _had_
been a Jesuit, but was unfrocked and expelled from Society for all sorts
of namable and unnamable offences. His community believed that he was
dead. So he fell to the profession in which you saw him, and, when the
gambling company saw that I was disinclined to let that hell burn any
longer on my rock, ingenious treachery did the rest.'

'By Jove!' said Logan.

* * * * *

The Prince of Scalastro, impoverished by his own generous impulse, now
holds high rank in the Japanese service. His beautiful wife is much
admired in Yokohama.

The Earl was nursed through the long and dangerous illness which followed
the shock o