ld for one of them?' said the doctor to himself.

'You have experience in these matters, sir. Will you help me to examine
the boat? There may perhaps be something there to help us to track the
criminal.'

The doctor had but the poorest opinion of this scheme. 'But, yes,'
he said, he would go, and then fell to thinking aloud. 'Poor thing.
Wonderfully plucky. Bears it well. Brother half killed. Lover suspected.
Go! Of course I'll go. Why the devil shouldn't I?' And he marched along
unconscious of his utterances or of the heightened colour and the look
of momentary surprise in Lilian's face. 'Pretty girl, too,' said the
doctor, in audible thought. 'Devilish pretty! Good girl, I should fancy.
Like the looks of her. Hard lines, poor thing--hard lines!'

They reached the bank and walked across the punt into the house-boat.
As she entered the door Lilian gave a cry, and dashed at the table;
then turned and held up before the doctor's eyes a meerschaum pipe--the
identical Antoletti meerschaum stolen in the Stamboul Bazaar by Demetri
Agryopoulo.

'This is it!' she gasped. 'The clue! Oh, it is certain! It is true! Who
else could have wished him ill?'

Then she told the doctor the story of the pipe. She told her tale in
verbal lightning. Every sentence flashed forth a fact; and in sixty
seconds or thereabouts the doctor was a man convinced.

But meantime where was Barndale? Poor Leland could tell them nothing.
For many a day he would bear no questioning. Could her lover, Lilian
asked herself, have started for the ball last night, and come to any
damage by the way?

'Here is a letter,' said the doctor, quietly taking up something from
the table. 'A lady's handwriting. Postmark, Constantinople.'

He drew the letter from its envelope and read it as coolly as if he had
a right to read it.

'The story is clear enough,' he said. 'The lady is in London. Your
brother knew of her presence there. The Greek you speak of has followed
her. The pipe proves his presence here. But how did he find out with
whom the lady was in correspondence?'

'That I cannot guess,' said Lilian.

It had been late in the afternoon when Lilian and her mother reached
the house-boat first. Twilight had fallen when the doctor and the girl
started to walk back together. Lilian, turning to look at the house-boat
as they went, seized the doctor by the shoulder. He turned and looked at
her. She pointed to a figure in the fields.

'The Greek!' she whispered.