ame way yourself now, I suppose?"

"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.

Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven't
I? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I
say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I
won't tell a soul."

"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim
twist of the mouth that was not a smile.

"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"

"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled
open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."

Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance
flashed upwards, and their eyes met.

There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for
that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.

"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.

"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow
like you--I don't believe it!"

"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It
can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of its
going off--or I shouldn't have shown it to you."

He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.

"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should
have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though
it's never safe to assume anything."

"Oh, don't talk like an idiot!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no
patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a
fellow like you--a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck--would give
way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because
things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that;
or if I don't, I've never known you at all."

"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.

Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so
that his face was in shadow.

"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.

"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."

He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light
streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant
splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world
at his feet.

Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he