the army. On being recalled to London, after war
had been declared, I was approached by the fellow Weirmarsh who, to my
horror, had, by some unaccountable means, obtained knowledge of my
indiscretion! At first he adopted a high moral tone, upbraiding me for my
fault and threatening to inform against me. This I begged him not to do.
For a fortnight he kept me in an agony of despair, when one day he called
me to him and unfolded to me a scheme by which I could make a
considerable amount of money; indeed, he promised to pay me a yearly sum
for my assistance."

"You thought him to be a doctor--and nothing else?" Walter said.

"Exactly. I never dreamed until quite recently that he was head of such a
formidable gang, whose operations were upon so extensive a scale as to
endanger our national credit," replied Sir Hugh. "At the time he
approached me I was in the Pay Department, and many thousands of pounds
in Treasury notes were passing through my safe weekly. His suggestion was
that I should exchange the notes as they came to me from the Treasury for
those with which he would supply me, and which, on showing me a specimen,
I failed to distinguish from the real. I hesitated; I was hard up. To
sustain my position after my knighthood money was absolutely necessary to
me, and for a long time I had been unable to make both ends meet. The
bait he dangled before me was sufficiently tempting, and--and--well, I
fell!" he groaned, and then after a pause he went on:

"Whence Weirmarsh obtained the packets of notes which I substituted for
genuine ones was, of course, a mystery, but once having taken the false
step it was not my business to inquire. Not until quite recently did I
discover his real position as chief of a gang of international crooks,
who combined forgery with blackmail and theft upon a colossal scale. That
he intended Bellairs should furnish him with an impression of the safe
key of a diamond dealer in Hatton Garden is now plain. Bellairs defied
him and threatened to denounce him to the police. Therefore, the poor
fellow's lips were quickly closed by the scoundrel, who would hesitate at
nothing in order to preserve his guilty secrets."

"But what caused you to break from him at last?" inquired Walter eagerly.

"Just before the armistice he and his friends had conceived a gigantic
scheme by which Europe and the United States were to be flooded with
great quantities of spurious paper currency, and though it would, when
d