iscovered--as it must have been sooner or later--have injured the
national credit, would bring huge fortunes to him and his friends. He was
pressing me to send in my papers and go to America, there to act as their
agent at a huge remuneration. They wanted a man of standing who should be
above suspicion, and he had decided to use me as his tool to engineer the
gigantic frauds."

"And you, happily, refused?"

"Yes. I resolved, rather than act further, to relinquish the handsome
payments he made to me from time to time. For that reason I got
transferred from the Pay Department, so that I could no longer be of much
use to him, a fact which annoyed him greatly."

"And he threatened you?"

"Yes. He was constantly doing so. He wanted me to go to New York. Enid
helped me and gave me courage to defy him--which I did. Then he conceived
a dastardly revenge by anonymously denouncing Le Pontois as a forger, and
implicating both Enid and myself. He contrived that some money I brought
from England should be exchanged for spurious notes, and these Paul
unsuspiciously gave into the Credit Lyonnais. Had it not been for your
timely warning, Fetherston, we should both have also been arrested in
France without a doubt."

"Yes," replied the other. "I was watching, and realised your peril,
though I confess that my position was one of extreme difficulty. I, of
course, did not know the actual truth, and, to be frank, I suspected both
Enid and yourself of being implicated in some very serious crime."

"So we were," he said in a low, hard voice.

"True. But you have both been the means of revealing to the Treasury a
state of things of which they never dreamed, and by turning King's
evidence and giving the names and addresses of members of the gang in
Brussels and Paris, all of whom are now under arrest, you have saved the
country from considerable peril. Had the plot succeeded, a very serious
state of things must have resulted, for the whole of our paper currency
would have been suspected. For that reason the authorities have, I
understand, now that they have arrested the gang and seized their
presses, decided to hush up the whole matter."

"You know this?" asked Sir Hugh, suddenly brightening.

"Yes, Trendall told me so this morning."

"Ah! Thank Heaven!" he gasped, much relieved. "Then I can again face the
world a free man. God knows how terribly I suffered through all those
years of the war. I paid for my fault very dearly--I assure