us together.
For quite a minute Bryce eyed the revolver that I still held in my hand,
then his glance travelled to the shattered window, and, completing the
circle, came to rest on me again.

"Well?" he queried, with intense interest in his voice. I knew what that
monosyllable meant. It was a request for a detailed account of the
events of that night. Seeing that there was nothing to be gained by
withholding anything, I plunged into the tale and related everything
just as it had happened.

"So he got away from you?" he remarked when I had finished.

"He did," I said emphatically.

"That's about the best thing he could have done," Bryce ran on. "I don't
know what we could have done with him if we had kept him."

"'He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day,'" I
reminded him.

"That other day is a matter for the future," he answered. "We'd better
see what he took though. Come on."

He turned on his heel and led the way to his study just as the first
rays of the rising sun crept up over the distant hills.

CHAPTER V.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

The room was much as we had left it the evening before. The typed papers
had disappeared, but a sheet which I recognised as the one I had picked
up from the kitchen floor the day of my arrival lay on the table in full
view. Beside it was the clean blotting pad that I had never yet seen
used. Bryce took no notice of the sheet of figures, but lifted the pad
up, and, drawing a magnifying glass from his pocket, ran his eyes over
the rough white surface. Moira and I watched him with unfeigned
interest. At last he looked up.

"Just as I thought," he remarked. "Have a look yourself, Jim." He handed
both glass and pad to me. I studied the latter for some seconds before I
quite dropped to what he meant. Gradually I made out figures impressed
on the rough surface. Our midnight visitor had made a copy of that
single sheet, had made it hurriedly in pencil, and the impression had
gone through on to the receptive softness of the blotting paper. My
scrutiny over, I handed the materials to Moira.

"You understand?" Bryce queried, with little laughter-wrinkles about his
eyes.

"I do," I said admiringly. "I don't know what the man was after, but he
didn't get it. He got a fake instead."

Bryce nodded. "He's up a gum-tree instead of under one," he said
enigmatically.

I made no answer to that, chiefly because it struck me that it was the
sort of remark that