he lady a title to which she has not and never had any
legal right, Sir Henry. If it had ever occurred to you to emulate my
example to-night and search the lady's effects, you would have found
that she was christened Enriqua Dolores Torjada, and that she was
married to Senor Filippo Bucarelli here, at Valparaiso in Chili, three
years ago, and that her marriage to you was merely a clever little
scheme to get hold of a pot of money and share it with her rascally
husband."

"It's a lie!" snarled out the male prisoner. "It's an infernal
policeman's lie! You never found any such thing!"

"Pardon me, but I did," replied Cleek serenely. "And what's more, I
found the little phial of coriander and oil of sassafras in your room,
senor, and I shall finish off the Mynga Worm in another ten minutes!"

Bucarelli and his wife gave a mingled cry, and, chained together though
they were, made a wild bolt for the door; only, however, to be met on
the threshold by the local constable to whom Cleek had dispatched a note
some hours previously.

"Thank you, Mr. Philpotts; you are very prompt," he said. "There are
your prisoners nicely trussed and waiting for you. Take them away, we
are quite done with them here. Sir Henry"--he turned to the baronet--"if
Black Riot is fitted to win the Derby she will win it and you need have
no more fear for her safety. No one has ever for one moment tried to get
at her. You yourself were the one that precious pair were after, and the
bait was your life assurance. By killing off the watchers over Black
Riot one by one they knew that there would come a time, when, being able
to get no one else to take the risk of guarding the horse and sleeping
on that bed before the steel-room door, you would do it yourself; and
when that time came they would have had you."

"But how? By what means?"

"By one of the most diabolical imaginable. Among the reptiles of
Patagonia, Sir Henry, there is one, a species of black adder, known in
the country as the Mynga Worm whose bite is more deadly than that of the
rattler or the copperhead, and as rapid in its action as prussic acid
itself. It has, too, a great velocity of movement and a peculiar power
of springing and hurling itself upon its prey. The Patagonians are a
barbarous people in the main and, like all barbarous people, are
vengeful, cunning, and subtle. A favourite revenge of theirs upon
unsuspecting enemies is to get within touch of them and secretly to
smear a mixt