failure upon me. It was partly your lies and partly your tactics."

An unwholesome flush rose in the other's face.

"Lies?" he repeated, a little truculently.

Tallente looked him up and down. The station master was approaching
now, the whistle had blown, their conversation was at an end.

"I said lies," Tallente observed, "most advisedly." The train was
already on the move, and the departing passenger was compelled to step
hurriedly into a carriage. Tallente, waited upon by the obsequious
station master, strolled across the line to where his car was waiting.
It was not until his arrival there that he realised that Miller had
offered him no explanation as to his presence on the platform of this
tiny wayside station.

"Did you notice the person with whom I was talking?" he asked the
station master.

"A tall, thin gentleman in knickerbockers? Yes, sir," the man replied.

"Part of your description is correct," Tallente remarked drily. "Do you
know what he was doing here?"

"Been down to your house, I believe, sir. He arrived by the early train
this morning and asked the way to the Manor."

"To my house?" Tallente repeated incredulously.

"It was the Manor he asked for, sir," the station master assured his
questioner. "Begging your pardon, sir, is it true that he was Miller,
the Socialist M.P.?"

"True enough," was the brief reply. "What of it?"

The man coughed as he deposited the dispatch box which he had been
carrying on the seat of the waiting car.

"They think a lot of him down in these parts, sir," he observed, a
little apologetically.

Tallente made no answer to the station master's last speech and merely
waved his hand a little mechanically as the car drove off. His mind was
already busy with the problem suggested by Miller's appearance in these
parts. For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in the
turmoil which he had left. Then with a little shrug of the shoulders he
abandoned this new enigma. Its solution must be close at hand.

Arrived at the edge of the dusty, white strip of road along which he had
travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and
watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise.
He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and
mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage.
In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories,
out-flung to the sea. On his ri