I'll manage somehow to get some bedding of some sort, and to see
that you don't miss your dinner. You are going to spend the night here,
my friend. Now, then, up you come and--there you are, on my shoulder.
Steady, if you please, while I get out my pocket torch to light the way.
I suppose you realize that I have heard all that passed between you and
Lady Katharine Fordham this evening?"

"And you know that I lied, don't you?" put in Geoff eagerly. "You know
that she _wasn't_ there last night, after all?"

"To the contrary, my friend, I know that she was."

"It's a lie--it's a dashed lie! She never was near the place. That was
pure bluff. It was I who killed the man."

"Don't tell any more lies than you are obliged to, my lad. I don't
believe she killed him, and I'm not so very sure that you killed
him--and there you are."

"Then what are you arresting me for?"

"I'm not arresting you; I'm simply sifting evidence. Your
stepmother--according to _your_ story--must be very, very fond of you,
and very, very solicitous for your welfare. And if she risked catching
cold and having people talk and all that sort of thing to rush out after
you when you had only been gone for a short time, let's see how she'll
act when you disappear mysteriously and don't come home all night!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A CHANGE IN THE PROGRAM

"I suppose you understand that this is a pretty high-handed sort of
proceeding?" began young Clavering agitatedly, half indignantly. "Even
the processes of the law have their limits; and to abduct a man and
imprison him before there is the ghost of a charge against him----"

There he stopped; his ear caught by a faint metallic click, his eye by a
little gleam of light that spat out through the darkness and made a
luminous circle upon the earthen floor of the passage. Cleek had
switched on his electric torch the better to see his way in carrying his
captive to the cell of which he had spoken and was now moving with him
toward it. His interest attracted in yet another direction, Geoffrey
twitched round his head and made an effort to see the face of his
captor. Pretty nearly everybody in England had, at one time or another,
heard of the man, and a not unnatural curiosity to see what he was like
seized upon young Clavering.

His effort to satisfy that curiosity was, however, without fruit, for
the downward-directed torch cast only that one spot of light upon the
floor and left everything else in the