cannon, which he delayed for an instant because
of the interruption, and then made with an unerring precision. His
antagonist was the burly and rubicund General Kruse, who had his nose
buried in a whisky and soda. On the lounge, watching the game with
sardonic contempt, sat the cadaverous Mr. Lazarus Lowch, the foreman
of the jury at the inquest on Levison, and but a rare visitor to the
billiard-room.

Leslie walked to the scoring-board and noted the state of the game. It
stood at 5-2, and could therefore have been only just begun. It followed
that any one of these three gentlemen, so oddly occupied at an
unaccustomed hour, when they ought to have been enjoying an
after-luncheon siesta at home, might have caused the sound on the stairs
a few minutes before.

Which of them could it have been? How much of that momentous interview,
on which his liberty and his life might depend, had been overheard?

CHAPTER XV

A COUNCIL OF THREE

The handsome pension which Mr. Vernon Mallory drew as a distinguished
servant of the Foreign Office, added to considerable private means,
enabled him to occupy one of the most important residences in the place.
It had large, well-shaded tennis and croquet lawns, and here, later on
that same afternoon, Mr. Mallory was sitting under a copper beech with
his wife, a gentle, patient lady, who had the misfortune to be blind.

At the other side of the croquet lawn Lieutenant Reginald Beauchamp and
Miss Enid Mallory were leaning on their mallets with every appearance of
being engaged in a violent quarrel. The girl's face was flushed, and now
and again she tapped the close-cropped turf impatiently with a neat
brown shoe. The young sailor, viewed from the distance, had the air and
attitude of saying rude things in a provoking manner.

"What are those two doing, dear?" Mrs. Mallory asked presently. "My ears
tell me that they have stopped playing."

"They look," replied her husband, "as if they were hurling invectives at
each other over a foul stroke. Knowing them as I do, my impression is
that they are occupied in coming to an understanding. Their ideas of
love-making are of the kittenish order--a pat and a scratch, and a pat
again. But I think that they are both in earnest."

"Reggie has been suddenly recalled to his ship, has he not?"

"Yes, he has to rejoin at Plymouth to-morrow morning for some sort of
manoeuvres or gun practice. That may account for the affair having
come to a head