turned. It was inevitable. They stood face to face. Then Saltash,
the mockery gone from his eyes, reached out abruptly and gripped him
by the arm. His touch was electric. For that moment--only for that
moment--he was dangerous. There was something of the spring of a tiger in
his action.

"You damn fool!" he said, and he spoke between his teeth. "Do you suppose
even I would play such a blackguard's game as that?"

"Let me go!" Bunny said through white lips. "Facts are facts."

Saltash's hold did not slacken. "Where's Jake?" he said.

"Jake's away."

"Confound him! Just when he's wanted!" The ferocity died out of Saltash
like the glow from cinders blown from a furnace. "Well, listen! I swear
to you by all that is sacred that you're making a mistake. Sheila has
told you a certain thing that is true, so far as it goes. But you've let
your imagination run away with you. The rest is false."

He spoke with an emphasis that carried weight, and Bunny was moved in
spite of himself. His own fire died down.

Saltash saw his advantage and pressed it. "If Jake were here, he'd tell
you I was speaking the truth, and you'd believe him. You're on a wrong
scent. So far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to follow it to blazes.
I'm used to pleasantries of that sort from my friends. But I'm damned if
I'll let that child be tripped for nothing. Do you hear, Bunny?" He shook
the arm he gripped impatiently. "I'll see you in hell first!"

Bunny's mouth twisted with a painful effort to smile. "I'm in hell now,"
he said.

"Why the devil did you listen?" said Saltash. "Look here! We've got to
have this thing out. Send a man along with my horse and walk across the
park with me!"

He had gained his point by sheer insistence, and he knew it. Bunny knew
it also and cursed himself for a weak fool as he moved to comply. With
Saltash's blade through his heart, he yet could somehow find it possible
to endure him.

He went with him in silence, hating the magnetism he found it impossible
to resist. They passed through the shrubberies that skirted the house,
and so to the open down.

Then in his sudden fashion, crudely and vehemently, Saltash began his
defence.

"It's not my way," he said, "to give an answer to any man who questions;
but you haven't stooped to question. So I tell you the truth. Sheila saw
Toby working as a page at the Casino Hotel at Valrosa. That right? I
thought so. It's the whole matter in a nutshell. I must have seen her
t