saw also that a steel
handcuff was on the woman's right wrist, its mate on the man's left one,
and that they were firmly chained together.

"In the name of Heaven, man," began Sir Henry, appalled by this, and
growing red and white by rapid turns.

"I fancy that Heaven has very little to do with this precious pair, Sir
Henry," interposed Cleek. "You want the two people who are accountable
for these diabolical crimes, and--there they stand."

"What! Do you mean to tell me that Sharpless, that my wife--"

"Don't give the 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 Torjado, 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-