t."

"Have you discovered anything in there?" asked Fisher.

"I have discovered everything," answered Grayne.

Fisher maintained a somewhat gloomy silence, as the other resumed
his explanation in quiet and assured tones.

"You were quite right, Fisher, when you said that young fellow was
in danger of going down dark ways toward the pit. Whether or no, as
you fancied, the jolt you gave to his view of the general had
anything to do with it, he has not been treating the general well
for some time. It's an unpleasant business, and I don't want to
dwell on it; but it's pretty plain that his wife was not treating
him well, either. I don't know how far it went, but it went as far
as concealment, anyhow; for when Lady Hastings spoke to Boyle it was
to tell him she had hidden a note in the Budge book in the library.
The general overheard, or came somehow to know, and he went straight
to the book and found it. He confronted Boyle with it, and they had
a scene, of course. And Boyle was confronted with something else; he
was confronted with an awful alternative, in which the life of one
old man meant ruin and his death meant triumph and even happiness."

"Well," observed Fisher, at last, "I don't blame him for not telling
you the woman's part of the story. But how do you know about the
letter?"

"I found it on the general's body," answered Grayne, "but I found
worse things than that. The body had stiffened in the way rather
peculiar to poisons of a certain Asiatic sort. Then I examined the
coffee cups, and I knew enough chemistry to find poison in the dregs
of one of them. Now, the General went straight to the bookcase,
leaving his cup of coffee on the bookstand in the middle of the
room. While his back was turned, and Boyle was pretending to examine
the bookstand, he was left alone with the coffee cup. The poison
takes about ten minutes to act, and ten minutes' walk would bring
them to the bottomless well."

"Yes," remarked Fisher, "and what about the bottomless well?"

"What has the bottomless well got to do with it?" asked his friend.

"It has nothing to do with it," replied Fisher. "That is what I
find utterly confounding and incredible."

"And why should that particular hole in the ground have anything to
do with it?"

"It is a particular hole in your case," said Fisher. "But I won't
insist on that just now. By the way, there is another thing I ought
to tell you. I said I sent Boyle away in charge of Travers. I