n a man knows his enemy will be dead in ten minutes, and takes
him to the edge of an unfathomable pit, he means to throw his body
into it. What else should he do? A born fool would have the sense to
do it, and Boyle is not a born fool. Well, why did not Boyle do it?
The more I thought of it the more I suspected there was some mistake
in the murder, so to speak. Somebody had taken somebody there to
throw him in, and yet he was not thrown in. I had already an ugly,
unformed idea of some substitution or reversal of parts; then I
stooped to turn the bookstand myself, by accident, and I instantly
knew everything, for I saw the two cups revolve once more, like
moons in the sky."

After a pause, Cuthbert Grayne said, "And what are we to say to the
newspapers?"

"My friend, Harold March, is coming along from Cairo to-day," said
Fisher. "He is a very brilliant and successful journalist. But for
all that he's a thoroughly honorable man, so you must not tell him
the truth."

Half an hour later Fisher was again walking to and fro in front of
the clubhouse, with Captain Boyle, the latter by this time with a
very buffeted and bewildered air; perhaps a sadder and a wiser man.

"What about me, then?" he was saying. "Am I cleared? Am I not going
to be cleared?"

"I believe and hope," answered Fisher, "that you are not going to be
suspected. But you are certainly not going to be cleared. There must
be no suspicion against him, and therefore no suspicion against you.
Any suspicion against him, let alone such a story against him, would
knock us endways from Malta to Mandalay. He was a hero as well as a
holy terror among the Moslems. Indeed, you might almost call him a
Moslem hero in the English service. Of course he got on with them
partly because of his own little dose of Eastern blood; he got it
from his mother, the dancer from Damascus; everybody knows that."

"Oh," repeated Boyle, mechanically, staring at him with round eyes,
"everybody knows that."

"I dare say there was a touch of it in his jealousy and ferocious
vengeance," went on Fisher. "But, for all that, the crime would ruin
us among the Arabs, all the more because it was something like a
crime against hospitality. It's been hateful for you and it's pretty
horrid for me. But there are some things that damned well can't be
done, and while I'm alive that's one of them."

"What do you mean?" asked Boyle, glancing at him curiously. "Why
should you, of all people, be so