"Fill up, Varne," he said, pushing the square bottle over to his companion--the glow of gla.s.ses and syphons between them shone merrily in the cheerful lamplight. "And now--we can talk. No, it's all right.

She can't hear," following an almost imperceptible lift of the other's eyebrows toward the ceiling, the sound of footsteps on the upper side of this betokening that Melian was undergoing the intricate and protracted process of feminine turning in.

Helston Varne, ensconced in the opposite chair, mixed himself a deliberate peg and relit his pipe. He was, in fact, more interested than--from force of habit--he allowed to appear, for now he was going to learn at first hand what he had pieced together in theory.

"First of all, tell me," went on Mervyn. "I haven't asked you yet, was purposely waiting until we got back here--on the very scene of it all, so to say. How did you get your cue to play up to on that Star business, when you were doing inquisitor-in-chief in that d.a.m.nable h.e.l.l-cave?"

"Mainly from deduction, I found the confirmation--here."

"Here? How--when?" And remembering various manoeuvres of his own-- here--Mervyn might well give way to amazement.

"You remember that day you came back from Clancehurst, and found me in the old lumber room. I had just discovered it then, and shoved back the old sideboard barely in time when you came in."

"Good G.o.d!"

The other nodded.

"I'll astonish you still further, Mervyn," he said. "Before it got there it reposed under a roundish topped stone on the sluice path. You transhipped it while you had me locked up in the cellar yonder."

"Wrong there, Varne," said Mervyn, with something of a chuckle, "but not altogether though. I did transfer that one, but it wasn't the one you found. That was kindly delivered here since, and it was the one I stowed away upstairs temporarily. By the way I take it you have some inkling of what those things represent?"

"Perhaps I have."

"Well, then--they are charged with a most deadly, subtle, and hitherto unknown poison. The touch of a hidden spring in the centre releases this, and then the merest invisible pin-p.r.i.c.k from any one of the points--good-night! Well just imagine my feelings when I looked out of the window to see Melian airily coming down the path with that infernal thing in her hand. I wonder I didn't faint. Well, that was the one you found."

The other started at the mention of Melian in this connexion, and his face took on something of the look of horror which had come over that of his host, evolved by the bare recollection.

"Yes, indeed. I can imagine them," he said. "Then the man you pulled out of the water--and who incidentally was instrumental in setting up the great Heath Hover mystery, brought the first?"

"That's right."

"What have you done with these two infernal things up to date, Mervyn?"

asked Helston Varne, not without some shade of anxiety.

"They're both snug and safe till the Day of Judgment at the bottom of the deepest part of Plane Pond. Thickly rolled up, well weighted, and by this time under six feet of mud and twenty of water. If they drained the pond they'd never find them."

Helston Varne nodded approvingly.

"It's an interesting case, Mervyn--very. But--do you know, I was very much getting on to the hang of it when--well, when we began to know each other."

"The devil you were? I knew you were--trying to."

"I know you did. Well, we've been through a strange experience together since then haven't we? But it's an infernally inconsequent world. For instance why should I have predicted to Coates that you would be sure to turn up over there again, and he have predicted that it would be bad for you if you did? And--we were both right."

"Yes, indeed."

There was silence for a few moments. Both lay back in their chairs puffing out contented clouds of smoke, and gazing into the red-hot wood cavern. Without the wind howled.

"Do you know, Varne," resumed Mervyn, meditatively. "It's a deuced odd thing, but that chap I got out of the pond, you know--to this day I can't make out whether I killed him or whether he killed himself. He died from a p.r.i.c.k from the Star anyhow, because none of the doctors could make head or tail of it, and by an inspiration of luck I had been careful to hide away the thing."

"If you only knew what sleepless nights you've entailed upon Nashby.

He's just as suspicious as ever, you know. When I saw him in Clancehurst the other day he looked at _me_ suspiciously. Thinks I've deserted to the other side."

"Oh d.a.m.n Nashby. He's a fool," came the gusty reply. "Well Varne, you know all about the finding of the chap dead, and the inquest, and all that. Very well. I had a sort of instinct against him from the moment I saw him in the full light. After I had left him to turn in on that sofa, I took precautions against him--I mean against him getting near me during the night. Now,"--lowering his voice to what was almost a whisper, and an impressive one, "I am almost certain I went down--in my sleep--and--turned the Star upon him. In my sleep, mind, and unconsciously. For, I give you my word that when the thing dropped off him in the morning the discovery came upon me as a wild and entire surprise. But it seemed to bring back a lot, and that with a rush."

The other emitted two deliberate puffs of smoke.

"If it's as you say, Mervyn, you are not responsible, but whether it is or not--or whether the chap was careless over handling the infernal machine, and so did for himself--and I don't see why you shouldn't give yourself the benefit of the doubt--the result's the same, and a good one for you, in that we shouldn't be here talking to-night, if he had lived another day. Had you any reason, by the way, to expect the attentions of this amiable confraternity?"

Mervyn knitted his brows and hesitated.

"Well, yes. I had," he said at length. "I had received signs to put myself under its orders again. I had chucked it--clean, altogether--for years, in fact I thought that the very act of coming to this out of the way place would--well, blot out the trail. But I took no notice of them, and--this was the consequence. There's no mistake about it, mind.

I've no idea as to the man's ident.i.ty, but I recognised him, not at first, but the next morning, as one of those light coloured Afghans. He was Europeanised and talked English perfectly. Then, of course, I had the key to the whole situation."

"Well, as I said, if he had lived, you would not have," said the other.

"I've sometimes thought," rejoined Mervyn, "and that's the only thing that has bothered me--that is supposing I really did--you know--that after saving his life, he might have backed out of his errand."

But Helston Varne shook his head slowly.

"I can't presume to teach _you_ your East, Mervyn. But--I think you are mistaken there."

"Perhaps I am--most likely I am," came the answer. "Anyway, Varne, I'm not going to stick on here any more, so if they plant another of those little reminders on me they'll have to find out where I've got to."

"They won't," said the other. "And when you're in that jolly little cottage inside my park that you've promised me to inhabit, for--well, as long as it suits you--I think it'll be a risky matter for any one to come fooling round you on that sort of errand."

And then the two men talked on--on this topic and others--far into the night.

Since her return to Heath Hover Melian had experienced none of the fears and misgivings which had hung over her before. The "influence" what ever it was, seemed to have ceased, or was it in abeyance? Anyway, with Helston Varne under the same roof nothing mattered. It seemed as if nothing could matter.

For here he was, installed at Heath Hover as a guest, he who had first come there as a spy, and that in a hostile interest to his now host. He had not returned from the East in their company. With marvellous self denial--or self control--or both, he had waited a week later, and then returned alone. Characteristically he had reckoned that just that period of time without him would deepen Melian's interest in him, would cause her to miss him, in short--or not. If so, and he felt justified in feeling sanguine--why there were all their lives before them to make up for it in. If not--well, he refused to contemplate such a contingency.

They had stayed at Mazaran just long enough for a rest after their hard, perilous experiences, but Mervyn had seemed as eager to get away from the country as before he had been to return to it. Helston had seen them off at Karachi, himself taking a pa.s.sage which brought him home nearly as soon as themselves. And now he had arrived at Heath Hover the evening before, and certainly had found no cause to complain of the nature of his welcome.

The clear, brisk, bracing air lay upon Plane Pond, and upon the reddening woods which flowed down to it, in the early morning, and the voices of birds lifted in their late autumn song, ere silencing for drear winter, made music in "Broceliande." The girl, tripping lightly up the sluice path, felt all the invigorating influence of it go through her system like a stimulant.

"Good morning, Sirdar."

Helston Varne turned. He had been leaning on the rail gazing out over the expanse of water, thinking; and what he was thinking about was embodied in this vision of youth and bright sweetness which now stood before him in the early freshness of morning. Melian had taken to calling him "Sirdar" since she had seen him in his wonderful Eastern make-up. But neither of the two men had ever told her the extent of the ghastly peril which the wonderful success of that make-up had been instrumental in delivering them from.

She put out both hands and he took them--both. He held them for quite a moment, gazing into the sweet blue eyes.

"Come," he said, still holding them. "We'll stroll a little through 'Broceliande,' the enchanted forest."

She looked at him, and said nothing; and they went, and as they went he drew one of the long white hands over his arm and covered it with one of his brown ones. And what they said in "Broceliande," the enchanted forest, under the old gnarled oaks--why, reader, that is no earthly concern of yours or mine. What may be, however, is that they emerged eventually therefrom perfectly happy, and at peace with all the world.

The End.