Slyne skirted a flower-bed cautiously and, approaching the shadowy background by a flank movement, found a stout individual in a voluminous coat kneeling on the grass there, with some white, metallic object in one trembling hand lifted in the direction of his own left eyelid. A second Click! startled Slyne disproportionately, and he spoke at that, in a very querulous voice. "Hey! you fool," he said, "you\'re wasting your time. Wait till I show you how.

"Good Lord! is that you, Jobling?"

Mr. Jobling suddenly cast a revolver from him, with a wailing execration, and, attempting to rise, sank down beside it, blubbering, entirely unstrung after the agonising strain of the past few seconds. Slyne, eyeing him with exasperated contempt, picked the weapon up and fingered it for an instant.

"A damned rotten make!" he commented morosely. "But it\'ll do the job for you all right now. You can\'t shoot it off, you know, with the safety catch set."

The miserable man on the grass held out his hand for it, humbly. But Slyne was not at all prepared to take any risks on his account—for suicide and murder are often very difficult to distinguish, in their results—and made up his mind to keep it, in the meantime at any rate.

"Get up," he ordered in his sharpest tone, "and come away out of this. If you could only see yourself, you wouldn\'t want to sit there and whimper."

Under the spur of that insult Mr. Jobling seemed to recall some stray shred of his forfeited self-respect. He got on to his knees, with an effort, and thence by degrees to his feet.

"I think you might show a little more decent feeling," he sobbed brokenly, "when—"

"And I think you might show a vast deal more sense," snapped Slyne. "Button up your coat, and come away out of this. You can kill yourself just as easily—a good deal more so, in fact, since I\'ve shown you how—in half an hour, after I\'m in a safer position to prove an alibi if any inconvenient questions are asked about it afterwards. Come on, now."

His whilom acquaintance followed him meekly, muttering, to a secluded corner where there was a seat.

"What\'s the trouble?" demanded Slyne magisterially, sitting down at one end of the bench and motioning him to the other. "But I suppose I need scarcely ask. Trust funds mysteriously melted away—the usual childish attempt to recover them by sheer chance, and with all the odds against you!—the dread of exposure and disgrace—which never worry a dead man. You\'ve been a bit of a wolf in sheep\'s clothing, eh, my respectable friend? And you\'d rather die in the dark than face the world in broad daylight without your immaculate fleece."

Mr. Jobling groaned.

"But why, after all, finish playing the knave by playing the fool? If you were the man of the world you fancy yourself, you\'d know that sheep are very seldom successful in real life. It\'s all very well to pose in a sheep-skin, but it isn\'t everything. A wolf undisguised can do very well for himself, so long as his teeth are sufficiently sharp. And, when he becomes a big millionaire, he can buy himself, among other things, a nice new merino coat."

His parable amused himself, but his auditor did not seem possessed of a sufficient sense of humour to appreciate its personal application.

"You\'re labouring under a misapprehension," said that gentleman, who had meantime regained some grip on himself, in accents anything but properly grateful. "I may, perhaps, have been unfortunate with—er—a few small investments for clients, but your inference that I have—er—er—You\'re positively insulting, sir!"

Slyne laughed, in better humour. "Bah!" said he. "What\'s the use of bluffing? You weren\'t going to blow out your brains—if any—because you had been too honest, were you?"

"I\'m a desperate man," declared Mr. Jobling, thus rudely reminded of the matter in hand. "Life isn\'t worth living, now that I\'ve lost—" He gulped and gasped, once more on the verge of tears, but a furtive glance at Slyne\'s impassive features, dimly visible in the glow of a half-smoked cigar, showed him he need not expect any excess of sympathy from that quarter. It also seemed to suggest to him, in the midst of his anguish of mind, an idea. He looked round at Slyne again.

"You\'re a man of wealth," he said in a husky voice whose suddenly inspired eagerness he could not conceal, and some spark of hope perhaps sprang up in his fainting heart again since Slyne did not deny that erroneous suggestion. Slyne was waiting to hear what more he might have to say, though not with any intention of helping him.

"I wonder—" the stout solicitor muttered. "It might interest you to—Two heads are better than one, and—Some sort of partnership—"

"I can only spare you five minutes more," said Slyne crisply. "As soon as I\'ve finished my cigar, I\'m going across to Ciro\'s for supper. The Marquis of Ingoldsby is expecting me."

"Do you know his lordship?" breathed Mr. Jobling, his new-born hope no doubt gaining strength and his respect for his chance companion obviously increased. "Then you\'ll understand me when I tell you that I\'ve ruined myself—ab-so-lutely ruined myself over the Jura succession."

"I haven\'t the least idea what the devil you\'re talking about," said Slyne.

Mr. Jobling groaned again. He was most grievously disappointed.

"I thought every one had heard of the case," he went on. "A couple of millions in cash—"

"Millions of what?" demanded Slyne with a little more lively interest.

"Pounds sterling," the London lawyer explained, rather testily. "A couple of millions in cash and forty or fifty thousand a year going a-begging may not seem a very important matter to a moneyed man like you, but I\'ve thought of nothing else, night and day, for the past five years, and—"

"I\'ve been all over the world for the past five years," mentioned Slyne loftily, but impatient now, "and the latest news of the parish pump has probably failed to reach me. Get on with your story, anyhow. If there\'s anything in it—I don\'t know but that I may be disposed to lend you a hand—if there\'s anything in it." And, having lighted a fresh cigar, he composed himself to listen. His time was his own. The chance of catching Lord Ingoldsby alone at Ciro\'s was too remote to be worth more than the passing thought. A story with so much money in it might prove at least as entertaining as a solitary supper.

Mr. Jobling gazed with glistening eyes at his providential acquaintance. "I\'ve told you what there is in it," said he in a tremulous tone. "A couple of millions in cash and forty or fifty thousand a year that will all ultimately fall to the Crown—unless I can find that girl, or—"

"What girl?" Slyne demanded irritably.

"The late Earl of Jura\'s daughter. You\'ll no doubt remember—But if you\'ve been abroad for so long, I\'d better repeat—" And, having got over his nervous prolixity, he became much more explicit.

"The late earl\'s first wife, as you must recall, sir, was Lady Eulalie Orlebarre. But she did not survive the birth of their only child, a son, in 1876.

"The earl married again, in \'94. His second wife was Josceline Beljambes, the famous dancer. A daughter was born to them. But they separated, by mutual agreement, only a year or two later, and the countess retained custody of her daughter. The earl was a good deal older than she.

"She was a very restless, erratic woman, and fond of travel. In \'99 she disappeared most mysteriously, somewhere abroad, and has never been heard of since.

"The following year, Lord St. Just, the earl\'s son by his first wife and, of course, his heir, was found dead one day at the foot of the cliffs near Loquhariot, the family seat in Scotland. He had grown up a very headstrong, troublesome lad, I have heard. There was some suspicion of foul play on the part of one of the gamekeepers on the estate—some scandalous story about a girl in the village—but the coroner\'s jury returned an open verdict.

"The earl himself died in 1906, a little more than five years ago. The estates fell into Chancery. And ever since I\'ve been trying to trace his second wife—or their child............