"It was stolen," Tallente replied, "by my secretary, Anthony Palliser,
who disappeared with it one night in August."

"'Disappeared' seems rather a vague term," Horlock remarked.

"A trifle melodramatic, I admit," Tallente assented. "So were the
circumstances of his--disappearance. I can assure you that I have had
the police inspector of fiction asking me curious questions and I am
convinced that down in Devonshire I am still an object of suspicion to
the local gossips."

"I remember reading about the affair at the time," Horlock remarked, as
he unlocked the door. "It never occurred to me, though, to connect it
with anything of this sort. Surely Palliser was a cut above the
ordinary blackmailer?"

Tallente shrugged his shoulders. "A confusion of ethics," he said. "I
dare say you remember that the young man conspired with my wife to boost
me into a peerage behind my back However!--"

"One last word, Tallente," Horlock interrupted. "I am not at liberty to
tell you from what source the offer as to your article came, but I can
tell you this--Palliser was not or did not appear to be connected with
it in any way."

"But I know who was," Tallente exclaimed, with a sudden lightning-like
recollection of that meeting on the railway platform at Woody
Bay.--"Miller!"

Horlock made no answer. To his visitor, however, the whole affair was