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 reveal the details of the experiments which you and Teddy were making at Gunnersbury. But I refused. Ah! how that hell-fiend tortured me day after day!

She nearly drove me mad by those fearful ordeals which, in a hundred ways, she put upon me—always promising to release me if I would but reveal details of what we had discovered. But I refused—refused always, Claude—because I knew that she was an enemy, and victory must be ours if I remained silent. Days—those terrible days—passed—so many that I lost count of them—yet I knew that the woman with the cruel eyes of a leopard had dosed me with some drug that sapped my senses, and she held me irrevocably in her power, prompted no doubt by somebody who meant to work evil also upon you. In the end I must have lost my reason. I think she must have given me certain drugs in order to confuse me as to the past. Then, one day, I found myself in the town of Grantham, inquiring for the station. I was in a maid's clothes, and in them I eventually returned to you. And you—Claude—you know all the rest.' And she burst into a torrent of tears.

'Yes,' I said slowly. 'And that blackguard Lionel Eastwell is the man who has directed all this intricate and dastardly intrigue against us.'

Then I took my love into my arms, and pressing her to me, soothed her tears with my passionate kisses.

What she had revealed to me amazed me.

In the evening, just after the Sunday-night supper,