church, but Tom’s benefactor that they followed back to Avenue Lodge. Did Daintree know who had committed the murder, and was that the secret of his belief in Tom? Inconceivable; but the document? Tom turned it over in his hand, and the address on the missive came uppermost. It began—Nicholas Harding, Esquire, M.P.
This name plunged Tom in a vortex of new suspicions; it neither recalled the bride as such, nor the marriage, nor the ring. Yet the clock stared him in the face, the short hand almost on the eleven, the long hand rapidly overtaking the short. It was ticking loud enough for dead of night; he both saw the time and heard it flying. But he had forgotten his errand: he could prove his innocence at last. Suddenly there was a groan, then a movement behind him, and as he wheeled round the man in the mask sat up.
“Ha!” said Tom. “So it was you who followed my master from the bank, and tried to break into his desk last night! You’ve succeeded a bit too late. My master’s got his money in his pocket—and he isn’t here!”
With these words Tom remembered where his master was, but only for an instant: small eyes were glinting through the mask, and the crumbling teeth showed again in a contemptuous grin.
“I ain’t after ’is money,” said a harsh high voice.
“What then?”
“What you’ve got in your ’and.”
“This!” cried Tom. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Wyeth. I’m a lag, same as you.”
“Let me see your face.”
Again that grin below the mask, ere it was whipped off, and Tom’s eyes lit upon a horrible face horribly disfigured. It was perfectly flat; disease had razed the
