What hitch could have occurred?

Nearly an hour went by when Rutherford went out and telephoned to the Towers, only to receive an astounding reply from Purcell Sandys himself, who said:

"My daughter Elma was married to Roderick Homfray by special licence in London this morning, and they are already on their way to the Continent on their honeymoon."

The crook stood dumbfounded for a second. Then, uttering a shriek of rage, he banged down the receiver, called Harrison, and they both drove rapidly away in the car together.

A trap for them had already been set, for as the car entered Haslemere four constables attempted to hold it up. Gray, seeing this, drew a revolver, fired three shots indiscriminately and dashed past.

Meanwhile Edna Manners was sitting with Mr Sandys, whose ward she was, relating to him a very remarkable story.

It concerned the death of her _fiance_, Hugh Willard.

"But," she said, "old Mr Homfray was, as you know, a friend of poor Hugh, and he was the only man who knew that Gordon Gray--the scoundrel whom you knew as Rutherford--and his accomplice, the woman Crisp, were the actual a.s.sa.s.sins. Mr Homfray had called upon him in Hyde Park Square on the night of the crime, and was actually in the house and saw the deed committed! The woman held poor Hugh down while the man injected something into his scalp by means of a hypodermic syringe. But Mr Homfray was too late to save him. I suspected that he was cognisant of these facts, but not until I had watched Freda Crisp enter the Rectory by stealth and listened in secret at the window and heard him threaten the woman with exposure did I know that he could clear up the mystery when he wished. But Gray held a secret of Mr Homfray's past.

When I had learnt the truth I slipped away in the wood, but was overtaken by Gray himself, and the next I saw was a bright red flash and then I lapsed into semi-consciousness. I shouted to somebody to save me. I have just a faint recollection of some man bending over me, and then I knew no more until my reason returned to me and I found myself living with the shoe-repairer and his wife in Bayeux."

"Then it is quite clear that Mr Homfray's son discovered you, but Gray, believing that he had seen you attacked, also attacked him."

"Yes," said the girl. "But there was evidently a yet deeper motive.

Gray knew that the rector held the secret of poor Mr Willard's death and, I think, feared lest he had disclosed it to his son. Poor Mr Homfray died mysteriously. Perhaps they actually killed him."

"To me it seems clear that the reason why young Homfray was not killed outright was because, knowing of the impending concession, they watched their opportunity to obtain it," said Mr Sandys. "Barclay received the very valuable plan of the mine, but it somehow fell into their hands,--a fact which was not discovered till a few days ago--and now I happily have it together with both concessions. At the hour of their triumph they confined Roddy in a place where they knew that a terrible death must sooner or later await him. Having swindled him out of his concession Gray hoped to marry Elma, first having cleverly entrapped Roddy and determined that the rising river should cause his death."

Of this curious sequence of strange and exciting adventures there remains little more to relate, save to say that during the time that Roddy and Elma were on their quiet, delightful honeymoon in Switzerland, Mr Sandys was busy at work on Roddy's original concession, while Andrew Barclay left for Morocco in order to get the original concession confirmed by the Sultan himself--which was done.

When the happy pair returned, they found that Mr Sandys was well forward in the retrieving of his lost fortune, for two other commercial ventures which he had regarded as failures had suddenly turned to be great successes--in one case a "boom." Therefore there was now little cause for anxiety.

A few months later Roddy and another expert engineer went out to the Wad Sus, and armed with the plan had but little difficulty in re-discovering the ancient workings, which were soon found to be extremely rich in emeralds of the best dark-green colour. Within a year Roddy Homfray, not only reaching the zenith of his happiness with Elma, had also become a comparatively rich man.

Of the criminals nothing was heard until about eight months after Elma's marriage, when the Paris Surete discovered that Gray, Porter and the woman Crisp were living in a fine villa near Dinard, and arrested them for the a.s.sa.s.sination in Paris, three years previously, of old Monsieur Jules Gournay, a banker living in the Avenue de Neuilly, whom the woman Crisp had previously robbed of a large sum of money.

Of this crime in March last, after a delay of over a year, Gordon Gray, alias Rex Rutherford and other names, was found guilty by the a.s.size Court of the Seine, held at Versailles, and duly sent to the guillotine, while both Porter and Freda Crisp were sent to penal servitude for life on the dreaded "Devil's Island," while nothing has since been heard of old Claribut, though a warrant is still out for his arrest.

All their cunningly devised schemes had been checkmated by "The Voice from the Void."