He knew that Clinton Kendale would stop at nothing to gain his end, and his agony at the thought that he might be unable to prevent it in time almost drove him to the verge of madness.

He felt that they would hold him there until they tortured from him whatever secret he held which they wished to learn; then they would deliberately make away with him.  Clinton Kendale would step into his place, personating himself so cleverly that the great world, under whose very eyes the terrible tragedy had taken place, would never know the difference.  Even Faynie would not know how she had been tricked and cheated, and the last thought almost drove him to the point of frenzy, nearly succeeding in turning his tortured brain.

CHAPTER XIV.

“You are our prisoner!”

For hours Lester Armstrong lay like one stunned, turning over and over in his mind the awful revelation he had heard.  That a human being, especially his cousin, Clinton Kendale, should have plotted so horribly against him seemed almost past believing.  Then he remembered how treacherous he had been in his early days, and he wondered that he had been so mad as to have trusted him.

“Heaven save my darling from him!” he cried out in an agony too great for words.  To realize that she was in the mercy of such a man was a sorrow so great that all else on earth paled before it.  Then a mighty resolve came to him—­to foil the villainous plot, weak though he was; he must make his escape and fly to his darling’s aid.

He knew that Clinton Kendale would follow out his line of action, keeping him there as long as it was necessary—­that is, until he learned all the secrets that he was so anxious to ascertain—­then he would put him out of the way with as little compunction as he would a dog.  He might expect little mercy at Kendale’s hands, when two fortunes and a beautiful young girl hung in the balance.

For hours he lay there, turning the matter over in his mind.  He knew he was terribly weak from the awful fall which he had received, and which had hurt his head the second time in almost the same place; but escape he must from the clutches of the conspirators, even though he were dying.

Suddenly the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Kendale entered, bearing a lighted candle in his hand.

“Ah, you have come to, have you?” he remarked, seeing the other’s eyes turn toward him; and before Lester Armstrong could answer he went on quickly:  “You are the only one who knows the combination which opens the safe of the late Marsh & Co., and as I intend to open it to-morrow morning at the usual hour in place of your punctual self, it will be most necessary for you to give me the required information.”

For one moment Lester Armstrong gazed steadily into the face of the fiend incarnate before him—­a look before which the other quailed despite his apparent bravado.