“I unmasked him once, as a thief and a swindler, and he swore to be avenged,” said the Baronet in a bitter voice.  “It was long ago.  He came to me in London and offered me a concession which he said he had obtained from the Ottoman Government for the construction of a railroad from Smyrna to the Bosphorus.  The documents appeared to be all right and in order, and after some negotiations he sold the concession to me and received ten thousand pounds in cash of the purchase-money in advance.  A week afterwards I discovered that, though the concession had been granted by the Minister of Public Works at the Sublime Porte, it had been sold to the Eckmann Group in Vienna, and that the papers I held were merely copies with forged signatures and stamps.  I applied to the police, this man was arrested in Hamburg, and brought back to London, where he was tried, and, a previous conviction having been proved against him, sent to penal servitude for seven years.  In the dock at the Old Bailey he swore to be avenged upon me and upon my family.”

“And he seems to have kept his word,” Walter remarked.

“When he came out of prison he found me in the zenith of my political career,” Sir Henry went on.  “On that well-remembered night of my speech at the Albert Hall I can only surmise that he went there, heard me, and probably became fiercely resentful that he had found a man cleverer than himself.  The fact remains that he must have gone in a cab in front of my carriage to Park Street, alighted before me, and secreted himself within the portico.  It was midnight, and the street was deserted.  My carriage stopped, I got out, and it then drove on to the mews.  I was in the act of opening the door with my latch-key when, by an unknown hand, there was flung full into my eyes some corrosive fluid which burned terribly, and caused me excruciating pain.  I heard a man’s exultant voice cry, ‘There!  I promised you that, and you have it!’ The voice I recognised as that of the blackguard standing before you.  Since that moment,” he added in a blank, hoarse voice, “I have been totally blind!”

“You got me seven years!” cried the foreigner with a harsh laugh, “so think yourself very lucky that I didn’t kill you.”

“You placed upon me an affliction, a perpetual darkness, that to a man like myself is almost akin to death,” replied his accuser very gravely.  “Secure from recognition, you wormed yourself into the confidence of my wife, for you were bent upon ruining her also; and you took as partner in your schemes that needy adventurer Flockart.  I now see it all quite plainly.  Hamilton had recognised you as Gerlach, and you therefore formed a plot to get rid of him and throw the crime upon my poor unfortunate daughter, even though she was scarcely more than a child.  In all probability, Lady Heyburn, in telling the girl the story regarding Murie and Miss Bryant, believed it, and if so she would also suspect my daughter to be the actual criminal.”