For this was how he took it in the end:  Calabressa was whimsical, fantastic, mysterious; he had been playing with the notion that Brand had been entrapped into this service; he had succeeded in showing himself how it might have been done.  The worst of it was—­had he been putting vain hopes into the mind of Natalie?  Was this the cause of her message?  In the midst of all this bewildering uncertainty, Brand set himself to the work left unfinished by Reitzei, and found Ferdinand Lind as pleasant and friendly a colleague as ever.

But a few days after he was startled by being summoned back to Lisle Street, after he had gone home in the afternoon.  He found Ferdinand Lind as calm and collected as usual, though he spoke in a hard, dry voice.  He was then informed that Lind himself and Beratinsky were about to leave London for a time; that the Council wished Brand to conduct the business at Lisle Street as best he could in their absence; and that he was to summon to his aid such of the officers of the Society as he chose.  He asked no explanations, and Lind vouchsafed none.  There was something unusual in the expression of the man’s face.

Well, Brand installed himself in Lisle Street, and got along as best he could with the assistance of Gathorne Edwards and one or two others.  But not one of them, any more than himself, knew what had happened or was happening.  No word or message of any kind came from Calabressa, or Lind, or the Society, or any one.  Day after day Brand get through his work with patience, but without interest; only for the time being, these necessities of the hour beguiled him from thinking of the hideous, inevitable thing that lay ahead in his life.

When news did come, it was sudden and terrible.  One night he and Edwards were alone in the rooms in Lisle Street, when a letter, sent through a roundabout channel, was put into his hands.  He opened it carelessly, glanced at the beginning of it, then he uttered an exclamation; then, as he read on, Edwards noticed that his companion’s face was ghastly pale, even to his lips.

“Gracious heavens!—­Edwards, read it!” he said, quite breathlessly.  He dropped the letter on the table.  There was no wild joy at his own deliverance in this man’s face, there was terror rather; it was not of himself at all he was thinking, but of the death-agony of Natalie Lind when she should hear of her father’s doom.

“Why, this is very good news, Brand,” Edwards cried, wondering.  “You are released from that affair—­”

But then he read farther, and he, too, became agitated.

“What—­what does it mean?  Lind, Beratinsky, Reitzei accused of conspiracy—­misusing the powers intrusted to them as officers of the Society—­Reitzei acquitted on giving evidence—­Lind and Beratinsky condemned!”

Edwards looked at his companion, aghast, and said,

“You know what the penalty is, Brand?”

The other nodded.  Edwards returned to the letter, reading aloud, in detached scraps, his voice giving evidence of his astonishment and dismay.