Chapter Twenty-nine

Dear Miss Smith,--I have been trying to get into communication with a Mr. John Wills, who is an assistant of mine, and possibly I have succeeded. But in case, by any mischance, my messages have failed to reach him, I should esteem it as a great favour if you would find him and hand him the enclosed, which is a duplicate of the instructions already posted. I think I have located Miss Reddle, and hope to have good news for you to-morrow. But I am dealing with a man for whose genius I have a profound respect. Miss Reddle is at Gallows Farm, near Whitcomb in Somerset, and, if you do not hear from me by telegram in the course of the day, it is extremely likely that I shall also be there--against my will. I have calculated every contingency; foreseen, I think, most of the possibilities, but there is always a big chance that I may not be as clever as I think I am! Will you therefore remain all day at Charlotte Street? I suggest that you should ask your employer, Mr. Shaddles, to let you off for the day, and, if necessary, show him this letter. He may remember me by name; I met him many years ago.

Yours very truly, Michael Dorn.

The words, “If necessary, show him this letter,” were heavily underlined.

The letter had come by special delivery, a red express label on the face, and the postmark was a town in Somersetshire. Lizzy Smith read it three times, once to master the calligraphy, once to understand it, and once out of sheer enjoyment, for she felt more important with each reading; though it struck her as humorous that Michael Dorn should, in his most extravagant mood, imagine that her flinty-faced employer would grant her leave of absence on the strength of a meeting which he must long since have forgotten and would most certainly disclaim.

The news was too vital to be kept to herself, and she took the letter down to old Mr. Mackenzie, and found him engaged in fitting a new string to his violin.

“Wore it out last night, I should think,” said Lizzy, not unkindly. “I heard you tuning and tuning.”

“Tuning!” said old Mackenzie in surprise. “I was no’ tuning, young lady. Perhaps, to the ear of one who is not acquainted with the peculiar qualities of classical music, it may have sounded that way. I was playing the aria from _Samson and Delilah_. ’Tis a bonny piece.”

He pulled on his spectacles from his forehead, and took the letter from her hand.

“You would like me to read this?” he asked, and when she nodded, he followed the quaint crabbed writing line by line. “It seems very good news,” he said. “Will Miss Reddle be back to-night?”

Lizzy sighed impatiently. It was the sort of question he would ask.

“How do I know whether she’ll be back to-night?” She was annoyed that he was not as impressed as she had expected. “She may not be back at all! Don’t you understand anything you can’t play on your fiddle, Mr. Mackenzie? She may be in the power of this Gallows man! The whole thing now depends on me. Mike understands human nature, and when he got into trouble naturally his mind flew to Elizabetta Smith. That man has got experience.”

“Naturally,” murmured Mr. Mackenzie.

“Now the thing is,” considered Lizzy, her face wearing a frown of profoundest thought, “shall I try to find this fellow Wills first, or shall I go to the office?”

“You might telephone to Mr. Dorn’s flat,” suggested the old man helpfully, and Lizzy was irritated that that simple solution had not occurred to her.

On her way to the office she stopped at the first telephone booth and called Michael’s number, and after a long wait was told there was no answer. The news pleased her rather than otherwise, for the responsibility, vague as it was, gave her a pleasing sense that she was intimately associated with great happenings, though she looked forward with trepidation to her meeting with old Shaddles. That he would grant her the day was a forlorn hope. Much more likely he would point his skinny finger to the door and order her from his room. Nevertheless, though she sacrificed her livelihood, she was determined to be on hand in case her services were required--though what she could do, and in what capacity she could act, she did not trouble to consider.

Before she reached the office she had created three alternative excuses, none of which unfortunately had any relation to the other. Happily she was only called upon to produce two.

Mr. Shaddles had arrived before her; he was invariably the first-comer and generally the last leaver. Without taking off her hat, she knocked at the glass panel, and when his gruff “Come in!” reached her she all but abandoned the interview. He scowled at her as she came in, noted her coat and her hat.

“Well, what is the matter? Why aren’t you at your work? You’re five minutes late as it is!” he demanded.

Lizzy rested her hand lightly on his desk, and in her most genteel voice began:

“Mr. Shaddles, I’m sorry to ask you, but, owing to a family bereavement, I should like the day off.”

“Who’s dead?” he growled.

“An aunt,” she said, and added: “On my mother’s side.”

“Aunts are nothing,” said the old man, and waved her to the door. “Uncles are nothing either. Can’t spare you. What do you want to go to funerals for?”

“Well, the real truth is,” said the disconcerted Lizzy, and produced the letter, “I’ve had this!”

He took the message with apparent reluctance and read it through with typical care. He sat for a long time, and she thought he was searching for misspelt words--a horrible practice of his.

“There is nothing about your aunt in this,” snarled Mr. Shaddles.

“Mr. Dorn has been more than an aunt to me,” said Lizzy with dignity. “It is my pet name for him. And if he’s not dead, he may very well be.”

He looked out of the window, scratched his rough chin angrily, then glared round at her.

“You can have the day,” he said, and she nearly dropped with amazement.

Murmuring her incoherent thanks, she was making for the door.

“Wait.”

He put his hand in his pocket, laid a note-case on the table, and took out three bank-notes.

“You may not want these,” he said; “I cannot conceive that you will, but you may. I shall require you to give me a very full account of any expenses you incur. If you need a car, hire one from the Bluelight Company--they are clients of ours, and they allow me a rebate.”

Like a woman in a dream, Lizzy staggered out the office. Each note was for £20. She had no idea there was so much money in the world.

She did not answer the clerk whom she passed on the stairs, and had not wholly recovered by the time she reached Hiles Mansions. Mr. Dorn was not in, the liftman told her unnecessarily; and Mr. Wills had not called since the previous day. Lizzy went out into the Brompton Road, called a taxicab magnificently, and, reaching Charlotte Street, discovered she had only sufficient loose cash to pay the fare.

Such a tremendous happening could not be reserved to herself, and she took Mr. Mackenzie into her confidence.

“Shaddles is a grand man,” said Mackenzie soberly, “a big-hearted fellow.”

Lizzy shook her head.

“I don’t know whether I shall get into trouble with the police for taking this money from the poor old man,” she said. “He has been strange for a long time: I’ve seen this coming on for days. When he raised Lois Reddle’s salary to three pounds a week I knew something else would happen.” She looked at the three notes in awe. “They get like that when they’re about ninety,” she said. And then a great inspiration came to her--so daring, so tremendous, that it left her gasping.

Borrowing some loose change from the old man, she dashed down to the telephone box from which she had called Hiles Mansions and gave Lady Moron’s number. The footman who answered her told her that her ladyship was in bed.

“Oh, pray don’t trouble,” said Lizzy in an exaggerated tone. “Will you ask his lordship to hop along?”

“To what, madam?”

“To speak to me,” corrected Lizzy.

“What name shall I give him?”

“Tell him the Lady Elizabetta,” said Lizzy, and lolled languidly against the cork-lined ’phone box as she would have lolled had she been a person of title.

She had to wait for some time before his lordship, who was sound asleep at that hour, could be aroused and sufficiently interested in the caller to come down to the drawing-room, where there was a telephone extension.

“Hullo?” he asked feebly. “Good morning and all that! Sorry I didn’t catch your name.”

“It’s Miss Smith,” said Lizzy in a hushed voice, and she heard Selwyn gasp.

“Really? Not really? I say, there’s been an awful bother here! Everything’s at sixes and sevens, and all that sort of thing. That beastly bounder, Chesney Praye--you remember the fellow--bird of prey, what?” (Even Lizzy could not laugh at that hour in the morning.) “Well, he’s in the library with her ladyship!”

“Listen--Selwyn!” She had to summon all her courage to voice this familiarity. “Can you see me? You know where I live--you were coming to dinner to-night; but I want you to come before. There’s something I want to see you about, something--well, I can’t describe it.”

“Certainly,” he interrupted. “I’ll come right along. I’m supposed to go to the South Kensington Museum to see some models, but---- All right, colonel, thank you very much for calling!”

The tone was louder and more formal. Lizzy, not unused to such innocent acts of deception, guessed that a servant or his mother had come into the drawing-room.

She went back to her lodging with a feeling of exaltation. Not only had she secured the aid of a member of the aristocracy, but she had also, with great daring, and exercising a woman’s privilege, addressed him by a name which, to say the least, was intimate. She confided to Mr. Mackenzie, with an air of nonchalance, that she was expecting Lord Moron to call upon her, and he was impressed to a gratifying extent.

“I told him to drop in--I know him rather well.” Lizzy flicked a speck of dust from her skirt with a fine air.

“Is that so?” he asked, looking at her in wonder. “Well now, I never thought that one of the Morons would ever do me the honour of entering my house! They’re a fine family, a handsome family. I remember the old earl: he frequently came to the theatre, though not, I fear, in the most presentable condition.”

Miss Lizzy Smith was not interested in the old earl. She was, however, immensely absorbed in the new one; and when Lord Moron’s taxicab pulled up at the side-walk she was at the door to admit him.

“I say, what an awfully jolly kitchen!” he said, looking round at a room of which even Lizzy was not particularly proud.

“I wouldn’t have asked your lordship here----” she began.

“I say, don’t give us any of that ‘lordship’ stuff,” he pleaded. “I’m Selwyn to my friends. That’s a wonderful frying-pan: did you make it?”

Lizzy disclaimed responsibility. But he had his views, apparently, upon culinary apparatus, had invented an electric chafing-dish, and had plans for a coke oven. Until then she had not known that coke was ever cooked.

“I’ve often thought I’d like to run away from this awful ‘my-lording’ and do some work. I’ve got a bit of money of my own that even her ladyship can’t touch--and you can bet your life that it’s pretty well tied up, old thing, if she and the bird of prey can’t get their hooks into it!”

He was delightfully, restfully vulgar, and Lizzy who only knew this much about electricity, that lamps light up when you turn a switch, without exactly understanding why, could have listened for hours to schemes which might even have interested an engineer. But she had the letter to discuss.

He read it through, and, by stopping at every other line and asking for explanations, understood the gist of it. She had noticed before how, on really important matters, Selwyn had quite intelligent views; and that he was no fool she discovered later in the day, when he confided to her that he had countered his mother’s veiled threats of getting him certified as mentally incompetent to deal with his estate, by making a visit to three Harley Street alienists in consultation, and procuring from them a most flattering tribute to his mentality.

“I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said, as he handed the letter back. And then, answering her pained look: “Yes, I understand the letter, but I mean all these accidents and things--old Braime dropping dead, or something, in the library. Madam is my mother, and I suppose I ought not to loathe her. But she’s fearfully devilish, Miss Smith, fearfully devilish!”

He fingered the red seam on his cheek tenderly.

“You can never be sure what she’s up to, and since that bounder Praye and that awful boozy doctor have been around the house she’s been queerer than ever. Do you know what she told me once? She said that if she thought she’d be any happier by me being dead I’d be dead to-morrow--those were her very words! Dead to-morrow, dear old Lizzy! Isn’t it positively fearful?”

“What a lady!” said Lizzy. “You’ve heard nothing at the house about this business--I mean Gallows Farm?”

He shook his head.

“They never talk in front of me. But _something’s_ happening: I’m sure of that! That chap Chesney has been in with her ladyship since eight o’clock this morning--they told you she was in bed--well, she wasn’t: she was in the library. And the telephone seems to have been ringing all night. I say, what do you think of that detective johnny putting the young lady in gaol? A bit thick, what? I meant to have a few words with him the other morning.”

“He did it for a very good reason,” said Lizzy mysteriously. “I can’t tell you everything, Selwyn; one day you will know the truth, but at the present moment I’m not at liberty to talk.”

“Nobody seems to be at liberty to tell me anything,” said the dismal man. “But what’s the idea of that letter? Somebody’s got her in that place with a fearful name!” He slapped his side. “Tappatt--the chap who worries the wine! You know this fellow--the perfectly horrible doctor! I’ll bet he’s the perfectly awful villain of the piece! He hasn’t been near the house for days, and he had been sleuthing round Chester Square a lot lately. And”--he slapped his knee again--“and there was a trunk call came through from the country last night! I was in the hall when the bell rang, and I’m sure he was the johnny who called. He asked for her ladyship. Gallows Farm: that’s the place he lives!”

Suddenly he jumped up, his eyes bright with excitement.

“She’s there--I’ll bet a million pounds to a strawberry ice! Gallows Farm, Somerset.” He tapped his forehead. “I signed a paper about that, I’ll swear! It is one of the job lots her ladyship bought two or three years ago, or one of her bailiffs bought. She is always buying old properties and selling ’em at a profit. And I know old stick-in-the-mud has got a home somewhere--Tappatt, I mean--because her ladyship said she’d send me there if I wasn’t jolly careful. That rosy-nosed hound has got Miss Reddle!”

They looked at one another in silence.

“You’re a detective, Selwyn!” she breathed ecstatically, and he pulled at his moustache.

“I’m pretty smart at some things--what about a rescue?” said his lordship suddenly.

“A what?” Lizzy’s heart beat faster.

“A rescue,” he nodded. “What about hopping down into Somerset, seeing old stick-in-the-mud, and saying: ‘Look here, old top, this sort of thing can’t be tolerated in civilised society. Hand over Miss Reddle or you’ll get into serious trouble’?”

Lizzy’s enthusiasm died down.

“I don’t think that would make much difference to him,” she said. “And it would be unnecessary, Selwyn; if Michael Dorn is there she will be released this afternoon.”

Selwyn was disappointed.

“Besides,” Lizzy went on, “what would her ladyship say if you were away all day?”

“Blow her ladyship!” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve had enough of her ladyship--I have really. I’ve made up my mind that I’m through with Chester Square, and I’ve got my eye on a dinky little flat in Knightsbridge,” he said rapidly. “I feel it is time I asserted myself. My idea is to live incognito. I’m going to call myself Mr. Smith----”

“Indeed?” said Lizzy coldly.

“It’s a pretty good name. Anyway, Brown is as good.” He amended his plans in some haste. “Now what about a little bit of lunch somewhere?”

An hour later Lizzy went dizzily into the great dining-room of the Ritz-Carlton, and Lady Moron, entertaining a guest at a corner table, looked at her through her lorgnettes and shrugged her large shoulders.

“Selwyn is sowing his wild oats rather late in life,” she said, and Chesney Praye, who had returned from Paris that morning, was mildly amused.

Chapter Thirty

Though she could remember one or two uncomfortable days in her life, Lois Reddle could not recall one that bore any comparison with the twenty hours that followed her departure from Gallows Farm. She had been awakened by the woman at some unknown hour in the middle of the night, ordered to dress and come downstairs. The first order was easy to obey, for she had not taken off her clothes. When she came down into the passage she found the doctor waiting for her. He was wearing his heaviest overcoat, and carried a thick stick, and was testing a flash-lamp as she joined him.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, as he led her across the yard to the accompaniment of the savage chorus of the dogs.

“You’ll find out in good time,” was the unpromising reply. “I don’t want you to ask questions or to speak until I tell you. After you leave this house you are to be silent--understand that?”

They mounted the gentle slope of the downs and presently descended into a valley on the other side. Although the moon was obscured, there was sufficient light to enable her to pick her way across the rough ground and to dispense with the arm he offered her. Once they made a wide detour to avoid a marshy patch, and once he had to help her through a fence of hawthorn. Ahead of them was a dark line of trees, which was on the estate. He told her there were twelve hundred acres of land attached to the farm, only a small portion of which had been sub-let, and none of which was under cultivation.

“It is poor land, anyway--most of this downland is. That is Gallows Wood,” he said, indicating the trees ahead. “The farm takes its name from the wood. There used to be a gallows on the crest of the hill years ago. Not scared, are you?”

He chuckled when she answered “No.”

After a while they struck a rough track which led into the heart of the copse, and now for the first time he produced the flash-lamp; a necessary precaution, for the path was overgrown and difficult to follow. Although her voice was steady and her attitude one of sublime confidence, Lois was inwardly quaking. There was something very ominous in this move. Yet it was not the fear of what would happen in the wood that frightened her. She guessed that the doctor was moving her from the farm because he expected the return of Michael Dorn. She dreaded only this; that Michael would search the house and be satisfied that she was not there. Would the doctor move the grey-haired woman too, she wondered? After ten minutes’ walk he stopped, and she thought he had lost the way, until the light of his lamp revealed a small stone cottage, standing back from the path and almost hidden by trees and undergrowth. This, then, was the new prison, she thought.

“Hold this light,” he ordered, and she obeyed, whilst he tried key after key in the lock.

After a while the door swung open and he went in, turning his head to see that she was coming after. The floor was thick with dust; the only furniture in the room into which he invited her was an old backless chair. On one of the walls was a yellow almanac for the year 1913, and probably the house had not been occupied since then.

“You’ll stay here and keep quiet. There will be light in a few hours. If you want anything, ask Mrs. Rooks--she will be here presently.”

He went out, but did not lock the door; she found afterwards that it was lacking in this appendage. Followed half an hour’s wait, and then she heard footsteps in the hall, heard another door open, and a mutter of conversation. Something dropped with a thud on the passage, and for a second Lois’ heart came into her mouth. But it seemed that Mrs. Rooks, who, she guessed, was the sallow-faced woman, had come heavily laden, for the sound of her complaining reached the girl. Evidently she had brought the provisions necessary for the party--the weight of them was not very promising, and Tappatt was seemingly prepared for a long stay.

“Nearly broke my back,” she grumbled. “Why couldn’t she carry it, doctor?”

Lois crept nearer to the door and listened, hoping to hear something that would confirm her theory that she was being hidden because the doctor expected a return visit from Michael Dorn.

“Get a chair from the other room,” she heard him growl. “What are you making all this fuss about? It is no worse for you than for me. This isn’t the first time you’ve sat up all night, is it?”

“I don’t see why you should take all this trouble,” grumbled the woman. “He’ll not come back again, and, if he did, what’s to stop him coming into the wood?”

“He will come back--you need have no doubt about that. I know the man. And you can make your mind easy about his finding them. He isn’t likely to search every copse in the neighbourhood.”

A few minutes later the front door slammed as he went out, and she heard the woman grumbling to herself. She was sitting within a few feet of the door, and could hear every sound and move in the bare room. To open the window might be possible, but to do so without her hearing was a hopeless impossibility.

Soon after daybreak Mrs. Rooks took her into the kitchen, and, passing the room which held the second prisoner, Lois saw that there was a key in that door. If the conditions were the same in the other prison room it was as impossible for the unknown woman to escape. Who was she, she wondered? Some poor creature, perhaps, who had been entrusted by her friends to the tender mercy of Dr. Tappatt. Her heart ached for the woman, and in her pity she forgot her own danger and discomfort.

Throughout the long and weary day that followed she saw no sign of any human being. The wood was situate on a private estate, and the overgrown condition of the path had told her that it was not frequented even by those who had authority to cross the land. From the windows she could see only the trunks of beeches and the green tracery of leaves. The oppressive loneliness told even upon the uncommunicative Mrs. Rooks, who must have been unused to a solitary life, for that afternoon she came into the room where Lois was sitting. Lois had opportunity for studying her. She must have been in the region of fifty, a harsh, sour-faced woman, with a grievance against the world and its people.

“It’s so pesky quiet that I should go off my head if I was here long,” she complained.

Lois wondered if she could make the woman talk about other things than the loneliness of the wood.

“Have you been in England a long time?” she asked.

Mrs. Rooks had to master her natural repugnance to gossip before she spoke.

“Only two years. We were in India before then. I don’t know what that has got to do with you, anyway.”

“I heard you call your dogs by Indian names. ‘Mali’ means money, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t you ask questions, young lady,” said the woman. “You behave yourself, and you won’t be badly treated. Act the fool, and you’ll----” She nodded significantly. “Of course ‘Mali’ means money. Do you _mallum_ the _bat_?”

Lois shook her head smilingly. She guessed that she was being asked if she spoke or understood Hindustani.

“Why am I kept here--can you tell me that?”

“Because you’re not right in your head.” The reply would have driven Lois to a fury, but she had already guessed the excuse that would be made for her detention. “You’ve been hearing things and seeing things. An’ people who hear things, voices an’ all that, are batty.”

Lois laughed quietly.

“You know that I am not mad, Mrs. Rooks.”

“Nobody thinks they are mad,” said Mrs. Rooks alarmingly. “That’s one of the symptoms. The minute a person thinks she’s sane, she’s mad! The doctor knows: he’s the cleverest man in the world.”

She glanced back at the open door. Lois heard a steady echo of footsteps, as though somebody was pacing the floor.

“Who is in the other room?” she asked, without expecting any very satisfactory reply.

“A woman--she’s nutty.”

“I thought I saw her the other evening,” said the girl with affected carelessness. “Weren’t you--talking to her in the yard?”

The woman’s shrewd eyes looked her up and down.

“You saw me quieting her with the whip. She gets fresh sometimes--most of ’em do. You will too.” Lois shuddered at this ominous prophecy. “Bless you, they don’t mind a licking! Lunatics ain’t human beings anyway, they’re just animals, the doctor says, and you’ve got to treat ’em like animals. That’s the only kind of treatment they understand.”

Lois tried to veil her horror and disgust and felt that she had not wholly succeeded.

“I hope you will not treat me like an animal,” she said, and Mrs. Rooks sniffed.

“If you behave yourself, you’ll be treated well. All nutty people have a good time if they don’t get fresh and obstrepulous. That’s the doctor’s way.”

It was clear to Lois that, whatever faults this woman might have, however brutal she might be, she had accepted without any question any diagnosis that the doctor might make. To Mrs. Rooks she was crazy, just as was the other woman. And if she became “obstrepulous” she would be served in the same way.

“Why did you call her a gaolbird?”

Again that shrewd, suspicious scrutiny.

“I call her lots of things,” said Mrs. Rooks indifferently. “If you hadn’t been spying you wouldn’t have heard. Names don’t hurt anybody. They’re better than the whip anyway--did you know that man that came last night?”

“Mr. Dorn?”

“Yes, who is he?”

“He’s a police officer,” said Lois.

The effect of the words upon the woman was unexpected. Her sallow skin became a pasty white.

“A detective!”

Lois nodded, and Mrs. Rooks’ face cleared.

“That’s part of your crazy ideas,” she said calmly. “He is a man the doctor owes money to. I know, because the doctor told me. The doctor’s been in difficulties, and he’s not the kind of man who’d have any trouble with the police. They told a lot of lies about him in India, but he’s a good man, the best man in the world.”

And then a thought struck Lois, and she asked:

“What is supposed to be my delusion?”

Mrs. Rooks shot a cunning glance at the girl.

“I’m surprised at you asking that, young lady! You think you’re somebody who you’re not!”

Lois frowned.

“You mean I am under the impression that I am somebody important?”

Mrs. Rooks nodded.

“Yes--you think you’re the Countess of Moron!” she said.

Chapter Thirty-one

Lois could hardly believe her ears.

“Me?” she said in amazement. “I think I am the Countess of Moron? How absurd! I think nothing of the kind!”

“Yes, you do,” nodded Mrs. Rooks. “The doctor said you think you’re the countess. You tried to murder Lady Moron because you wanted the title!”

The suggestion was so ludicrous that Lois laughed.

“How ridiculous! Such an idea has never entered my head. Lady Moron! Why, I am a secretary--where did you hear this?”

“The doctor told me,” said the woman stubbornly. “He never tells lies--except to people he owes money to, but that’s natural, ain’t it?”

She went out of the room soon after and was gone for half an hour, apparently attending to the needs of the other prisoner, for when she came back she had something to say about discontented people.

“She’s had all she wants to eat and all she wants to drink and still she’s not satisfied. That shows she’s mad. I never knew a crazy woman that was satisfied.”

Lois thought it was a weakness, not entirely confined to the crazy.

“When are we leaving here?”

“I don’t know--to-night I guess,” said the other, vaguely. “Anyway, the doctor will be here to take my place and I’ll get some sleep. I’m nearly dead.”

Mrs. Rooks was not disposed for further conversation and as the day progressed she grew more taciturn and irritable. When night fell, she seemed to be spending her time either at the door of the cottage or outside. Lois heard her walking under her window, talking to herself. She was dozing in her chair when she heard the doctor’s voice and was instantly wide awake.

“You take the other, I’ll bring this one along. You can leave all the truck here. We may want to come back. I don’t think it is likely, but we may.”

The room was in darkness when he came stamping in and flashed his lamp upon her.

“You’ve had an uncomfortable day, but you’ve got your friend to blame,” he said. “You’ll be able to sleep to-night in your own bed, which is more than he will do!”

She did not answer him; the reference to Michael’s bed was too cryptic to follow.

“Clever fellow, Dorn, eh? Brilliant detective? He’s got all his wits about him, don’t you think?”

Still she did not answer.

“Oh yes, he’s clever,” said Tappatt. He was in a cheerful, almost a rollicking mood, and she guessed with a sinking heart that if Michael Dorn had come back, he had been outwitted. “Look at this.” He flashed his lamp on an object which lay in his palm. It was a heavy-calibred automatic pistol and she uttered an “Oh!” of surprise.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you, my girl. We don’t kill people, we cure ’em! That is what they are here for.”

As he patted her shoulder, she shrank back from him.

“No, I wanted to show you that, because it is Dorn’s. I took it away from him as easily as you might take money from a child. I just took it out of his pocket and he said nothing! And he’s clever.”

“Is he dead?” she asked, and the question tickled him.

“No, he’s not dead,” he said jovially. “Nothing so dramatic. I don’t kill people, I tell you. I cure ’em! He’s cured! The mania for investigation has been entirely eradicated!”

Mrs. Rooks and her prisoner had, by this time, left the house. Lois heard them swishing through the undergrowth and saw a momentary flicker of light through the window, as the old woman sought for the path.

“We’ll give them a start,” said the doctor, “and then we’ll follow them. Rooks is slow; getting old, I guess.”

“Who is the other woman?”

“A patient of mine,” said the doctor casually. “She’s got some strange delusions.”

“Why did you tell Mrs. Rooks that I was mad?”

“Because you are,” was the calm reply. “I have diagnosed you as suffering from delusions, with suicidal tendencies. And my diagnosis has never been questioned, my dear. And now, if you’re ready----?”

“Why do you say that I think I’m the Countess of Moron?”

“Because you do! I’ve put that in my case book and case books are evidence!”

And he roared with laughter as if he had made a good joke.

They returned to the other cottage, and even in her weariness Lois looked forward to the walk across the fields, for her legs were cramped and she ached in every limb. As they mounted the last gentle slope, the long wall of Gallows Farm came into view. The gate was open and they passed through. Half-way across the yard he caught her arm and they stopped. She heard the rattle of the chained dogs and wondered if he was about to warn her again of the dangers that attended an escape. Instead:

“There’s a nice little place down there,” he pointed into the darkness--“a room that has been described as airy, though it is a little below the level of the ground. I must show it to you some day--it has an interesting story.”

“Are you going to put me there?” she asked, her courage almost failing her.

“You? My dear, you’re the last person in the world I should put there.” Again the hateful encouragement of his caressing hand. “Go ahead, your own handsome apartment is ready for you.”

He took up the lamp that was waiting in the passage and showed her to the landing. Glancing at the room opposite, she saw that a new staple had been fixed in the doorway and guessed that the other woman was now her neighbour. Tappatt followed the direction of her eyes.

“You’ll have company,” he said. “The old home is filling up rapidly! All you require in any mental establishment is a start. Satisfied clients are the best advertisements!”

“Where is Mr. Dorn?” she asked as he was leaving the room.

“He has gone back to London with a flea in his ear. That fellow won’t bother me again in a hurry.”

“Do you ever speak the truth?”

For some reason the question infuriated him and his manner changed in an instant.

“I’ll tell you the truth one of these days, my young lady, and it won’t be pleasant to hear!” he stormed.

With that he slammed the door and turned the key on her.

Chapter Thirty-two

Earlier that day somebody else had asked for the truth. As a rule, Mr. Chesney Praye had little use for that quality, but, as he explained to the Countess over their protracted meal, he wanted to know “exactly where he was.” He knew a lot, more than she guessed, for he was a keen man with an instinct for hidden facts. He was also a professional opportunist, as she was to learn.

“You’re going to marry me, Leonora, as soon as this business is cleared up. But before we go any further, I want all your cards on the table. And first I want to know what I have been doing. Blind obedience is all right in a soldier, but I’m not a soldier. I’ve muddied my hands pretty badly over this business and I can see myself getting five years’ imprisonment if Dorn ever gets on to my trail. But there is a lot that you haven’t told me and I’d rather like to know where I stand.”

The Countess took the cigarette from her mouth, blew a cloud of smoke, following it with her eyes until it dissipated, and then, slowly extinguishing the cigarette in the ash-tray, she made her revelation and Mr. Chesney Praye listened without interruption for half an hour. And all that he heard he sorted for his own advantage.

She paused only once, and that was when she saw her son, piloting the girl into the palm court.

“She’s prettier than I thought,” she said, “a chorus-girl’s prettiness, but----”

“Never mind about her,” said Chesney impatiently. “What happened after----”

The Countess told him, concealing nothing, and when she had finished, he sat back in his chair, hot and limp.

“My God!” he breathed. “You--you are wonderful! And that’s the ‘why’ of Gallows Farm, eh? I confess I was puzzled.”

“That is the why of Gallows Farm,” said Lady Moron, lighting another cigarette.

Chesney Praye left the hotel alone; the Countess was going down to her place in the country, and, when she invited him to accompany her, he had invented an appointment on the spur of the moment, for Chesney was a quick thinker, and on the occasion of which Michael Dorn never grew weary of reminding him, he owed his immunity from arrest to this quality.

He glanced up at the street-clock. There was time to carry out one essential part of his scheme and, if his plan was not entirely worked out when he picked up a taxi, it was complete in all details when he reached St. Paul’s Churchyard.

From the top of a plebeian ’bus Lord Moron and his companion saw the cab flash past.

“My stepfather!” groaned his lordship. “You wouldn’t think a horrible, common bounder like that would attract a woman like her ladyship, Elizabeth?”

But Lizzy pressed her lips tightly together and expressed no opinion, other than the noncommittal one that “likes attract like,” which may or not have been as complimentary as she intended.

There was no telegram for her in Charlotte Street when they arrived.

“And there won’t be,” said Lord Moron with satisfaction. “I’ll bet you any amount of money that the purply doctor has got away with it. Mind you, Elizabeth, I know him! He’s had his skinny legs under my mahogany, and whatever you may say about me, I’m a judge of character.”

“I think you’re clever,” admitted Lizzy, “and I’ve always said so. What is your mother going to say about us going to lunch at that posh restaurant?”

Lord Moron expressed his complete indifference.

“From to-day I am on my own; I can’t start too soon,” he said. “Her ladyship doesn’t mind being seen in public with that perfectly impossible Chesney Praye--the bird of prey, as I sometimes call him----” he waited for applause, but received no more than an approving smile,--“and if she doesn’t mind, I don’t see how she can object to me going to lunch with one of the--at any rate, a very nice girl,” he added lamely, and Elizabeth raised her eyes in the shy, wistful way she had seen in the best films.

At eight o’clock the post office was closed. Moron went down to the nearest branch office and enquired for a telegram, but none had been received; nor were they able to get into communication with Mr. Wills.

On his way back to the house, Selwyn telephoned the Bluelight Garage, in accordance with instructions, and they were flying along the broad expanse of the Great West Road, when a faster car overtook and passed them and Selwyn involuntarily shrank back to cover.

“Who was it?” asked Lizzy, who had not seen the occupant.

Lord Moron raised his fingers to his lips, though the possibility of being overheard was negligible. It was not until the overtaking car was a steady speck in a revolving cloud of dust that he turned dramatically to her and whispered:

“Chesney--Chesney Praye. He’s going down too! I knew he was in it. A bounder like that would be in anything dirty!”

“Did he see us?”

Selwyn shook his head.

“No. He was driving; but he was grinning like an ape. That shows!”

At Maidenhead they passed the car standing outside an hotel.

“He’s gone in to grub,” said Selwyn, all a-twitter with excitement. “The thing for us to do is to be careful when he passes us again.”

But no care was required, and his elaborate plan to be immersed in an evening newspaper that completely hid himself and his companion when the car came abreast, was unnecessary, for it was dark when the siren of Chesney’s machine called for a clear road, and the car swept past.

Within ten miles of the farm there were a number of enquiries to be made. The exact situation of the farm was difficult to locate, and it was only when they reached Whitcomb village that they were able to take the road with any certainty. And there were other difficulties to be overcome.

“There is no sense in our dashing up madly to this old Gallows and saying ‘Where is she?’” said his lordship, with perfect truth. “If we’re on the track of something fishy, and I’m sure everything connected with Chesney is fishy, we shan’t get a civil answer. On the other hand, if there is nothing fishy about the business, we’ll be getting ourselves a bad reputation if we barge in and there’s nothing--er----”

“Fishy,” suggested Lizzy helpfully.

Two miles from Whitcomb they held a council of war, and decided to send the machine back to the main road and to continue the journey on foot. This was his lordship’s idea.

“The situation requires a certain amount of tact, and if there’s anybody more tactful than me, I’d like to meet them.”

They trudged up the dusty road, keeping a watch for Chesney’s car. It was dark by now and they were without any kind of light except the matches that Lord Moron occasionally struck, and both were dead-beat by the time they came in view of the farm.

“Not a very cheerful looking place, is it?” said Selwyn, some of his enterprise evaporating. “Beastly dismal hole. Shouldn’t be surprised if there was a real gallows somewhere around. I think it was a mistake to have left the car.”

“It is too late to talk about mistakes,” said Lizzy brusquely, and led the way. “We’ve found the place, that is something. Not that it looks as if it is worth finding.”

They came at last to the big black gate and the forbidding wall.

“Shall we ring or knock?” asked his lordship. “There’s a car inside--do you hear it?”

Lizzy compromised by kicking on the wood. Her foot was raised to kick a second time, when there came from the house a woman’s scream, so vibrant with fear that Selwyn’s blood seemed to turn to ice and his knees touched together.

At that moment the gates burst open with a crash, almost knocking them down, and the bonnet of a car showed.

“There’s a woman in the car,” screamed Lizzy, but the roar of the engines drowned her voice.

Chapter Thirty-three

Mr. Chesney Praye was a welcome visitor. He had parked his machine in the forecourt, and now, sitting before the small wood fire, was warming his chilled hands, for the night had turned unusually cold and he had come at full speed across the windy downs.

“Br-r-r!” he said, as he held his hands before the blaze. “And this is what they call an English summer! I’ll be glad to get back to India.”

“Do you think of going?”

“I may. Everything depends----”

“You were lucky to find me in,” said the doctor, putting glasses on the table.

“Why?” asked the other, in surprise. “I thought you wouldn’t leave this abode of peace, at any rate not now.”

Briefly the doctor related the cause of his excursion and Chesney looked serious.

“Is there any likelihood of Dorn coming back?” he asked.

Tappatt’s merriment reassured him.

“He’s back! In fact, he is practically under this roof!”

Chesney sprang to his feet.

“What the devil do you mean?” he asked roughly.

“Sit down. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. He is behind a two-inch door, with handcuffs on his wrists and a pain in his head that will take a lot of moving. I’d have telephoned, only I don’t trust the exchange.”

And then he told the visitor of his encounter with Dorn.

“It was a question of foresight, and I saw farthest,” he said. “It is as good as a bottle of sparkling wine to match your brain against the mind of a man like that, to look ahead and see what he will do in given circumstances, and to counter and recounter his plans. Somebody had to come out on top--he or I. He failed to take an elementary precaution--the veriest amateur would have known that, if his attention was distracted for a moment, I’d doctor his drink; and it was absurdly simple. I don’t even take the credit for it. He played so completely into my hands.”

Chesney pursed his lips.

“Has he recovered from the drug?” he asked, a little apprehensively.

Tappatt nodded.

“Oh yes, I’ve had quite an interesting conversation with him through the door. There’s a little spyhole that makes it easy to exchange pleasant badinage. Captain Michael Dorn is a pretty sick man at this moment.”

Chesney Praye was pacing up and down the room, a worried frown on his face. This was a development that he had not looked for.

“Perhaps it is better,” he said. “I shall be taking away the girl to-night.”

“The countess didn’t----” began the doctor.

“You needn’t worry about the countess. She’d have telephoned, but she shared your fear of the exchange. The girl and Mrs. Pinder are to be moved. The risk of keeping them here is too great. Dorn has people working for him and you’ll wake one morning to find a cordon of police round the house.”

“Where will you go?”

“I shall take her abroad.”

“And the other woman?”

Chesney looked at him oddly.

“I may want the other woman--later,” he said.

“I had better bring Reddle down,” said the doctor, rising and going to the door, but Praye beckoned him back.

“There is no hurry,” he said.

He evidently had something which he had hesitated to say.

“What are your plans, Tappatt?”

“Mine? I shall have to flit, I suppose. They’re striking me off the register, at least Dorn told me so.”

“What will you do with him?”

An ugly smile showed for a second on the doctor’s face.

“I don’t know. He is going to be a difficulty. I’ve seen that from the first. I could leave him, and that is what I shall probably do. Nobody would come near the farm perhaps for months, perhaps for a year.”

Chesney Praye’s face was ashen.

“Leave him to starve?” he whispered.

“Why not?” asked the other coolly. “Who would know? I thought of going to Australia. And I’d take my nurse with me. She would think that I had let Dorn out, and anyway she’s not the kind of person to ask questions. This place is Lady Moron’s property. Who would visit it if I left? It might be empty for years.”

Chesney Praye’s mouth was dry, the hand that went to his lips shook.

“I don’t know--it seems pretty awful,” he said irresolutely. “To leave a man--to starve!”

“What will happen if he gets after me?” asked the doctor, stirring the fire that had almost gone out. “I should either starve or get my meals too regularly! I understand the food is fairly good at Dartmoor, but I am willing to take anybody’s word for it. I do not want to have a personal experience. And anyway, there’s always a way out for a medical man. I owe Dorn something. He hounded me from India, and he’s not exactly a friend of yours, is he, Chesney?”

“No,” said the other shortly, “only----”

“Only what? You’re chicken-hearted! What do you think is going to happen to you and me if that gets out?” He pointed to the ceiling. “It would mean the best part of a lifetime for you--more than a lifetime for me. No, sir, I am well aware of the risks I am taking and more than determined what further risks I’ll accept. You’d better have the girl down. I suppose you want to be alone?”

He nodded and the doctor went out of the room, and was gone for a long while. When the door opened, Lois Reddle stood framed against the dark background of the passage. At the sight of Praye she stopped.

“You!” she said in wonder.

“Good evening, Miss Reddle. Won’t you sit down?”

Chesney was politeness itself and his manners were unimpeachable.

“I’m afraid you’ve had a very unhappy experience,” he said. “I only learnt about it this afternoon and I came down immediately to do whatever I could. The doctor tells me that you have been certified.”

“That is not true,” she said hotly. “I know very little about the law, but I have been in Mr. Shaddles’ office too long to suppose that any person can be certified as mad by one doctor! Are you going to take me away?”

He nodded.

“And that other unfortunate woman?”

“She may go too,” he said slowly, “on conditions.”

She looked at him steadily.

“I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Praye.”

He motioned her to a chair, but she did not move.

“Now listen to me, Miss Reddle. I am taking big risks for your sake. I needn’t particularise them, but if I fail this evening, my future, and probably”--he hesitated to say “liberty”--“at any rate, my future is seriously jeopardised. I’ve made this journey without the knowledge of a person who shall be nameless and I am betraying the trust she has in me. She will not forgive me.”

“You mean the Countess of Moron?” she asked quietly.

“There is no use in beating about the bush. I refer to the Countess of Moron.”

“Am I here by her orders?”

He nodded.

“But why? What have I ever done to her that she should wish to injure me?”

“You will know one of these days,” he said impatiently, “but that is beside the point. I can save you and your mother----”

She fell back a pace.

“My mother?” she breathed. “That woman,” she pointed her trembling finger to the door--“not my mother?” He nodded. “Here? Oh, my God! Why?”

“She’s here for the same reason that you are here,” was his cool reply. “Now, Miss Reddle, you’ve got to be an intelligent being. I want you to be sensible and recognise the sacrifices I am making for you, and to agree to my conditions for taking your mother away from this place.”

“What are the conditions?” she asked slowly.

“The first is that you marry me!” said Chesney Praye.

Chapter Thirty-four

She looked at him bewildered, as though she could not grasp the meaning of his words.

“That I marry you?” she repeated.

“That you marry me to-morrow. I took the precaution this afternoon of going to Doctors’ Commons and securing a special licence, which allows me to be married to-morrow morning. I had some trouble in getting it, but it is here----” he tapped his breast pocket. “Before leaving London I telegraphed to the vicar of Leitworth, a village some thirty miles from here, and asked him to perform the ceremony at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

His face was white; he was obviously labouring under the stress of some tense emotion. Presently he went on in a lower voice:

“I will make you a rich woman. I will place you and your mother beyond want. I will give you a position in the world that you could not dream you would ever occupy. I’ll do something more.” He came closer to her, and before she realised what he was doing he had gripped her shoulders. “I will clear your mother’s name--I can’t give her back the years she has spent in prison----”

She drew back out of his grasp.

“No!” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It may be true--all these things you say--but I can’t marry you, Mr. Praye, and I--I don’t believe you. My mother is in prison.”

“Your mother is in this house.”

He strode to the door and, pulling it open, called the doctor by name.

“Bring down Mrs. Pinder,” he said.

The girl stood at the farther end of the room, her hands clasped together, waiting, hoping, yet not daring to hope. She heard a light step on the stair, again the door opened and the woman came in.

One glance at that serene face was sufficient. In another second they were in one another’s arms, and the girl was sobbing on her mother’s breast.

For a minute there was silence in the room, and only the murmured endearments of the older woman interrupted. Then Mrs. Pinder held the girl at arm’s length and looked into her tear-stained face.

“My little Lois!” she said softly. “It hardly seems possible.”

Lois tried to speak.

“And have you come to take me away?”

Watching the girl, Chesney saw her nod, and his hopes bounded as he introduced himself.

“I am Chesney Praye,” he said awkwardly, “a--a friend of Miss Reddle.”

“Reddle? Then Mrs. Reddle gave you her name?” She looked at Chesney. “When do we go?” she asked.

“As soon as certain conditions are fulfilled. Will you leave us, Mrs. Pinder?”

The woman’s eyes fell upon the girl. Gathering her in her arms, she kissed her tenderly. Chesney, in his feverish anxiety, almost tore them apart in his urgency. He closed the door upon Mrs. Pinder and came back to the girl.

“Well?” he said. “I told you the truth?”

She nodded.

“And you’ll do this?”

“Marry you?” She shook her head.

“But you told your mother you would!” he said furiously. “You know what it means, don’t you, if you refuse?”

“I can’t, I can’t! How can I marry you, Mr. Praye? You’re engaged to the Countess of Moron----”

He interrupted her with an oath.

“Never mind about the countess! You know what I’m doing for you, don’t you? I’m saving your life, I’m giving you your mother----”

She looked past him at the closed door.

“I can’t!” she said helplessly. “How can you ask me to decide? I--I don’t know you, you must give me time.”

“I’ll give you as much time as it will take you to sign this paper.”

He pulled out a sheet of foolscap from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“What is that?” she said.

“It’s an agreement. You needn’t trouble to read it. Just put your signature here, and I’ll bring in the doctor to witness it.”

“But what is the document?” she asked, and tried to turn it back to the first page, but he prevented her.

Her suspicion was growing, and the reaction from that tremendous meeting had left her chilled and numb. Into her heart had crept an uneasy suspicion that the conditions he offered were not in his power to fulfil. All her instincts told her this man’s word was valueless.

“I can do nothing until I have seen Mr. Dorn.”

Why she mentioned the detective’s name at all, she could not understand. She wanted time. She mentioned the first name that occurred to her, and might as well have referred to Mr. Shaddles.

“Dorn! So that’s how the land lies, eh? Michael Dorn is the favoured gentleman? Well, Dorn or no Dorn, you’ll marry me to-morrow morning at ten o’clock. I’ve gone too far to pull back now. And Dorn’s dead, anyway.”

“Dead?” she cried in horror.

“He came here this morning, looking for you, and----”

The door was opening slowly.

“I don’t want you, Tappatt. Shut the door, damn you!”

But still it was moving, slowly, slowly. And then around the edge came the black muzzle of a pistol, an arm, and then, last, the smiling face of Michael Dorn!

“Put up your hands, Praye!” he said. “I want you!”

As the door opened and the hand came in, Chesney Praye’s fingers closed around an ebony ruler, and then, at the hateful sight of Michael Dorn’s face, he struck at the oil lamp that stood on the table. There was a crash, a jangle of broken glass, and Lois screamed.

Praye darted past her; she heard the thud of the door, and a grunt from somebody. In another second the two men were at grips and she shrank back farther and farther into a corner of the room, as tables and chairs became involved in the struggle. She heard Chesney screaming for the doctor at the top of his voice.

“Doctor--help! Get this swine!” And there came to the frightened ears of the girl the sound of the door being wrenched open, the scurry of footsteps, and Chesney’s voice was silent.

“Stay where you are!”

The room reeked with the smell of kerosene.

“Don’t strike a light,” said Michael’s voice, but even as he spoke a white flame leapt up from the hearth. The flowing oil had reached some red-hot embers, and in a second the whole floor was blazing.

The girl was paralysed with fear, but before she could move he had picked her up and carried her into the passage.

“Go into the back, quick! The dogs won’t hurt you,” he said, and flew up the stairs, bursting into Mrs. Pinder’s prison.

The room in which Mrs. Pinder had been confined was empty. There was no sign of the doctor or of the woman. He came down into the hall again and ran to the front door. As he opened the door, he saw Chesney’s big car going full speed towards the closed gates. There was a crack and a crash, the gates flew open, and the tail lights disappeared as the car turned on to the road.

The front room was now blazing. He tried the housekeeper’s room: that also was empty. There was no need for further search. Dr. Tappatt had got away, and with him the unhappy mother of Lois.

He rejoined the girl and she told him what had happened before he came into the room.

“That is it,” he said bitterly. “The doctor was listening at the door and, thinking he was going to be left in the lurch, decided to make his getaway. When Praye turned your mother from the room he must have put her into the car, and probably unfastened the gate when he heard the fight.”

“Where will he have taken her? What will happen?” she asked fearfully.

Her nerve had gone, and she clung to him like a frightened child, and as he held the quivering figure in his arms, the world and all its sordid horrors dropped away from him and for a second he lived in a heaven of happiness.

“Child, child!” His hand trembled as it touched her cheek. “Your mother is not in danger--they dare not.”

“I am an hysterical fool!” she sobbed as she rubbed her face against his coat. “But, Michael, I am so frightened. What will happen to my mother?”

“Nothing; they will not dare injure her.”

The fire had taken hold; great tongues of flame were leaping up from the roof.

“It will burn like tinder. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she said, in surprise.

“I mean I’m sorry to see property destroyed. I don’t suppose it is insured,” was his strange reply. “I’ll pull the Buick out of the shed before the fire gets to it.”

As they were walking across the yard to the extemporised garage, he caught her arm and drew her from the path, and, looking down, she saw the stiff figure of a dog.

“I had to shoot them,” he said. “I used a silencer, because I thought the doctor would hear.”

“But they told me you were dead?”

“I’ll tell you about it some day,” he answered briefly, and gave his whole attention to breaking the lock of the shed.

Presently he hauled out the car and examined the petrol tank.

“There is enough to get us to the nearest village,” he said; “the spare tin is full.”

He got the car round to the front of the house, and was standing watching the havoc of the flames when the first police cyclist came thunderously from the direction of Whitcombe.

“Nobody is hurt except me,” said Michael in answer to the man’s enquiry, “and in my case it is only a question of feelings. You didn’t pass a car on your way?”

“Yes, I passed a big car, with three or four people in it.”

“Which way did they go?”

“They took the Newbury Road.”

“Then we also will take the Newbury Road,” said Michael.

On the journey back to London he told Lois what had happened to him.

“I pretty well knew that he’d get you out of the house in the night, but I also knew that he couldn’t take you far. It was impossible to watch all sides of the house, and besides, it would have been as impossible to get back on foot in time to intercept him. As I expected, the house was empty when I made my search. I had formed a plan which was fairly elementary. When he showed me the underground cellar room, I slipped a spare gun and a small kit of tools amongst the bedding, for I guessed that would be the place he would put me--that is, if he managed to catch me. Honestly, I don’t believe he thought of drugging me until I suggested it myself, and then he did his work in the most clumsy way. He told me that he heard somebody moving outside in order to distract my attention, and of course my attention was distracted. When he had dropped the dope into my coffee, I had a little distraction of my own. I found an excuse to go out into the yard, poured away the coffee, and when I came back I stood in the doorway, giving him the impression that I was drinking. I was standing and he was sitting, so he couldn’t tell whether there was coffee in the cup or not. But he was so smugly satisfied that he did what I knew he would do--‘lured’ me down into the underground room--and I was glad to be lured. I knew that the moment I was safely under lock and key, he would bring you back again. I had cached my gun and tools, and when he came in and found me unconscious, he did not trouble to search the room again. If he had, he would have been shocked to have had a most unpleasant beating from the helpless creature on the bed!”

“But how did you get out?”

“That was easy. Almost any key could have opened that old-fashioned lock, and I came prepared with several. I waited all day because I was certain that he would not bring you back until night. The handcuffs were the most difficult part; I hadn’t a key to fit them. It took me two hours’ hard work and a nearly dislocated thumb to slip them off.”

They stopped at an all-night filling station, replenished the tank, and continued their way to London.

“I know one person who will be happy to-night,” said Michael, as the car sped up the Bayswater Road. “I wonder whether she got the day off?”

“Whom do you mean?” asked the girl, aroused from an unpleasant reverie.

“Miss Elizabeth Smith.”

“Mr. Dorn, do you really think that there’s no danger to my mother?” she asked, for the moment oblivious to everything except the woman’s danger.

“None, I should imagine,” he said.

The car stopped before the house in Charlotte Street, and Mr. Mackenzie answered the knock.

“Have you Miss Smith with you?” he asked, after he had welcomed the girl.

“Lizzy?” said Lois in surprise. “She wasn’t with me. I haven’t seen her. Why do you ask?”

“She went to Gallows Farm with his lordship.”

“With his lordship?” said Michael, in surprise. “Do you mean Lord Moron?”

“They left at eight o’clock,” said the old man, “in a hired car.”

Michael and the girl were in the old man’s room when he gave them this information, and the two exchanged glances. Here was an unforeseen complication.

“I saw no sign of a car, hired or otherwise,” he said. “And Moron--phew!” He whistled.

“Perhaps they lost their way,” suggested Lois, and he seemed prepared to accept the suggestion.

“If you don’t mind, Miss Reddle, I’ll wait here until they have returned,” he said, and then: “You don’t wish to call up Lady Moron, I suppose?”

Lois shuddered.

“No, no, not that terrible woman.”

“So you know--or rather, you guess?”

Lois shook her head.

“I know nothing. The whole thing is a mystery to me. It is so confusing that I think I should go mad, only I’m so grateful to be here,” she smiled, and held out her hand. “And I knew that it would be you who would come for me, just as I know it will be you who will restore my mother to me.”

He took her hand and held it, his eyes searching hers.

“I’m going to tell you something,” he said in a low voice. They were alone in the little room, and she felt her heart beating in time with the cheap American clock on the table. “I suppose I really oughtn’t to say anything,” he said, “because I have no right. But I feel if I don’t tell you I may never have another opportunity.”

She had dropped her eyes before his, but now she looked at him again.

“I love you,” he said simply. “I can’t marry you, I won’t ask you to marry me, and that is what makes this folly of mine all the more mad! But I want you to believe that it has been a happiness to work for you.”

“For me?” she said. “Why, of course, you’ve worked very hard for me.”

“And I have been paid very well,” was the disconcerting rejoinder. “But I would do it again and pay all the money I have in the world for the privilege.”

Suddenly he released her hand, and when she smiled up at him he, too, was smiling.

“Two declarations of love in one night is more than any reasonable girl can expect,” he said flippantly.

“One declaration of love,” she said in a low voice, “and one offer of marriage--quite different, isn’t it?”

“I’m not an authority on these matters,” he said with a sigh, and looked up at the loud-ticking clock.

Michael saw the hour and frowned.

“I’m rather worried about these people; where on earth can they have got? You don’t feel worried about sleeping here to-night alone--if you have to sleep alone?”

She shook her head.

“I’m troubled about Lizzy,” she said. “Poor Lord Moron! I wonder what his mother would say if she knew.”

“She probably knows,” said Michael.

It was at that moment they heard Lizzy’s voice in the hall and the sound of feet on the stairs.

Lois ran out to the landing and looked down into the lighted hall.

“Michael!” she called wildly, and he was at her side. “Look--oh, look!” she said in a hushed voice.

And Michael Dorn looked--and wondered!

Chapter Thirty-five

As the gates burst open violently and the car lurched on to the road, Lizzy pulled her companion back to the shadow of the wall. At that moment a man came flying through the gateway and leapt upon the running-board. Again the car slowed perceptibly.

“He’s there,” whispered Lizzy fiercely. “Quick--luggage rack!”

In an instant she was flying after the machine, caught the iron rail of the rack and sprang on. The car was gathering speed as Selwyn Moron stumbled forward, his hand gripping the rail, his legs moving faster than nature had intended. Kneeling down, Lizzy caught him by a garment which ladies do not mention, let alone grab, and hauled him up to her side, breathless, almost dead.

“Hold tight!” she squeaked in his ear, and there was need for the caution, for the car was bumping from side to side over the uneven road, at a speed beyond her computation.

“A thousand miles an hour!” she jerked into his ear, and he nodded his complete agreement.

Now they were on the post road. The bumping had ceased, and the machine was going even faster. Lizzy held tight to the luggage support and adopted an attitude of passive fatalism. Once a motorcyclist snapped past, going in the other direction, and she had a glimpse of a uniform cap. It was a policeman, but by the time she realised the fact he was out of sight.

The seat was most uncomfortable. She began to realise the sensations of a herring on a gridiron and wondered if the luggage rack would leave the same marks.

Selwyn was trying to whisper to her; he had recovered most of his breath and all his sense of obligation.

“What about that car of ours? We hired it by the hour,” he whispered hoarsely, and she put her lips to his ear.

“Shaddles will pay,” she said gaily, and found a delight in the prospect.

A little while later the car stopped, and the two unauthorised riders got ready to jump. Peeping round the back of the machine, Lizzy saw the cause of the delay. They had pulled up at a sort of sentry box and one of the party was unlocking the door. She knew that the hut was an automobile station equipped with a telephone, before she heard a muffled voice speaking. Presently the telephoner came out.

“All right,” he said, as he climbed in and the car started again.

They had not gone twenty miles when, to her surprise, the machine slackened its speed again, slowed almost to a halt, and then turned suddenly through a pair of old gates that had been opened for them. She felt a communicated excitement from her companion as he bent over towards her.

“Old family estate,” he whispered. “Country seat and all that sort of thing! Knew it as soon as I saw the gates.”

“Whose?” she asked cautiously.

“Mine,” was the surprising reply.

And then, feeling that he had overstated the case, he added:

“Her ladyship’s really. Beastly house--never liked it. Moron Court, Newbury. Rum place----”

They passed up a long avenue of elms, going slower and slower. Selwyn tapped her on the shoulder and dropped off the rack, and, recognising his wisdom, she followed, darting into the shadow of an elm only just in time, for at that moment the car stopped and the voice of Lady Moron sent a shiver down the back of her son.

“Go to the west entrance: you’ll find nobody there. What were you doing in Somerset, Chesney?”

“I will tell you later,” he said shortly.

The car passed on and the two watchers saw the tall woman walking slowly in its wake. How had she known they were coming? And then Lizzy remembered the car stopping at the telephone box on the side of the road.

“Queer old crib, eh?” Moron was whispering. “See that bump in the roof? That’s the alarm bell--works from the music-room… in case of fire and all that sort of thing.”

They waited till Lady Moron had disappeared from sight, then they followed cautiously. The west entrance was reached through a glass-covered porch, and the door was closed when they came up to it. Moron smiled benignly at the girl, and took a small object from his pocket.

“Pass-key,” he whispered, so loudly that he would have been heard if there had been a listener.

Inserting the key, he turned it and signalled the girl to follow. Before them stretched a vista of red-carpeted corridor; a light burnt in a ceiling lamp at the farther end. Moron crept along with extravagant caution, and he was half-way up the passage when he stopped and raised a warning finger, pointing energetically to a door before he beckoned her past it. A little farther along was a broad marble staircase. Up this he went, with Lizzy, feeling like a conspirator, at his heels.

They must have presented a terrifying sight. White from head to foot, their faces were masks of dust. Lizzy’s crumpled hat hung drunkenly over one ear. At the top of the stairs was another corridor, with the same meagre illumination. He drew her head to his.

“That is the gallery of the music-room!” He indicated a small door. “For heaven’s sake don’t make a row,” he implored her, and opened the door an inch at a time.

The door itself was shadowed by the broad musicians’ balcony from the light in the room below. They heard voices talking as they came in, and, keeping flat to the wall, they edged forward until it was dangerous to go any farther. Then Selwyn gave a start that nearly betrayed their presence. Turning, he communicated what he had seen.

“She’s not there--Miss Reddle, I mean. It’s an elderly lady with white hair.”

“So you have seen your daughter, Mrs. Pinder?”

“Yes, madam, I have seen Lois.”

Lois! Lizzy clapped her hand over her mouth. Lois Reddle’s mother, and her name was Pinder!

“A very beautiful girl,” said Lady Moron suavely.

“A dear, sweet girl! I am very proud, whatever happens to me.”

“What do you think will happen to you?”

“I don’t know, but I am prepared for anything now.”

Lizzy glanced at her comrade. He was staring open-mouthed into the hall below.

“She is too pretty a daughter to lose. Now, Mrs. Pinder, I am going to make you an offer. I want you to take your daughter to South America. I will pay you a yearly sum, more than sufficient for your needs. If you undertake to do that, you will never be troubled again.”

Mary Pinder smiled and shook her head.

“Madam, your offer comes too late. Had it been made whilst I was still a prisoner, had it been supported by any efforts to obtain my release from that cruel punishment, I would have gone on my knees and thanked you and blessed you. But now I know too much.”

“What do you know?” asked Lady Moron.

And then Mrs. Pinder began to speak, and as she went on, Lizzy gripped the hand of the man at her side, and laid her face against his arm. He turned round once during the narrative, his weak face transfigured and smiled down at her, as though he read in her gesture all that her heart conveyed. Mrs. Pinder spoke without interruption, and, when she had finished:

“You know a great deal too much for my comfort, madam,” said her ladyship’s voice, “and much too much for the safety of my friends.”

“So I realise,” said Mary Pinder gravely.

“I repeat my offer. I would advise you to think well before you reject your chance of safety.”

“Look here, Leonora----” began Chesney Praye.

“Be silent. I have found one friend to-night--one I can trust. It is not you, Chesney. The doctor has told me all that has happened. You thought you would go behind my back and forestall me. To-night you will do as you’re told. Now, madam--do you accept my offer?”

“No,” was Mrs. Pinder’s reply.

Lady Moron turned to the red-faced doctor. He nodded.

“Now, Mrs. Pinder,” he said, advancing to her, his tone jovial, his manner friendly, “why can’t you be sensible? Do as her ladyship asks you.”

“I will not----”

He was near to her now. Suddenly his hand shot out and strangled the scream in her throat. She struggled desperately, madly, but there was no denying those relentless hands. Chesney Praye took half a step forward, but Lady Moron’s arm barred him.

And then came the interruption. A wild-looking, dust-stained man, unrecognisable to any, leapt from the balcony and gripped the doctor by the shoulders from behind. As Tappatt staggered back, releasing his hold upon his victim, Selwyn sprang to the long red bell-cord that hung on the side of the wall, and pulled. From overhead came a deafening clang. Again he pulled.

“You fool, you madman, what are you doing?”

His mother rushed towards him, but he pushed her back. Presently he ceased.

“That’s the alarm bell. We’ll have all the house and half the village in here in a minute. And I don’t want to say before them what I’m saying to you now.” He pointed an accusing finger at his mother. “You think I’m a fool, and perhaps you’re right. But I’m not a wicked fool, and I’m going to send you and your damnable friend before a judge!”

“Get him away quick!” screamed the countess, as a patter of feet came along the corridor. “I can say it was an accident.”

“Don’t touch him!”

A girl, almost as great a scarecrow as the panting Selwyn, was leaning over the balcony.

“You can tell them what you like, but you can’t tell them anything they’ll believe after they’ve heard me!”

The door was pushed open at that moment, and a man half-dressed came running in, and stopped dead, gaping at the scene that met his eyes. Almost immediately the doorway was filled with dishevelled men and women.

“Is there any trouble, my lady?”

“None,” she said sharply, and pointed to the door. “Wait outside.”

She looked up at the girl in the gallery.

“I think you would be well advised to ask my son to change his plans,” she said, in the same calm, even voice which Selwyn knew so well. “The matter can be adjusted to-morrow. Selwyn, go back to your friend and take this lady with you.”

Mrs. Pinder was sitting on a chair, her frail frame shaking convulsively, while Selwyn strove to comfort her. At Lady Moron’s words she stood up, and, with the man’s arm about her, passed into the crowded corridor, and in a few seconds Lizzy Smith had joined them.

Chapter Thirty-six

Leonora, Countess of Moron, paced her long dressing-room, her hands behind her, a calm, speculative woman, for emotion did not belong to her. Chesney Praye and the doctor she had left in the music-room, and through the windows that overlooked the stone porch at the front of the house she had, a few minutes before, seen the car pass which carried Mary Pinder to happiness and freedom.

Lady Moron felt no resentment against any save the weakling son she had hated from his birth. There was still a hope that the wheel would turn by some miracle in her favour. All she had played for, all she had won, was gone. It was the hour of reparation and judgment, not yet for her the hour of penitence.

Opening a little safe that was set in the wall, concealed by a silver barometer, she took out a tiny box and shook on to the table a folded sheet of newspaper and a key. This she put into her bag. From the back of the safe she pulled to view a small automatic pistol, and, jerking back the cover to assure herself that it was loaded, fixed the safety catch. This too went into the bag. Then she rang the bell, and her scared maid answered after a long interval.

“Tell Henry that I wish the Rolls to be at the door in ten minutes,” she said, and at the end of that time, with her cloak wrapped about her shoulders, she stepped into the car, pausing only to give directions. “Charlotte Street,” she said, and gave the number.

She turned over in her mind the events of the past few weeks, striving to discover the key flaw of her plan. Some force had been working against her. Dorn was the instrument, but behind that was a power the identity of which she could not imagine.

The car ran through the deserted streets of Reading along the long road to Maidenhead. Still her problem was not solved. Who was behind Dorn? She had for him a certain amount of admiration. She had known, the moment he came into the case, that the little men who had seemed so big, Chesney Praye and the doctor, were valueless.

The car came noiselessly to the door of Lois Reddle’s home. She looked up at the lighted windows and was slightly amused. Selwyn would be there, basking in the approval of the bourgeoisie. Even her feeling of bitterness towards him had been blunted on the journey. This was to be the last throw.

Old Mackenzie, on his way up to Lizzy’s kitchenette to brew more coffee, heard the knock and called to Lizzy:

“There’s somebody at the door, miss: will you open it for me?”

A transfigured Lizzy, dustless and tidy, ran down the stairs two at a time and pulled open the door. At first she did not recognise the woman, and then:

“You can’t come in here, ma’am,” she said.

“I wish to see Miss Reddle,” said the countess. “Please don’t be ridiculous!”

She had still an overawing effect upon Lizzy, and the girl stood on one side, and followed the leisurely figure up the stairs.

The door of Mackenzie’s room was open, and as she walked into the chamber, a sudden silence fell upon the gathering. She looked from face to face and smiled. But the smile faded when her eyes rested upon the man who sat by the plain deal table near the window.

“Mr. Shaddles!” she faltered.

He nodded.

“So it was you? I might have guessed that.”

“Yes, madam, it was I. My family have been the Moron lawyers for hundreds of years, and it was not likely that I should cease to study their interests.”

“It was you!” she said again. “I should have guessed that. You opposed my marriage to Lord Moron.”

He nodded.

“I should have opposed it more if I had known what I know now,” he said. “Will you be seated?”

She nodded and sat down, her bag on her knees, opened. Michael Dorn stood by the lawyer’s side, and his eyes never left her face.

“Well, I suppose everybody knows now?” said the countess pleasantly.

“Nobody knows--yet. I particularly asked Miss Smith, when she called me on the ’phone, not to tell the story until I came. It is not a long story, madam, if you will permit me?”

She nodded.

“The late Earl of Moron married twice,” said Shaddles. “By his first wife he had a son, William. By his second wife--which is your ladyship--a son, Selwyn, who is with us to-night. William was a high-spirited, honourable young man, who served Her Majesty Queen Victoria in a regiment of Highlanders. He was a thought romantic, and nothing was more natural than that, when he met Mary Pinder----”

“Mary Pinder!” gasped Lois, but he did not notice the interruption.

“----when he met Mary Pinder, who was then a very beautiful girl of seventeen or eighteen, he should fall in love with her. He did not reveal his identity. He had a craze for walking tours, and at that time was travelling through Hereford--not under his own name, which was Viscount Craman, but under the name of Pinder, which was his mother’s maiden name. He met the girl several times without telling her who he was, and married her by special licence, in the name of Pinder, intending to reveal his status after the marriage. They had been living together for a month, when he was suddenly called home by the illness of his father, and arrived in Scotland to find the late Earl dying of malignant scarlet fever. By a cruel fate, William was infected with the disease and died two days after his father, leaving his widow, ignorant alike of his identity and where he was staying.

“As he was dying, he told his stepmother, the present Lady Moron, the story of his marriage, and begged her to send for his wife. This she refrained from doing, especially when she learnt that the girl did not know where or who he was. Lord Moron, as of course he was then, was buried. Some time after the countess went to Hereford to seek out the widow. Mrs. Pinder was living in the house of an eccentric woman, a drug-taker and slightly mad. The woman had threatened to commit suicide many times, and it happened that on the morning her ladyship arrived in Hereford and made a call at the house to satisfy her curiosity about her stepson’s wife, the landlady took the fatal step, and when the caller walked into her room, she found her dead, with a letter on the table announcing why she had committed suicide.

“Lady Moron is a woman of infinite resource. Here, she thought, was an opportunity of removing for ever a possible claimant to the Moron estate. On the table were a number of jewels and some money, which the woman had put there in her madness. Gathering these, her ladyship went into the girl’s room. She guessed it was hers when she saw the photograph of William on the mantelpiece, a photograph which was afterwards left in Lois’ room to discover if she knew her father. Lady Moron placed the jewels and the poison in an open box, locked it, taking away the key, and also a letter which would not only have established Mrs. Pinder’s innocence, but if the part Lady Moron played became public property, would also establish hers! That is the explanation for what would seem at the most to be an indiscretion.

“As you know, Mary Pinder was tried, sentenced to death, and her sentence commuted. In the prison her baby was born and taken in charge by a neighbour friend--though for some reason it was announced in the newspapers that the child of the ‘Hereford murderess’ had died. That, at any rate, satisfied Lady Moron, and she made no attempt to verify the story until she learnt by accident one day that Lois Reddle was the missing girl. How she discovered this I do not pretend to know--I am under the impression that one of her servants was connected with the Reddle family.

“For years,” Mr. Shaddles went on, “I have been satisfied in my mind that William was married, and have been trying to find his wife. I saw him soon after he was dead, and there was a gold wedding ring on his little finger, which was not there when he was buried. I also believed that the child was alive, and sought her out. I found that she was working at an office in Leith, and brought her down to my own office so that she should be under my eye, and eventually engaged the cleverest detective I could find to protect her. I then discovered that Lady Moron had some inkling of her identity, and I confess I hesitated when her ladyship suggested that the girl should go to her house as secretary. It was only after consultation with Mr. Dorn that I agreed. I had notified my suspicions to the Home Office, and a special service officer, Sergeant Braime, had been planted in her household to make enquiries, and to discover if she had been foolish enough to preserve the suicide’s letter.”

He paused.

“I think that is all.”

“An excellent story,” said Lady Moron, “and in confirmation----”

She took something from her bag and threw it on the floor.

Dorn stooped and picked up the key and the letter, gave one quick glance at its contents, and handed it to the lawyer.

“And now I have something else to say.” There was a dreadful silence. The pistol was in her hand, and the safety-catch had been lowered. “Most people in my position would commit suicide. But it will be very poor satisfaction to me to go out of the world and leave my enemies to triumph. I have a son--of sorts.” She smiled across the room to Selwyn, and he met her gaze steadily. “I should not care to leave him behind. Nor this wretched shop-girl”--her eyes sought Lois Reddle’s, and instantly her mother was by her side, her frail body interposed between the woman and her vengeance. “That is all,” said her ladyship.

And then Selwyn saw a look of horror come into his mother’s face. She was staring at the doorway. Little Mackenzie, a tray in his hand, had not seen the new visitor and he put down the tray with a chuckle.

“It’s a curious thing----” he said.

And then he saw the woman with the pistol.

“Martha!”

“My God!” she moaned. “I thought you were dead!”

The room was very quiet.

“I’d have recognised you if I hadn’t heard your fine, deep voice,” said the old man, blinking at her. “It’s Martha, my wife--you’ve met her, Mr. Shaddles?”

“I thought you were dead!” she said again, and the pistol dropped from her nerveless hand.

* * * * * * *

“The point is,” said the disconsolate Selwyn. “I am in a perfectly painful position, old dear, I’m not Lord anybody; I suppose I’m a Moron of sorts. I’m what you might term a naughty Moron. I’m really not worried about the mater--she’s in the south of France, and she’s jolly lucky she’s not in a hotter place! She’s been a perfectly fearful mother to me, and I don’t suppose I shall ever see her again, and I don’t jolly well want to! She’ll probably live to ninety--she’s that kind of mother.”

“Don’t be silly, Selwyn. Of course it makes all the difference!” said Lizzy. “If you’d asked me when you were a real lord and I was a typist--I’m a typist still, for the matter of that--I simply couldn’t have allowed you to ruin your career. As it is----”

They were walking along a quiet by-path of the park when suddenly Lizzy caught him by the arm and swung him round.

“Not that way,” she said. “Here’s a path through the rhododendrons. They’ll never think of coming round here, and there’s a perfectly beautiful seat--and at this time of the morning there’s nobody about. We can sit and talk----”

Michael saw the hasty retreat and smiled to himself.

“That’s the queerest aspect of the whole case.”

“Do you think so?” asked Lois, Countess of Moron. “I know lots of things that are queerer. I had a bill this morning from Mr. Shaddles. He has charged me one pound six shillings for the damage you did to his Ford!”

“He never has?” said the admiring Michael. “What a man! He must have spent ten thousand pounds on this case if he spent a penny. Most of which,” he added, “went to me.”

“Do you feel repaid?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I shall when your ladyship has said ‘thank you.’”

“Haven’t I said that yet?” she demanded in feigned surprise. “And please don’t say ‘ladyship’--you give me the creeps. Well, I’ll thank you, now--no, not now.”

They paused at the end of a little path.

“Let us go down here,” she said. “I think I remember there’s a shrubbery at the other end, and a garden seat, and it’s hardly likely that at this time of day…”

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The Hodder and Stoughton Limited (1926) edition was consulted for many of the changes listed below.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ liftman/lift-man, prison-gate/prison gate, Whitcomb/Whitcombe, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Abandon the use of drop-caps.

Add ToC.

[Chapter Seven]

Change (“Even you must _given_ me some credit for my frankness.”) to _give_.

[Chapter Thirteen]

(“Lizzy came promptly at six, bringing with her a…) delete the quotation mark.

[Chapter Eighteen]

“periods of national rejoicing but here, in this shadowy place” add semicolon after _rejoicing_.

[Chapter Twenty]

(“I’ve got a wife and four children,” he whined “and there’s an…) add comma after _whined_.

[Chapter Twenty-one]

“in order to get even either with Mr. _Chester_ Praye or the Countess” to _Chesney_.

[Chapter Twenty-five]

(“I want to see the master of this house,” said Michael Dorn!) change the exclamation mark to a period.

[Chapter Twenty-six]

“he could not see the top windows of the _buildings_” to _building_.

[Chapter Twenty-seven]

“Dr. Tappatt had no intention of sending _of_ the police” to _for_.

[Chapter Twenty-eight]

“_Tappett_ forced a smile.” to _Tappatt_.

[Chapter Twenty-nine]

“He scowled at her as _he_ came in, noted her coat and her hat” to _she_.

[Chapter Thirty]

“The farm takes _it_ name from the wood.” to _its_.

“steady echo of footsteps, as though somebody was _passing_ the floor” to _pacing_.

[Chapter Thirty-three]

“be sensible and recognise the _sacrifies_ I am making for you” to _sacrifices_.

[Chapter Thirty-six]

(“_It_ a curious thing----” he said.) to _It’s_.

[End of text]