"The Great Wireless Mystery" (continued 2)

He halted, reflected for a few moments, and then struck out into the undergrowth, confident that he was upon the spot where the unknown girl had sunk dying into his arms. Elma, who watched, followed him. He scarcely spoke, so fully absorbed was he in his quest.

At last he crossed some dead and broken bracken, and said:

“Here! This is where I found her!”

His pretty companion halted at his side and gazed about her. There was nothing save a tangle of undergrowth and dead ferns. Above were high bare oaks swaying slowly in the wintry wind.

“Well,” said Elma at last. “There’s nothing here, is there?”

He turned and looked her straight in the face, his expression very serious.

“No. There is nothing, I admit. Nothing! And yet a great secret lies here. Here, this spot, remote from anywhere, was the scene of a mysterious tragedy. You hold one clue, Elma—and I the other.” And again he looked straight into her eyes, while standing on that very spot where the fair-haired girl had breathed her last in his arms, and then, after a few seconds’ silence, he went on: “Elma! I—I call you by your Christian name because I feel that you have my future at heart, and—and I, on my part—I love you! May I call you by your Christian name?”

She returned his look very gravely. Her fine eyes met his, but he never wavered. Since that first day when Tweedles, her little black Pomeranian, had snapped at him she had been ever in his thoughts. He could not disguise the fact. Yet, after all, it was a very foolish dream, he had told himself dozens of times. He was poor—very poor—a mere adventurer on life’s troublous waters—while she was the daughter of a millionaire with, perhaps, a peeress’ career before her.

“Roddy,” at last she spoke, “I call you that! I think of you as Roddy,” she said slowly, looking straight into his eyes. “But in this matter we are very serious—both of us—eh?”

“Certainly we are, Elma,” he replied, taking her hand passionately.

She withdrew it at once, saying:

“You have brought me here for a purpose—to find traces of—of the girl who died at this spot. Where are the traces?”

“Well, the bracken is trodden down, as you see,” he replied.

“But surely that is no evidence of what you allege?”

“No, Elma. But that photograph which you showed me last night is a picture of her.”

The girl smiled mysteriously.

“You say so. How am I to know? They say that you are unfortunately suffering from delusions. In that case sight of any photograph would possibly strike a false chord in your memory.”

“False chord!” he cried. “Do you doubt this morning that I am in my sane senses? Do you doubt that which I have just said, Elma—do you doubt that I love you?”

The girl’s cheeks flushed instantly at his words. Next second they were pale again.

“No,” she said. “Please don’t let us talk of love, Mr Homfray.”

“Roddy—call me that.”

“Well—yes, Roddy, if you like.”

“I do like. You told me that you thought of me as Roddy. Can you never love me?” he implored.

The girl held her breath. Her heart was beating quickly and her eyes were turned away. She let him take her gloved hand and raise it fervently to his lips. Then, without answering his question, she turned her splendid eyes to his and he saw in them a strange, mysterious expression such as he had never noticed in the eyes of any woman before.

He thought it was a look of sympathy and trust, but a moment later it seemed as though she doubted him—she was half afraid of him.

“Elma!” he cried, still holding her hand. “Tell me—tell me that you care for me a little—just a little!” And he gazed imploringly into her pale face.

“A little!” she echoed softly. “Perhaps—well, perhaps I do, Roddy. But—but do not let us speak of it now—not until you are better.”

“Ah! You do love me a little,” he cried with delight, again raising her hand to his lips. “Perhaps you think I’ve not recovered from that infernal drug which my unknown enemies gave me. But I declare that to-day I am in my full senses—all except my memory—which is still curiously at fault.”

“Let us agree to be very good friends, Roddy,” the girl said, pressing his hand. “I confess that I like you very much,” she admitted, “but love is quite another matter. We have not known each other very long, remember.”

“Sufficiently long for me to know that I love you truly, and most dearly, Elma,” the young man declared with keen enthusiasm.

Then the girl sighed, withdrew her hand, and begged of him to drop the subject.

“I have told you that I care for you just a little, Roddy,” she said. “For the present let that suffice.”

She was obdurate, refusing to discuss the matter further. Instead, she began to question him closely concerning the events of that fatal night.

Again he repeated them, just as they have been recorded in the foregoing pages.

“Then it is evident that you were watched,” she remarked. “Whoever was responsible for the crime attacked you by some secret means. Then both of you were taken away.”

“By whom? To where? That’s the mystery!” Roddy echoed blankly.

“A mystery which must be fathomed. And I will help you,” she said quietly.

“You know the identity of the poor girl,” he said. “How did you come by her photograph?” he asked, a question he had been dying to put to her ever since the previous evening.

She was silent.

“You know more of the affair than you have admitted, Elma,” he suggested in a low voice, his eyes still fixed upon her pale countenance. “Is my surmise correct?”

“It is,” she replied in a strange half-whisper. “I have no actual knowledge,” she hastened to add. “But I have certain grim and terrible surmises.”

“You were anxious that my father should not see that photograph last night. Why?”

“Well—well, because I did not wish to—I didn’t wish him to think that I was unduly exciting you by showing you the portrait,” she faltered.

He looked at her, struck by her curious evasiveness.

“And was there no other reason, Elma?” asked the young man in deep earnestness.

Again she hesitated.

“Yes. There was another reason,” she replied. “One that I regret I cannot at present tell you.”

“You refuse to satisfy my curiosity—eh?”

“I am compelled to refuse,” she replied in a low voice.

“Why?”

“Because, as yet, I have only suspicions and surmises. When I have proved even one of them then I shall not hesitate to tell you the truth, Roddy—a bitter and terrible truth though it may be.”

“Really you are most mysterious!” her companion said, his face darkening.

“I know I am,” she answered with a queer hollow laugh.

“But at least you can tell me the dead girl’s name?”

“I only know her Christian name. It is Edna.”

“You knew her personally?”

“Well—yes. I have met her.”

“In what circumstances?”

“Curious ones. Very curious ones,” the girl replied. “If my surmises are correct, Roddy, we are face to face with one of the strangest problems of crime that has ever arisen in our modern world,” she added. “But until I am able to substantiate certain facts I can tell you nothing—nothing, much as I desire to in order to place you upon your guard.”

“What, am I still in peril?”

“Yes, I believe you are—in very great peril. So beware of yet another trap which may be cunningly laid for you by those who may pose as your friends.”

And the girl, taking her companion’s hand, gripped it between hers, and looking into his face, added:

“Roddy, trust me. Don’t ask me for facts which I cannot give. There are reasons—very strong reasons—that compel me for the moment to remain silent. So trust me?”

Chapter Eight.

Fears and Surprises.

Three nights later.

Over the steps which led from the pavement in Park Lane to the front door of Mr Sandys’ huge white mansion an awning had been erected. The people who went by upon the motor-buses to Oxford Street or to Hyde Park Corner noted it, and remarked that Purcell Sandys was giving one of his usual parties—functions at which the smartest set in high Society attended; gatherings which were always announced by the Times on the day previous and chronicled—with the dresses worn by the female guests—on the morning following.

The huge white-painted mansion which was so well known to Londoners was to them, after all, a house of mystery. The gossip papers had told them how the famous financier—one of England’s pillars of finance—spent three hundred pounds weekly on the floral decorations of the place; how the rooms, the mahogany doors of which had silver hinges, were full of priceless curios, and how each Wednesday night the greatest musical artistes in the world were engaged to play for the benefit of his guests at fees varying from five hundred to a thousand guineas.

All this was the truth. The Wednesday night entertainments of Purcell Sandys were unique. Nobody in all the world was so lavish upon music or upon floral decorations. The grey-bearded old man, who usually wore a rather shabby suit, and habitually smoked a pipe, gave his guests the very best he could, for he loved flowers—as his great range of hot-houses at Farncombe Towers and at Biarritz testified—while good music always absorbed his senses.

Cars were constantly arriving, depositing the guests, and driving on again, while the servants in the wide, flower-decorated hall were passing to and fro, busy with the hats and coats of the men, and conducting the ladies upstairs.

Through the hall came strains of dance music from the fine ballroom at the back of the house, one of the finest in the West End of London.

At the head of the great staircase Elma, in a simple but pretty frock of pale lemon, was doing the duty of hostess, as she always did, while her father, a burly, grey-bearded, rather bluff man in a well-fitting but well-worn evening suit, was grasping the hands of his friends warmly, and welcoming them.

On the opposite side of the road, against the railings of Hyde Park, a young man was standing, watching the procession of cars, watching with wistful eyes as he stood with half a dozen others attracted by the commotion, as is always the case outside the mansions of the West End where a party is in progress.

The young man was Roddy Homfray. As a matter of fact, he had passed in a ’bus towards Hyde Park Corner, and seeing the awning outside Mr Sandys’ house, had alighted and out of sheer curiosity made his way back. At his side were two young girls of the true Cockney type, who were criticising each female guest as she arrived, and declaring what a joy it must be to be able to wear fine clothes and go to parties in a car.

Roddy was just about to turn away and cross to Waterloo to take the last train home, when among the cars he saw a fine grey Rolls in which a man and a woman were seated. Next second he craned his neck, and then crossed the road to obtain a nearer view of the pair.

“Yes,” he gasped aloud to himself, “that’s the woman. I’m certain! And the man? No, I’m not quite so sure. He was older, I think.”

Unseen, he narrowly watched the tallish, dark-haired, clean-shaven man alight, and saw him help out his companion, who was about forty, and wore a fur-trimmed evening wrap of gorgeous brocade and a beautiful diamond ornament in her dark hair.

“No! I’m not mistaken!” the young man muttered again to himself. “That’s the woman, without a doubt. But surely she can’t be a friend of Mr Sandys!”

That she was, was instantly proved by the fact that she ascended the red-carpeted steps followed by her companion, and they were received within by the bowing man-servant.

He watched them disappear, and a few moments afterwards he boldly mounted the steps to the door, where his passage was at once barred by a flunkey.

“I don’t want to come in,” said Roddy, in a low, confidential tone. “Do me a favour, will you? I’ll make it right with you. I want to know the names of that lady and gentleman who’ve this moment gone in.”

The servant viewed him rather suspiciously, and replied:

“Well, I don’t know them myself, for I haven’t been here long—only a week. But I’ll try to find out if you’ll come back, say, in a quarter of an hour.”

“Yes, do,” urged Roddy. “It’s most important to me.”

And then he slipped back down the steps and strolled along Park Lane, full of strange reflections.

That woman! It was the same woman of his hideous nightmare—the dark-faced woman who had held him beneath her evil influence, and forced him to commit some act against his will. But exactly what act it was he could not for the life of him recall. Sometimes he had an idea that he had been forced into the committal of a terrible crime, while at others the recollections all seemed so vague and fantastic that he dismissed them as the mere vagaries of an upset mind.

But he had found the woman. She was a friend of the Sandys! And did not Elma hold the photograph of the girl Edna, whom he had discovered in Welling Wood? The circumstances were more than strange!

A quarter of an hour later he returned to the house, and on slipping a ten-shilling note surreptitiously into the hand of the servant the latter said:

“The gentleman’s name is Mr Bertram Harrison, and the lady—a widow—is Mrs Freda Crisp.”

“Freda Crisp?” he echoed aghast.

“Yes. That’s the name Mr Hughes, the butler, told me,” the flunkey declared.

Roddy Homfray turned away. Freda Crisp! How amazing! That was the name of the woman against whom his father had warned him. That woman was undoubtedly his enemy. Why? Could it be possible that she was Elma’s enemy also? Was it possible that Elma, with the knowledge of the girl Edna, who had died in the wood and so mysteriously disappeared, suspected that handsome dark-haired woman of being implicated in the crime?

He recollected Elma’s curious reticence concerning the girl, and her refusal to make any allegations before she had ascertained and proved certain facts.

He crossed the road and, halting, gazed through the railings out across the dark London park where in the distance the lights were twinkling among the bare branches. The night was cold, for a keen east wind had sprung up. He hesitated.

To remain the night in London would bring the truth no nearer, for with the gay party in progress he could not enter there in the clothes he wore. And besides, he had not yet met Elma’s father. He longed to go there and watch the movements of that dark, gorgeously-dressed woman who had exercised such a strangely evil influence over him while he was in the grip of that mysterious drug. Who was she? Why had she and her companion held him in their toils for days, and then cast him aside at that remote spot by the Thames, hoping that he would die during the night?

What did it all mean?

He glanced at his watch, and saw that if he took a taxi he might just catch the last train. And this he did.

It was long after midnight when he entered the silent old Rectory and found his father bent beneath the green-shaded reading-lamp which stood on the study table.

The rector had been busy writing for hours—ever since old Mrs Bentley had cleared away his supper and wished him good-night.

Roddy, throwing off his coat, sank wearily into the wicker arm-chair before the welcome fire and took out his pipe, his father continuing writing his next Sunday’s sermon after briefly greeting him.

As the young man smoked, he reflected, until at last he suddenly said:

“Haven’t you finished your work, father? It’s getting very late.”

“Just finished—just finished, my boy!” said the old man cheerily, screwing up his fountain-pen. “I’ve had a heavy day to-day—out visiting nearly all day. There’s a lot of sickness in the village, you know.”

“Yes. And the Sandys are away in town, aren’t they?”

“They went up yesterday. Mr Sandys and his daughter are always at Park Lane on Wednesdays, I understand. I saw in the paper this morning that the party to-night has a rather political flavour, for two Cabinet Ministers and their wives are to be there.”

“I suppose Mr Sandys must be very rich?”

“Immensely, they say. I heard the other day that he is one of the confidential advisers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he’ll probably get a peerage before long,” said his father. “But, after all, he is not one of your modern, get-rich-quick men. He’s a real, solid, God-fearing man, who though so very wealthy does a large amount of good in a quiet, unostentatious way. Only three days ago he gave me a cheque for two hundred pounds and asked me to distribute it to the poor people at Christmas, but on no condition is his name to be mentioned to a soul. So keep the information to yourself, Roddy.”

“Of course I will,” his son replied, puffing at his pipe.

“Mr Sandys asked about you,” said the rector. “I am to take you to the Towers to dine one night very soon.”

“I shall be delighted. Old Lord Farncombe asked me when I was last at home. Don’t you remember?”

“Of course,” said his father. “But how have you been feeling to-day? All right, I hope?”

“I feel quite right again now,” replied the young man. Then, after a brief pause, he removed his pipe and looked straight across at his father as in a rather changed voice, he said: “Do you recollect, dad, the other day you spoke of a certain woman, and warned me against her?”

“Yes,” said the old rector very seriously. “You recollect her name, I hope—Freda Crisp. Never forget that name, Roddy, never!”

“Why?”

“Because she is my enemy, my boy—and yours,” replied the old man, in a hard, strained voice.

“Why should she be? I don’t know the lady.”

“You said that you had some recollection of her in South America,” the old clergyman remarked.

“It isn’t the same woman.”

“Oh! How do you know?” asked his father, glancing at him quickly.

“Because I’ve seen the real Freda Crisp—the woman who you say is my enemy. I saw her to-night.”

“You’ve seen her! Where?” asked Mr Homfray eagerly.

“She is the woman I see in my bad dreams—those hazy recollections of the hours when I was drugged—handsome, dark-haired, middle-aged, and wears wonderful gowns.”

“Exactly! The description is quite correct, Roddy. But where did you see her to-night?”

“She is at Mr Sandys’.”

“At Mr Sandys’?” gasped his father. “You are surely mistaken! Freda Crisp would never have the entrée there?”

“But she has, father! I saw her go in—with an elderly man whose name is Bertram Harrison.”

“I’ve never heard of him. But are you quite certain of this, Roddy? Are you positive that the woman is actually on friendly terms with Mr Sandys?”

Then Roddy explained to his father exactly what had occurred, and how he had obtained the name of the handsome guest.

“Well—what you tell me, my boy, utterly staggers me?” the old man admitted. “I never dreamed that the woman knew Purcell Sandys. I told you to beware of her, and I repeat my warning. She is a woman whose eyes are as fascinating as those of a snake, and whose hand-shake is as fatal as a poisoned dart.”

“Really, dad, you don’t seem to like her, eh?”

“No, my boy, I don’t. I have cause—good cause, alas! to hold her in abhorrence—as your enemy and mine!”

“But why? I can’t understand you. You’ve never spoken of her till the other day.”

“Because I—well, the secret is mine, Roddy.”

“Yours,” said his son. “Is it one that I may not know?”

“Yes. I would prefer to say nothing more,” he answered briefly.

“Nothing more concerning a woman who held me for days beneath her evil influence, helpless as a babe in her unscrupulous hands—a woman who compelled me to—”

“To what, Roddy?” asked his father very quickly, and with difficulty controlling his own emotion.

“To commit some crime, I fear. But I cannot tell—I cannot decide exactly what I did—or how I acted. All seems so vague, indistinct and mysterious! All I remember is that woman’s handsome face—that pair of dark, evil eyes!”

“Yes,” remarked the old man in a deep voice. “They are evil. The man is bad enough—but the woman is even worse.”

“The man Harrison?”

“No. Gordon Gray. You have not met him.”

“Perhaps I have. Perhaps he was the man with Mrs Crisp at the house where I was held in bondage—a big house standing in its own grounds—but where it is situated, I have no idea.”

“Perhaps,” said his father reflectively. “Describe him.”

Roddy Homfray strove to recall the salient points of the woman’s male companion, and as far as his recollection went he described them.

“Yes,” said the rector, his grey brows knit.

“It may have been Gordon Gray! But why did they make that secret attack upon you, if not in order to injure me?”

“Because I discovered the girl in the wood. They evidently intended to cover all traces of the crime. But how did they come to Welling Wood at all?”

His father remained silent. He had said nothing of the woman’s secret visit to him, nor of Gray’s presence in the church on that Sunday night. He kept his own counsel, yet now he fully realised the dastardly trap set for his son, and how, all unconsciously, the lad had fallen into it.

Only that afternoon Doctor Denton had called, and they had taken tea together. In the course of their conversation the doctor had told him how, when in London on the previous day, he had gone to an old fellow-student who was now a great mental specialist in Harley Street, and had had a conversation with him concerning Roddy’s case.

After hearing all the circumstances and a close description of the symptoms, the specialist had given it as his opinion that the ball of fire which Roddy had seen was undoubtedly the explosion of a small bomb of asphyxiating gas which had rendered him unconscious. Afterwards a certain drug recently invented by a chemist in Darmstadt had, no doubt, been injected into his arms. This drug was a most dangerous and terrible one, for while it had no influence upon a person’s actions, yet it paralysed the brain and almost inevitably caused insanity.

Roddy was practically cured, but the specialist had expressed a very serious fear that ere long signs of insanity would reappear, and it would then be incurable!

It was that secret but terrible knowledge of his son’s imminent peril that old Mr Homfray now held. His enemies had triumphed, after all!

And this was made the more plain when three hours later he woke up to find his son in his room, chattering and behaving as no man in his senses would.

The old man rose, and with clenched fists declared aloud that he would now himself fight for his son’s life and bring the guilty pair to justice.

But, alas! the old rector never dreamed how difficult would be his task, nor what impregnable defences had arisen to protect and aid those who were his enemies.

In addition Roddy, in his half-dazed condition, never dreamed of the perils and pitfalls which now surrounded the girl he so dearly loved.

Chapter Nine.

The Spider’s Nest.

Ten days had gone by.

Gordon Gray, wearing a grey Austrian velour hat and heavy brown motor-coat, turned the car from the Great North Road into the drive which led to the front of Willowden, and alighted.

The afternoon was wet, and the drive from London had been a cold, uncomfortable one. In the hall he threw off his coat, and entering the well-furnished morning-room, rang the bell. In a few moments Claribut, respectable, white-haired and rosy-faced, entered.

“Well, Jim?” he asked. “What’s the news at Little Farncombe—eh? You’ve been there several days; what have you discovered?”

“Several things,” replied the old crook who posed as servant. “Things we didn’t expect.”

“How?” asked Gray, offering the old man a cigarette from his gold case.

“Well, I went first to Pangbourne, and then to Little Farncombe. Young Homfray was taken queer again. I stayed at the Red Lion, and managed to find out all about what was going on at the Rectory. Homfray’s old gardener is in the habit of taking his glass of beer there at night, and I, posing as a stranger, soon got him to talk. He told me that his young master was taken ill in the night. His brain had given way, and the village doctor called in a specialist from Harley Street. The latter can’t make out the symptoms.”

“Probably not!” growled Gray. “The dose cost us a lot, so it ought not to be detected by the first man consulted.”

“The specialist has, however, fixed that he’s suffering from a drug—administered with malicious intent, he puts it.”

“What’s the fool’s name?” snapped Gray.

“I don’t know. My friend, the gardener, could not ascertain.”

Gray gave vent to a short grunt of dissatisfaction.

“Well—and what then?”

“The young fellow was very ill—quite off his head for three days—and then they gave him some injections which quietened him, and now he’s a lot better. Nearer his normal self, I hear.” And he sank into a chair by the fire.

“H’m! He’ll probably have a second relapse. I wonder what they gave him? I wonder if this Harley Street chap has twigged our game, Jim?”

“Perhaps he has.”

“If so, then it’s a jolly good job for us that I kept out of the way. Young Homfray has never seen me to his knowledge, remember. He saw you several times.”

“Yes, Gordon. You took precautions—as you always do. You somehow seem to see into the future.”

“I do, my dear Jimmie. I hope this lad doesn’t recognise Freda again. He may, of course. But he doesn’t know me—which is as well.”

“He recollects finding Edna, though.”

“Ah! That’s a little awkward, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. He told the old sky-pilot all about it, but naturally they think his mind is unhinged and take the story with a grain of salt.”

“Naturally. But what else?” asked the well-dressed international crook with a business-like air.

“It seems that the young fellow is on the point of obtaining a concession from the Moorish Government to prospect for emeralds somewhere in the Atlas Mountains; I believe it is a place called the Wad Sus. Ever heard of it?”

“Yes,” replied Gray, making a mental note of the region. “I’ve heard of some ancient mines there. But how is he obtaining the concession?”

“Ah! I’ve had a lot of trouble to get that information, and it has cost me a pound or two. But I’ve got it,” laughed the old scoundrel.

“There’s a friend of his who lives at Richmond, a certain Andrew Barclay, who has spent many years in Fez. It seems that young Homfray met him in Santiago last year, and by some means was able to do him a great service. In return, this man Barclay is endeavouring to obtain the concession for prospecting from the Moorish Government.”

“H’m! The Wad Sus region—a very wild mountainous one, inhabited by a wild desert tribe called the Touaregs, men who wear black veils over their faces to protect them from the sandstorms so prevalent in the Sahara. But I’ll look it all up. Where does this man Barclay live?” asked Gray.

“In Underhill Road. Where that is I don’t know—but, of course, it is easily found.”

The master-crook drew several long whiffs at his choice Eastern cigarette.

“Then, after all, it may be to our distinct advantage that Roderick Homfray recovers, Jimmie.”

“What! Then you think that the concession for the emerald prospecting may be worth money?”

“It may be worth quite a lot in the City. A rather attractive proposition—emeralds in the Sahara. I know two or three men who would take it up—providing I could bring them a properly signed and sealed concession. Emeralds are increasing in value nowadays, you know—and an emerald concession is a sound proposition. After all, the lad may yet be of considerable use to us, Jimmie.”

“Pity he saw Freda!” remarked the wily old fellow. “Jimmie, the butler” was well known in Sing-Sing Prison as one of the shrewdest and cleverest of crooks and card-sharpers who had ever “worked” the transatlantic liners.

In the underworld of New York, Paris and London marvellous stories had been and were still told of his alertness, of the several bold coups he had made, and the great sums he had filched from the pockets of the unwary in conjunction, be it said, with Gordon Gray, alias Commander George Tothill, late of the British Navy, who was also known to certain of his pals as “Toby” Jackson. At Parkhurst Prison “Joyous Jimmie” was also well known, for he had enjoyed the English air for seven years less certain good conduct remission. But both master and man were crooks, clever cultured men who could delude anybody, who could adapt themselves to any surroundings, who knew life in all its phases, and could, with equanimity, eat a portion of oily fried fish-and-chips for their dinner or enjoy a Sole Colbert washed down with a glass of Imperial Tokay.

The pair, with a man named Arthur Porter, known to his criminal friends as “Guinness”—whom, by the way, Roddy had seen entering Mr Sandys’ house in Park Lane—and the handsome woman Freda Crisp were indeed parasites upon London society.

Their daring was colossal, their ingenuity astounding, and the ramifications of their friends bewildering.

“Get me a drink, Jimmie,” said the man who posed as his master. “I’m cold. Why the devil don’t you keep a better fire than this?”

“The missus is out. Went to the parson’s wife’s tea-party half an hour ago. Mary goes to church here. It’s better.”

“Of course it is—gives us a hall-mark of respectability,” laughed Gray. “Freda goes now and then. But she gives money to the old parson and excuses herself for non-attendance on Sunday mornings. Oh! my dear Jimmie!” he laughed. “These people want a lot of moss scraping off them, don’t they—eh?”

“Moss! Why, it’s that hard, grey lichen with hairy flowers that grows on trees! They want it all scraped off, then rubbed with sandpaper and a rag and acid applied to put a bit of vim in them. It’s the same over all this faded old country—that’s my belief.”

“And yet some of them are infernally cute. That old man Homfray, for instance, he’s got his eyes skinned. He doesn’t forget that silly young ass Hugh Willard, you know!”

“No, Gordon! Don’t mention him. That’s one of our failures—one of our false steps,” declared Jimmie. “I don’t like to hear any mention of his name—nor of Hyde Park Square either.”

“Rot! my dear fellow! What can the old clergyman know? Nothing. It’s all surmise—and what does that matter? There’s no trace, and—”

“And we made a profit—and a fine lot of good it did us.”

“It was Freda’s doing. She worked it out.”

“I know. And, thanks to her, we are in the infernal peril we are to-day, my dear Gordon.”

“Peril? Bosh! What are you thinking of, Jimmie?” laughed Gray. “There’s not a written word.”

“But you know what old Homfray said to Freda—what he threatened—a witness!”

“Witness!” laughed the good-looking man, tossing his cigarette end viciously into the fire. “Don’t believe it, my dear old chap. He was only trying to bluff her—and Freda knows a game worth two of that—the game we are playing with the old fool’s son.”

“A highly dangerous game—I call it!” was the butler’s dubious reply.

“Leave that to me.”

“But he might recognise me, Gordon!”

“Rot! You won’t meet him.”

“What about Freda?”

“Don’t worry. The boy was so dazed by the drug that he’ll never recognise her again. She tried to make him believe that he himself had committed a crime. And she succeeded.”

“Old Homfray may have told him about us and about the Willard affair. What then?”

“No fear of that. Old Homfray will say nothing to his son. He wouldn’t expose himself.”

But Claribut shook his head in doubt.

“My opinion is that we’re treading on very thin ice. I don’t like this house—and I don’t like the look of things at all.”

“The house is all right. Young Homfray can recollect nothing clearly after he found the girl.”

“Of course, his friends are laughing at this weird story of how he discovered her,” said Claribut. “But we don’t know whether, in some way or other, his story may be corroborated. And then—”

“Well, even then there’s no evidence to connect us with the affair. None whatever. We got them both clear away in the car, thanks to your marvellous ingenuity, Jimmie. And naturally he wonders where Edna is.”

“And so do two or three other people,” Claribut remarked. “Recollect there are some unwelcome inquiries on foot in another quarter.”

“I don’t fear them in the least. All we have to do now is to sit tight and watch the young fellow’s movements. We want to ascertain what he is doing concerning that concession. We must discover that man Barclay at Richmond and find out what sort of fellow he is. I may have to approach him. We both of us know Morocco—eh, Jimmie? That little bit of gun-running helping the Moors against the Spanish was exciting enough—wasn’t it?”

“Yes. And it brought us in big profits, too. I wish we had another slice of luck like it,” Claribut agreed.

“Well, we may. Who knows? I’ll see what I can find out about emeralds in Morocco.”

At that moment the woman Crisp came in. She was wearing a long mink coat, with a splendid blue fox around her neck and a small grey velour hat which suited her to perfection.

“Hallo, Gordon! Back again. How’s Paris looking?”

“Looking? I was only there nine hours, just to see Françillon. Good job I went. He didn’t see the risk. He’s slipped off to Switzerland. He left the Gare de Lyon at eleven this morning, and the Sûreté are now looking, for him. He got off just in the nick of time.”

“You came over by air, I suppose?”

“Yes, left Le Bourget at ten and was at Croydon just after twelve. I left the car at Croydon yesterday afternoon when I went over. Rather a bad fog over the Channel and it took us over three hours.”

“Did you see Milly?”

“Yes, called at the Continental last night and had half an hour’s chat with her. She seems well enough, and had booked her passage to New York from Cherbourg on the eighteenth.”

“And what’s the latest about young Homfray?” asked the handsome woman, divesting herself of her furs.

“I was just discussing him with Jimmie. He seems to have unearthed one or two things while poking about at Little Farncombe.”

“Yes. But there’s one fact that I’ve discovered to-day—a very important fact,” she said.

“Well, what’s the trouble now?” asked Gray. “Young Homfray is watching us!”

“Watching us? What do you mean?” asked the man, turning pale. “Has the old man told him about us?”

“He may have done. That we can’t tell. Only I found out that the other night Homfray was watching outside Purcell Sandys’ house in Park Lane, and saw me go in with Arthur. He inquired our names of one of the servants.”

“Gad! Then he’s already recognised you—eh?” cried Gray. “That’s horribly awkward.”

“It is—in many ways! We must devise some plan to close the young man’s mouth.”

“But how, Freda?”

“The drug will work again in a day or two. When it does he’ll be a hopeless idiot and nobody will credit a word he’s said.”

“It may work—and it may not. Jimmie says that some Harley Street fellow has been giving him injections. That looks as though the drug has been spotted—eh?”

“Yes, it does. But old Grunberg assured me that a reaction must set in and hopeless idiocy will be the result. At least, let’s hope so.”

“I’m not so hopeful. The lad may yet be of some use to us. It’s fortunate that he’s never seen me.”

“It is. And you’d better keep away from me in London, for it’s evident that he is pretty shrewd, and is now constantly watchful.”

“I agree,” growled Claribut. “And he must not see me either.”

“No. He certainly must not,” said Freda Crisp. “Of course, the mystery of Edna has aroused his curiosity—which is a pity. Our only hope is that the drug will act as old Grunberg guaranteed it would. By Jove! those German chemists are devilish clever—aren’t they? Old Homfray has defied us, and he will very soon have cause to regret his words, as I told him he would. Yet he may, of course, risk everything and tell the police about Hugh Willard!”

“Oh! Don’t worry at all about that, you fool!” urged Gray. “As long as his son lives, whether idiot or not, he’ll keep his mouth closed for his own sake, depend upon it?”

Chapter Ten.

What Mr Sandys Knew.

“I am very pleased indeed to meet your son, Mr Homfray,” said the grey-bearded man in his well-worn dinner-jacket as he grasped Roddy’s hand in the handsome hall of Farncombe Towers.

“It’s awfully kind of you to say that, Mr Sandys,” replied the young man, as they crossed to the great open fireplace with the blazing logs, a fireplace with carved stone over which was the time-worn escutcheon with the sea-horse rampant of the ancient Farncombe family. “It’s so very kind of you to invite me,” the young man went on. “Lord Farncombe asked me here the last time I was back in England.”

“You are a great traveller, I believe—are you not? Your father told me the other day about your adventures on the Amazon.”

“Well,” laughed the young man, easy in his well-cut dinner-jacket. “I’m a mining engineer, you know, and we have to rough it very often.”

“No doubt. Some of you are the pioneers of Great Britain. Once, years ago, I accompanied an expedition up the Yukon River, and I had a very rough time of it, but it was intensely interesting.”

“Just now my son is interested in a concession for emerald prospecting in the Atlas Mountains,” the old rector remarked. “I have been going into the matter. There are some ancient workings somewhere in the Wad Sus district, from which it is said that the Pharaoh Rameses V of the Twenty-First Dynasty, and who was called Amennesu-F, obtained the magnificent gems which were among the greatest treasures of his huge palace in ancient Thebes. They were the gems which five hundred years later Ptolemy IV gave to Arsinde, the wife of Philopator—a fact which is recorded in a papyrus in the British Museum. And that was about eleven hundred years before the Christian era. The exact locality has been lost, but my son believes that from the mention of two ancient documents—one of which is in the Egyptian department at the British Museum and the other in the National Library in Paris—it can be located.”

“Most interesting, intensely interesting,” exclaimed the honest-faced old gentleman whose name in connexion with his partner, Sir Charles Hornton, the international banker, who lived mostly in Paris, was one to conjure with in high finance. All over Europe the banking house of Sandys and Hornton was known. Next to that of the Rothschilds it was the most world famous. Old Purcell’s partner lived in the Avenue des Champs Elysées and had the ancient château of Livarot on the Loire, a beautiful winter villa at Cap Martin, and a house in Suffolk. Sir Charles seldom, if ever, came to London. Lady Hornton, however, frequently came, and spent a few weeks each season at Claridge’s or at Fawndene Court.

“I hope you will be successful, not only in obtaining the concession from the Moors, Homfray, but also in locating the exact position of the ancient workings,” Sandys said, turning to the young man. “It should bring you a fortune, for such a business proposition is worth money even to-day when there is a slump in precious gems.”

“I hope to be successful,” Roddy replied, when at the same moment Elma, in a pretty gown of soft pink crêpe marocain, entered the room.

Unaware of their previous friendship, Mr Sandys introduced his daughter. Roddy instantly realised the fact that her father was in ignorance of their acquaintance, therefore he greeted her with formality, a fact which secretly amused the old rector.

At dinner Roddy found himself seated on Elma’s left in the fine old seventeenth-century room, with its old panelling and its four oval portraits by Lely, pictures of the dead-and-gone Farncombe beauties in wigs and patches.

Roddy and his father were the only guests, and Elma, smiling and happy, acted as hostess.

The grey-bearded old financier evinced a great interest in the rector’s son, and listened to his descriptions of his wanderings up the mighty Amazon.

Presently Mr Sandys remarked:

“I hear you are interested in wireless. It must be a most fascinating science. Of course, I have seen the installations on board ship, but the modern wireless telephony seems to me little short of marvellous.”

“Yes, to the uninitiated,” remarked the young fellow with a smile. “I’ve been experimenting for some years, and the set I have at the Rectory is quite efficient. From it I can speak over five to six hundred miles of space.”

“Really?” exclaimed the old gentleman, greatly interested. “How very wonderful. I should like to see it.”

“So should I, dad,” said Elma, not allowing her father to know that she was already very well acquainted with the set, for Roddy had shown her how it worked, and had given her some slight instruction in its various complications. “We ought to have a set fixed here. Then we could listen to the wireless concerts, the broadcasting of news, and all that goes on in the ether—eh?”

“Would it be a very difficult affair to fit up a set here?” inquired her father of the young man.

“Not at all. You could easily stretch an aerial from a mast on one of the towers across to one of the big trees in the park, and so have a magnificent aerial. As regards cost, it all depends upon what you desire to receive. There are small sets for about five pounds, while on the large sets, which would receive everything up to nine thousand miles distant, one can spend a hundred pounds or more. Of course, you would not want to transmit—for transmission permits are only granted to those engaged in genuine research work.”

“No. I should only want to listen. Could you manage to instal one for me, do you think?”

“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Roddy, delighted, while in secret Elma was equally enthusiastic. She well knew how absorbed he was in his experiments, and what pleasure he would derive from fitting up the new station.

So it was decided that Roddy should purchase a really fine seven-valve receiving-set and fix it up as soon as possible.

“You are not going away just yet, I hope,” said the financier laughing, “at least, not until you’ve fixed up our wireless.”

“I don’t expect so,” was the young man’s reply. “As soon as my friend gets the concession through at Fez I shall go to Morocco and start to work. I’ve been reading up the Wad Sus region, and it seems that the only way to reach it in safety is to join one of the camel caravans which go regularly to and fro from Mogador across the Sahara.”

“How interesting!” declared Elma, looking very sweet and dainty. “What an adventure to travel with the Arabs! I’d love it. We were in Algiers for a few weeks the winter before last, and I longed to make an excursion into the desert, but father objected!”

“Ah! The Sahara is no place for a woman, Elma,” replied the old man. “And especially that district south of the Atlas where Mr Homfray is going. By the way,” added Mr Sandys, turning to the young man, “I hear that you haven’t been very well lately. Somebody said you were missing for several days. Is that so?”

A slight colour rose to the young man’s face, for he was at a loss for an evasive explanation.

“Oh! I went away—up to London—and father grew alarmed because I hadn’t told him where I’d gone—that’s all!” he laughed, and his eyes met Elma’s with a meaning look.

There the matter dropped, and all four leaving the table passed into the big drawing-room, warmed by huge wood fires blazing at each end, where coffee was served by Hughes, the stately old butler who had been in Lord Farncombe’s service. Indeed, when Mr Sandys purchased the Towers he took over nearly the entire staff, by which he had greatly ingratiated himself with the whole countryside.

It was a magnificent old room, oblong, with four long windows which in daytime gave beautiful vistas over the lake, the park, and dark woods beyond—a room which contained a number of valuable pieces of antique furniture, some genuine Elizabethan chairs and a Carolean day-bed, while on the walls were three pieces of almost priceless tapestry which had originally been in the historic Château of Amboise. Across the long windows heavy plush curtains were now drawn, and instead of a hundred candles in the great crystal candelabra, the beautiful old apartment with its sweet odour of pot pourri was filled with the soft glow of electricity, the lamps being hidden behind the high-up cornice.

After coffee, Elma, at her father’s request, went to the piano and King delightfully some charming French chansonettes. She had received part of her education at Versailles and spoke French fluently.

“When shall you start putting up the wireless, Mr Homfray?” she asked presently, turning to Roddy, while her father and the rector were discussing something concerning the parish.

“As soon as I can get the apparatus,” was his reply. “You will, I hope, help me—eh?”

And he looked straight into her fine eyes.

“If you wish,” she replied. “But—but,” she added in a low voice, “you are going away to Morocco?” and her lips pouted prettily.

“Not yet,” he assured her beneath his breath. “I have no wish to go while you are here, Elma.” They had contrived to be at the other end of the big room, so that they could not be overheard. But next second he spoke aloud, suggesting that she should sing another song.

“No, Mr Homfray. Come, let us sit by the fire,” she urged. “Tell me more about your adventures in South America. It’s so exciting.” And they seated themselves at the further end of the room.

Elma was nothing else than a modern girl—a “latchkey girl,” if one liked to apply to her such an epithet. The removal of the conventions which tradition had built up around women—removed by the ardours and endurances of the war—has reorganised society. The correct behaviour of the days of Elma’s mother had vanished, and instead of the chaperon—to-day as extinct as the dodo—Elma frequently took around with her her dancing partner, a good-looking young barrister named Mostyn Wynn, with whom she often danced the entire evening, he taking her home to Park Lane in the small hours of the morning. Mostyn was only a “pal.” He was a divine dancer, but she regarded him in much the same light as she regarded her little sharp-nosed, alert Pomeranian, Tweedles, the fiery yapper who had been the means of introducing her to Roddy Homfray.

There are a good many pessimists to-day, both men and women, in London Society who declare that its “decline and fall” has come because a girl has a latchkey, because she sometimes pays for a man’s dinner at a restaurant, and because she takes her dancing partner about with her like a dog. They say that the delicate lights and shades of the romance of Society of the Edwardian days are no longer to be found in Mayfair or Belgravia, but those who see through modern spectacles know that the removal of those tiresome and outworn conventions was inevitable, and that dancing partners and latchkeys for women mark the renaissance of London life, rather than the decline which our pessimists who have lived in the last generation declare it to be.

“Last Wednesday you were not in London, were you?” remarked Roddy, as he smoked the cigarette which Elma had offered him.

“No,” she replied. “I motored father up to Liverpool. He had some business friends coming from New York, so we didn’t give our usual party.”

“But on the previous Wednesday you did, and you had among your guests a Mrs Crisp.”

“Yes, Freda Crisp. Do you know her? Isn’t she awfully jolly?”

“I only know her by sight, Elma. What do you know of her? Tell me,” he asked, lowering his voice again.

“Oh! not really very much. Her friend, Mr Bertram Harrison, is a business friend of father’s. They are, I believe, carrying on some negotiations concerning a company in Marseilles.”

“But Mrs Crisp. How did you come to know her?”

“Why?”

“Because I am very interested,” Roddy said, deeply in earnest.

“Lady Hornton, the wife of father’s partner, introduced us when I was staying at Fawndene Court, their place in Suffolk, about six months ago. Mr Harrison came there to dine and sleep. But Freda never fails nowadays to come to our party, and she has hosts of friends in town.”

“Where does she live?” he asked eagerly.

“At a big old house called Willowden, beyond Welwyn, on the Great North Road.”

The young man made a mental note of the address. Could it have been to that house he had been taken? If he saw it again possibly he would remember it.

“Why are you so inquisitive about her?” asked the girl.

“For several reasons,” he replied. “I was once warned against her, Elma. And I would repeat the warning to you,” he said, looking straight into the beautiful eyes of the girl he loved so deeply.

“But why?” she asked, staring at him. “Freda is an awfully good friend of mine?”

“Has she ever been down here?”

“No. We’ve always met in town.”

“Has she ever asked about this place—about Little Farncombe—or about myself?”

“No, never. Why?”

Roddy hesitated. Then he answered:

“Oh! well, I thought she might be a little inquisitive—that’s all?” He did not tell her that it was his father, the rector, who had declared her to be a woman of a very undesirable type. It was that woman’s handsome, evil face that ever and anon arose in his dreams. She was the woman under whose influence he had acted against his will, utterly helpless while beneath her dominating influence and only half-conscious in his drugged state.

And such a woman was Elma’s friend!

“Do you know anything of Mr Harrison?” Roddy asked, whereupon she replied that she did not know much about him, but that her father would know. Then she called across to him:

“I say, dad, what do you know about Bertram Harrison—Freda Crisp’s friend?”

At mention of the latter name the rector’s face changed.

“Bertram Harrison?” echoed the great financier. “Oh! He is partner in a French financial house. Hornton is having some business with him. Mrs Crisp is a relative of his—his sister, I believe. Why do you ask?”

The rector sat silent and wondering.

“Mr Homfray knows Mrs Crisp, and has just asked me about Mr Harrison.”

“Oh! you know Freda, do you?” exclaimed Mr Sandys, addressing the young man. “A very intelligent and delightful woman, isn’t she? She has been a wonderful traveller.”

“Yes,” replied Roddy faintly. “I—well, I was surprised when I knew that she was a frequent visitor at Park Lane.”

“Why?”

“For certain reasons, Mr Sandys,” was the young man’s hard reply, “certain private reasons.”

“You don’t like her, that’s evident,” laughed the grey-bearded man.

“No, I don’t,” was Roddy’s blunt answer, as his eyes met those of his father.

“Well, she’s always most charming to me?” declared Elma.

“And she has never mentioned me?” he asked. “Are you quite sure?”

“Never?”

“Of course, I only know her through Harrison,” Mr Sandys said. “He introduced her to my partner, Sir Charles Hornton, whose wife, in turn, introduced her to Elma. She comes to our parties and seems to be very well known, for I’ve seen her in the Park once or twice with people who move in the best circles.”

“I know you’ll pardon me, Mr Sandys,” Roddy said, “but I merely asked your daughter what she knew of her. Please do not think that I wish to criticise your friends.”

“Of course not,” laughed the financier. “All of us at times make social mistakes, especially men in my own walk of life. I am frequently compelled to entertain people whose friendship I do not desire, but whom I have to tolerate for purely business purposes. But, by the way,” he added, “I should much like to hear more concerning this concession in Morocco in which you are interested. Shall you be in London to-morrow? If so, will you look in and see me about noon in Lombard Street?”

“Certainly,” replied Roddy with delight, and half an hour later father and son walked back through the frosty night to the Rectory.

On the way Roddy referred to the conversation concerning the woman Crisp, but his father remained pensive and silent.

He merely remarked:

“I had no idea that that woman was friendly with Miss Sandys.”

Next day at the hour appointed Roddy passed through the huge swing doors in Lombard Street which bore a great brass plate with the inscription: “Sandys and Hornton,” and a commissionaire at once conducted him up in the lift to Mr Purcell Sandys’ private room.

The elderly man was seated smoking a cigar by the fire of the big apartment which, with its red Turkey carpet and large mahogany table, was more like a comfortable dining-room than a business office. He welcomed his visitor to an arm-chair and at once pushed over a box of cigars.

Then, when Roddy had lit one, he rose, and standing astride upon the hearthrug, he looked at him very seriously and said:

“I really asked you here, Homfray, to put a question to you—one which I trust you will answer with truth.”

“Certainly I will,” the young man replied frankly.

The old man fixed him with his deep-set eyes, and in a strange voice put to him a question which caused him to gasp.

“A young girl named Edna Manners has mysteriously disappeared. You know something concerning the affair! Tell me, what do you know?”

Chapter Eleven.

The House of Mystery.

In an instant Roddy recovered himself. He saw that if he repeated the story of finding the girl in Welling Wood he would not be believed. And if Mr Sandys did not believe the strange truth, he would likewise not believe in his bona fides concerning the hoped-for concession in Morocco. He therefore pursued a rather injudicious policy of evasion.

“I know no girl named Edna Manners,” he replied.

The old gentleman moved uneasily and grunted in dissatisfaction.

“You did not tell me the truth last night concerning your disappearance,” he said severely. “Why?”

“The less known about my strange adventure the better, Mr Sandys,” was the young man’s reply.

“Then you did have a curious adventure, eh? I’ve heard some rather strange rumours.”

“Rumours which I suppose are more or less true,” Roddy admitted. “But, pardon me, Mr Sandys, the affair is now all over. I was ill at the time, but now I am quite well again, and I have no desire to recall the past. It upsets me. Therefore I know that you will forgive me.”

“Certainly, certainly, my dear young friend. I quite understand. I’ve heard that you’ve been suffering—well—from a nervous breakdown, they say. Denton had a specialist down to see you. Of course I’m wrong in trying to question you when you are not in a fit state. I admit it. It is I who should ask your forgiveness, Homfray.” The young man smiled, glad to have extricated himself from a rather delicate situation.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he answered. “But one day, and very soon perhaps, I shall require your assistance, Homfray,” the grey-bearded financier said, looking at him very earnestly. “I shall want you to help me to discover what has become of that young girl. You tell me you don’t know. But perhaps you may be aware of facts which may give us a clue to what actually happened to her.”

Those words of his made it clear that it was not Elma who had told him about the tragic discovery in Welling Wood. He had learnt it from some other source—possibly from the current village gossip. In any case, Elma had not told her father the strange truth, and for that Roddy was indeed thankful.

Those words of Purcell Sandys’, however, struck him as very strange; certainly they showed that his questioner believed that he knew more about the mysterious Edna Manners—whoever she had been—than he had admitted.

“I take it that you are deeply interested in the young lady who is missing?” Roddy remarked, hoping to elicit something concerning the girl, especially as Elma had the girl’s photograph in her possession.

“Yes, I am,” was the other’s abrupt reply. “She must be found—and at all hazards, for much depends upon it.”

“Where was she last seen?”

“On the platform at Waterloo Station on a Sunday morning—the day when you also disappeared. She was with a gentleman whose description I have, and whom we must find. I have already a very reliable firm of private inquiry agents at work, and that much they have already discovered. Whether the pair took train from Waterloo is not known.” And taking a paper from a drawer which he unlocked he read a minute description of a middle-aged, clean-shaven, well-dressed man, to which Roddy listened.

“Ah!” he said at last. “I know of nobody who answers to that description.” And he spoke the truth.

The fact, however, that Elma’s father had engaged detectives was rather perturbing. They might discover the secret of his love for Elma! That secret both were determined, for the present, to conceal.

Half an hour later Roddy walked back along Lombard Street, that bustling thoroughfare of bankers and financiers, full of grave reflections. If he could only recollect what had happened during that period of half-oblivion, then he would be able to act with fearlessness and come to grips with his enemies.

He remembered that on the previous night he had learnt where Freda Crisp lived—a house called Willowden, on the high road beyond Welwyn. Therefore after a sandwich at the refreshment bar at King’s Cross station he took train, and half an hour later alighted at Welwyn station.

Directed by a butcher’s boy, he walked for about a mile along the broad high road until he came to the house—a large old-fashioned one standing back amid a clump of high fir trees, with a tennis lawn and large walled garden on the left. The green holland blinds were down, and apparently the place was temporarily closed, a fact which gave him courage to approach nearer.

As he did so the chords of his memory began to vibrate. He could remember at last! He recollected quite distinctly walking on the lawn. In a flash it all came back to him! There was a gate which led into a small rose garden. He looked for it. Yes! There it was! And the grey old sundial! He recollected the quaint inscription upon it: “I mark ye Time; saye Gossip dost thou so.” Yes, the weather-beaten old dial was there beside a lily pond with a pretty rock garden beyond.

He stood peering eagerly through a crack in the old moss-grown oak fence, his vista being limited. But it sufficed to recall to his be-dimmed memory some details, sharp and outstanding, of the interior of that old Georgian house, its plan and its early Victorian furnishings. In the days he had spent there he had wandered aimlessly in and out. He knew that the two French windows, which he could see, opening on to a veranda and giving out upon the leaf-strewn lawn, were those of the drawing-room. The old-fashioned furniture he remembered was covered with glazed chintz with a design of great red roses and green peacocks. In the centre was a large settee upon which the Woman of Evil had often sat beside him, holding his hand and talking to him in domineering tones, while her elderly male companion sat in a high-backed “grandfather” chair beside the fire, smoking and smiling.

Mostly, however, he had spent his time in an upstairs room which had once been a nursery, for it had iron bars at the window. His eyes sought that window—and he found it!

Ah! in that room he had spent many dreary hours; his mind filled with weird and horrible visions—shadowy pictures which seemed bent on driving him to insanity.

For fully a quarter of an hour he remained in the vicinity, his eyes strained on every side, and gradually recovering his normal memory.

When, however, he tried to recall that night when he had acted under the overbearing influence of the woman Crisp he, alas! failed—failed utterly. Perhaps if he could get sight of the interior of the room in which he was victimised he might remember, but strive how he would all he could recall was but misty and unreal.

At last he turned from the house, half-fearful lest his presence there might be known, yet gratified that the place was shut up.

Had the woman and her companion left? Had they taken fright and flown?

He walked back to the station, but ere he had arrived at King’s Cross he found that his recollection was becoming fainter, until it was just as hazy as before. Only when his eyes were fixed upon the scene of his mysterious bondage did his memory return to him.

Yet he had satisfactorily cleared up one important point. He had fixed the house to which he had been secretly conveyed. Had the girl Edna Manners been taken there also? Perhaps her body had afterwards been concealed. Recollection of his mysterious discovery caused him to shudder. The girl’s appeal to him to save her still sounded in his ears, while the vision of that pale, still countenance often rose before him.

Next day, and the next, he was busy purchasing the wireless set which he had promised to obtain for Mr Sandys—a seven-valve Marconi set with a “double note-magnifier,” a microphone relay and a loud-speaking telephone. This, with coils taking every wavelength from one hundred to twenty-five thousand metres, completed one of the best and most sensitive sets that had been invented.

Adjoining the morning-room in the east wing of Farncombe Towers was a small ante-room, and into this he proceeded to instal the apparatus, aided of course by Elma. Mr Sandys had gone to Paris to consult with his partner, therefore the young pair had the place to themselves.

The local builder at Roddy’s orders put up a mast upon the tower immediately above the room they had chosen, and the young man having constructed the double-line aerial a hundred feet long and put many insulators of both ebonite and porcelain at each end, the long twin wires were one morning hoisted to the pole, while the other end was secured in the top of a great Wellingtonia not far from the mansion. The lead-in cable, known to naval wireless men as the “cow-tail,” was brought on to a well-insulated brass rod which passed through the window-frame and so on to the instruments, which Roddy set up neatly in an American roll-top desk as being convenient to exclude the dust.

Making a wireless “earth” proved an amusing diversion to both. Elma, who had read a book about wireless, suggested soldering a wire to the water tap; but Roddy, who had bought his experience in wireless after many months and even years of experiment, replied:

“Yes. That’s all very well for an amateur ‘earth,’ but we’ve put up a professional set, and we must make a real ‘earth.’”

The real “earth” consisted, first, of digging three deep holes about four feet deep and three feet long under the aerial. This necessitated the use of a pickaxe borrowed from the head gardener, for they had to dig into chalk.

Elma proved herself an enthusiastic excavator and very handy with the shovel, and after a heavy afternoon’s work she wheeled a barrowful of coke from the palm-house furnace, and Roddy carefully placed a zinc plate in a perpendicular position into each hole and surrounded it with coke which, absorbing the moisture, would always keep the zinc damp, and hence make a good earth connexion. These three plates having been put in directly beneath the aerial wires, they were connected by soldered wires, and before darkness set in the earth-wire was brought in and connected up to the set.

Afterwards, in order to make certain of his “earth”—usually one of the most neglected portions of a wireless installation, by the way—he took a large mat of fine copper gauze which he had bought in London, and soldering a lead to it spread it across the grass, also beneath the aerial.

Elma watched it all in wonderment and in admiration of Roddy’s scientific knowledge. She had read the elementary book upon wireless, but her lover, discarding the directions there set down, had put in things which she did not understand.

“And now will it really work?” asked the girl, as together they stood in the little room where upon the oak writing-desk the various complicated-looking pieces of apparatus had been screwed down.

“Let’s try,” said Roddy, screwing two pairs of head-’phones upon two brass terminals on one of the units of the apparatus.

Elma took one pair of telephones, while Roddy placed the others over his ears. His deft fingers pulled over the aerial switch, whereupon the nine little tubular electric lights instantly glowed, each of them three inches long and about the size of a chemical test-tube. They gave quite a pretty effect.

“Thanks, Cox!” came a voice, loud and distinct. “I could not get you clearly until now. I understand that your position is about half-way across the Channel and that visibility is rather bad. Le Bourget reported when you left. Righto! Croydon, switching off!”

“Splendid!” Elma cried. “Just fancy, within a day you have fitted up wireless for us, so that we can actually hear telephony on the Paris airway!”

“That was my friend Luger talking to the Paris-London mail-plane. Probably we’ll have Tubby next.”

“Who’s Tubby?”

“Oh! The one-time boy scout who is an operator in the hut at Croydon aerodrome and who climbs the masts, fits the switch-board, and does all the odd jobs. Sometimes the jobs are very odd, for he makes the wheels go round when other people give it up. Listen again. The hour has just struck. Tubby may now come on duty.”

Again they placed the telephones over their ears, but beyond a few faint dots and dashes—“spark” signals from ships at sea and “harmonies” at that—there was nothing. The mysterious voice of Croydon was silent.

Suddenly they heard a kind of wind whistle in the telephones, and another voice, rather high-pitched, said:

“Hulloa! G.E.A.Y.! Hulloa, Cox! Croydon calling. Please give me your position. Croydon over.”

“That’s Tubby,” laughed Roddy. “I thought he’d come on duty for the last watch.”

“Marvellous!” declared the pretty girl, still listening intently.

Then she heard a faint voice reply:

“Hulloa, Croydon! G.E.A.Y. answering. I am just over Boulogne; visibility much better. Thanks, Tubby! Switching off.”

Roddy removed the telephones from his ears, and remarked:

“I hope your father will be interested.”

“He will, I’m certain. It’s topping,” the girl declared, “but it’s rather weird though.”

“Yes—to the uninitiated,” he replied. Then, glancing at his wrist-watch, he said: “It’s time that New Brunswick began to work with Carnarvon. Let us see if we can get the American station.”

He changed the small coils of wires for ones treble their size, and having adjusted them, they both listened again.

“There he is!” Roddy exclaimed. “Sending his testing ‘V’s’ in Morse. Do you hear them—three shorts and one long?”

In the ’phones the girl could hear them quite plainly, though the sending station was across the Atlantic.

Then the signals stopped. Instantly the great Marconi station gave the signal “go.” And Roddy, taking up a pencil, scribbled down the first message of the series, a commercial message addressed to a shipping firm in Liverpool from their New York agent concerning freights, followed, with scarce a pause, by a congratulatory message upon somebody’s marriage—two persons named Gladwyn—and then a short Press message recording what the President had said in Congress an hour before.

“They’ll keep on all night,” remarked Roddy, with a smile. “But so long as the set works, that’s all I care about. I only hope your father will be satisfied that I’ve tried to do my best.”

“Really the marvels of wireless are unending!” Elma declared, looking into her lover’s strong, manly face. “You said that the broadcast would come on at eight. Stay and have something to eat, and let us listen to it.”

“Ah! I’m afraid I’d—”

“Afraid! Of course not!” she laughed merrily, and ringing the bell she told Hughes, who answered, that “Mr Homfray would stay to dinner.”

The latter proved a cosy tête-à-tête meal at which the old butler very discreetly left the young couple to themselves, and at eight they were back in the newly fitted wireless-room where, on taking up the telephones, they found that the concert broadcasted from London had already begun. A certain prima donna of world-wide fame was singing a selection from Il Trovatore, and into the room the singer’s voice came perfectly.

Roddy turned a switch, and instead of the music being received into the ’phones it came out through the horn of the “loud speaker,” and could be heard as though the singer was actually in the house and not forty-five miles away.

And they sat together for yet another hour enjoying the latest wonders of wireless.

Chapter Twelve.

Rex Rutherford’s Prophecy.

At the Rectory Roddy sat in his own wireless-room until far into the night, fitting a complete wireless receiving-set into a small cigar-box. The one he had fitted into a tin tobacco-box was efficient in a sense, but the detector being a crystal it was not sufficiently sensitive to suit him.

The one he was constructing was of his own design, with three valves—as the little wireless glow-lamps are called—the batteries and telephones being all contained in the box, which could easily be carried in the pocket together with a small coil of wire which could be strung up anywhere as an aerial, and as “earth” a lamp post, a pillar-box, or running water could be used.

It was nearly three o’clock in the morning before he had finished assembling it, and prior to fixing it in the box he submitted it to a test. Opening the window of his wireless-room he threw the end of the coil of wire outside. Then going out into the moonlight, he took the ball insulator at the end of the wire and fixed it upon a nail he had driven in the wall of the gardener’s potting-shed some time before.

Then, having stretched the wire taut to the house, he went back and attached it to one of the terminal screws of the little set upon which he had been working for many days. The earth-wire of his experimental set he joined up, and then putting on the ’phones listened intently.

Not a tick!

He slowly turned the ebonite knob of the condenser, but to no avail. Raising the wavelength brought no better result. Was it yet another failure? As an experimenter in radio he was used to failures, so it never disheartened him. Failure in prospecting was the same as failure in wireless. He received each rebuff complacently, but with that air of dogged perseverance of which success is ever born.

“Strange!” he remarked aloud. “It certainly should give signals.”

Then he examined the underside of the sheet of ebonite on which the various units were mounted, valves, condensers, etc, when at last he discovered a faulty connexion on the grid-leak. The latter will puzzle the uninitiated, but suffice it to say that so delicate is wireless receiving that over a line drawn by a lead pencil across paper or ebonite with a two-inch scratch in it filled with pencil dust the electric waves will travel. The connexion was not complete at one end. He tightened the little terminal, and suddenly came the expected high-pitched dots and dashes in the Morse code.

“Ah! Stonehaven!” he remarked. Then, by turning the knob of the condenser, a sharp rippling sound was brought in—the automatic transmission from Cologne to Aldershot at seventy words a minute.

Backwards and forwards he turned the condenser, and with a second knob altered the wavelength of his reception, first tuning in ships in the Channel signalling to their controlling station at Niton, in the Isle of Wight, or the North Foreland; then Leafield, in Oxfordshire, could be heard transmitting to Cairo, while Madrid was calling Ongar, and upon the highest wavelength the powerful Marconi station at Carnarvon was sending out a continuous stream of messages across the Atlantic.

Suddenly, as he reduced his wavelength below six hundred metres, he heard a man’s deep voice call:

“Hulloa, 3.V.N. Hulloa! This is 3.A.Z. answering. What I said was the truth. You will understand. Tell me that you do. It is important and very urgent. 3.A.Z. changing over.”

Who 3.A.Z. was, or who 3.V.N., Roddy did not at the moment know without looking up the call-letters in his list of experimental stations. The voice was, however, very strong, and evidently high power was being used.

He listened, and presently he heard a voice much fainter and evidently at a considerable distance, reply:

“Hulloa, 3.A.Z. This is 3.V.N. answering. No, I could not get you quite clearly then. Remember, I am at Nice. Kindly now repeat your message on a thousand metres. 3.V.N. over.”

Quickly Roddy increased his wavelength to a thousand metres, which he swiftly tested with his wave-metre, a box-like apparatus with buzzer and little electric bulb. Suddenly through the ether came the words even more clearly than before:

“Hulloa, 3.V.N. at Nice! Hulloa! This is 3.A.Z. repeating. I will repeat slowly. Please listen! 3.A.Z. repeating a message. Andrew Barclay leaves London to-morrow for Marseilles, where he will meet Mohamed Ben Azuz at the Hôtel Louvre et Paix. Will you go to Marseilles? Please reply. 3.A.Z. over.”

Roddy held his breath. Who could possibly be warning somebody in the south of France of his friend Barclay’s departure from Victoria to interview the Moorish Minister of the Interior regarding the concession?

Again he listened, and yet again came the far-off voice, faint, though yet distinct:

“3.V.N. calling 3.A.Z.! Thanks, I understand. Yes. I will go by next train to Marseilles. Is Freda coming? 3.V.N. over.”

“Yes. Freda will come if you wish it,” replied the loud, hard voice. “3.A.Z. calling 3.V.N. Over.”

“Hulloa, 3.A.Z. From 3.V.N. Thanks. Shall expect Freda, but not by same train. Tell Jimmie to be on the alert. I’ll explain to Freda when I see her. Good-night, old man. Good-bye. 3.V.N. closing down.”

Quickly Roddy searched his list of amateur call-signs, but he could not find either 3.A.Z. or 3.V.N. They were evidently false signs used by pre-arrangement, but by persons who, strangely enough, knew of his friend Barclay’s journey on the morrow!

And Freda? Could it be Freda Crisp who had been indicated? Why was she going south also—but not by the same train?

After an hour’s sleep young Homfray, much mystified, rose, dressed, and taking out his motorcycle, started up the long high road to London.

On the platform at Victoria as early as half-past eight o’clock he awaited his friend Barclay. Presently he came, a ruddy, round-faced, rather short little man of fifty, who was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan and who had dabbled in concessions in all parts of the world.

“Hulloa, Homfray!” he exclaimed, looking at the muddy condition of his friend’s motor clothes. “I didn’t expect you to come to see me off.”

“No,” replied the young man rather hesitatingly, “but the fact is I have come here to warn you.”

“Warn me! Of what?” asked his friend in surprise.

Then Roddy explained, and repeated what the mysterious voice from the void had said.

“Both speaker and listener were disguised under false call-signs,” he went on. “Hence it is highly suspicious, and I felt it my duty to tell you.”

Andrew Barclay was puzzled. The porter was placing his bags in a first-class compartment of the boat train, which was crowded with people going holiday-making abroad. Loud-voiced society women commanded porters, and elderly men stalked along to the carriages following their piles of baggage. The eight-forty Paris service is usually crowded in summer and winter, for one gets to Paris by five, in time for a leisurely dinner and the series of trains which leave the Gare de Lyon in the region of nine o’clock.

“Just repeat all you said, Roddy, will you?” asked the man in the heavy travelling coat.

The young fellow did so.

“Freda? That’s a rather unusual name. Has it anything to do with that woman Freda Crisp you told me about? What do you think?”

“I believe it has.”

Barclay was aware of all the strange experiences of the shrewd young mining engineer. Only three days after his return to Little Farncombe he had gone down to the quiet old country rectory and listened to his friend’s story.

In this concession to work the ancient mines in the Wad Sus he was equally interested with his young friend in whom he believed so implicitly, knowing how enthusiastic and therefore successful he had been in his prospecting expeditions up the Amazon.

The big portable luggage-vans—those secured by wire hawsers which are slung on to the mail-boat and re-slung on to the Paris express—had been locked and sealed with lead, as they always are. The head guard’s whistle blew, and Barclay was about to enter the train, when Roddy said:

“Do take care! There’s more in this than either of us suspect. That woman Crisp! Beware of her. You will see her in due course at your hotel. Be careful. Good-bye—and good luck!”

The train moved out around the bend. The young fellow in his wet, muddy overalls stood for a moment gazing at the rear van. Should he watch for the departure of the woman? No. She might see him. Better that he should remain in apparent ignorance. So he went out, remounted his cycle, and headed away back over Putney Bridge and through crooked Kingston, Cobham, and down the steep hill in Guildford towards home.

Freda! That name was burned into his brain like the brand of a red-hot iron. Freda—the woman who had held him beneath her strange, inexplicable spell during his bondage at the remote old country house near Welwyn.

But why? Why should his father have warned him against her? His father, a most honest, upright, pious man to whom he had always looked for leadership—the road-builder to the perfect life, as he had always regarded him. No man in the world is perfect, but Norton Homfray had, to say the least, tried to live up to the standard laid down by the Holy Writ.

Had he had faults in his past life, his son wondered? Every man has faults. Were those faults being concealed by his father—the “pater” upon whom he doted and to whom when away he wrote so regularly, with all his most intimate news, though mails might leave very intermittently, as they do from the back of beyond, where prospectors carry on their work with hammer and microscope.

Then, as he rode along in the grey, damp winter morning, he reflected.

The whole situation was most puzzling. He loved Elma with a fierce all-consuming affection. She was his only beacon in his eager, strenuous life.

A week went by. He anxiously awaited news from Andrew Barclay, but the latter sent no word. He was, without doubt, negotiating with the Moorish Minister of the Interior, who was at that moment visiting France, and who was his personal friend.

But Roddy could not rid himself of the recollection of that strange conversation by radio-telephone—the request that Freda should go south. He had taken another journey out to Welwyn in order to ascertain if the woman was still at Willowden, but had found the house still closed and apparently without a caretaker. Had he been able to get a view of the back of the premises he would, no doubt, have noticed the well-constructed wireless aerial, but it was completely hidden from the road, and as during his enforced sojourn in the place he had never seen it, he remained in ignorance of its existence.

At Farncombe Towers Mr Sandys, when he returned home, had expressed himself highly delighted with the wireless set which the rector’s son had installed, and on two successive evenings sat with Elma intensely interested in listening to broadcasted concerts and news.

Three nights later Elma and her father, having been to the first night of a new revue, had had supper at the Savoy, and passing into the lounge, sat down to their coffee, when an elderly, clean-shaven, rather tall man, accompanied by a well-dressed, shorter, but good-looking companion, both in well-cut evening clothes, suddenly halted.

“Hulloa, Harrison!” exclaimed the grey-bearded financier to the man who bowed before Elma and greeted her.

“Not often we see you here, Mr Sandys!” replied the man, evidently surprised. Then he begged leave to introduce his companion, Mr Rex Rutherford.

Elma smiled as the stranger expressed delight at meeting her father and herself.

“Your name is very well known to me, as to everybody, Mr Sandys,” said the dark-eyed man pleasantly, as they both took chairs which the financier offered them, at the same time ordering extra coffee. “Though I’m an American, I live mostly in Paris, and I met your partner, Sir Charles, there quite recently.”

“I shouldn’t have thought you were an American,” remarked Elma. “We in England expect every United States citizen to speak with an accent, you know.”

“Well, Miss Sandys, I suppose I’m one of the exceptions. My father and mother were British. Perhaps that accounts for it,” he laughed, lighting a cigar.

“Mr Rutherford is more of a Parisian than American, Miss Sandys,” declared the man, Bertram Harrison. And then they began to chat about the new revue, which Elma described enthusiastically as a great success, while Rex Rutherford sat listening to her, evidently filled with admiration of her sweetness and remarkable beauty.

Elma presently inquired of Mr Harrison if he had seen Mrs Crisp lately.

“No. She’s gone to Switzerland,” was his reply.

“I’m thinking of going across to Florida very soon to spend the winter at Palm Beach. I was there last year,” remarked Rutherford. “Ever been there, Mr Sandys?”

“Never,” replied Elma’s father. “I must try it one winter. I’ve heard so much about it. Are you in London for long?”

“Only for a week or so on a matter of business. I’m at the Carlton, but I expect very soon to get back to Paris again.”

And so the conversation drifted on, both men well-bred and of charming manner, until the lights were lowered as sign that the restaurant was closing.

The pair saw Mr Sandys and his daughter into their limousine, and then walked together along the Strand.

“Well, how did it work?” asked the man Harrison eagerly.

“Excellent,” declared Gordon Gray, for it was he who had been introduced as Rex Rutherford. “We’ve taken a step in the right direction to-night. It only shows you what can be done by watchfulness. But, oh! the girl! Lovely, isn’t she?”

“Yes, but I hope, my dear Gordon, you’re not going to lose your head to a woman! We’ve other fish to fry with the old man—remember!”

“Lose my head to a woman!” cried Gray, halting beneath the street lamp and looking at him with his dark eyes. “No, my dear fellow, I never do that. It’s the woman who loses her head to me! You told me once that she dances well, didn’t you? Well, the day will come when she will dance to any tune that I choose to play!”

Chapter Thirteen.

The Hidden Ear.

“No, Dick! A trifle farther this way,” whispered Freda Crisp, who with a piece of string had been measuring the blank wall of the sparely-furnished hotel sitting-room.

“Do you think so? I don’t,” replied a lean, well-dressed, rather striking-looking man of middle-age, who held in his hand a steel gimlet, nearly two feet in length, such as is used by electricians to bore holes through walls and floors to admit the passage of electric-lighting wires.

“Slip out and measure again,” urged the woman, who was wearing a simple blouse and a navy-blue skirt which looked rather shabby in the grey afternoon light. “It won’t do to be much out.”

The man, whom she had addressed as Dick, carefully opened the door of the room a little way, peered out into the corridor, and waited. There being no sign of anyone stirring—for hotels are usually most quiet at about half-past three in the afternoon—he slipped out. He took the string and, stooping to the floor, measured from the lintel of the door to the dividing wall of the next room.

Twice he did so, and then made a knot in the string, so that there should be no further mistake.

On creeping back to where the woman awaited him, he said:

“You were quite right, Freda. Now let’s get to work.”

So saying, he again measured the distance from the door, being on his knees the while. Then, still on his knees and taking the long gimlet, he screwed it into the plaster and worked hard until the steel slowly entered the wall, driving a small hole through it and at the same time throwing out a quantity of white dust upon the floor.

“It’s through?” he exclaimed presently, and withdrawing the tool, placed his eye to the small round hole.

“Excellent. Now we’ll take the wires through.”

Again the man, Dick Allen, opened the door noiselessly, and creeping out with a coil of twin wires, unrolled it from his hand and, as he went down the corridor, placed it beneath the edge of the strip of thick green carpet, and into a sitting-room four doors along.

He laid the two twisted wires still beneath the carpet, and carrying them behind a heavy settee, he took from his pocket what looked like a good-sized nickel-plated button. The front of it was, however, of mica, a tiny brass screw set in the centre. To it he carefully attached the fine silk-covered wires, tightening the screw securely. Then, taking a big safety-pin from his pocket, he attached the button to the back of the settee, where it was completely hidden.

The microphone-button hung there as a hidden ear in that luxuriously-furnished room.

When he returned to his companion he found that she had already driven in a tin-tack, around which she had twisted the two wires. To pass the wires beneath the door was impossible, as they would have to run over a long stretch of stone and somebody might trip over them.

Afterwards she put on her hat and fur coat, and the pair left the big Hôtel du Parc and strolled down the wide, bustling boulevard, the Rue Noailles, in that great city of commerce, Marseilles. The hotel they had left was not so large nor so popular as the great Louvre et Paix, which is perhaps one of the most cosmopolitan in all the world, but it was nevertheless well patronised. At the Louvre most travellers passing to and from India and the Far East stay the night, after landing or before embarking, so that it is an establishment with a purely cosmopolitan clientèle. But the Parc was a quieter, though very aristocratic hotel, patronised by British peers and wealthy Americans on their way to the Riviera or the East, and also by foreign potentates when landing in Europe.

The truth was that when the Moorish Minister of the Interior—the white-bearded old Moslem who had come over on an informal visit to the French President—arrived in Marseilles accommodation could not be found for him at the Louvre et Paix. So he had naturally gone to the Parc, where the best suite had been placed at his disposal by the officials at the Quai d’Orsay.

News of this had reached Dick Allen on his arrival from Nice, and Freda, posing as an English society woman, had taken another suite for the purpose of keeping observation upon the old Moorish Minister, whom his English friend Barclay had arrived in Marseilles to visit.

Already it was nearly five o’clock, so the woman Crisp and her companion strolled along to the big Café de l’Univers in the Cannebière, where they sat outside over their apéritifs, well satisfied with their preparations.

“When I dined at the Louvre et Paix last night I sat close to Barclay. The old Moor was with him, and I distinctly heard Barclay say that he would call at the Parc at nine to-night. The old Moor looks very picturesque in his native costume with his turban and his white burnous.”

“Marseilles is so cosmopolitan that one meets almost as many costumes here in the Cannebière as on the Galata Bridge at Constantinople,” laughed Freda. “Nobody here takes any notice of costume. Besides, all the Arab business men from Algeria and Tunis who come over wear the same Arab dress. In any other city they would be conspicuous, but not here.”

Dick Allen, a clever crook, by the way, who had been in many intricate little “affairs” as the accomplice of Gordon Gray, Porter, Claribut and Freda, remained silent for a moment or two.

“A Moorish costume would be a jolly good disguise one day, wouldn’t it? I’ve never thought of that before, Freda,” he said.

“Providing you knew a few words of Arabic and could speak French fairly well,” the woman answered.

“The first I could easily pick up. The second I can already do fairly well. Just a little staining of the face, hands and hair, and the transformation would be complete. I’ll remember that for the future.”

“Yes, my dear Dick. One day it might be very handy—if the police were very hot on the track. You could pose as an Algerian fruit merchant, or something of the sort, while they’d be looking for the Englishman, Dick Allen?”

Both laughed. Each had their reminiscences of being hard pressed and having to exercise their keenest wits to elude their pursuers.

“What you’ve told me about that old parson in England rather worries me,” said the man. “What can he know about Hugh?”

“Nothing, my dear Dick. Don’t worry. It’s all bluff! Leave it to Gordon. He directs everything. He wriggled out in the past, and he’ll do it again.”

“That’s all very well. But I tell you I’m not so sure. Jimmie wrote to me the other day. The butler stunt at your house at Welwyn is all very well, but the game must be blown sooner or later. Believe me, Freda, it must?”

“I know. But we’re not staying at Willowden always.”

“But Gordon has his radio-telephone there. He talked to me on it to Nice the other night.”

“Yes. But we shall clear out at a moment’s notice—when it becomes desirable, and the little local police sergeant—no, I beg his pardon, he’s fat and red-faced and goes about on a push-bike—will be left guessing why the rich tenants of the big house have gone away on holidays. We’ve departed upon lots of holidays—haven’t we, Dick? And we’ll go once more! Each holiday brings us money—one holiday more or one less—what matters? And, after all, we who live with eyes skinned on people with money deserve all we get. England has now changed. Those stay-at-home cowards of the war have all the money, and poor people like ourselves deserve to touch it, if we can manage to lead them up the garden, eh?”

And the handsome adventuress laughed merrily.

“But surely our present game is not one against war profits?” the man remarked, during a lull in the blatant café orchestra.

“No. We’re up against saving ourselves—you and I and Gordon and Jimmie. Don’t you realise that not a word must ever leak out about young Willard? Otherwise we shall all be right in the cart—jugged at once!”

“I hope old Homfray knows nothing. What can he know?”

“He may, of course, know something, Dick,” the woman said in an altered voice. “If I had known what I do now I would never have been a party to taking his son Roddy away.” She paused for a moment and looked straight at him. “We made a silly mistake—I’m certain of it. Gordon laughs at me. But Jimmie is of my opinion.”

“But can’t we close the old man’s mouth and trust to luck with his son? He’ll become an idiot.”

“Gordon is bent upon getting this concession. So are you. So let us do what we can. The installation of that delicate microphone into the old Moor’s room is a mark up to you.”

“It usually works. I’ve used it once or twice before. But let’s hope for the best—eh, Freda?”

“Yes,” laughed the handsome woman carelessly—the adventuress who was so well known each winter at Cannes or at Monte Carlo, or in summer at Aix or Deauville. In the gayer cosmopolitan world Freda Crisp was known wherever smart society congregated to enjoy itself.

The pair of crooks afterwards dined at that well-known restaurant the Basso-Brégaillon, on the Quai de la Fraternité, a place noted for its “bouillabaisse”—that thick fish soup with the laurel leaves and onions and coloured with saffron, which is the great delicacy of the city. Both Freda and her companion had been in Marseilles before upon other adventurous missions. Dick lived in Nice, and was really a secret agent for the blackmailing exploits of others concerning those who played at Monte Carlo when they were supposed to be at home attending to business or politics; or the wives of men who were detained by their affairs in Paris, New York, or London.