The girl screamed and gripped Michael’s arm.

“What is that?” she asked. “Is it the Thing that came to my—my room?”

Michael put her aside gently, and ran toward the tower. As he did so, Bhag took a leap and dropped on the ground. For a moment he stood, his knuckles on the ground, his malignant face turned in the direction of the man. And then he sniffed, and, with that queer twittering noise of his, went ambling across the downs and disappeared over a nearby crest.

Michael raced in pursuit. By the time he came into view, the great ape was a quarter of a mile away, running at top speed, and always keeping close to the hedges that divided the fields he had to cross. Pursuit was useless, and the detective went slowly back to the alarmed company.

“It is only an orang-outang belonging to Sir Gregory, and perfectly harmless,” he said. “He has been missing from the house for two or three days.”

“He must have been hiding in the tower,” said Knebworth, and Michael nodded. “Well, I’m darned glad he didn’t choose to come out at the moment I was shooting,” said the director, mopping his forehead. “You didn’t see anything of him, Adele?”

Michael guessed that the girl was pale under her yellow make-up, and the hand she raised to her lips shook a little.

“That explains the mystery of the handcuffs,” said Knebworth.

“Did you notice them?” asked Michael quickly. “Yes, that explains the broken link,” he said, “but it doesn’t exactly explain the butyl chloride.”

He held the girl’s arm as he spoke, and in the warm, strong pressure she felt something more than his sympathy.

“Were you a little frightened?”

“I was badly frightened,” she confessed. “How terrible! Was that Bhag?”

He nodded.

“That was Bhag,” he said. “I suppose he’s been hiding in the tower ever since his disappearance. You saw nothing when you were on the top of the wall?”

“I’m glad to say I didn’t, or I should have dropped. There are a large number of bushes where he might have been hidden.”

Michael decided to look for himself. They put up the ladder and he climbed to the broad top of the tower and looked down. At the base of the stonework the ground sloped away in a manner curiously reminiscent of the shell-holes he had seen during the war in France. The actual floor of the tower was not visible under the hawthorn bushes which grew thickly at the centre. He caught a glimpse of the jagged edges of rock, the distorted branches of an old tree, and that was all.

There was ample opportunity for concealment. Possibly Bhag had hidden there most of the time, sleeping off the effects of his labour and his wounds; for Michael had seen something that nobody else had noticed—the gashed skin, and the ear that had been slashed in half.

He came down the ladder again and rejoined Knebworth.

“I think that finishes our work for to-day,” said Jack dubiously. “I smell hysteria, and it will be a long time before I can get the girls to come up for a night picture.”

Michael drove the director back in his car, and all the way home he was considering this strange appearance of the ape. Somebody had handcuffed Bhag: he ought to have guessed that when he saw the torn link. No human being could have broken those apart. And Bhag had escaped—from whom? How? And why had he not returned to Griff Towers and to his master?

When he had dropped the director at the studio he went straight on to Gregory’s house, and found the baronet playing clock-golf on a strip of lawn that ran by the side of the house. The man was still heavily bandaged, but he was making good recovery.

“Yes, Bhag is back. He returned half an hour ago. Where he has been, heaven knows! I’ve often wished that chap could talk, but I’ve never wished it so much as I do at this moment. Somebody had put irons on him: I’ve just taken them off.”

“Can I see them?”

“You knew it, did you?”

“I saw him. He came out of the old tower on the hill.” Michael pointed; from where they stood, the tower was in sight.

“Is that so? And what the devil was he doing there?”

Sir Gregory scratched his chin thoughtfully.

“He’s been away before, but mostly he goes to a shoot of mine about three miles away, where there’s plenty of cover and no intruders. I discovered that when a poacher saw him, and, like a fool, shot at him—that poacher was a lucky man to escape with his life. Have you found the body of Foss?”

The baronet had resumed his playing, and was looking at the ball at his feet.

“No,” said Michael quietly.

“Expect to find it?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Sir Gregory stood, his hands leaning on his club, looking across the wold.

“What’s the law in this country, suppose a man accidentally kills a servant who tried to knife him?”

“He would have to stand his trial,” said Michael, “and a verdict of ‘justifiable homicide’ would be returned and he would be set free.”

“But suppose he didn’t reveal it? Suppose he—well, did away with the body—buried it—and let the matter slide?”

“Then he would place himself in a remarkably dangerous position,” said Michael. “Particularly”—he watched the man closely—“if a woman friend, who is no longer a woman friend, happened to be a witness or had knowledge of the act.”

Gregory Penne’s one visible eye blinked quickly, and he went that curious purple colour which Michael had seen before when he was agitated.

“Suppose she tried to get money out of him by threatening to tell the police?”

“Then,” said the patient Michael, “she would go to prison for blackmail, and possibly as an accessory to or after the fact.”

“Would she?” Sir Gregory’s voice was eager. “She would be an accessory if she saw—him cut the man down? Mind you, this happened years ago. There’s a Statute of Limitations, isn’t there?”

“Not for murder,” said Michael.

“Murder! Would you call that murder?” asked the other in alarm. “In self-defence? Rot!”

Things were gradually being made light to Michael. Once Stella Mendoza had called the man a murderer, and Michael’s nimble mind, which could reconstruct the scene with almost unerring precision, began to grow active. A servant, a coloured man, probably, one of his Malayan slaves, had run amok, and Penne had killed him—possibly in self-defence—and then had grown frightened of the consequences. He remembered Stella’s description—“Penne is a bluffer and a coward at heart.” That was the story in a nutshell.

“Where did you bury your unfortunate victim?” he asked coolly, and the man started.

“Bury? What do you mean?” he blustered. “I didn’t murder or bury anybody. I was merely putting a hypothetical case to you.”

“It sounded more real than hypothesis,” said Michael, “but I won’t press the question.”

In truth, crimes of this character bored Michael Brixan; and, but for the unusual and curious circumstances of the Head-Hunter’s villainies, he would have dropped the case almost as soon as he came on to it.

There was yet another attraction, which he did not name, even to himself. As for Sir Gregory Penne, the grossness of the man and his hobbies, the sordid vulgarity of his amours, were more than a little sickening. He would gladly have cut Sir Gregory out of life, only—he was not yet sure.

“It is very curious how these questions crop up,” Penne was saying, as he came out of his reverie. “A chap like myself, who doesn’t have much to occupy his mind, gets on an abstract problem of that kind and never leaves it. So she’d be an accessory after the fact, would she? That would mean penal servitude.”

He seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from this thought, and was almost amiable by the time Michael parted from him, after an examination of the broken handcuffs. They were British and of an old pattern.

“Is Bhag hurt very much?” asked Michael as he put them down.

“Not very much; he’s got a cut or two,” said the other calmly. He made no attempt to disguise the happenings of that night. “He came to my assistance, poor brute! This fellow nearly got him. In fact, poor old Bhag was knocked out, but went after them like a brick.”

“What hat was that man wearing—the brown man?”

“Keji? I don’t know. I suppose he wore a hat, but I didn’t notice it. Why?”

“I was merely asking,” said Michael carelessly. “Perhaps he lost it in the caves.”

He watched the other narrowly as he spoke.

“Caves? I’ve never heard about those. What are they? Are there any caves near by?” asked Sir Gregory innocently. “You’ve a wonderful grip of the topography of the county, Brixan. I’ve been living here off and on for twenty years, and I lose myself every time I go into Chichester!”

The question of the caves intrigued Michael more than any feature the case had presented. He bethought himself of Mr. Longvale, whose knowledge of the country was encyclopædic. That gentleman was out, but Michael met him, driving his antique car from Chichester. To say that he saw him is to mistake facts. The sound of that old car was audible long before it came into sight around a bend of the road. Michael drew up, Longvale following his example, and parked his car behind that ancient ’bus.

“Yes, it is rather noisy,” admitted the old man, rubbing his bald head with a brilliant bandana handkerchief. “I’m only beginning to realize the fact of late years. Personally, I do not think that a noiseless car could give me as much satisfaction. One feels that something is happening.”

“You ought to buy a ——” said Michael with a smile, as he mentioned the name of a famous car.

“I thought of doing so,” said the other seriously, “but I love old things—that is my eccentricity.”

Michael questioned him upon the caves, and, to his surprise, the old man immediately returned an affirmative.

“Yes, I’ve heard of them frequently. When I was a boy, my father told me that the country round was honeycombed with caves, and that, if anybody was lucky enough to find them, they would discover great stores of brandy. Nobody has found them, as far as I know. There used to be an entrance over there.” He pointed in the direction of Griff Tower. “But many years ago——”

He retold the familiar story of the landslide and of the passing out of two companies of gallant knights and squires, which probably the old man had got from the same source of information as Michael had drawn upon.

“The popular legend was that a subterranean river ran into the sea near Selsey Bill—of course, some distance beneath the surface of the water. But, as you know, country people live on such legends. In all probability it is nothing but a legend.”

Inspector Lyle was waiting for the detective when he arrived, with news of a startling character.

“The advertisement appeared in this morning’s Daily Star,” he said.

Michael took the slip of paper. It was identically worded with its predecessor.

“There will be no reply till to-morrow morning. Letters are to be readdressed to a shop in the Lambeth Road, and the chief wants you to be ready to pick up the trail.”

The trail indeed proved to be well laid. At four o’clock on the following afternoon, a lame old woman limped into the newsagent’s shop on the Lambeth Road and inquired for a letter addressed to Mr. Vole. There were three waiting for her. She paid the fee, put the letters into a rusty old handbag and limped out of the shop, mumbling and talking to herself. Passing down the Lambeth Road, she boarded a tramcar en route for Clapham, and near the Common she alighted and, passing out of the region of middle-class houses, came to a jumble of tenements and ancient tumble-down dwellings.

Every corner she turned brought her to a street meaner than the last, and finally to a low, arched alleyway, the paving of which had not been renewed for years. It was a little cul-de-sac, its houses, built in the same pattern, joined wall to wall, and before the last of these she stopped, took out a key from her pocket and opened the door. She was turning to close it when she was aware that a man stood in the entrance, a tall, good-looking gentleman, who must have been on her heels all the time.

“Good afternoon, mother,” he said.

The old woman peered at him suspiciously, grumbling under her breath. Only hospital doctors and workhouse folk, people connected with charity, called women “mother”; and sometimes the police got the habit. Her grimy old face wrinkled hideously at this last unpleasant thought.

“I want to have a little talk with you.”

“Come in,” she said shrilly.

The boarding of the passage-way was broken in half a dozen places and was indescribably dirty, but it represented the spirit of pure hygiene compared with the stuffy horror which was her sitting-room and kitchen.

“What are you, horspital or p’lice?”

“Police,” said Michael. “I want three letters you’ve collected.”

To his surprise, the woman showed relief.

“Oh, is that all?” she said. “Well, that’s a job I do for a gentleman. I’ve done it for years. I’ve never had any complaint before.”

“What is his name?”

“Don’t know his name. Just whatever name happens to be on the letters. I send ’em on to him.”

From under a heap of rubbish she produced three envelopes, addressed in typewritten characters. The typewriting Michael recognized. They were addressed to a street in Guildford.

Michael took the letters from her handbag. Two of them he read; the third was a dummy which he himself had written. The most direct cross-examination, however, revealed nothing. The woman did the work, receiving a pound for her trouble, in a letter from the unknown, who told her where the letters were to be collected.

“She was a little mad and indescribably beastly,” said Michael in disgust when he reported, “and the Guildford inquiries don’t help us forward. There’s another agent there, who sends the letters back to London, which they never reach. That is the mystery of the proceeding. There simply isn’t such an address at London, and I can only suggest that they are intercepted en route. The Guildford police have that matter in hand.”

Staines was very worried.

“Michael, I oughtn’t to have put you on this job,” he said. “My first thoughts were best. Scotland Yard is kicking, and say that the meddling of outsiders is responsible for the Head-Hunter not being brought to justice. You know something of inter-departmental jealousy, and you don’t need me to tell you that I’m getting more kicks than I’m entitled to.”

Michael looked down at his chief reflectively.

“I can get the Head-Hunter, but more than ever I’m convinced that we cannot convict him until we know a little more about—the caves!”

Staines frowned.

“I don’t quite get you, Mike. Which caves are these?”

“There are some caves in the neighbourhood of Chichester. Foss knew about them and suspected their association with the Head-Hunter. Give me four days, Major, and I’ll have them both. And if I fail”—he paused—“if I fail, the next time you say good morning to me, I shall be looking up to you from the interior of one of the Head-Hunter’s boxes!”

It was the second day of Michael’s visit to town, and, for a reason which she could not analyse, Adele felt “out” with the world. And yet the work was going splendidly, and Jack Knebworth, usually sparing of his praise, had almost rhapsodized over a little scene which she had acted with Connolly. So generous was he in his praise, and so comprehensive, that even Reggie came in for his share, and was willing and ready to revise his earlier estimate of the leading lady’s ability.

“I’ll be perfectly frank and honest, Mr. Knebworth,” he said, in this moment of candour, “Leamington is good. Of course, I’m always on the spot to give her tips, and there’s nothing quite so educative—if I may use the term——”

“You may,” said Jack Knebworth.

“Thanks,” said Connolly. “——as having a finished artiste playing opposite to you. It doesn’t do me much good, but it helps her a lot; it inspires courage and all that sort of thing. And though I’ve had a perfectly awful, dreadful time, I feel that she pays for the coaching.”

“Oh, do you?” growled the old man. “And I’d like to say the same about you, Reggie! But unfortunately, all the coaching you’ve had or ever will get is not going to improve you.”

Reggie’s superior smile would have irritated one less equable than the director.

“You’re perfectly right, Mr. Knebworth,” he said earnestly. “I can’t improve! I’ve touched the zenith of my power, and I doubt whether you’ll ever look upon the like of me again. I’m certainly the best juvenile lead in this, and possibly in any country. I’ve had three offers to go to Hollywood, and you’ll never believe who is the lady who asked me to play against her——”

“I don’t believe any of it,” said Jack even-temperedly, “but you’re right to an extent about Miss Leamington. She’s fine. And I agree that it doesn’t do you much good playing against her, because she makes you look like a large glass of heavily diluted beer.”

Later in the day, Adele herself asked her grey-haired chief whether it was true that Reggie would soon be leaving England for another and a more ambitious sphere.

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Jack. “There never was an actor that hadn’t a better contract up his sleeve and was ready to take it. But when it comes to a show-down, you find that the contracts they’re willing to tear up in order to take something better, are locked away in a lawyer’s office and can’t be got out. In the picture business all over the world, there are actors and actresses who are leaving by the first boat to show Hollywood how it’s done. I guess these liners would sail empty if they waited for ’em! That’s all bluff, part of the artificial life of make-believe in which actors and actresses have their being.”

“Has Mr. Brixan come back?”

He shook his head.

“No, I’ve not heard from him. There was a tough-looking fellow called at the studio half an hour ago to ask whether he’d returned.”

“Rather an unpleasant-looking tramp?” she asked. “I spoke to him. He said he had a letter for Mr. Brixan which he would not deliver to anybody else.”

She looked through the window which commanded a view of the entrance drive to the studio. Standing outside on the edge of the pavement was the wreck of a man. Long, lank black hair, streaked with grey, fell from beneath the soiled and dilapidated golf cap; he was apparently shirtless, for the collar of his indescribable jacket was buttoned up to his throat; and his bare toes showed through one gaping boot.

He might have been a man of sixty, but it was difficult to arrive at his age. It looked as though the grey, stubbled beard had not met a razor since he was in prison last. His eyes were red and inflamed; his nose that crimson which is almost blue. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his trousers, and seemed to be their only visible means of support, until you saw the string that was tied around his lean waist; and as he stood, he shuffled his feet rhythmically, whistling a doleful tune. From time to time he took one of his hands from his pockets and examined the somewhat soiled envelope it held, and then, as if satisfied with the scrutiny, put it back again and continued his jigging vigil.

“Do you think you ought to see that letter?” asked the girl, troubled. “It may be very important.”

“I thought that too,” said Jack Knebworth, “but when I asked him to let me see the note, he just grinned.”

“Do you know who it’s from?”

“No more than a crow, my dear,” said Knebworth patiently. “And now let’s get off the all-absorbing subject of Michael Brixan, and get back to the fair Roselle. That shot I took of the tower can’t be bettered, so I’m going to cut out the night picture, and from now on we’ll work on the lot.”

The production was a heavy one, unusually so for one of Knebworth’s; the settings more elaborate, the crowd bigger than ever he had handled since he came to England. It was not an easy day for the girl, and she was utterly fagged when she started homeward that night.

“Ain’t seen Mr. Brixan, miss?” said a high-pitched voice as she reached the side-walk.

She turned with a start. She had forgotten the existence of the tramp.

“No, he hasn’t been,” she said. “You had better see Mr. Knebworth again. Mr. Brixan lives with him.”

“Don’t I know it? Ain’t I got all the information possible about him? I should say I had!”

“He is in London: I suppose you know that?”

“He ain’t in London,” said the other disappointedly. “If he was in London, I shouldn’t be hanging around here, should I? No, he left London yesterday. I’m going to wait till I see him.”

She was amused by his pertinacity, though it was difficult for her to be amused at anything in the state of utter weariness into which she had fallen.

Crossing the market square, she had to jump quickly to avoid being knocked down by a car which she knew was Stella Mendoza’s. Stella could be at times a little reckless, and the motto upon the golden mascot on her radiator—“Jump or Die”—held a touch of sincerity.

She was in a desperate hurry now, and cursed fluently as she swung her car to avoid the girl, whom she recognized. Sir Gregory had come to his senses, and she wanted to get at him before he lost them again. She pulled up the car with a jerk at the gates of Griff Towers, flung open the door and jumped out.

“If I don’t return in two hours, you can go into Chichester and fetch the police,” she said.

Stella had left a note to the same effect on her table. If she did not return by a certain hour, the police were to read the letter they would find on her mantelpiece. She had not allowed for the fact that neither note nor letter would be seen until the next morning.

To Stella Mendoza, the interview was one of the most important and vital in her life. She had purposely delayed her departure in the hope that Gregory Penne would take a more generous view of his obligations, though she had very little hope that he would change his mind on the all-important matter of money. And now, by some miracle, he had relented; had spoken to her in an almost friendly tone on the ’phone; had laughed at her reservations and the precautions which she promised she would take; and in the end she had overcome her natural fears.

He received her, not in his library, but in the big apartment immediately above. It was longer, for it embraced the space occupied on the lower floor by the small drawing-room; but in the matter of furnishing, it differed materially. Stella had only once been in “The Splendid Hall,” as he called it. Its vastness and darkness had frightened her, and the display which he had organized for her benefit was one of her unpleasant memories.

The big room was covered with a thick black carpet, and the floor space was unrelieved by any sign of furniture. Divans were set about, the walls covered with eastern hangings; there was a row of scarlet pillars up both sides of the room, and such light as there was came from three heavily-shaded black lanterns, which cast pools of yellow light upon the carpet but did not contribute to the gaiety of the room.

Penne was sitting cross-legged on a silken divan, his eyes watching the gyrations of a native girl as she twirled and twisted to the queer sound of native guitars played by three solemn-faced men in the darkened corner of the room. Gregory wore a suit of flaming red coloured pyjamas, and his glassy gaze and brute mouth told Stella all that she wanted to know about her evil friend.

Sir Gregory Penne was no less and no more than a slave to his appetites. Born a rich man, he had never known denial of his desires. Money had grown to money in a sort of cellular progression, and when the normal pleasures of life grew stale, and he was satiated by the sweets of his possessions, he found his chiefest satisfaction in taking that which was forbidden. The raids which his agents had made from time to time in the jungles of his second home gave him trophies, human and material, that lost their value when they were under his hand.

Stella, who had visions of becoming mistress of Griff Towers, became less attractive as she grew more complaisant. And at last her attraction had vanished, and she was no more to him than the table at which he sat.

A doctor had told him that drink would kill him—he drank the more. Liquor brought him splendid visions, precious stories that wove themselves into dazzling fabrics of dreams. It pleased him to place, in the forefront of his fuddled mind, a slip of a girl who hated him. A gross bully, an equally gross coward, he could not or would not argue a theme to its logical and unpleasant conclusion. At the end there was always his money that could be paid in smaller or larger quantities to settle all grievances against him.

The native who had conducted Stella Mendoza to the apartment had disappeared, and she waited at the end of the divan, looking at the man for a long time before he took any notice of her. Presently he turned his head and favoured her with a stupid, vacant stare.

“Sit down, Stella,” he said thickly, “sit down. You couldn’t dance like that, eh? None of you Europeans have got the grace, the suppleness. Look at her!”

The dancing girl was twirling at a furious rate, her scanty draperies enveloping her like a cloud. Presently, with a crash of the guitars, she sank, face downward, on the carpet. Gregory said something in Malayan, and the woman showed her white teeth in a smile. Stella had seen her before: there used to be two dancing girls, but one had contracted scarlet fever and had been hurriedly deported. Gregory had a horror of disease.

“Sit down here,” he commanded, laying his hand on the divan.

As if by magic, every servant in the room had disappeared, and she suddenly felt cold.

“I’ve left my chauffeur outside, with instructions to go for the police if I’m not out in half an hour,” she said loudly, and he laughed.

“You ought to have brought your nurse, Stella. What’s the matter with you nowadays? Can’t you talk anything but police? I want to talk to you,” he said in a milder tone.

“And I want to talk to you, Gregory. I am leaving Chichester for good, and I don’t want to see the place again.”

“That means you don’t want to see me again, eh? Well, I’m pretty well through with you, and there’s going to be no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part.”

“My new company——” she began, and he stopped her with a gesture.

“If your new company depends upon my putting up the money, you can forget it,” he said roughly. “I’ve seen my lawyer—at least, I’ve seen somebody who knows—and he tells me that if you’re trying to blackmail me about Tjarji, you’re liable to get into trouble yourself. I’ll put up money for you,” he went on. “Not a lot, but enough. I don’t suppose you’re a beggar, for I’ve given you sufficient already to start three companies. Stella, I’m crazy about that girl.”

She looked at him, her mouth open in surprise.

“What girl?” she asked.

“Adele. Isn’t that her name?—Adele Leamington.”

“Do you mean the extra girl that took my place?” she gasped.

He nodded, his sleepy eyes fixed on hers.

“That’s it. She’s my type, more than you ever were, Stella. And that isn’t meant in any way disparaging to you.”

She was content to listen: his declaration had taken her breath away.

“I’ll go a long way to get her,” he went on. “I’d marry her, if that meant anything to her—it’s about time I married, anyway. Now you’re a friend of hers——”

“A friend!” scoffed Stella, finding her voice. “How could I be a friend of hers when she has taken my place? And what if I were? You don’t suppose I should bring a girl to this hell upon earth?”

He brought his eyes around to hers—cold, malignant, menacing.

“This hell upon earth has been heaven for you. It has given you wings, anyway! Don’t go back to London, Stella, not for a week or two. Get to know this girl. You’ve got opportunities that nobody else has. Kid her along—you’re not going to lose anything by it. Speak about me; tell her what a good fellow I am; and tell her what a chance she has. You needn’t mention marriage, but you can if it helps any. Show her some of your jewels—that big pendant I gave you——”

He rambled on, and she listened, her bewilderment giving place to an uncontrollable fury.

“You brute!” she said at last. “To dare suggest that I should bring this girl to Griff! I don’t like her—naturally. But I’d go down on my knees to her to beg her not to come. You think I’m jealous?” Her lips curled at the sight of the smile on his face. “That’s where you’re wrong, Gregory. I’m jealous of the position she’s taken at the studio, but, so far as you’re concerned”—she shrugged her shoulders—“you mean nothing to me. I doubt very much if you’ve ever meant more than a steady source of income. That’s candid, isn’t it?”

She got up from the divan and began putting on her gloves.

“As you don’t seem to want to help me,” she said, “I’ll have to find a way of making you keep your promise. And you did promise me a company, Gregory; I suppose you’ve forgotten that?”

“I was more interested in you then,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going back to my cottage, and to-morrow I’m returning to town,” she said.

He looked first at one end of the room and then at the other, and then at her.

“You’re not going back to your cottage; you’re staying here, my dear,” he said.

She laughed.

“You told your chauffeur to go for the police, did you? I’ll tell you something! Your chauffeur is in my kitchen at this moment, having his supper. If you think that he’s likely to leave before you, you don’t know me, Stella!”

He gathered up the dressing-gown that was spread on the divan and slipped his arms into the hanging sleeves. A terrible figure he was in the girl’s eyes, something unclean, obscene. The scarlet pyjama jacket gave his face a demoniacal value, and she felt herself cringing from him.

He was quick to notice the action, and his eyes glowed with a light of triumph.

“Bhag is downstairs,” he said significantly. “He handles people rough. He handled one girl so that I had to call in a doctor. You’ll come with me without—assistance?”

She nodded dumbly; her knees gave way under her as she walked. She had bearded the beast in his den once too often.

Half-way along the corridor he unlocked a door of a room and pushed it open.

“Go there and stay there,” he said. “I’ll talk to you to-morrow, when I’m sober. I’m drunk now. Maybe I’ll send you someone to keep you company—I don’t know yet.” He ruffled his scanty hair in drunken perplexity. “But I’ve got to be sober before I deal with you.”

The door slammed on her and a key turned. She was in complete darkness, in a room she did not know. For one wild, terrified moment she wondered if she was alone.

It was a long time before her palm touched the little button projecting from the wall. She pressed it. A lamp enclosed in a crystal globe set in the ceiling flashed into sparkling light. She was in what had evidently been a small bedroom. The bedstead had been removed, but a mattress and a pillow were folded up in one corner. There was a window, heavily barred, but no other exit. She examined the door: the handle turned in her grasp; there was not even a keyhole in which she could try her own key.

Going to the window, she pulled up the sash, for the room was stuffy and airless. She found herself looking out from the back of the house, across the lawn to a belt of trees which she could just discern. The road ran parallel with the front of the house, and the shrillest scream would not be heard by anybody on the road.

Sitting down in one of the chairs, she considered her position. Having overcome her fear, she had that in her possession which would overcome Gregory if it came to a fight. Pulling up her skirt, she unbuckled the soft leather belt about her waist, and from the Russian leather holster it supported, she took a diminutive Browning—a toy of a weapon but wholly business-like in action. Sliding back the jacket, she threw a cartridge into the chamber and pulled up the safety-catch; then she examined the magazine and pressed it back again.

“Now, Gregory,” she said aloud, and at that moment her face went round to the window, and she started up with a scream.

Two grimy hands gripped the bars; glaring in at her was the horrible face of a tramp. Her trembling hand shot out for the pistol, but before it could close on the butt, the face had disappeared; and though she went round to the window and looked out, the bars prevented her from getting a clear view of the parapet along which the uncouth figure was creeping.

Ten o’clock was striking from Chichester cathedral when the tramp, who half an hour ago had been peering and prying into the secrets of Griff Towers, made his appearance in the market-place. His clothes were even more dusty and soiled, and a policeman who saw him stood squarely in his path.

“On the road?” he asked.

“Yes,” whined the man.

“You can get out of Chichester as quick as you like,” said the officer. “Are you looking for a bed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why don’t you try the casual ward at the workhouse?”

“They’re full up, sir.”

“That’s a lie,” said the officer. “Now understand, if I see you again I’ll arrest you!”

Muttering something to himself, the squalid figure moved on toward the Arundel Road, his shoulders hunched, his hands hidden in the depths of his pockets.

Out of sight of the policeman, he turned abruptly to the right and accelerated his pace. He was making for Jack Knebworth’s house. The director heard the knock, opened the door and stood aghast at the unexpected character of the caller.

“What do you want, bo’?” he asked.

“Mr. Brixan come back?”

“No, he hasn’t come back. You’d better give me that letter. I’ll get in touch with him by ’phone.”

The tramp grinned and shook his head.

“No, you don’t. I want to see Brixan.”

“Well, you won’t see him here to-night,” said Jack. And then, suspiciously: “My idea is that you don’t want to see him at all, and that you’re hanging around for some other purpose.”

The tramp did not reply. He was whistling softly a distorted passage from the “Indian Love Lyrics,” and all the time his right foot was beating the time.

“He’s in a bad way, is old Brixan,” he said, and there was a certain amount of pleasure in his voice that annoyed Knebworth.

“What do you know about him?”

“I know he’s in bad with headquarters—that’s what I know,” said the tramp. “He couldn’t find where the letters went to: that’s the trouble with him. But I know.”

“Is that what you want to see him about?”

The man nodded vigorously.

“I know,” he said again. “I could tell him something if he was here, but he ain’t here.”

“If you know he isn’t here,” asked the exasperated Jack, “why in blazes do you come?”

“Because the police are chivvying me, that’s why. A copper down on the market-place is going to pinch me next time he sees me. So I thought I’d come up to fill in the time, that’s what!”

Jack stared at him.

“You’ve got a nerve,” he said in awe-stricken tones. “And now you’ve filled in your time and I’ve entertained you, you can get! Do you want anything to eat?”

“Not me,” said the tramp. “I live on the fat of the land, I do!”

His shrill Cockney voice was getting on Jack’s nerves.

“Well, good night,” he said shortly, and closed the door on his unprepossessing visitor.

The tramp waited for quite a long time before he made any move. Then, from the interior of his cap, he took a cigarette and lit it before he shuffled back the way he had come, making a long detour to avoid the centre of the town, where the unfriendly policeman was on duty. A church clock was striking a quarter past ten when he reached the corner of the Arundel Road, and, throwing away his cigarette, moved into the shadow of the fence and waited.

Five minutes, ten minutes passed, and his keen eyes caught sight of a man walking rapidly the way he had come, and he grinned in the darkness. It was Knebworth. Jack had been perturbed by the visitor, and was on his way to the police station to make inquiries about Michael. This the tramp guessed, though he had little time to consider the director’s movements, for a car came noiselessly around the corner and stopped immediately opposite him.

“Is that you, my friend?”

“Yes,” said the tramp in a sulky voice.

“Come inside.”

The tramp lurched forward, peering into the dark interior of the car. Then, with a turn of his wrist, he jerked open the door, put one foot on the running-board, and suddenly flung himself upon the driver.

“Mr. Head-Hunter, I want you!” he hissed.

The words were hardly out of his mouth before something soft and wet struck him in the face—something that blinded and choked him, so that he let go his grip and fought and clawed like a dying man at the air. A push of the driver’s foot, and he was flung, breathless, to the side-walk, and the car sped on.

Jack Knebworth had witnessed the scene as far as it could be witnessed in the half-darkness, and came running across. A policeman appeared from nowhere, and together they lifted the tramp into a sitting position.

“I’ve seen this fellow before to-night,” said the policeman. “I warned him.”

And then the prostrate man drew a long, sighing breath, and his hands went up to his eyes.

“This is where I hand in my resignation,” he said, and Knebworth’s jaw dropped.

It was the voice of Michael Brixan!