From this flaccid condition he was roused by a somewhat obstreperous knocking and whistling in the passage dividing the coffee-room from the bar. In a moment he had sprung up and run to the window, which he threw open, and stood there ready to bolt through it if necessary. "What ho! Anybody alive here?" a voice called out. "Hi, yi! Where do I come in?" As the invocation and inquiry seemed reassuring. Peckover turned back into the room as the door opened and a man in a dripping mackintosh appeared looking in. "Hullo!" he exclaimed. "I can't find anybody worth mentioning. Bar empty as a mortuary chapel. Young lady in the cellar hiding from the thunderstorm, eh? You don't happen to be the proprietor of the establishment?" "Not exactly," Peckover answered, wondering what kind of customer he had come across now. "That's near enough," said the man in the mackintosh. "You're alive at any rate. Well, somebody has looked after you all right," he remarked, eyeing the remains of Peckover's last dinner. "Oh, yes, I've dined," Peckover replied loftily. "You bet. Like a lord," assented the stranger cheerfully. "By the way"--he scrutinized him curiously, much to that gentleman's uneasiness--"by the way, you don't by any chance happen to be a lord?" Something in the man's manner suggested a reason for the inquiry other than mere chaff. "Suppose I am?" returned Peckover, with his best attempt at an enigmatical smile. The newcomer stared at him as though unable to make up his mind to risk a question, and as he hesitated, the dripping mackintosh made a circle of water round him. "Well, if you are----" he stopped, and abruptly changed the subject. "Staying here?" he asked; "or just waiting till the rain stops?" "That's it," Peckover answered, scarcely knowing how to take the fellow. "Far to go?" "Few miles, I'm waiting for the carriage," said Peckover casually, remembering what Quorn had told him. "H'm!" The man looked at him as though stoked to blowing-off point with curiosity. "Not going Staplewick Towers way?" The problem as to whether it were better to say yes or no was too complex for Peckover's present state of mind. "That's my way," he declared, and chanced it. The stranger's face brightened with anticipation. "Going to the Towers, perhaps?" he asked with hopeful persistence. Peckover nodded in as non-committal a fashion as he could command. "Why," cried the other, "I do believe I'm in luck after all. You hinted just now you might be a lord. You don't tell me you are Lord Quorn?" "You've guessed it." With another word the stranger turned and walked energetically to some pegs at the end of the room, unbuttoned the humid mackintosh and hung it up; also his hat. Then, with business-like action, he came back and favoured the astonished Peckover with a long stare of gratified curiosity. "Excuse me," he said, "but it's more than curious that the man I have been hunting all the week should run across me like this."