Dale understood exactly what the other man meant, and, so long as _he_ understood, the fact may suffice for the rest of the world. "Tell you wot," he suggested eagerly, "when you're ready we'll just run to the station an' arsk the bookstall people for yesterday's paper." The inquiry, the search, the triumphant discovery, the telegraphing of the "information" and a sovereign to Tomkinson in Cavendish Square--"five bob each way" for each of the two--all these things took time, and time was very precious to Dale just then. Unhappily, time is often mute as to its value, and Bath is really quite close to Bristol. The choice secret of the Beckhampton stable was safely launched--in its speculative element, at any rate--and Dale was about to seat himself beside Simmonds, when an astonished and somewhat irate old gentleman hooked the handle of an umbrella into his collar and shouted: "Confound you, Dale! What are you doing here, and where is your master?" Dale's tanned face grew pale, his ears and eyes assumed the semblance of a scared rabbit's, and the power of speech positively failed him. "Do you hear me, Dale?" cried the Earl, that instant alighted from a cab. "I am asking you where Viscount Medenham is. If he has gone to town, why have _you_ remained in Bristol?" "But his lordship hasn't gone to London, my lord," stuttered Dale, finding his voice at last, and far too flustered to collect his wits, though he realized in a dazed way that it was his duty to act exactly as Viscount Medenham would wish him to act in such trying circumstances. And, indeed, many very clever people might have found themselves sinking in some such unexpected quicksand and be not one whit less bemused than the miserable chauffeur. Morally, he had given the only possible answer that left open a way of escape, and he had formed a sufficiently shrewd estimate of the relations between his master and the remarkably good-looking young lady whom the said master was serving with exemplary diligence to fear dire consequences to himself if he became the direct cause of a broken idyl. The position was even worse if he fell back on an artistic lie. The Earl was a dour person where servants were concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of Fairholme would insist on Dale's dismissal when he discovered the facts. Talk of the horned dilemma--here was an unfortunate asked to choose which bristle of a porcupine he would sit upon. The mere presence of his lordship in Bristol betokened a social atmosphere charged with electricity--a phase of the problem that constituted the only clear item in Dale's seething brain: it was too much for him; in sudden desperation he determined to stick to the plain truth. He had to elect very quickly, for the peppery-tempered Earl would not brook delay.