"They were found this morning within half an hour, I understand, of your wedding. And it was only owing to the quickness of a lady named Miss Forsyth--assisted, I am bound to say, by Mr. Hayley of the Foreign Office, who is, I believe, a relation of Mrs. Guthrie--that they were found at all. The man who came to fetch them away did get off scot free--luckily leaving them, and his motor, behind him." "The man who came to fetch them away?" The woman sitting opposite to the speaker repeated the words in a wondering tone--then, very decidedly, "There has been some extraordinary mistake!" she exclaimed. "I know every inch of my house, and so I can assure you"--she bent forward a little in her earnestness and excitement--"I can assure you that it's quite _impossible_ that there was anything of the sort in the Trellis House without my knowing it!" "Did you ever go into your servant's bedroom?" asked Mr. Reynolds quietly. Major Guthrie felt the hand he was holding in his suddenly tremble, and his wife made a nervous movement, as if she wanted to draw it away from his protecting grasp. A feeling of terror--of sheer, unreasoning terror--had swept over her. _Anna?_ "No," she faltered, but her voice was woefully changed. "No, I never had occasion to go into my old servant's bedroom. But oh, I cannot believe----" and then she stopped. She had remembered Anna's curious unwillingness to leave the Trellis House this morning, even to attend her beloved mistress's wedding. She, and Rose too, had been hurt, and had shown that they were hurt, at old Anna's obstinacy. "We have reason to suppose," said Mr. Reynolds slowly, "that the explosives in question have been stored for some considerable time in a large roomy cupboard which is situated behind your servant's bed. As a matter of fact, the man who had come to fetch them away was already under observation by the police. He has spent all the winter in a village not far from Southampton, and he is registered as a Spaniard, though he came to England from America just before the War broke out. Of course, these facts have only just come to my knowledge. But both this Miss Forsyth and your cousin, Mr. Hayley, declare that they have long suspected your servant of being a spy." "Suspected my servant? Suspected Anna Bauer?" repeated Mrs. Guthrie, in a bewildered tone. "Then you," went on Mr. Reynolds, "have never suspected her at all, Mrs. Guthrie? I understand that but for the accidental fact that Witanbury is just, so to speak, over the border of the prohibited area for aliens, she would have _had_ to leave you?" "Yes, I know that. But she has been with me nearly twenty years, and I regarded her as being to all intents and purposes an Englishwoman." "Did you really?" he observed drily. "Her daughter is married to an Englishman."