Miss Girton still looked at him with those deep-set eyes of hate. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “For years you’ve made my life a misery. I’ve a mind to end it. And putting you where you belong might make them forget some of the things they know about me. The busies are always kind to squeakers.” The man was silent for a short space; then he put up his hand and pulled his hat a little further over his eyes. He turned his head, but he could only have seen her feet. “I am not like the busies,” he returned in a voice that was cold and flat and hard like a sheet of ice. “Don’t talk like that—or I might be tempted to put you where you will have no power to threaten me.” He stood up and walked to the door, his hands in the side-pockets of his coat and his shoulders hunched up. He turned the key and pulled the door open quickly and silently. Leaning out, he glanced up and down the hall, then half pulled the door to while he spoke to Miss Girton. “I can let myself out. The lady is upstairs, isn’t she?” “I heard her moving about overhead a little while ago.” He waited a moment as though listening. “Your ears are better than mine,” he said, and looked at her warningly. “Do exactly as I told you, and don’t try to double-cross me. You mightn’t succeed. Good-evening.” The door closed behind him, and she could hear him moving across the hall. For a moment she hesitated. Then she crossed the room swiftly and pulled out the drawer of the writing bureau. She felt in the cavity and tugged. When she straightened up there was a small automatic pistol in her hand. She went to the windows at the front, snapping back the jacket of the gun as she did so and pushing over the safety catch. The heavy curtains swung away as she jerked at the cord that controlled them, and she saw the man hurrying down the drive. Without looking round, he turned and went down the road to the left, and Agatha Girton opened the french windows and stepped out on to the terrace. The range was about twenty-five yards, but the hedge at the bottom of the garden was a low one, and his body could be seen above it from the waist upwards. Miss Girton raised the gun and extended her arm slowly and steadily, as she might have done in a Bisley competition. At that moment the man turned to the right again into a field, and so his back was squarely presented to her. The echoes of the two rapid shots rattled clamorously in the still air of the evening. She saw the man fling up his arms, stagger, and fall out of sight. Suddenly she found Patricia beside her. “Who was it?” gasped the girl, white-faced and shaking. “What have you done?” “Killed him, I hope,” said Agatha Girton coolly. She was standing on tiptoe, gazing out into the gathering dusk, trying to see the result of her shooting. But there was the hedge at the end of the Manor garden and the hedge that lined the field into which the man had passed, both hiding the more distant ground from her, and she could see no sign of him.