“What about the lady we caught sight of just now as we rode up to the inn?” “A lady?” “Yes, a lady. She just came out of this door and went straight in again. It rather looked as if she wanted to avoid us.” “A lady? In this inn? It isn’t possible!” “A lady in gray. She was too far off for us to be able to recognize her face again. But we saw her gray dress; and she is wearing a hat with flowers in it.” “The devil she is!” cried the detective. “We must look into this!” They said no more, but there came the ominous clumping of large police boots along the flagged path of the garden. During this conversation Ralph and the young woman had listened without uttering a word, staring at one another. As these new facts came to his ears, Ralph’s face had grown darker and darker. She made no attempt to rebut them. “They’re coming.... They’re coming,” she said in a hushed voice. “Yes. They’re coming; and we must be doing, or else they’ll come upstairs and find you here,” he said calmly. As he spoke he snatched up her hat from the toilet table, put it on his head, pulled down the brim a little and tied the strings under his chin to hide yet more of his face. Then he gave her his final instructions. “I’m going to clear the way for you,” he said. “As soon as it is clear, you will walk quietly along the road to the farm-yard where your carriage is waiting. Get into it, and see that Leonard has the reins in his hands.” “But what about you?” she said. “I’ll be with you in twenty minutes.” “But suppose they arrest you?” “They won’t arrest me, or you either,” he said confidently. “But no hurry, mind you. Don’t run down the road. Keep cool.” He stepped to the window and leaned out of it. The four men were on the point of entering the house. He slipped over the sill and dropped into the garden, uttered a cry as if he had just caught sight of them, and dashed off at full speed. They yelled with one voice. “Hi! The woman in gray!... It’s her!... Halt! Or I’ll fire!” He crossed the road in one stride, jumped into the ploughed field on the other side of it, raced across it, and sideways up a slope to a farm. Then came another slope, then some fields; then he ran into a lane which skirted another farm and had a thick, quickset hedge on both sides of it. He stopped short. He had outdistanced his heavily-booted pursuers considerably. He was out of their sight behind that thick hedge. In a jiffy he pulled off the hat, stripped off the frock, and thrust them well down into the bottom of the overgrown ditch. Then he put on his fisherman’s cap, lit a cigarette, stuck his hands in his pockets, and went back the way he had come. At the corner of the farm two breathless, bucketting detectives nearly ran into him. “Hullo, fisherman! Have you met a woman--a woman in gray?” “Yes.... A woman who was running, you mean?... A regular madwoman,” said Ralph. “That’s her!... Which way did she go?” “She went into the farm.” “How?” “Through the back gate.”