"Just so!" he agreed. "It is. So take my advice. Instead of having the wire sent from the nearest office, do this--my friend, as a matter of fact, is going on by rail to Berwick. Let him send a wire from there: it will only mean that Mr. Raven will get it an hour or so later. Say that you and Miss Raven find you cannot get home tonight, and that she is quite safe--word it in any reassuring way you like." I gave him a keen glance. "The thing is," said I. "Can we get home tomorrow?" "Well--possibly tomorrow night--late," he answered. "I will do my best. I may be--I hope to be--through with my business tomorrow afternoon. Then--" At that moment the other man appeared on deck, emerging from somewhere. He had changed his clothes--he now presented himself in a smart tweed suit, Homburg hat, polished shoes, gloves, walking cane. Baxter signed to him to wait, turning to me. "That's the wisest thing to do," he remarked. "Draft your wire." I wrote out a message which I hoped would allay Mr. Raven's anxieties and handed it to him. He read it over, nodded as if in approbation, and went across to the other man. For a moment or two they stood talking in low tones; then the other man went over the side, dropped into the boat which lay there, and pulled himself off shorewards. Baxter came back to me. "He'll send that from Berwick railway station as soon as he gets there, at six-thirty," he said. "It should be delivered at Ravensdene Court by eight. So there's no need to worry further, you can tell Miss Raven. And when all's said and done, Mr. Middlebrook, it wasn't my fault that you and she broke in upon very private doings up there in the old churchyard--nor, I suppose, yours either. Make the best of it!--it's only a temporary detention." I was watching him closely as he talked, and suddenly I made up my mind to speak out. It might be foolish, even dangerous, to do it, but I had an intuitive feeling that it would be neither. "I believe," I said, brusquely enough, "that I am speaking to Mr. Netherfield Baxter?" He returned me a sharp glance which was half-smiling. Certainly there was no astonishment in it. "Aye!" he answered. "I thought, somehow, that you might be thinking that! Well, and suppose I admit it, Mr. Middlebrook? What then? And what do you--a Londoner, I think you told me--know of Netherfield Baxter?" "You wish to know?" I asked. "Shall I be plain?" "As a pike-staff, if you like," he replied. "I prefer it."