On the Monday morning Richard presented himself at Queen’s Farm. The day was jocund, the landscape smiled; in the forty-acre field below the house a steam-plough, actuated by two enormous engines and a steel hawser, was working at the bidding of a farmer who farmed on principles of his own, and liked to do his ploughing at midsummer. The steam-plough rattled and jarred and jolted like a humorous and high-spirited leviathan; the birds sang merrily above it; the Chiltem Hills stretched away in the far distance, bathed in limitless glad sunshine; and Watling Street ran white, dazzling, and serene, down the near slope and up the hill towards Dunstable, curtained in the dust of rural traffic. In the midst of all these things joyous and content, behold Richard, melancholy and full of discontent, ringing at the front-door bell of Queen’s Farm. He rang and rang again, but there was no answer. It was after eight o’clock, yet not a blind had been drawn up; and the people of the house had told him that they took breakfast at seven o’clock! Richard had passed a wretched week-end in the village of Hockliffe, his one solace having been another chat with Mr. Puddephatt, wine-merchant and horse-dealer to the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. He was at a loss what to do. What, indeed, could he do? The last words of Nolan, the detective, had given him pause, hinting, as they did, at strange mysteries still unsolved. Supposing that he, Richard, continued his investigations and discovered some sinister secret--some crime? The point was that Teresa was almost certainly involved in her father’s schemes. Here was the difficulty which troubled him. His fancy pictured a court of justice, and Raphael Craig and Teresa in the dock, and Richard Redgrave giving evidence against them, explaining how he had spied upon them, dogged their footsteps, and ultimately arrived at the heart of the mystery. Could he do that? Could he look Teresa in the face? And yet, what, after all, was Teresa to him--Teresa, whom he had known only three days? That was the question--what was Teresa to him? He rang again, and the jangle of the bell reverberated as though through a deserted dwelling. Then he walked round the house by the garden, in the hope of encountering Micky, otherwise Mr. Nolan of Scotland Yard. But not a sign of Mr. Nolan could he see anywhere. The stable-door was unlocked; the mares were contentedly at work on a morning repast of crushed oats, followed by clover-hay, but there was no Micky. He began to think that perhaps Nolan knew a great deal more than he had chosen to tell during that night walk along Watling Street. Perhaps Nolan had returned to Scotland Yard armed with all the evidence necessary to conduct a magnificent _cause célèbre_ to a successful conclusion. He could see the posters of the evening papers: ‘Extraordinary Affair in Bedfordshire: A Bank Manager and his Daughter charged with----’ Charged with what?