‘Then he missed his aim,’ said Bridget, ‘for the master came to me afterwards on the upper landing as sound as a bell.’ ‘Did he seem agitated?’ Richard asked. ‘Not he! Why should a gintleman seem agitated because he has shot a scoundrel?’ Bridget appeared to glory in the idea that Raphael Craig might indeed have shot the Scotland Yard detective. ‘And since then you have seen nothing of either your father or Micky?’ ‘Nothing whatever,’ said Teresa. ‘And you have no notion where they are?’ ‘None; at least--no--none.’ ‘I observed this morning,’ said Richard quietly, ‘that the new electric car was not in the shed.’ ‘Sure, and the master must have ridden off on it with the corpse----’ ‘Bridget, silence!’ said Teresa imperatively. Richard had an uncanny vision of Raphael Craig flying from justice on the electric car, with the corpse of a murdered detective hidden somewhere behind. The vision struck him, though, as amusing. He could not believe in the possibility of such a deed on the part of Raphael Craig. Yet he could see that Bridget’s doubtless fanciful and highly-coloured report of what had passed in the night had so worked on Teresa’s brain, already disturbed by sinister events. He could understand now why she had so incontinently flown to London, in the wild hope of stopping all further inquiries into her father’s proceedings. The car climbed over the hill on which stands the town of St. Albans, and then slipped easily down towards Redbourne and the twelve miles of lonely and straight Watling Street that separates St. Albans from Dunstable. On this interminable and monotonous stretch of road there are only two villages; mile succeeds mile with a sort of dogged persistency, and the nocturnal traveller becomes, as it were, hypnotized by the ribbon-like highway that stretches eternally in front of him and behind him. It was fortunate that the car ran well. Dunstable was reached in forty minutes after leaving St. Albans, and then as they passed into the mysterious cutting--resembling a Welsh mountain pass--to the north of the ancient borough, the thoughts of all flew forward to the empty farmhouse which Teresa and her attendant had left in the morning. As soon as you emerge from the cutting you can, in daylight, see Queen’s Farm quite plainly on the opposite slope of the valley, two miles away. But at night, of course, you can see nothing of the house of Mr. Raphael Craig unless it is lighted up. ‘Sure, the master’s returned!’ old Mrs. Bridget exclaimed. A light faintly twinkled from the direction of Queen’s Farm.