"So those ladies told me. If the dead have any knowledge of what takes place in this world, I wonder what your father's feelings were when he became informed of his assumption of that--delicate office; I should think he nearly jumped out of his grave. Especially as he must have been conscious that the fault was again his own. Emmett was within easy distance of the place at which your father died. He got there before I did; and he gained access to your father's papers. Fortunately he was interrupted before, as was supposed, he had an opportunity to work any material mischief; but not, apparently, before he had obtained at least two pieces of information. I have no doubt that he found out how much money your father had left; obviously, also, your address; and on that information he promptly acted. He never lacked audacity; but when he carried you off in that fashion his courage must surely have been at its highest." For the first time the speaker showed signs of restlessness; beginning to move about the cabin as if constrained to find relief for his feelings in motion of some sort. "The most astounding part of it was, that he had duped those innocent females with a completeness which was bewildering; no one had the dimmest notion where he had gone, with you; he had left no tracks behind him. A man with an unknown motor car, who knows the highways and byways of Europe better than some people know their back gardens, is not always an easy object to trace. I got wind of him again and again; but I believe some occult sense warned him of my pursuit; more than once it was as if he had slipped through my fingers; till at last I could get no news of him at all. It was as if he had vanished into space. So far I had chased him singlehanded; feeling that this was an account which I should like to settle with him singlehanded; but, in the end, I retired, beaten; resolved to employ those resources of civilisation which, hitherto, I had slighted; and, on the very day on which I had finally so resolved, I found him." The man was working himself into a state of excitement which was communicating itself to his listener; as was plain from the strained eagerness with which she was hanging on his every word. "You remember Billson?" "Oh yes, I remember Billson; I shall not easily forget him." "I also remembered Billson--luckily. I had been visiting a friend when I saw, outside a tavern door, a motor car, with a chauffeur standing by it whom I seemed to recognise. For a second I hesitated; then I had it; it was Billson, Emmett's chauffeur. At the same instant he recognised me and, scrambling into the car, would have been off if I hadn't stopped him. The fellow had been drinking." "It seemed to me that he always had." "Like his master." "The master used to get more horribly drunk than the man." "Pleasant society for you to be alone in." "It wasn't--nice."