He found he had to wait an hour before he could get a train for Ashford, and he passed that hour impatiently walking up and down the broad platform. Here was a new complication in the case. Who was Miss Stevens, and why should she be journeying to Dover on the night of the murder? He reached Ashford, and with difficulty found a cab, for it was raining heavily, and he had come provided with neither mackintosh nor umbrella. The matron of the Cottage Hospital reassured him on one point. "Oh, yes, Miss Stevens is still in the hospital," she said, and he breathed a sigh of relief. There was just a chance that she might have been discharged, and again the possibility that she would be difficult to trace. The matron showed him the way through a long corridor, terminating in a big ward. Before reaching the door of the ward there was a smaller door on the right. "We put her in this private ward, because we thought it might be necessary to operate," said the matron and opened the door. Tarling walked in. Facing him was the foot of the bed, and in that bed lay a girl whose eyes met his. He stopped dead as though he were shot For "Miss Stevens" was Odette Rider! CHAPTER XI "THORNTON LYNE IS DEAD." For a time neither spoke. Tarling walked slowly forward, pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, never once taking his eyes off the girl. Odette Rider! The woman for whom the police of England were searching, against whom a warrant had been issued on a charge of wilful murder--and here, in a little country hospital. For a moment, and a moment only, Tarling was in doubt. Had he been standing outside the case and watching it as a disinterested spectator, or had this girl never come so closely into his life, bringing a new and a disturbing influence so that the very balance of his judgment was upset, he would have said that she was in hiding and had chosen this hospital for a safe retreat. The very name under which she was passing was fictitious--a suspicious circumstance in itself. The girl's eyes did not leave his. He read in their clear depths a hint of terror and his heart fell. He had not realised before that the chief incentive he found in this case was not to discover the murderer of Thornton Lyne, but to prove that the girl was innocent. "Mr. Tarling," she said with a queer little break in her voice, "I--I did not expect to see you." It was a lame opening, and it seemed all the more feeble to her since she had so carefully rehearsed the statement she had intended making. For her waking moments, since the accident, had been filled with thoughts of this hard-faced man, what he would think, what he would say, and what, in certain eventualities, he would do. "I suppose not," said Tarling gently. "I am sorry to hear you have had rather a shaking, Miss Rider." She nodded, and a faint smile played about the corners of her mouth. "It was nothing very much," she said. "Of course, it was very harried at first and--what do you want?"