"While I was on my way to Holt Stacey this morning, Mrs. Stapleton passed me in her car. I was on that part of the road, about a mile from the lodge, where if you look round you can see a long bit of the avenue. I wondered if Mrs. Stapleton were going to Holt by any chance, so I bicycled rather slowly for a minute or two, and looked round once or twice. I had guessed right, because all at once I saw her car going up the avenue." "Are you sure it was Mrs. Stapleton?" I asked, suddenly interested. "Oh, quite. But I don't think she saw me, her car went by so fast." "Was anybody with her?" "No, she was alone—the chauffeur was driving." "And the car that went up the drive, are you sure it was the same?" "Positive—that long grey car of hers, I'd know it anywhere; you can recognize it ever so far away." We were half a mile from the lodge, now. Soon we had shot through the open gates, and were sliding up the splendid avenue. I felt intensely excited, also happier than when in the train, for I knew I now possessed Sir Roland's entire confidence. Delicious was it to think that in a few minutes I should see Dulcie again, but what excited me—and I knew it must be exciting Sir Roland too—was the thought of that man—or would it prove to be a woman?—lying concealed in the hiding-hole. Who could he be? How long had he been there? How had he got there and what could he be doing? I had told Sir Roland of the false conclusion Aunt Hannah had come to with regard to the sending of that typed telegram, and how bitterly she had spoken to me about it—I had thought it best to prepare him for the absurd story that I felt sure Aunt Hannah would proceed to pour into his ear directly she met him. To my relief he had laughed, appearing to treat the matter of her annoyance and suspicion as a joke, though the sending of the telegram he looked upon, naturally, as a very grave matter. Consequently, upon our arrival at Holt, instead of inquiring for his sister, and at once consulting her upon the subject of the day's events, as he would, I knew, have done under ordinary circumstances, he told Charles, the footman, to send the butler to him at once, and to return with him. We were now in the little library—Sir Roland and myself, Dick, the butler and the footman, and the door was shut. Without any preliminaries Sir Roland came straight to the point. He told the two servants of Dick's discovery that morning, told them that presumably the man was still in hiding where Dick had bolted him down, and that the four of us were at once going, as he put it, "to unearth the scoundrel." "And you will stay here, Dick," Sir Roland added. "We shall not need your services at this juncture." Dick was, I could see, deeply disappointed at, as he put it to me in an undertone, "being side-tracked like this by the guv'nor when it was I who marked the beggar to ground "; but his father's word was law, and he knew it.