"Well, George," she exclaimed, as she sat behind me in the car and I drove down Pall Mall, "we're going out on a little adventure, I understand. Do you know where we're going?" "Down to Ripley, on the Portsmouth Road," I replied. "I have to meet a man named Houston at the Talbot Hotel. That's all I know," I answered. "Yes," she said. "I know Houston. We must be careful to-night--very careful." We went through the crooked roads of Kingston and out through Surbiton towards Ditton, when, after a long silence, she exclaimed as she bent towards me: "Tell me, George, have you ever heard the name of Gori, and if so, in what connection? I ask this in confidence between ourselves, as the outcome may mean much to both of us." "I don't quite understand you, Madame," was my polite reply. "I only wish your husband had asked that question." "Look here," she said in a low, tense voice, "you love Lola! I know you do. Then will you, for her sake, reply to me openly and frankly? Have you in these past few days met a bald-headed Italian named Luigi Gori? And in what circumstances?" I remained silent for some minutes. Then I said: "I have met a man named Gori. He called upon Rudolph." "When?" she gasped. "He called on Monday night." Madame Duperre held her breath for a few moments. She seemed to be calculating. "I recognize certain grave probabilities in Gori's visit," she said, and then lapsed again into silence. Presently I pulled up before the big old seventeenth-century posting-house in the long, quiet village of Ripley, once noted in the late Victorian craze of the "push-bike" as being the Mecca of the daring cyclist who ran out of London and back. The great gateway through which the mail coaches for Portsmouth used to rumble was dark and cavernous, but on the right I saw a small door, and opening it found myself in a very low-ceiled but cosy bar, in which burned a great log fire with shining pewters above it. The Talbot is nothing if not a link with the days of the highwaymen of Weybridge Heath. Few inns in England are so unspoiled by modern improvements as the Talbot, at Ripley. In the rather dim light of that low-pitched, well-warmed inn parlor, with its wide, inviting chimney-corner, I saw four men. One of them, facing the firelight, I recognized from the photographs Rayne had shown me--the man with the moonstone in his tie. I ordered my drink loudly, and looked him full in the face. Then, when a few moments later I had drunk it, I wished the barman good night and went out. Reentering the car, I drove out of the village towards Guildford, and there waited expectantly. In ten minutes he came out of the darkness. "Mr. Hargreave?" he asked, and, after replying, I invited him inside the car, whereupon he at once recognized Madame in the half-light. It was plain that they were known to each other. "I expected Vincent would be with you. Where is he?" asked the man named Houston.