At this I was very pleased, for Lola with her great dark eyes always sat beside me. She could drive quite well, and was full of good humor and a charming little gossip. Hence I looked forward to a very pleasant run. The more I saw of the master-crook's daughter the more attracted I became by her. Indeed, though she seemed to regard me with some suspicion--why, I don't know--we had already become excellent friends. The month of September passed. We had all spent a delightful time at Overstow. Rayne had given two big shoots at which several well-known Yorkshire landowners had been present, while I had taken a gun, and Lola, Madame and several other ladies had walked with us. Lola and I were frequently together, and I often accompanied her on long walks through the autumn-tinted woods. Madame's husband had only spent a week with us, for he had, I understood, been called to Switzerland on "business"--the nature of which I could easily guess. At the end of the month we were back in London again. One evening I had dined at the Carlton with Lola, her father and Madame, and the two ladies having gone off to the theater, he took me round to the set of luxurious chambers he occupied in Half Moon Street. When we were alone together with our cigars, he suddenly said: "I want you to go out for a run to-night--to Bristol." "To Bristol! To-night?" I echoed. "Yes. I want you to take the new 'A. C.' and get to the Clifton Suspension Bridge by two o'clock to-morrow morning. There, in the center of the bridge, you will await a stranger--an elderly hunchback whose name is Morley Tarrant. He'll give you, as _bona fides_, the word 'Mask.' When you meet him act upon his instructions. He is to be trusted." The tryst seemed full of suspicion, and I certainly did not like it. The evening was bright and clear, and the run in the fast two-seater would be enjoyable. But to meet a man who would give a password savored too much of crookdom. He quickly saw my hesitation, and added: "Now, Hargreave, I ought not to conceal from you the fact that there may be a trap. If so, you must evade it and escape at all costs. I have enemies, you know--pretty fierce ones." Again, for the hundredth time, I debated within myself whether I dare cast myself adrift from the round-faced, prosperous-looking cosmopolitan who sat before me so full of good humor and so fearless. I had been cleverly inveigled into accepting the situation he had offered me, but I had never dreamed that by accepting, I was throwing in my lot with the most marvelously organized gang of evil-doers that that world had ever known.