The nearest outhouse offering a safe refuge, they withdrew hastily and scrutinised their find more closely. After ten minutes’ concentrated effort they found themselves in possession of the following: “. . . that brute Prince . . . this neighbourhood . . . serious danger . . . fright of my life this morning on chancing to . . . be locked up . . .” “I think that’s absolutely all that’s decipherable, without a magnifying glass, at any rate,” Roger said at length, folding up the precious paper and stowing it carefully away in his pocketbook. “But it’s plain enough, isn’t it? So forward!” He marched out of the shed and turned in the direction of the drive. “Where to now?” asked the faithful Alec, hurrying after him. “To find Master Prince,” Roger returned grimly. “Ah! You think he’s still about here?” “I think it’s quite probable. He’s been in communication with Jefferson this morning, hasn’t he? At any rate, we can soon find out.” “What exactly have you deduced then?” “Well, there’s precious little deduction needed; the thing speaks for itself. Stanworth, for some reason still unknown to us, had cause to fear a man named Prince. To his surprise and terror he chanced to encounter him unexpectedly one morning about a week ago in this neighbourhood, and knew at once that he was in serious danger. He comes home at once, makes a rough draft of a letter, and then writes off to some other person telling him all about it and asking, probably, for help; at the same time expressing his conviction that Prince ought to be locked up.” “It’s curious,” Alec mused. “Fishy, you mean? Yes, but we’ve had a suspicion for some time that there was something fishy going on behind the scenes in all this, haven’t we? Not only with regard to the behaviour of the other people in the house, but even possibly in connection with old Stanworth himself. But we’re hot on the trail this time, I think.” “What’s your plan of campaign?” Alec asked, as they turned into the drive. “Well, we must make a few discreet inquiries. In fact, our course will be much the same as we contemplated before, except that our field of action has luckily been narrowed down very considerably. Instead of chasing about after some nebulous stranger, we’ve now got a definite goal. We had a pretty good idea of what he looks like before, but now we even know the blighter’s name. Oh, this is going to be too easy.” “How do you mean—we had a pretty good idea of what he looks like?” “Well, haven’t we? We know he must be strong, because of what happened in the library; Stanworth was no weakling, remember. Then the size of his footprints shows that he was a large man, probably tall. I can’t tell you the colour of his hair or how many false teeth he’s got; but we’ve got a good working idea of his appearance for all that.”