"It's these motor veils," said I. "You can't expect a man to see through three thicknesses of shuffon--now can you, Mr. Moss?" It was a lucky shot, and, upon my word, I really do believe that I began to wheedle him, Whether I did, or whether I did not, we had the car upon the road in ten minutes, and were off for Dover before a quarter of an hour had passed. Previous to that I had slipped into the inn on the pretence of leaving my coat, and had left a letter for Miss Dolly to be taken up by Biggs, when he came there to meet me for our evening walk. "Moss is here," I wrote, "look out for yourself." I laugh now when I think of that journey to Dover, and old Shekels Moss sitting like a hawk on the seat beside me. What lies I had to tell him--what starts I gave him, when I pointed out that she might have gone by the afternoon boat, or perhaps motored right on to Southampton. My own idea was to stop the night at Dover, whatever happened, and no sooner had we drawn up at the "Lord Warden," than I had a penknife into the off front tyre, and turned my back when the wind fizzed out. This stopped the run to Folkestone straight away, and, by the time I'd done the job, Moss said he thought he would telephone the police, as I suggested, describing Miss Dolly, but saying nothing about his lordship. "He might do pusiness with us, Britten," he remarked. "I won't have his dabe in it--but I'll tell him about her directly I get the chadce, and she won't be long in his house, dow will she?" "Perhaps not," said I; "but if she marries his lordship's son, the boot will be on the other leg. You'd better think of that, Mr. Moss." "What I want is my modey," he rejoined. "If she don't pay, she goes to prison--I dow too much about the peerage to be stuffed with promises. Either the modey or the writ. I'll feed here, Britten, and go back to Sadwich, if she's not on the boats. Perhaps we were a couple of fools to come at all." I said nothing, but was pretty sure that one fool had come along in the car, anyway. My business was to keep Moss at Dover as long as might be, and in that I succeeded well enough. Nothing could save Miss Dolly if he went blundering up to Lord Badington's house with his story of what she'd done in London, and how fond certain West End tradesmen had become of her. Given time enough, I believed the pretty little lady would wheedle his lordship to consent to her marriage with Mr. Sarand. But time she must have, and if she did not get it, well, then, time of another kind might await her. It would have broken my heart to see misfortune overtake pretty Dolly St. John, and I swore that it should not, if any wit of mine could prevent it.