“Found, Mrs. Braxfield!” said the Chief Constable sternly. “I needn’t ask you if you have any ideas as to where it was found—I think you have. Now that automatic pistol has, of course, a mark and a number, and it has been identified by a gunsmith in Selcaster as one that he sold, comparatively recently, to Mr. Harry Markenmore—your son-in-law. Now, Mrs. Braxfield, we know beyond any question that you have been in the habit of using an automatic pistol of that particular sort to scare or shoot foxes. Be candid. Was the pistol that you’ve been using given to you by Mr. Harry Markenmore—the pistol that is now in our possession? Come!” Mrs. Braxfield sat silent for a while. Now and then she looked at her questioner; now and then at the rings on her fingers, which she was mechanically turning round and round. It seemed a long time before she spoke. But when she did, it was to the accompaniment of an unusually dogged and defiant look. “I’m not going to say another word!” she said. “Bear you in mind, all of you, that I’ve admitted nothing!” The Chief Constable glanced at Blick and sighed—the sigh of a man upon whom an unpleasant duty is forced, much against his will. “Very well, Mrs. Braxfield,” he said quietly. “Then there’s nothing else for it—you’ll have to come with us.” “Do you mean that you’re going to take me to Selcaster?” asked Mrs. Braxfield, with suspicious calmness. “All right!—and you’ll be more than sorry for it, as you’ll see! Very well—I suppose I can go upstairs and make ready?” “No!” said the Chief Constable. “Not out of my sight, now! You’ve a woman in the house—you can ring for her, and tell her to get all you want. Then—we’ve a cab outside.” “Ah!” remarked Mrs. Braxfield maliciously. “You’re only doing what you meant to do! All right, Mr. Chief Constable, and the other two of you—you’ll be sorry for this!” But the Chief Constable silently motioned to Blick to ring the bell for the charwoman. CHAPTER XXII MRS. BRAXFIELD’S MOVE Five minutes later, the charwoman, amazed and lachrymose, and holding a corner of her apron in readiness to apply to her eyes, watched the little procession move away across the garden of Woodland Cottage and over the hill-side to the edge of the grass track whereat the cab was in waiting. She kept her eyes fixed on Mrs. Braxfield until Mrs. Braxfield vanished; but Mrs. Braxfield never looked back. Her eyes were concentrated on the cab in which she was to be carried away. There were two more plain-clothes men in charge of it; one on the box, another by the door, and at sight of them she laughed satirically. “You came pretty well prepared, I think!” she said with bitter emphasis. “I can see what was in your minds! This is what you call having a talk between ourselves—being frank and candid—and all that! Rubbish!” “You’ve only got to be candid, Mrs. Braxfield, and there’ll be no necessity to take you away,” said the Chief Constable. “If you’ll only just tell me——”