As you have, no doubt, already guessed, the man who so cleverly got hold of Blenkap's money, and who had escaped so swiftly, I now recognised as the affable Lieutenant Shacklock, the intimate friend and guest of James Harding Miller. Was not his presence in that house sufficient to convince me that what had been suspected of Miller was more than a mere surmise? It had been declared that Lucie's father, though a county gentleman, was also head of the most daring association of criminals in Europe. It seemed to me that Gordon-Wright, alias Shacklock, was one of his ingenious lieutenants whom he was entertaining in his cosy retreat--planning some new scheme perhaps--and who was, at the same time, an ardent admirer of the beautiful girl whose unhappiness and deadly peril was so great a mystery. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. PLIGHT AND PURSUIT. I left the Manor with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with a sickening pain. I moved down the road without quite well knowing where I went. My well-beloved had again escaped me. It was my duty to follow her, to learn the truth, to save her--my duty to her, as well as to myself. Mystery followed upon the back of mystery. In those brief days, since the advent of the fugitive Italian at Shepherd's Bush, I had become enmeshed in a veritable web of entangled events which seemed to grow more extraordinary and more inexplicable every hour. My meeting with the man Shacklock proved, beyond doubt, the source of Mr Miller's income. Finding Lucie's father such an affable and gentlemanly man, I had entirely refused to credit Sammy's story. Nevertheless, Lucie herself had corroborated it, inasmuch as she had described her love at Enghien and its tragic sequel; while I, myself, had recognised in Gordon-Wright the clever international thief who had decamped with Blenkap's valuables. And this man was actually Miller's most intimate friend! To Lucie I made no mention of my intention, but half an hour later I was in a dogcart hired from the "Lion," driving at a furious pace over the Ballard Down into Swanage, where, at the hotel I had previously visited on my arrival, I inquired for Miss Murray. "The lady left with a party in a motor-car an hour ago," was the reply of the young person in black satin, whose duty appeared to be to keep the books and order about the waiters. "Gone!" I ejaculated. "Where?" "Well, when people go off in a car we don't generally know their destination. Motor-cars are so very uncertain, you see." "Did they arrive here on the car?" I inquired eagerly. "No. Mr Murray and his daughter came over by boat from Bournemouth. The motor arrived last night with a gentleman, a lady and the chauffeur." "Pardon me," exclaimed a man's voice at my elbow--the hotel proprietor who had overheard all our conversation. "Are you a detective?" he asked, in a rather low, confidential tone. "No. Why?"