It was an unusually pleasant day, with a pale blue sky, lightly sprinkled with feathery white clouds. A gentle wind was blowing, which was not sufficiently strong to impede the speed of the aeroplanes. Yet it was chilly in these high altitudes, and in his haste Dan had not put on his overcoat. Before the end of the chase he grimly expected to be well-nigh frozen, but did not mind so uncomfortable a prospect so long as he gained his aim. Before him fled the woman he was determined to capture and place in the criminal dock to answer for her manifold sins. Thinking of what she had done, and how her path was strewn with victims, the young man set his teeth and tried his best to force the pace. But this was useless, as the biplane could not do more than it was intended to do. Although he had now been racing northward for over an hour, the distance between pursuer and pursued appeared to be much the same, and the receding black dot did not seem to be growing larger. Dan was irritated, yet felt that even though he was not gaining, he was not losing, and that was much, taking all things into account. There was always the chance that Queen Beelzebub's machine might break down, and then she would be as helpless as a bird with a broken wing. Also--and Dan did not blind himself to this possibility--his own aeroplane might come to grief, as it had done during the London to York race. But, benefiting by his former experience, he did not try any fancy-flying, and held to a straight undeviating course. Both machines were making a bee-line for the goal, which Halliday now guessed very plainly was The Grange in Sheepeak, Hillshire.