[Illustration] The Postmaster’s Daughter by Louis Tracy 1916 Also by this author: _ Number Seventeen, The Wheel of Fortune, The Terms of Surrender, The Wings of the Morning, &c._ Contents I. The Face at the Window II. P. C. Robinson “Takes a Line” III. The Gathering Clouds IV. A Cabal V. The Seeds of Mischief VI. Scotland Yard Takes a Hand VII. “Alarums and Excursions” VIII. An Interrupted Symposium IX. He Whom the Cap Fits— X. The Case Against Grant XI. P. C. Robinson Takes Another Line XII. Wherein Winter Gets To Work XIII. Concerning Theodore Siddle XIV. On Both Sides of the River XV. A Matter of Heredity XVI. Furneaux Makes a Successful Bid XVII. An Official Housebreaker XVIII. The Truth at Last Chapter I. The Face at the Window John Menzies Grant, having breakfasted, filled his pipe, lit it, and strolled out bare-headed into the garden. The month was June, that glorious rose-month which gladdened England before war-clouds darkened the summer sky. As the hour was nine o’clock, it is highly probable that many thousands of men were then strolling out into many thousands of gardens in precisely similar conditions; but, given youth, good health, leisure, and a fair amount of money, it is even more probable that few among the smaller number thus roundly favored by fortune looked so perplexed as Grant. Moreover, his actions were eloquent as words. A spacious French window had been cut bodily out of the wall of an old-fashioned room, and was now thrown wide to admit the flower-scented breeze. Between this window and the right-hand angle of the room was a smaller window, square-paned, high above the ground level, and deeply recessed—in fact just the sort of window which one might expect to find in a farm-house built two centuries ago, when light and air were rigorously excluded from interiors. The two windows told the history of _The Hollies_ at a glance. The little one had served the needs of a “best” room for several generations of Sussex yeomen. Then had come some iconoclast who hewed a big rectangle through the solid stone-work, converted the oak-panelled apartment into a most comfortable dining-room, built a new wing with a gable, changed a farm-yard into a flower-bordered lawn, and generally played havoc with Georgian utility while carrying out a determined scheme of landscape gardening.