That Lennard did go at considerable speed was very evident, for it was under two hours when the limousine, gray with dust, raced once more into Grays High Street, and pulled up in front of the solitary inn, the Royal Arms. Here Mr. George Headland, after giving some directions to a weedy youth of dejected mien, who had sat beside him in the car, flashed the door open and shut again, and vanished up the village street. He crossed the road and struck into the woods, his face relaxed from its tenseness, and swung across country in the direction of the Manor House. There was still one link missing in his chain, and he wanted it quite finished before he met Mr. Narkom. Reaching the house through the trees, he searched carefully along the ground on the side on which gave the window of the gallery, and in a very few moments leaned forward with a little cry of satisfaction. His case was complete. He turned swiftly back, but as he passed silently through the heavy undergrowth, the sound of snapping twigs brought him up short. Then he moved on with indrawn breath. Someone was shadowing him without a doubt. Well, if necessary, he could make a run for it, but the path was indistinct---- And just then came a snarl and a spring from somewhere behind him. A thick cloth was thrown rapidly over his head, two arms like vises closed about his struggling shoulders, and he was carried, fighting for dear life, away from the Manor House and the scene of the murder. He was conscious of being forced inside some building and here a voice greeted him the sound of which sent a little dagger of fear stabbing its way into his heart. "The Cracksman at last!" shrilled the voice, excitedly, and Cleek knew, for the time being, that the game was up. He was here in the shadow of these woods, and in the power of the accursed Apaches themselves--alone and helpless! A door closed behind them, bolts were shot, the cloth torn from his head, and he saw before him, in the interior of a half-ruined cottage, three of the best-known scoundrels in Paris, men he had known only too well in the past. "At last, _nom de Dieu_, we have you!" cried one as he seized a rope and bound Cleek's struggling hands and feet. "Margot shall hear of this, I promise you! Margot, who thirsts for your blood for your escape from her as we thirst for the money she will pay us! Where is this precious 'Rose of Fire'? That is what we are after. No foolish priest shall have a jewel which _we_ are after. Where is it, pig of a cracksman, where, I say?" "Where I have failed to find it, that I can promise you!" replied Cleek in as level a voice as he could muster under the circumstances. "It has wholly disappeared." "You lie!" screamed Dubois, furiously. "You lie! You know well where it is concealed. Do you not always find the answers to the cases propounded to you? But we shall see what we shall see. A touch of fire may loosen your tongue, _cochon_! Come, _mes amis_!"