“No easier.” Michael shook his head. “I’m going to get the truth. I’m going to find out where they have taken these two women. And the rack and the thumbscrew will be babies’ toys compared with what I will use against them! I’ll have the truth if I have to pull Chesney Praye limb from limb!” Chapter Twenty-one Lois was wakened from an exhausted sleep by the opening of the cell door; she got up unsteadily, not quite knowing what she was doing, and followed the matron to the charge-room, dizzy with sleep, inert from the very shock of the charge levelled against her. She heard the desk-sergeant say something, and dimly heard the name of the countess. And then somebody shook hands with her; she thought it was the sergeant. And a young man, who had appeared and disappeared in her focus of vision and had not entered into recognition, took her arm and led her slowly into the dark street. He jerked open the door of a car, and, before she knew what was happening, had set the car in motion. She experienced a pleasant sensation of languor--her head drooped. It was the bump of her forehead against the driver’s seat that wakened her. It was nearly daybreak. “Where are we?” she asked. She was uninterested in the identity of the driver, but, as he turned his head to answer her, she saw that it was the red-faced man, Chesney Praye. “It’s all right, Miss Reddle,” he said, showing his big teeth in a grin; “I’m taking you down into the country.” She frowned, trying to remember clearly the events of the night before. She was still dazed with sleep, then she recalled her arrest and became wide awake. Before she could ask any further questions, he was explaining over his shoulder. “Her ladyship thought you’d better be kept out of the way of that sleuth for a day or two. He’s got a grudge against you, and he’s a vindictive beast.” “Mr. Dorn?” she asked. “Why did he arrest me? I knew nothing whatever about Braime’s injury.” “Of course you didn’t,” he said soothingly. “But that was his way of getting even.” With whom he was getting even he did not explain, and even to the girl’s tired brain it seemed a little illogical to suggest that Michael Dorn had procured her arrest in order to get even either with Mr. Chesney Praye or the Countess of Moron. They were passing across the wide slope of a hill. Beneath them she saw the glitter of a meandering river and the grey smoke rising from little cottages in the valley. The road was narrow and bumpy and was little more than a lane. She wondered why he came this way, for down the hill-side she saw a broader thoroughfare which seemed to be running more or less parallel with that they traversed. “We are nearly there.”