“But why?” The big man grinned. “I’ve known Mr. Gonsalez many years,” he said. “I’m a police pensioner, and I can remember the time when I’d have given a lot of money to lay my hands on him—but I’ve never asked him why, miss. There is generally a good reason for everything he does.” Mirabelle went back into the farmhouse, very thoughtful. Happily, Alma was not inquisitive; she was left alone in the drawing-room to reconstruct her exciting yesterday. Mirabelle harboured very few illusions. She had read much, guessed much, and in the days of her childhood had been in the habit of linking cause to effect. The advertisement was designed especially for her: that was her first conclusion. It was designed to bring her into the charge of Oberzohn. For now she recognized this significant circumstance: never once, since she had entered the offices of Oberzohn & Smitts, until the episode of the orangeade, had she been free to come and go as she wished. He had taken her to lunch, he had brought her back; Joan Newton had been her companion in the drive from the house, and from the house to the hall; and from then on she did not doubt that Oberzohn’s surveillance had continued, until . . . Dimly she remembered the man in the cloak who had stood in the rocking doorway. Was that Gonsalez? Somehow she thought it must have been. Gonsalez, watchful, alert—why? She had been in danger—was still in danger. Though why anybody should have picked unimportant her, was the greatest of all mysteries. In some inexplicable way the death of Barberton had been associated with that advertisement and the attention she had received from Dr. Oberzohn and his creatures. Who was Lord Evington? She remembered his German accent and his “gracious lady,” the curious click of his heels and his stiff bow. That was a clumsy subterfuge which she ought to have seen through from the first. He was another of her watchers. And the drugged orangeade was his work. She shuddered. Suppose Leon Gonsalez, or whoever it was, had not arrived so providentially, where would she be at this moment? Walking to the window, she looked out, and the sight of the two men just inside the gate gave her a sense of infinite relief and calm; and the knowledge that she, for some reason, was under the care and protection of this strange organization about which she had read, thrilled her.