Ferret lost no time in reaching the Fair mansion. The guests were still at dinner and he could see no trace of excitement from without. Wilson reported in detail the sudden appearance of the Cuban, his hurried flight up the street with Thorpe at his heels—and all quiet inside. “Who the devil fired that shot, and at whom was it fired, and what did pretty Kate mean by her stammering protests that no crime had been done? Was the saucy little minx deeper after all than they thought?” asked Ferret of himself. He must have a good look at that library—that was the key to the thickening mystery. So he stole up the stairs, but before he could investigate the fatal library he heard the family coming up from dinner and fled to the attic, passing Kate’s door, which stood ajar, and through which he saw her on her knees with her face buried on the bed. CHAPTER VIII As those whose memories run back thirty years know, Sir Nelson Poynter owes his baronetcy to his financial ability and the fact that he made his huge fortune honestly and always stood ready to sacrifice himself at times of threatened panic on ’Change. Essentially a “City man,” when he became a country gentleman he established himself in Surrey, where he could keep an eye on Capel Court and reach the office in a little time. To Drayton Hall, his princely mansion, it might be objected that it was a trifle too pretentious, with its battlements and towers, but no fault could be found either with its hospitality or with the kindly old gentleman and dear old lady who dispensed it. A week-end at Drayton was always charming. On the terrace at Drayton on the day following that on which so much had transpired at Fair’s town house, Travers was smoking and reading the paper, when Allyne sauntered out of a window and approached him. “What! Not gone to church with the rest, Travers?” he said reprovingly. “Dry up, idiot!” replied Travers, not looking up from his paper. “Church? Why, hang it, did you ever hear the curate here read? He’s the worst I ever heard—except the vicar himself. And their sermons—lord! I wonder where Poynter ever unearthed these two mummies.” “Oh, come, I say; no heresy now,” protested Allyne, sitting on the balustrade of the terrace. “But, I say, old chap,” he added, knocking the newspaper out of Travers’s hand, “what a funk poor Fair has got into! What the deuce is in the wind, anyway?” “Give it up,” answered Travers, growing serious at once; “but I know one thing. You and I have some decidedly nasty experience of some sort in store for us tonight, see if we haven’t. You are going up to town with him this afternoon, he tells me. So am I.”