I knew that I had struck on the flying woman's trail, almost as soon as I arrived at this hidden gate. On one of the brambles a filmy scrap of gauze fluttered in the wind. Apparently while getting over the gate in her hurried flight, the woman's veil had caught in the thorns and she had twitched it irritably away, leaving the scrap unthinkingly behind as evidence. I secured the same and placed it in my pocket-book, then made a thorough examination of the gate on both sides. No further evidence was forthcoming until I searched the ditch, which in this instance was on the farther side of the hedge. There, hidden amongst the dank weeds, thrust into a convenient rabbit-hole in the crumbling clay bank, was the cloak itself. I drew it out with a sensation of triumph, and from it was wafted the torn veil. I had the outfit complete, save for the motoring cap. Evidently the rending of the veil had drawn the woman's attention to the eccentricity of a white cloak worn on a chilly autumnal evening. Acting promptly, as was her custom--I guessed that from the theft of my car--she had concealed cloak and veil, and then had vanished down the muddy lane, heaven only knows whither. But I had now the evidence. It was a white cloak, of good and even expensive material. Round the neck, down the front, and along the hem, two letters were embroidered repeatedly in blue silk so as to form a pattern. They were G. M. I dropped the cloak and gasped with dismay. G. M., in twisted fanciful letters, formed the running adornment of the cloak worn by the woman who had stolen my car and who had, to all appearances, murdered Mrs. Anne Caldershaw. And the name of the child she had nursed, of the woman with whose portrait I had fallen so unexpectedly in love, was Gertrude Monk. "It's a lie," I said aloud to nobody in particular. "I don't believe it." All the same, the accusing initials were there, G. M.--Gertrude Monk. CHAPTER VI. MY RIVAL Had I not been in love--and with a face, instead of the flesh and blood woman--I suppose I would have gone off at once to Dredge to announce my discovery and show what I had found. But, in spite of evidence to the very strong contrary, I could not believe that Gertrude Monk was guilty of her old nurse's murder. She might have locked me in, she might have run off with my car and practically wrecked it, and she might have hidden in the hedge these incriminating garments: but she assuredly had not--in my now terribly biassed opinion--thrust the hat-pin into Mrs. Caldershaw's heart. Unless she confessed her guilt to my face, I resolutely declined to believe that she had perpetrated a sordid crime.