Plight and Pursuit.

I left the Manor with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with a sickening pain. I moved down the road without quite well knowing where I went.

My well-beloved had again escaped me. It was my duty to follow her, to learn the truth, to save her—my duty to her, as well as to myself.

Mystery followed upon the back of mystery. In those brief days, since the advent of the fugitive Italian at Shepherd’s Bush, I had become enmeshed in a veritable web of entangled events which seemed to grow more extraordinary and more inexplicable every hour.

My meeting with the man Shacklock proved, beyond doubt, the source of Mr Miller’s income. Finding Lucie’s father such an affable and gentlemanly man, I had entirely refused to credit Sammy’s story. Nevertheless, Lucie herself had corroborated it, inasmuch as she had described her love at Enghien and its tragic sequel; while I, myself, had recognised in Gordon-Wright the clever international thief who had decamped with Blenkap’s valuables. And this man was actually Miller’s most intimate friend!

To Lucie I made no mention of my intention, but half an hour later I was in a dogcart hired from the “Lion,” driving at a furious pace over the Ballard Down into Swanage, where, at the hotel I had previously visited on my arrival, I inquired for Miss Murray.

“The lady left with a party in a motor-car an hour ago,” was the reply of the young person in black satin, whose duty appeared to be to keep the books and order about the waiters.

“Gone!” I ejaculated. “Where?”

“Well, when people go off in a car we don’t generally know their destination. Motor-cars are so very uncertain, you see.”

“Did they arrive here on the car?” I inquired eagerly. “No. Mr Murray and his daughter came over by boat from Bournemouth. The motor arrived last night with a gentleman, a lady and the chauffeur.”

“Pardon me,” exclaimed a man’s voice at my elbow—the hotel proprietor who had overheard all our conversation. “Are you a detective?” he asked, in a rather low, confidential tone.

“No. Why?”

“Well—” he hesitated. “Only because there seemed to be something rather funny about Mr Murray—that’s all.”

“Something funny about him? How?”

“Well, from the moment he came here, till the moment he went away, he never came out of his room. And when he did, he was wearing a motor-coat with the collar turned up around his chin and goggles which entirely disguised him.”

“Not at all a suspicious circumstance, surely?” I remarked, though inwardly much interested. “On these white dusty roads every one must wear goggles.”

“Of course. But when people come to Swanage they generally go out and look about the town and the bay. Mr Murray, however, shut himself up and saw nobody, while his daughter drove over to Studland, where she stayed the night and returned about an hour before the motor started.”

“I’m going to follow that motor. I have a reason,” I said. “Don’t you think the chauffeur might have told one of the stable-hands or garage-men—if you have a garage here—as to his destination? There’s a kind of freemasonry among chauffeurs, by which all of them know each other’s roads.”

“I’ll see,” replied the obliging proprietor. “Come with me.”

He conducted me through to the back of the house, where a large courtyard had been recently converted into a garage. There were several cars in the coach-houses around, while in the centre of the yard a clean-shaven young man was turning a hose upon a dark red 16-horse “Fiat.”

“Gibbs, where has that blue car gone to this morning—the one that left an hour ago?”

“The 40 ‘Mercédès,’ sir? Gone to some place beyond Exeter, sir. They’re on a big tour.”

“You don’t know the name of the place?” I asked the man anxiously.

“The chauffeur did tell me, but it was a funny name, an’ I’ve forgotten.”

“They’ve gone direct to Exeter, in any case?”

“Yes—by Dorchester, Chard and Honiton. ’E asked me about the road.”

“How far is it to Exeter?”

“About seventy-eight or eighty miles.”

“I could get there by train before they arrived,” I remarked.

“Ah! I doubt it, sir,” was the man’s reply. “That’s a good car they’ve got, and if you went by train you’d ’ave to go right up to Yeovil. They’d be through Exeter long before you got there.”

“That’s so,” remarked the hotel proprietor. “From here to Exeter by rail is a long cross-country journey.”

“Then could I get a car? Is any one of these for hire?”

“This one ’ere belongs to Saunders, down in the town. ’E lets it out sometimes,” replied Gibbs, indicating the red car he had been cleaning.

“Then I’ll have it—and you’ll drive me, eh? We must overtake them.”

“Very good, sir,” replied the man, and then I returned to the hotel to telephone to the owner and fix the price.

Gibbs quickly filled the tank with petrol, poured water into the radiator, e............