‘Sholl ter?’ she echoed, teasing.

He smiled. ‘Ay, sholl ter?’ he repeated.

‘Ay!’ she said, imitating the dialect sound.

‘Yi!’ he said.

‘Yi!’ she repeated.

‘An’ slaip wi’ me,’ he said. ‘It needs that. When sholt come?’

‘When sholl I?’ she said.

‘Nay,’ he said, ‘tha canna do’t. When sholt come then?’

‘‘Appen Sunday,’ she said.

‘‘Appen a’ Sunday! Ay!’

He laughed at her quickly.

‘Nay, tha canna,’ he protested.

‘Why canna I?’ she said.

On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning, the pear–blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the world in a wonder of white here and there.

It was cruel for Clifford, while the world bloomed, to have to be helped from chair to bath–chair. But he had forgotten, and even seemed to have a certain conceit of himself in his lameness. Connie still suffered, having to lift his inert legs into place. Mrs Bolton did it now, or Field.

She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the edge of the screen of beeches. His chair came puffing along with a sort of valetudinarian slow importance. As he joined his wife he said:

‘Sir Clifford on his roaming steed!’

‘Snorting, at least!’ she laughed.

He stopped and looked round at the facade of the long, low old brown house.

‘Wragby doesn’t wink an an eyelid!’ he said. ‘But then why should it! I ride upon the achievements of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.’

‘I suppose it does. And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a two–horse chariot would go in a Ford car now,’ she said.

‘Or a Rolls–Royce: Plato was an aristocrat!’

‘Quite! No more black horse to thrash and maltreat. Plato never thought we’d go one better than his black steed and his white steed, and have no steeds at all, only an engine!’

‘Only an engine and gas!’ said Clifford.

‘I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year. I think I shall have about a thousand to spare for that: but work costs so much!’ he added.

‘Oh, good!’ said Connie. ‘If only there aren’t more strikes!’

‘What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the industry, what’s left of it: and surely the owls are beginning to see it!’

‘Perhaps they don’t mind ruining the industry,’ said Connie.

‘Ah, don’t talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if it can’t keep their pockets quite so flush,’ he said, using turns of speech that oddly had a twang of Mrs Bolton.

‘But didn’t you say the other day that you were a conservative–anarchist,’ she asked innocently.

‘And did you understand what I meant?’ he retorted. ‘All I meant is, people can be what they like and feel what they like and do what they like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the FORM of life intact, and the apparatus.’

“Curious people, Watson! I don’t pretend to understand it all yet, but very curious people anyway. It’s a double-winged house and the servants live on one side, the family on the other. There’s no link between the two save for Henderson’s own servant, who serves the family’s meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms the one connection. Governess and children hardly go out at all, except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walks alone. His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants is that their master is terribly afraid of something. ‘Sold his soul to the devil in exchange for money,’ says Warner, ‘and expects his creditor to come up and claim his own.’ Where they came from, or who they are, nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy compensation have kept him out of the courts.

“Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information. We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel, and it was a woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we may take it as a hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail. I may add that Miss Burnet’s age and character make it certain that my first idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.

“If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his death? If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be sealed. Still, in her heart, she must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as she could to have revenge upon them. Could we see her, then, and try to use her? That was my first thought. But now we come to a sinister fact. Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night of the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she alive? Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend whom she had summoned? Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point which we still have to decide.

“You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson. There is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our whole scheme might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman’s disappearance counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a week. And yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her life. All I can do is to watch the house and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates. We can’t let such a situation continue. If the law can do nothing we must take the risk ourselves.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an outhouse. My suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we can strike at the very heart of the mystery.”