It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old house with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour. But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend. One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found. I clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast.

But it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous an ending. It was about five o’clock, and the shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our room.

“They’ve gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady broke away, and I’ve got her in a cab downstairs.”

“Excellent, Warner!” cried Holmes, springing to his feet. “Watson, the gaps are closing rapidly.”

In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent recent tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark dots in the centre of the broad gray iris. She was drugged with opium.

“I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes,” said our emissary, the discharged gardener. “When the carriage came out I followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep, but when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She fought her way out again. I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are. I shan’t forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I’d have a short life if he had his way — the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil.”

We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug. Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained to him.

“Why, sir, you’ve got me the very evidence I want,” said the inspector warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. “I was on the same scent as you from the first.”

“What! You were after Henderson?”

“Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It was just who would get his evidence first.”

“Then why did you arrest the mulatto?”

Baynes chuckled.

“I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected, and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet.”

Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector’s shoulder.-

He laughed at her again, with mocking humour.

‘But why are you in a bad temper?’ she asked. ‘Do you mean you are ALWAYS in a bad temper?’

‘Pretty well,’ he said, laughing. ‘I don’t quite digest my bile.’

‘But what bile?’ she said.

‘Bile!’ he said. ‘Don’t you know what that is?’ She was silent, and disappointed. He was taking no notice of her.

‘I’m going away for a while next month,’ she said.

‘You are! Where to?’

‘Venice! With Sir Clifford? For how long?’

‘For a month or so,’ she replied. ‘Clifford won’t go.’

‘He’ll stay here?’ he asked.

‘Yes! He hates to travel as he is.’

‘Ay, poor devil!’ he said, with sympathy. There was a pause.

‘You won’t forget me when I’m gone, will you?’ she asked. Again he lifted his eyes and looked full at her.

‘Forget?’ he said. ‘You know nobody forgets. It’s not a question of memory;’

She wanted to say: ‘When then?’ but she didn’t. Instead, she said in a mute kind of voice: ‘I told Clifford I might have a child.’

Now he really looked at her, intense and searching.

‘You did?’ he said at last. ‘And what did he say?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t mind. He’d be glad, really, so long as it seemed to be his.’ She dared not look up at him.

He was silent a long time, then he gazed again on her face.

‘No mention of ME, of course?’ he said.

‘No. No mention of you,’ she said.

‘No, he’d hardly swallow me as a substitute breeder. Then where are you supposed to be getting the child?’

‘I might have a love–affair in Venice,’ she said.

‘You might,’ he replied slowly. ‘So that’s why you’re going?’

‘Not to have the love–affair,’ she said, looking up at him, pleading.

‘Just the appearance of one,’ he said.

There was silence. He sat staring out the window, with a faint grin, half mockery, half bitterness, on his face. She hated his grin.

‘You’ve not taken any precautions against having a child then?’ he asked her suddenly. ‘Because I haven’t.’

‘No,’ she said faintly. ‘I should hate that.’

He looked at her, then again with the peculiar subtle grin out of the window. There was a tense silence.

At last he turned his head and said satirically:

‘That was why you wanted me, then, to get a child?’

She hung her head.

‘No. Not really,’ she said. ‘What then, REALLY?’ he asked rather bitingly.

She looked up at him reproachfully, saying: ‘I don’t know.’

He broke into a laugh.

‘Then I’m damned if I do,’ he said.

There was a long pause of silence, a cold silence.