It had been agreed that, having failed in their attack, and their energies for the moment being directed to Rath Hall, an immediate return of the Old Guard to Heavytree Farm was unlikely. This had been Meadows’ view, and Leon and his friend were of the same mind. Only Poiccart, that master strategist, working surely with a queer knowledge of his enemies’ psychology, had demurred from this reasoning; but as he had not insisted upon his point of view, Heavytree Farm and its occupants had been left to the care of the local police and the shaken Digby.

Aunt Alma offered to give up her room to the wounded man, but he would not hear of this, and took the spare bedroom; an excellent position for a defender, since it separated Mirabelle’s apartment from the pretty little room which Aunt Alma used as a study and sleeping-place.

The staff of Heavytree Farm consisted of an ancient cowman, a cook and a maid, the latter of whom had already given notice and left on the afternoon of the attack. She had, as she told Mirabelle in all seriousness, a weak heart.

“And a weak head too!” snapped Alma. “I should not worry about your heart, my girl, if I were you.”

“I was top of my class at school,” bridled the maid, touched to the raw by this reflection upon her intelligence.

“It must have been a pretty small class,” retorted Alma.

A new maid had been found, a girl who had been thrilled by the likelihood that the humdrum of daily labour would be relieved by exciting events out of the ordinary, and before evening the household had settled down to normality. Mirabelle was feeling the reaction and went to bed early that night, waking as the first slant of sunlight poured through her window. She got up, feeling, she told herself, as well as she had felt in her life. Pulling back the chintz curtains, she looked out upon a still world with a sense of happiness and relief beyond measure. There was nobody in sight. Pools of mist lay in the hollows, and from one white farmstead, far away on the slope of the hill, she saw the blue smoke was rising. It was a morning to remember, and, to catch its spirit the better, she dressed hastily and went down into the garden. As she walked along the path she heard a window pulled open and the bandaged head of Mr. Digby appeared.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, miss?” he said with relief, and she laughed.

“There is nothing more terrible in sight than a big spider,” she said, and pointed to a big flat fellow, who was already spinning his web between the tall hollyhocks. And the first of the bees was abroad.

“If anybody had come last night I shouldn’t have heard them,” he confessed. “I slept like a dead man.” He touched his head gingerly. “It smarts, but the ache is gone,” he said, not loth to discuss his infirmities. “The doctor said I had a narrow escape; he thought there was a fracture. Would you like me to make you some tea, miss, or shall I call the servant?”

She shook her head, but he had already disappeared, and came seeking her in the garden ten minutes later, with a cup of tea in his hand. He told her for the second time that he was a police pensioner and had been in the employ of Gonsalez for three years. The Three paid well, and had, she learned to her surprise, considerable private resources.

“Does it pay them⁠—this private detective business?”

“Lord bless your heart, no, miss!” He scoffed at the idea. “They are very rich men. I thought everybody knew that. They say Mr. Gonsalez was worth a million even before the war.”

This was astonishing news.

“But why do they do this”⁠—she hesitated⁠—“this sort of thing?”

“It is a hobby, miss,” said the man vaguely. “Some people run racehorses, some own yachts⁠—these gentlemen get a lot of pleasure out of their work and they pay well,” he added.

Men in the regular employ of the Three Just Men not only received a good wage, but frequently a bonus which could only be described as colossal. Once, after they had rounded up and destroyed a gang of Spanish bank robbers, they had distributed £1,000 to every man who was actively employed. He hinted rather than stated that this money had formed part of the loot which the Three had recovered, and did not seem to think that there was anything improper in this distribution of illicit gains.

“After all, miss,” he said philosophically, “when you collect money like that, it’s impossible to give it back to the people it came from. This Diego had been holding up banks for years, and banks are not like people⁠—they don’t feel the loss of money.”

“That’s a thoroughly immoral view,” said Mirabelle, intent upon her flower-picking.

“It may be, miss,” agreed Digby, who had evidently been one of the recipients of bounty, and took a complacent and a tolerant view. “But a thousand pounds is a lot of money.”

The day passed without event. From the early evening papers that came from Gloucester she learned of the fire at Oberzohn’s, and did not connect the disaster with anything but an accident. She was not sorry. The fire had licked out one ugly chapter from the past. Incidentally it had destroyed a crude painting which was, to Dr. Oberzohn, more precious than any that Leonardo had painted or Raphael conceived, but this she did not know.

It was just before the dinner hour that there came the first unusual incident of the day. Mirabelle was standing by the garden gate, intent upon the glories of the evening sky, which was piled high with red and slate-coloured cumuli. The glass was falling and a wet night was promised. But the loveliness of that lavish colouring held her. And then she became dimly aware that a man was coming towards the house from the direction of Gloucester. He walked in the middle of the road slowly, as though he, too, were admiring the view and there was no need to hurry. His hands were behind him, his soft felt hat at the back of his head. A stocky-looking man, but his face was curiously familiar. He turned his unsmiling eyes in her direction, and, looking again at his strong features, at the tiny grey-black moustache under his aquiline nose, she was certain she had seen him before. Perhaps she had passed him in the street, and had retained a subconscious mental picture of him.

He slowed his step until, when he came abreast of her, he stopped.

“This is Heavytree Lane?” he asked, in a deep, musical voice.

“No⁠—the lane is the first break in the hedge,” she smiled. “I’m afraid it isn’t much of a road⁠—generally it is ankle-deep in mud.”

He looked past her to the house; his eyes ranged the windows, dropped for a moment upon a climbing clematis, and came back to her.

“I don’t know Gloucestershire very well,” he said, and added: “You have a very nice house.”

“Yes,” she said in surprise.

“And a garden.” And then, innocently: “Do you grow onions?”

She stared at him and laughed.

“I think we do⁠—I am not sure. My aunt looks after the kitchen garden.”

His sad eyes wandered over the house again.

“It is a very nice place,” he said, and, lifting his hat, went on.

Digby was out: he had gone for a gentle walk, and, looking up the road after the stranger, she saw the guard appear round a bend in the road, saw him stop and speak to the stranger. Apparently they knew one another, for they shook hands at meeting, and after a while Digby pointed down the road to where she was standing, and she saw the man nod. Soon after the stranger went on out of view. Who could he be? Was it an additional guard that the three men had put to protect her? When Digby came up to her, she asked him. “That gentleman, miss? He is Mr. Poiccart.”

“Poiccart?” she said, delighted. “Oh, I wish I had known!”

“I was surprised to see him,” said the guard. “As a matter of fact, he’s the one of the three gentlemen I’ve met the most. He’s generally in Curzon Street, even when the others are away.”

Digby had nothing to say about Poiccart except that he was a very quiet gentleman and took no active part in the operations of the Just Men.

“I wonder why he wanted to know about onions?” asked the girl thoughtfully. “That sounded awfully mysterious.”

It would not have been so mysterious to Leon.

The house retired to bed soon after ten, Alma going the rounds, and examining the new bolts and locks which had been attached that morning to every door which gave ingress to the house.

Mirabelle was unaccountably tired, and was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.

She heard in her dreams the swish of the rain beating against her window, lay for a long time trying to energize herself to rise and shut the one open window where the curtains were blowing in. Then came a heavier patter against a closed pane, and something rattled on the floor of her room. She sat up. It could not be hail, although there was a rumble of thunder in the distance.

She got out of bed, pulled on her dressing-gown, went to the window, and had all her work to stifle a scream. Somebody was standing on the path below⁠ ⁠… a woman! She leaned out.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“It is me⁠—I⁠—Joan!” There was a sob in the voice of the girl. Even in that light Mirabelle could see that the girl was drenched. “Don’t wake anybody. Come down⁠—I want you.”

“What is wrong?” asked Mirabelle in a low voice.

“Everything⁠ ⁠… everything!”

She was on the verge of hysteria. Mirabelle lit a candle and crossed the room, went downstairs softly, so that Alma should not be disturbed. Putting the candle on the table, she unbarred and unbolted the door, opened it, and, as she did so, a man slipped through the half-opened door, his big hands smothering the scream that rose to her lips.

Another man followed and, lifting the struggling girl, carried her into the drawing-room. One of the men took a small iron bottle from his pocket, to which ran a flexible rubber tube ending in a large red cap. Her captor removed his hands just as long as it took to fix the cap over her face. A tiny faucet was turned. Mirabelle felt a puff on her face, a strangely sweet taste, and then her heart began to beat thunderously. She thought she was dying, and writhed desperately to free herself.

“She’s all right,” said Monty Newton, lifting an eyelid for a second. “Get a blanket.” He turned fiercely to the whimpering girl behind him. “Shut up, you!” he said savagely. “Do you want to rouse the whole house?”

A woebegone Joan was whimpering softly, tears running down her face, her hands clasping and unclasping in the agony of her mind.

“You told me you weren’t going to hurt her!” she sobbed.

“Get out,” he hissed, and pointed to the door. She went meekly.

A heavy blanket was wrapped round the unconscious girl, and, lifting her between them, the two men went out into the rain, where the old trolley was waiting, and slid her along the straw-covered floor. In another second the trolley moved off, gathering speed.

By this time the effect of the gas had worn off and Mirabelle had regained consciousness. She put out a hand and touched a woman’s knee. “Who is that⁠—Alma?”

“No,” said a miserable voice, “it’s Joan.”

“Joan? Oh, yes, of course⁠ ⁠… why did you do it?⁠—how wicked!”

“Shut up!” Monty snarled. “Wait until you get to⁠—where you’re going, before you start these ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores.’ ”

Mirabelle was deathly sick and bemused, and for the next hour she was too ill to feel even alarmed. Her head was going round and round, and ached terribly, and the jolting of the truck did not improve matters in this respect.

Monty, who was sitting with his back to the truck’s side, was smoking. He cursed now and then, as some unusually heavy jolt flung him forward. They passed through the heart of the storm: the flicker of lightning was almost incessant and the thunder was deafening. Rain was streaming down the hood of the trolley, rendering it like a drum.

Mirabelle fell into a little sleep and woke feeling better. It was still dark, and she would not have known the direction they were taking, only the driver took the wrong turning coming through a country town, and by the help of the lightning she saw what was indubitably the stand of a racetrack, and a little later saw the word “Newbury.” They were going towards London, she realized.

At this hour of the morning there was little or no traffic, and when they turned on to the new Great West Road a big car went whizzing past at seventy miles an hour and the roar of it woke the girl. Now she could feel the trolley wheels skidding on tramlines. Lights appeared with greater frequency. She saw a store window brilliantly illuminated, the night watchman having evidently forgotten to turn off the lights at the appointed hour.

Soon they were crossing the Thames. She saw the red and green lights of a tug, and black upon near black a string of barges in midstream. She dozed again and was jerked wide awake when the trolley swayed and skidded over a surface more uneven than any. Once its wheels went into a pothole and she was flung violently against the side. Another time it skidded and was brought up with a crash against some obstacle. The bumping grew more gentle, and then the machine stopped, and Monty jumped down and called to her sharply.

Her head was clear now, despite its throbbing. She saw a queer-shaped house, all gables and turrets, extraordinarily narrow for its height. It seemed to stand in the middle of a field. And yet it was in London: she could see the glow of furnace fires and hear the deep boom of a ship’s siren as it made its way down the river on the tide.

She had not time to take observations, for Monty fastened to her arm and she squelched through the mud up a flight of stone steps into a dimly lit hall. She had a confused idea that she had seen little dogs standing on the side of the steps, and a big bird with a long bill, but these probably belonged to the smoke of dreams which the gas had left.

Monty opened a door and pushed her in before him, and she stared into the face of Dr. Oberzohn.

He wore a black velvet dressing-gown that had once been a regal garment but was now greasy and stained. On his egg-shaped head he had an embroidered smoking-cap. His feet were encased in warm velvet slippers. He put down the book he had been reading, rubbed his glasses on one velvet sleeve, and then: “So!” he said.

He pointed to the remains of a fire.

“Sit down, Mirabelle Leicester, and warm yourself. You have come quickly, my friend,”⁠—he addressed Monty.

“I’m black and blue all over,” growled Newton. “Why couldn’t we have a car?”

“Because the cars were engaged, as I told you.”

“Did you⁠—” began Newton quickly, but the old man glanced significantly at the girl, shivering before the fire and warming her hands mechanically.

“I will answer, but you need not ask, in good time. This is not of all moments the most propitious. Where is your woman?”

He had forgotten Joan, and went out to find her shivering in the passage.

“Do you want her?” he asked, poking his head in the door.

“She shall go with this girl. You will explain.”

“Where are you going to put her?”

Oberzohn pointed to the floor.

“Here? But⁠—”

“No, no. My friend, you are too quick to see what is not meant. The gracious lady shall live in a palace⁠—I have a certain friend who will no longer need it.”

His face twitched in the nearest he ever approached to a smile. Groping under the table, he produced a pair of muddy Wellingtons, kicked off his slippers and pulled on the boots with many gasps and jerks.

“All that they need is there: I have seen to it. March!”

He led the way out of the room, pulling the girl to her feet, and Newton followed, Joan bringing up the rear. Inside the factory, Oberzohn produced a small hand torch from his pocket and guided them through the debris till he came to that part of the floor where the trap was. With his foot he moved the covering of rubbish, pulled up the trap and went down.

“I can’t go down there, Monty, I can’t!” said Joan’s agitated voice. “What are you going to do with us? My God! if I’d known⁠—”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Newton roughly. “What have you got to be afraid of? There’s nothing here. We want you to look after her for a day or two. You don’t want her to go down by herself: she’d be frightened to death.”

Her teeth chattering, Joan stumbled down the steps behind him. Certainly the first view of her new quarters was reassuring. Two little trestle beds had been made; the underground room had been swept clean, and a new carpet laid on the floor. Moreover, the apartment was brilliantly lit, and a furnace gave almost an uncomfortable warmth which was nevertheless very welcome, for the temperature had dropped 20° since noon.

“In this box there are clothes of all varieties, and expensive to purchase,” said Oberzohn, pointing to a brand-new trunk at the foot of one of the beds. “Food you will have in plenty⁠—bread and milk newly every day. By night you shall keep the curtain over the ventilator.” On the wall was a small black curtain about ten inches square.

Monty took her into the next apartment and showed her the wash-place. There was even a bath, a compulsory fixture under the English Factory Act in a store of this description, where, in the old days, men had to handle certain insanitary products of the Coast.

“But how do we get out, Monty? Where do we get exercise?”

“You’ll come out tomorrow night: I’ll see to that,” he said, dropping his voice. “Now listen, Joan: you’ve got to be a sensible girl and help me. There’s money in this⁠—bigger money than you have ever dreamed of. And when we’ve got this unpleasant business over, I’m taking you away for a trip round the world.”

It was the old promise, given before, never fulfilled, always hoped for. But this time it did not wholly remove her uneasiness.

“But what are you going to do with the girl?” she asked.

“Nothing; she will be kept here for a week. I’ll swear to you that nothing will happen to her. At the end of a week she’s to be released without a hair of her head being harmed.”

She looked at him searchingly. As far as she was able to judge, he was speaking the truth. And yet⁠—

“I can’t understand it,”⁠—she shook her head, and for once Monty Newton was patient with her.

“She’s the owner of a big property in Africa, and that we shall get, if things work out right,” he said. “The point is that she must claim within a few days. If she doesn’t, the property is ours.”

Her face cleared.

“Is that all?” She believed him, knew him well enough to detect his rare sincerity. “That’s taken a load off my mind, Monty. Of course I’ll stay and look after her for you⁠—it makes it easier to know that nothing will happen. What are those baize things behind the furnace⁠—they look like boxes?”

He turned on her quickly.

“I was going to tell you about those,” he said. “You’re not to touch them under any circumstances. They belong to the old man and he’s very stuffy about such things. Leave them just as they are. Let him touch them and nobody else. Do you understand?”

She nodded, and, to his surprise, pecked his cheek with her cold lips.

“I’ll help you, boy,” she said tremulously. “Maybe that trip will come off after all, if⁠—”

“If what?”

“Those men⁠—the men you were talking about⁠—the Four Just Men, don’t they call themselves? They scare me sick, Monty! They were the people who took her away before, and they’ll kill us⁠—even Oberzohn says that. They’re after him. Has he”⁠—she hesitated⁠—“has he killed anybody? That snake stuff⁠ ⁠… you’re not in it, are you, Monty?”

She looked more like a child than a sophisticated woman, clinging to his arm, her blue eyes looking pleadingly into his.

“Stuff! What do I know about snakes?” He disengaged himself and came back to where Oberzohn was waiting, a figure of patience.

The girl was lying on the bed, her face in the crook of her arm, and he was gazing at her, his expression inscrutable.

“That is all, then. Good night, gracious ladies.”

He turned and marched back towards the step and waved his hand. Monty followed. The girl heard the thud of the trap fall, the scrape of the old man’s boots, and then a rumbling sound, which she did not immediately understand. Later, when in a panic, she tried the trap, she found that a heavy barrel had been put on top, and that it was immovable.