"Yes, I am," he said, after a moment's hesitation. "Why?"

"If you are, there's this as I'm to give you," the lad answered, drawing
a note from his pocket.

"Oh, who gave you that?" Dunn asked, fully persuaded the note contained
some final instructions from Deede Dawson and wondering if this lad were
one of his agents in disguise, or merely some inhabitant of the district
hired for the one purpose of delivering the letter.

But the lad's drawled reply disconcerted him greatly.

"A lady," he said. "A real lady in a big car, she told me to wait here
and give you this. All alone she was, and drove just like a man."

He handed the letter over as he spoke, and Dunn saw that it was
addressed to him in his name of Robert Dunn in Ella's writing. He
blinked at it in very great surprise, for there was nothing he expected
less, and he did not understand how she knew so well where he would be
or how she had managed to get away from Bittermeads uninterfered with by
Deede Dawson.

His first impulse was to suspect some new trap, some new and cunning
trap that, perhaps, the unconscious Ella was being used to bait. Taking
the letter from the boy, he said:

"How did you know it was for me?"

"Lady told me," answered the boy grinning. "She said as I was to look
out for a chap answering to the name of Robert Dunn, with his face so
covered with hair you couldn't see nothing of it no more'n you can see
a sheep's back for wool. 'As soon as I set eye on 'ee,' says I, 'That's
him,' I says, and so 'twas."

He grinned again and slouched away and Dunn stood still, holding the
letter in his hand and not opening it at first. It was almost as though
he feared to do so, and when at last he tore the envelope open it was
with a hand that trembled a little in spite of all that he could do.
For there was something about this strange communication and the means
adopted to deliver it to him that struck him as ominous in the extreme.
Some sudden crisis must have arisen, he thought, and it appeared to him
that Ella's knowledge of where to find him implied a knowledge of Deede
Dawson's plans that meant she was either his willing and active agent
and accomplice, or else she had somehow acquired a knowledge of her
stepfather's proceedings that must make her position a thousand times
more critical and dangerous than before.

He flung the envelope aside and began to read the contents. It opened
abruptly, without any form of address, and it was written i