se your lordship's father
threatened to give him in charge for stealing a couple of your
portmanteaux."

"Tell me he thieved successfully and I shall fork out handsomely."

The man grinned. He was shrewd enough to realize that, no matter what
mystery lay behind all this, the aid of the police would not be
requisitioned.

"I believe----" he began. Then he made off, with a cry of "Wait just a
few seconds, my lord. I'll bring Dale."

And Dale appeared, picking bits of hay off his uniform, and striving
vainly to compose his features into their customary expression of a
stolid alertness that hears nothing but his master's orders, sees
nothing that does not concern his duties. He gave one sharp glance at
the car, and his face grew chauffeurish, but the look of hang-dog
despair returned when he met Medenham's eyes.

"I couldn't get away to save me life, my lord," he grumbled. "It was a
fair cop at Bristol, an' no mistake. His lordship swooped down on me
an' Simmonds at the station, so wot could I do?"

Medenham laughed.

"I don't blame you, Dale. You could not have been more nonplussed than
I at this moment. Will you kindly remember that I know nothing
whatever of the Earl's appearance either at Bristol or Hereford----"

"Gord's trewth! Didn't they tell you I telephoned, my lord?"

Dale would not have spoken in that fashion were he not quite woebegone
and down-hearted; and not without reason, for the Earl had dismissed
him with contumely not once but a dozen times. Medenham saw that his
retainer would be more muddled than ever if he realized that Mrs.
Devar had intercepted the telephone message, so he slurred over that
element of the affair, and Dale quickly enlightened him as to the
course taken by events after the departure of the Mercury's tourists
from Bristol.

The Earl, too, had referred to Lady St. Maur's correspondent at
Bournemouth, and Medenham could fill in blanks in the story quite
easily, but the allusions to Marigny were less comprehensible.

Dale's distress arose chiefly from the Earl's vows of vengeance when
he discovered that his son's baggage had been spirited away during the
breakfast hour that morning, but Medenham reassured him.

"Don't bother your head about that," he said. "I'll telegraph and
write to my father a full explanation to-day. You have obeyed my
orders, and he must blame me, not you, if they ran counter to his.
Take charge of the car while I change my clothes and make a few
inq