I shut
the door, and Barnes drove straight home. We never stopped anywhere, and
we never noticed nothing happen on the way; and yet when we got home the
carriage was empty."

The duke started.

"Do you mean to tell me that the duchess got out of the carriage while you
were driving full pelt through the streets without saying anything to you,
and without you noticing it?"

"The carriage was empty when we got home, your grace."

"Was either of the doors open?"

"No, your grace."

"You fellows have been up to some infernal mischief. You have made a mess
of it. You never picked up the duchess, and you're trying to palm this
tale off on me to save yourselves."

Barnes was moved to adjuration:

"I'll take my Bible oath, your grace, that the duchess got into the
carriage outside Cane and Wilson's."

Moysey seconded his colleague.

"I will swear to that, your grace. She got into that carriage, and I shut
the door, and she said, 'Home, Moysey!'"

The duke looked as if he did not know what to make of the story and its
tellers.

"What carriage did you have?"

"Her grace's brougham, your grace."

Knowles interposed:

"The brougham was ordered because I understood that the duchess was not
feeling very well, and there's rather a high wind, your grace."

The duke snapped at him:

"What has that to do with it? Are you suggesting that the duchess was more
likely to jump out of a brougham while it was dashing through the streets
than out of any other kind of vehicle?"

The duke's glance fell on the letter which Knowles had brought him when he
first had entered. He had placed it on his writing table. Now he took it
up. It was addressed:

"_To His Grace the Duke of Datchet_.
_Private!_
VERY PRESSING!!!"

The name was written in a fine, clear, almost feminine hand. The words in
the left-hand corner of the envelope were written in a different hand.
They were large and bold; almost as though they had been painted with the
end of the penholder instead of being written with the pen. The envelope
itself was of an unusual size, and bulged out as though it contained
something else besides a letter.

The duke tore the envelope open. As he did so something fell out of it on
to the writing table. It looked as though it was a lock of a woman's hair.
As he glanced at it the duke seemed to be a trifle startled. The duke read
the letter:

"Your grace will be so good as to bring five hundred pounds in