ite.

"Who--who are you?" she asked; then quickly, "I know you. You are the
man Beale. The drunken man----"

She looked from him to the bag at her feet and to him again, then before
he could divine her intention she had stooped and grasped the handle of
the bag. Instantly all his attention was riveted upon that leather case
and its secret. His hand shot out and gripped her arm, but she wrenched
herself free. In doing so the bag was carried by the momentum of its
release and was driven heavily against the wall. He heard a shivering
crash as though a hundred little glasses had broken simultaneously.

Before he could reach the bag she snatched it up, leapt through the
open door and slammed it to behind her. His hand was on the latch----

"Put 'em up, Mr. Beale, put 'em up," said a voice behind him. "Right
above your head, Mr. Beale, where we can see them."

He turned slowly, his hands rising mechanically to face Parson Homo, who
still sat at the table, but he had discarded his Greek book and was
handling a business-like revolver, the muzzle of which covered the
detective.

"Smells rotten, doesn't it?" said Homo pleasantly.

Beale, too, had sniffed the musty odour, and knew that it came from the
bag the girl had wrenched from his grasp. It was the sickly scent of the
Green Rust!

CHAPTER XIII

AT DEANS FOLLY

With her elbows resting on the broad window-ledge and her cheeks against
the cold steel bars which covered the window, Oliva Cresswell watched
the mists slowly dissipate in the gentle warmth of the morning sun. She
had spent the night dozing in a rocking-chair and at the first light of
day she had bathed and redressed ready for any emergency. She had not
heard any sound during the night and she guessed that van Heerden had
returned to London.

The room in which she was imprisoned was on the first floor at the back
of the house and the view she had of the grounds was restricted to a
glimpse between two big lilac bushes which were planted almost on a
level with her room.

The house had been built on the slope of a gentle rise so that you might
walk from the first-floor window on to the grassy lawn at the back of
the house but for two important obstacles, the first being represented
by the bars which protected the window and the second by a deep area,
concrete-lined, which formed a trench too wide to jump.

She could see, however, that the grounds were extensive. The high wall
which, apparently, s