-gate, and there Miss Lorne found him when she drove up
in Lady Drood's pony phaeton a little time afterward. She was not alone,
however. She had spoken of a friend, and a sharp twitch disturbed
Cleek's heart when he saw that a young man sat beside her, a handsome
young man of two-or three-and-twenty, with a fair moustache, a pair of
straight-looking blue eyes, and that squareness of shoulder and
uprightness of bearing which tells the tale of a soldier.

In another moment she had alighted, her fingers were lying in the close
grasp of Cleek's, and the colour was coming and going in rosy gusts over
her smiling countenance.

"How good of you to come!" she said. "But, there! I knew that you would,
if it were within the range of possibility; I said so to Mr. Bridewell
as we came along. Mr. Cleek, let me have the pleasure of making you
acquainted with Lieutenant Bridewell. His fiancee, Miss Warrington, is
the dear friend of whom I wrote you. Lieutenant Bridewell is home on
leave after three years' service in India, Mr. Cleek; but in those three
years strange and horrible things have happened, are still happening, in
his family circle. But now that you have come---- We shall get at the
bottom of the mystery now, lieutenant; I feel certain that we shall. Mr.
Cleek will find it out, be sure of that."

"At least, I will endeavour to do so, Mr. Bridewell," said Cleek
himself, as he wrung the young man's hand and decided that he liked him
a great deal better than he had thought he was going to do. "What is the
difficulty? Miss Lorne's letter mentioned the fact that not only was
there a mystery to be probed but a human life in danger. Whose life, may
I ask? Yours?"

"No," he made reply, with a sort of groan. "I wish to heaven it were no
more than that. I'd soon clear out from the danger zone and put an end
to the trouble, get rid of that lot at the house and put miles of sea
between them and me, I can tell you. It's my dad they are killing--my
dear old dad, bless his heart--and killing him in the most mysterious
and subtle manner imaginable. I don't know how, I don't know why, that's
the mystery of it, for he hasn't any money nor any expectations, just
the annuity he bought when he got too old to follow his calling (he used
to be a sea captain, Mr. Cleek), and there'd be no sense in getting rid
of him for that, because, of course, the annuity dies with him. But
somebody's got some kind of a motive and somebody's doing it, that's