waiting car.
Her quick sympathy was aroused.

"The poor dear!" she cried. "Oh, don't tell me those horrid people have
hurt her."

Voles who had choked Winifred into insensibility with a mixture of
alcohol, chloroform, and ether--a scientific anesthetic used by all
surgeons, rapid in achieving its purpose and quite harmless in its
effects--was far more surprised than Polly. He never expected to be
greeted in this way, but rather to be met by some helper of Carshaw's
posed there, and he was prepared to fight or trick his adversary as
occasion demanded.

He had carried Winifred down a servants' stairs and made his way out of
the house by a back door. The exit was unguarded. In this, as in many
other country mansions, the drive followed a circuitous sweep, but a
path through the trees led directly toward the gate. Hence, his passage
had neither been observed from the hall nor overheard by Polly.

It was in precisely such a situation as that which faced him now that
Voles was really superb. He was an adroit man, with ready judgment and
nerves of steel.

"Not much hurt," he said quietly. "She has fainted from shock, I think."

Though he spoke so glibly, his brain was on fire with question and
answer. His eyes glowered at the car and its occupant, and swept the
open road on either hand.

To Polly's nostrils was wafted a strange odor, carrying reminiscences of
so-called "painless" dentistry. Winifred, reviving in the open air when
that hateful sponge was removed from mouth and nose, struggled
spasmodically in the arms of her captor. Polly knew that women in a
faint lie deathlike. That never-to-be-forgotten scent, too, caused a
wave of alarm, of suspicion, to creep through her with each heart-beat.

"Where are the others?" she said, leaning over, and striving to see
Voles's face.

"Just behind," he answered. "Let me place Miss Bartlett in the car."

That sounded reasonable.

"Lift her in here, poor thing," said Polly, making way for the almost
inanimate form.

"No; on the front seat."

"But why? This is the best place--oh, help, _help_!"

For Voles, having placed Winifred beside the steering-pillar, seized
Polly and flung her headlong onto the grass beneath the wall. In the
same instant he started the car with a quick turn of the wrist, for the
engine had been stopped to avoid noise, and there was no time to
experiment with self-starters. He jumped in, released the brakes,
applied the first speed, and was away