Wimbledon Common.

Lennard, the chauffeur, put on the brake with such suddenness that the
car seemed actually to rise from the earth, performed a sort of buzzing
and snorting semicircle, and all but collided with the rear wall of
Wuthering Grange before coming to a halt in the narrow road space which
lay between that wall and the tree-fringed edge of the great Common.

Under ordinary circumstances one might as soon have expected to run foul
of a specimen of the great auk rearing a family in St. Paul's
churchyard, as to find Mr. Narkom's limousine in the neighbourhood of
Mulberry Lane at any hour of the day or the night throughout the whole
cycle of the year.

For a reason which will be made clear in the course of events, however,
the superintendent had been persuaded to go considerably out of his way
before returning to town after mingling duty with pleasure in taking
part in the festivities attendant upon the coming of age of his friend
Sir Philip Clavering's son and heir, and, incidentally, in seeing, too,
that Petrie and Hammond, two of his sergeants, kept a watchful eye upon
the famous Clavering service of gold plate which had been brought out of
the bank vault for the occasion.

All three were sitting serenely back among the cushions of the limousine
at the period when Lennard brought it to this abrupt and startling halt,
the result of which was to fairly jerk them out of their seats and send
them sprawling over one another in a struggling heap.

There was a moment of something like absolute confusion, for mist and
darkness enveloped both the road and the Common, and none of the three
could see anything from the windows of the car which might decide
whether they had collided with some obstruction or were hovering upon
the brink of some dangerous and unexpected pitfall.

Nor were their fears lessened by perceiving--through the glass
screen--that Lennard had started up from his seat, and, with a hastily
produced electric torch in one upraised hand, was leaning forward and
wildly endeavouring to discern something through the all-enfolding mist.
Mr. Narkom hastily unlatched the door and leaned out.

"What is it? What's gone wrong?" he inquired in the sharp staccato of
excitement. "Anything amiss?"

"Lord, yessir! I heard a shot and a cry. A pistol shot ... and a police
whistle ... and a cry of murder, sir. Up the lane ahead of us!" began
Lennard, in a quaking voice; then he uttered a cry of fright, for, of a
s