e place is away and there are only
two old servants left. They tell me that Mary came here late, and that
very early in the morning a closed car came over the Staub with a man
in it. They say he asked to see the young lady, and that they talked
together for some time, and that then she went off with him in the car
down the valley ... I must have passed it on my way up ... There's been
some black devilment that I can't follow. Who was the man? Who was the
man?'

He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.

'I can tell you that,' I said. 'It was Ivery.'

He stared for a second as if he didn't understand. Then he leaped to
his feet and cursed like a trooper. 'You've botched it, as I knew you
would. I knew no good would come of your infernal subtleties.' And he
consigned me and Blenkiron and the British army and Ivery and everybody
else to the devil.

I was past being angry. 'Sit down, man,' I said, 'and listen to me.' I
told him of what had happened at the Pink Chalet. He heard me out with
his head in his hands. The thing was too bad for cursing.

'The Underground Railway!' he groaned. 'The thought of it drives me
mad. Why are you so calm, Hannay? She's in the hands of the cleverest
devil in the world, and you take it quietly. You should be a raving
lunatic.'

'I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last night in
that den of Ivery's. We've got to pull ourselves together, Wake. First
of all, I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She went with him
of her own free will. I don't know why, but she must have had a reason,
and be sure it was a good one, for she's far cleverer than you or me
... We've got to follow her somehow. Ivery's bound for Germany, but his
route is by the Pink Chalet, for he hopes to pick me up there. He went
down the valley; therefore he is going to Switzerland by the Marjolana.
That is a long circuit and will take him most of the day. Why he chose
that way I don't know, but there it is. We've got to get back by the
Staub.'

'How did you come?' he asked.

'That's our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder
Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the road.
We've got to foot it.'

'We can't do it. It would take too long. Besides, there's the frontier
to pass.'

I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport from the
Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time beyond getting
to Santa Chiara.

'Then we must make a circ