action of the occult would in all
probability have overcome Mary Ellen's maidenly suspicions. She might
not have sat upon the wall. She would have almost certainly have yielded
her sticky hand if a sudden sound had not startled Moriarty. A motor-car
hooted at the far end of the village street. Moriarty jumped off the
wall.

"There's one of them motor-cars," he said, "and the fellow that's in her
will be stopping at the barrack for to ask his way to somewhere. It's a
curious thing, so it is, that them motor drivers never knows the way to
the place they're going to, and it's always the police they ask, as
if the police had nothing to do but to attend to them. I'll have to be
off."

He left the yard, hurried down the narrow lane, and crossed the road
to the barrack. Just as he reached it the car, a large, opulent-looking
vehicle, stopped outside Doyle's Hotel. Moriarty went into the barrack
and wakened the sergeant. He had a keen sense of his duty towards his
superior officer. It would not have been kind or right to allow the
sergeant to sleep through an event so unusual as the stopping of a
handsome motor outside the door of the Imperial Hotel.

The car was a large one, but it carried only a single traveller. He
was a lean, sharp-faced man, clean shaven, with very piercing hard grey
eyes. He blew three blasts on the horn of his motor. Then Mr. Doyle
came out of the door. He blinked irritably at the stranger. The strong
sunlight affected his eyes, and the rude way in which he had been
awakened from his sleep overcame for a moment the natural instinct
of the hotel keeper. All hotel keepers are civil to possible guests.
Otherwise they would not succeed in their business. Mr. Doyle knew this,
but he scarcely realised at first that the gentleman in the motor-car
might be a guest. His was not a tourist's hotel and he had been very
sound asleep.

"Say," said the stranger, "are you the proprietor?"

"I am," said Doyle.

"Can I register?" said the motorist.

The word was strange to Doyle, Guests at his hotel were very few. A
commercial traveller stopped a night with him occasionally, trying to
push the sale of drapery goods or boots in Ballymoy. An official of a
minor kind, an instructor in agriculture, or a young lady sent out to
better the lot of domestic fowls, was stranded now and then in Ballymoy
and therefore obliged to spend the night in Doyle's hotel. But such
chance strangers merely asked for rooms and food. They