ave interfered with me in the execution
of my duty. This is not the end."

He left the room without even a word or a salute to Philippa. Lessingham
looked after him for a moment, thoughtfully. Then he shrugged his
shoulders.

"I am quite sure that I do not like Captain Griffiths," he declared.
"There is no breeding about the fellow."

CHAPTER XXIV

Philippa, even for some moments after the departure of Captain Griffiths
and his myrmidons, remained in a sort of nerveless trance. The crisis,
with its bewildering denouement, had affected her curiously. Lessingham
rose presently to his feet.

"I wonder," he asked, "if I could have a whisky and soda?"

She stamped her foot at him in a little fit of hysterical passion.

"You're not natural!" she cried. "Whisky and soda!"

"Well, I don't know," he protested mildly, helping himself from the
table in the background. "I rather thought I was being particularly
British. When in doubt, take a drink. That is Richard all the world
over, you know."

She broke into a little mirthless laugh.

"I shall begin to think that you are a poseur!" she exclaimed.

He crossed the room towards her.

"Perhaps I am, dear," he confessed. "I want you just to sit up and lose
that unnatural look. I am not really full of cheap bravado, but I am a
philosopher. Something has happened to postpone--the end. Good luck to
it, I say!"

He raised his tumbler to his lips and set it down empty. Philippa rose
to her feet and walked restlessly to the window and back.

"I'll try and be reasonable too," she promised, resuming her seat. "I
was right, you see. Captain Griffiths has discovered everything. Can
you tell me what possible reason any one in London could have had for
interference?"

"I seem to have got a friend up there without knowing it, don't I?" he
observed.

"This is aging me terribly," Philippa declared, throwing herself back
into her seat. "All my life I have hated mysteries. Here I am face to
face with two absolutely insoluble ones. Captain Griffiths has assured
me that there is here in Dreymarsh something of sufficient importance to
account for the presence of a foreign spy. You have confirmed it. I have
been torturing my brain about that for the last twenty-four hours. Now
there happens something more inexplicable still. You are arrested, and
you are not arrested. Your identity is known, and Captain Griffiths is
forbidden to do his duty."

"It seems puzzling, does it not?"