s badly puzzled. You see he had never seen
me, and my appearance must have altered considerably from my
photographs, if he had got one of them. I was pretty smart and well
dressed in London, and now I was a regular tramp.

'I do not propose to let you go. If you are what you say you are, you
will soon have a chance of clearing yourself. If you are what I
believe you are, I do not think you will see the light much longer.'

He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the veranda.

'I want the Lanchester in five minutes,' he said. 'There will be three
to luncheon.'

Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all.

There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant,
unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the
bright eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to throw myself on his
mercy and offer to join his side, and if you consider the way I felt
about the whole thing you will see that that impulse must have been
purely physical, the weakness of a brain mesmerized and mastered by a
stronger spirit. But I managed to stick it out and even to grin.

'You'll know me next time, guv'nor,' I said.

'Karl,' he spoke in German to one of the men in the doorway, 'you will
put this fellow in the storeroom till I return, and you will be
answerable to me for his keeping.'

I was marched out of the room with a pistol at each ear.

The storeroom was a damp chamber in what had been the old farmhouse.
There was no carpet on the uneven floor, and nothing to sit down on but
a school form. It was black as pitch, for the windows were heavily
shuttered. I made out by groping that the walls were lined with boxes
and barrels and sacks of some heavy stuff. The whole place smelt of
mould and disuse. My gaolers turned the key in the door, and I could
hear them shifting their feet as they stood on guard outside.

I sat down in that chilly darkness in a very miserable frame of mind.
The old boy had gone off in a motor to collect the two ruffians who had
interviewed me yesterday. Now, they had seen me as the roadman, and
they would remember me, for I was in the same rig. What was a roadman
doing twenty miles from his beat, pursued by the police? A question or
two would put them on the track. Probably they had seen Mr Turnbull,
probably Marmie too; most likely they could link me up with Sir Harry,
and then the whole thing would be crystal clear. What chance ha