arkness
wrapped him about, so that no one watching could have seen his face. But
he himself knew that under the bronze which he never lost he had grown
pale. His heartbeats grew suddenly fainter, an eerie chill more intense
than any which the note of danger had ever occasioned caused him to draw
sharply back.

"My God!" he whispered. He drew his automatic swiftly from his pocket,
and, pressed against the wall beside the window, looked about him as a
man looks who finds himself surrounded by enemies. Not a sound disturbed
the stillness of the garden except for sibilant rustlings of the leaves,
occasioned by a slight breeze.

Paul Harley retreated step by step to the bushes. He held the pistol
tightly clenched in his right hand.

He had heard his own death sentence pronounced and he knew that it was
likely to be executed.

CHAPTER XIX. WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEY--CONCLUDED

He regained the curve of the drive without meeting any opposition.
There, slipping the pistol into his pocket, he climbed rapidly up the
tree from which he had watched the arrival of the three cars, climbed
over the wall, and dropped into the weed jungle beyond. He crept
stealthily forward to the gap where he had concealed the racer, drawing
nearer and nearer to the bushes lining the lane. Only by a patch of
greater darkness before him did he realize that he had reached it. But
when the realization came one word only he uttered: "Gone!"

His car had disappeared!

Despair was alien to his character: A true Englishman, he never knew
when he was beaten. Beyond doubt, now, he must accept the presence
of hidden enemies surrounding him, of enemies whose presence even his
trained powers of perception had been unable to detect. The intensity of
the note of danger which he had recognized now was fully explained.
He grew icily cool, master of his every faculty. "We shall see!" he
muttered, grimly.

Feeling his way into the lane, he set out running for the highroad, his
footsteps ringing out sharply upon the dusty way. The highroad gained,
he turned, not to the left, but to the right, ran up the bank and threw
himself flatly down upon it, lying close to the hedge and watching the
entrance to the lane. Nothing appeared; nothing stirred. He knew the
silence to be illusive; he blamed himself for having ventured upon
such a quest without acquainting himself with the geography of the
neighbourhood.

Great issues often rest upon a needle point. He had no i