wish I was as certain of everything else," Deede Dawson said.

"Oh, all right," exclaimed Dunn. "I suppose you know and you may be
right."

"I am," Deede Dawson assured him. "Listen carefully now, there mustn't
be any blunders. You are to make an early start tomorrow. I don't want
you to take the car for fear of its being seen and identified. You must
take the train to London and then another train back immediately to
Delsby. From Delsby you'll have an eighteen-mile walk through lonely
country where you aren't likely to meet any one, and must try not to.
The less you are seen the better. You know that for yourself, and for
your own sake you'll be careful. You'll have no time to spare, but you
will be able to get to the place I told you of by four all right--no
earlier, no later. You must arrange to be there at four exactly. You may
spoil all if you are too early. Almost as soon as you get there, Rupert
Dunsmore will arrive. You must do the rest for yourself, and then you
must strike straight across country for here. You can look up your
routes on the map. There will be less risk of attracting attention if
you come and go by different ways. You ought to be here again some time
in the small hours. I'll let you in, and you'll have cleared your own
score with Rupert Dunsmore and earned more money than you ever have had
in all your life before. Now, can I depend on you?"

"Yes--yes," answered Dunn, over whom there had come a new and strange
sense of unreality as he stood and listened to cold-blooded murder being
thus calmly, coolly planned, as though it were some afternoon's pleasure
trip that was being arranged, so that he hardly knew whether he did, in
fact, hear this smooth, low, unceasing voice that from the darkness at
his side laid down such a bloody road for his feet to travel.

"Oh, yes, you can depend on me," he said. "But can I depend on you, when
you say Rupert Dunsmore will be there at that time and that place?"

It was a moment or two before Deede Dawson answered, and then his voice
was very low and soft and confident as he said:

"Yes, you can--absolutely. You see, I know his plans."

"Oh, do you?" Dunn said as though satisfied. "Oh, well then, it's no
wonder you're so sure."

"No wonder at all," agreed Deede Dawson. "There's just one other thing
I can tell you. Some one else will be there, too, at Brook Bourne Spring
in Ottam's Wood."

"Who's that?" asked Dunn sharply.

"The man," said Deede Dawson,