ng to fall, when an excited rustic rushed
into our room.

"They've gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady
broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs."

"Excellent, Warner!" cried Holmes, springing to his feet. "Watson, the
gaps are closing rapidly."

In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She
bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent
tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised
it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark
dots in the centre of the broad gray iris. She was drugged with opium.

"I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes," said our
emissary, the discharged gardener. "When the carriage came out I
followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep, but
when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and
struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She fought her way out
again. I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are. I shan't
forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I'd have a
short life if he had his way--the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil."

We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of
the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug.
Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained
to him.

"Why, sir, you've got me the very evidence I want," said the inspector
warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. "I was on the same scent as you
from the first."

"What! You were after Henderson?"

"Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable
I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It
was just who would get his evidence first."

"Then why did you arrest the mulatto?"

Baynes chuckled.

"I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected,
and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was
in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our
eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and
give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet."

Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder.

"You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and
intuition," said he.

Baynes flushed with pleasure.

"I've had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week.
Wherever the High Gable folk go he w