ife and soul of the smart party.

On the fourth day, about twelve o'clock, Lola, who had made friends
with Enid Claverton, the barrister's daughter, who was about the same
age as herself, came to me in the garage, and said:

"Mr. Lloyd, whom we met at Keswick, has just arrived. He's come on a
visit. Father told me nothing about it. Did he tell you?"

"Not a word," I replied, wondering why the person in question had been
enticed into the spider's parlor. No doubt the highly respectable
house-party had been invited to form a suitable setting for some
secret villainy.

I met the new guest just before luncheon and found him a
white-bearded, bald-headed, fresh-complexioned and rather dapper
little man, whose merry eyes and easy-going manner marked him as a
_bon vivant_ and something after Rayne's own style.

He greeted me when in the big hall with its long armorial windows, its
old family portraits, and the many trophies of the chase that had been
secured by the noble family who were previous owners of the Hall.
Rayne introduced me as his secretary.

I looked into the smartly dressed old fellow's blue eyes and wondered
what foul plot against him had emanated from the abnormal brain of the
arch-criminal who was his host. I smiled when I reflected on the
horror of those guests did they but know who Rudolph Rayne really was.
But in their ignorance they enjoyed his unbounded hospitality and
voted him a real good sort--as outwardly he was.

My time was occupied mostly in driving the Rolls, but when at home I
watched narrowly yet was utterly unable to discern why the friendship
of Mr. Gordon Lloyd, whose profession or status I failed to discover,
had been so cleverly secured and carefully cultivated until he had now
become a welcome guest under Rayne's roof.

There was a sinister design somewhere, but in what direction? Rudolph
Rayne never lifted a finger or smiled upon a stranger without some
evil intent by which to enrich himself. Usurers in the City have
always been clever people backed by capital, but this super-crook had,
I learned, risen in a few years from a small bookmaker in Balham to
control the biggest combine of Thiefdom ever known in the annals of
our time.

One day I drove Mr. Lloyd with Lola and a Mrs. Charlesworth, one of
the guests, into Ripon to see the cathedral. We had inspected the fine
transepts, the choir and the famous Saxon crypt--of which there is
only one other in England--and had gone to the