, and T. B. Smith leapt out.

Brown had seen the detective before on his visits to the rectory, and
now hailed him as veritably god-sent.

"Where is Lady Constance?" asked T. B., quickly.

The man pointed to the house with trembling finger.

"She's in there somewhere," he said, fretfully, "but I can't make her
answer ... and the room appears to be very disordered."

He led the way to the window. T. B. looked in and saw that which
confirmed his worst fears.

"Stand back," he said.

He raised his ebony stick and sent it smashing through the glass. In a
second his hand was inside unlocking the latch of the window; a few
seconds later he was in the room itself. He passed swiftly from room to
room, but there was no sign of Lady Constance. On the floor of the study
was a piece of lace collar, evidently wrenched from her gown.

"Hullo!" said Ela, who had followed him. He pointed to the table. On a
sheet of paper was the print of a bloody palm.

"Farrington," said T. B., briefly, "he has been here; but how did he
get out?"

He questioned the coachman closely, but the man was emphatic.

"No, sir," he said, "it would have been impossible for anybody to have
passed out of here without my seeing them. Not only could I see the
cottage from where I sat, but the whole of the hillside."

"Is there any other place where she could be?"

"There is the outhouse," said Brown, after a moment's thought; "we used
to put up the victoria there, but we never use it nowadays in fine
weather."

The outhouse consisted of a large coachhouse and a small stable. There
was no lock to the doors, T. B. noticed, and he pulled them open wide.
There was a heap of straw in one corner, kept evidently as a provision
against the need of the visiting coachman. T. B. stepped into the
outhouse, then suddenly with a cry he leant down, and caught a figure by
the collar and swung him to his feet.

"Will you kindly explain what you are doing here?" he asked, and then
gave a gasp of astonishment, for the sleepy-eyed prisoner in his hands
was Frank Doughton.

"It is a curious story you tell me," said T. B.

"I admit it is curious," said Frank, with a smile, "and I am so sleepy
that I do not know how much I have told you, and how much I have
imagined."

"You told me," recapitulated T. B., "that you were kidnapped last night
in London, that you were carried through London and into the country in
an unknown direction, and that you made your escape f