Moss came down from town suddenly on the second afternoon, and
while he carried a new magneto under his arm, the bill was in his
pocket right enough. I was standing at the inn door as he drove up in
a fly, and when I recognised the face, you might have knocked me down
with a cotton umbrella. Not, mind you, that I lost my presence of
mind, or said anything foolish, but just that I felt sorry enough for
Dolly St. John to risk all I'd got in the world to save her from this
land shark. That Moss had found her out, I did not doubt for an
instant, and his first words told me I was right.

"Do you know who you've been trotting about the country?" he asked, as
he stepped down. I replied that I did not, but that I believed the
lady to be a relative of Lord Badington's. Then he was fair angry.

"Lord Badington be d----d," he said, speaking through his nose as he
always did, "her dabe's Dolly Sid John, and she's the sabe who did us
id de winter. I wonder you were such a precious fool as not to
recognise her. Do you mean to dell me you didn't dow her?"

"What!" I cried, opening my eyes wide, "she Dolly St. John! Well, you
do surprise me; and she gone to Dover this very afternoon--leastwise,
if it isn't to Dover, it's to Folkestone--but Biggs would tell us. Are
you quite sure about it, sir?"

He swore he was sure, and went on to tell me that if I hadn't been the
greatest chump in Europe I would have known it from the start.

"Where are your eyes?" he kept asking me; "do you mean to say you can
drive a woman for ted days in London and not dow her again three months
afterwards? A fine sort of chap you are. You deserve a statue in the
Fools' Museum, upod my word you do. Now take me to the car, and let's
see what's the matter. I'll have more to say to you whed we're in
London, you mark that, my man."

I didn't give him any cheek, much as I would have liked to. My game
was to protect Miss Dolly as far as I was able, and to hold my tongue
for her sake.

Clearly her position was perilous. If this dun of a Jew went up to the
house, and told them her name was not More, but St. John, the fat would
be in the fire with a vengeance, and her chance of marrying John Sarand
about equal to mine of mating with the crowned heads of Europe. What
to do I knew no more than the dead. I had no messenger to send up to
the house; I dare not leave Moss to get talking to the people of the
inn; and there I was, helping him to fit and ti