little while ago Mr.
Latour was seen several times by men working in the fields to meet, down
at Alconbury Brook, a rather handsome, dark young lady, and walk with
her."

Was that lady Clotilde? I wondered.

The inquest, held two days later, revealed nothing concerning the
antecedents of the Latours, except that they had taken "The Cedars"
furnished a year before, and very rarely received visitors. Mr. Latour
was believed to be French, but even of that nobody was certain.

A week afterwards, after taking Bindo up to Nottingham, I returned to
London, and watched daily for some communication, as Clotilde had
promised. Weeks passed, but none came, and I gradually became more and
more convinced that I had been the victim of an adventuress.

One afternoon, however, I received at my rooms in Bloomsbury a brief
note in a woman's handwriting, unsigned, asking me to call at an address
in Eccleston Street, Pimlico, that evening, at half-past nine. "I desire
to thank you for your kindness to me," was the concluding sentence of
the letter.

Naturally, I kept the appointment, and on ringing at the door was shown
up by a man-servant to a sitting-room on the first floor, where I stood
prepared again to meet the woman who held me entranced by her beauty.

But instead of a woman there appeared two dark-faced, sinister-looking
foreigners, who entered without a word and closed the door behind them.
I instantly recognised them as those I had seen in the passage of the
"Bell" at Stilton.

"Well? So you have come?" laughed the elder of the two. "We have asked
you here because we wish to know something." And I saw that in his hand
he held some object which glistened as it caught my eye. It was a plated
revolver. I had been trapped!

"What do you want to know?" I inquired, quickly on the alert against the
pair of desperate ruffians.

"Answer me, Mr. Ewart," said the elder of the two, a man with a grey
beard and a foreign accent. "You were driving an automobile near
Alconbury on a certain evening, and a woman stopped you. She had a boy
with her, and she gave you something--a packet of papers, to keep in
safety for her. Where are they? We want them."

"I know nothing of what you are saying," I declared, recollecting
Clotilde's injunction. "I think you must be mistaken."

The men smiled grimly, and the elder made a signal, as though to
someone behind me, and next instant I felt a silken cord slipped over my
head and pulled tight by