I left the Manor with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with a
sickening pain. I moved down the road without quite well knowing where
I went.
My well-beloved had again escaped me. It was my duty to follow her, to
learn the truth, to save her--my duty to her, as well as to myself.
Mystery followed upon the back of mystery. In those brief days, since
the advent of the fugitive Italian at Shepherd's Bush, I had become
enmeshed in a veritable web of entangled events which seemed to grow
more extraordinary and more inexplicable every hour.
My meeting with the man Shacklock proved, beyond doubt, the source of
Mr Miller's income. Finding Lucie's father such an affable and
gentlemanly man, I had entirely refused to credit Sammy's story.
Nevertheless, Lucie herself had corroborated it, inasmuch as she had
described her love at Enghien and its tragic sequel; while I, myself,
had recognised in Gordon-Wright the clever international thief who had
decamped with Blenkap's valuables. And this man was actually Miller's
most intimate friend!
To Lucie I made no mention of my intention, but half an hour later I was
in a dogcart hired from the "Lion," driving at a furious pace over the
Ballard Down into Swanage, where, at the hotel I had previously visited
on my arrival, I inquired for Miss Murray.
"The lady left with a party in a motor-car an hour ago," was the reply
of the young person in black satin, whose duty appeared to be to keep
the books and order about the waiters.
"Gone!" I ejaculated. "Where?"
"Well, when people go off in a car we don't generally know their
destination. Motor-cars are so very uncertain, you see."
"Did they arrive here on the car?" I inquired eagerly. "No. Mr
Murray and his daughter came over by boat from Bournemouth. The motor
arrived last night with a gentleman, a lady and the chauffeur."
"Pardon me," exclaimed a man's voice at my elbow--the hotel proprietor
who had overheard all our conversation. "Are you a detective?" he
asked, in a rather low, confidential tone.
"No. Why?"
"Well--" he hesitated. "Only because there seemed to be something
rather funny about Mr Murray--that's all."
"Something funny about him? How?"
"Well, from the moment he came here, till the moment he went away, he
never came out of his room. And when he did, he was wearing a
motor-coat with the collar turned up around his chin and goggles which
entirely disguised him."
"Not at all a suspicious circumstance, surely?" I remarked, though
inwardly much interested. "On these white dusty roads every one must
wear goggles."
"Of course. But when people come to Swanage they generally go out and
look about the town and the bay. Mr Murray, however, shut himself up
and saw nobody, while his daughter drove over to Studland, where she
stayed the night and returned about an hour before the motor started."
"I'm going to follow that motor. I have a reason," I said. "Don't you
think the chauffeur might have told one of the stable-hands or
garage-men--if you have a garage here--as to his destination? There's a
kind of freemasonry among chauffeurs, by which all of them know each
other's roads."
"I'll see," replied the obliging proprietor. "Come with me."
He conducted me through to the back of the house, where a large
courtyard had been recently converted into a garage. There were several
cars in the coach-houses around, while in the centre of the yard a
clean-shaven young man was turning a hose upon a dark red 16-horse
"Fiat."
"Gibbs, where has that blue car gone to this morning--the one that left
an hour ago?"
"The 40 `Mercedes,' sir? Gone to some place beyond Exeter, sir.
They're on a big tour."
"You don't know the name of the place?" I asked the man anxiously.
"The chauffeur did tell me, but it was a funny name, an' I've
forgotten."
"They've gone direct to Exeter, in any case?"
"Yes--by Dorchester, Chard and Honiton. 'E asked me about the road."
"How far is it to Exeter?"
"About seventy-eight or eighty miles."
"I could get there by train before they arrived," I remarked.
"Ah! I doubt it, sir," was the man's reply. "That's a good car they've
got, and if you went by train you'd 'ave to go right up to Yeovil.
They'd be through Exeter long before you got there."
"That's so," remarked the hotel proprietor. "From here to Exeter by
rail is a long cross-country journey."
"Then could I get a car? Is any one of these for hire?"
"This one 'ere belongs to Saunders, down in the town. 'E lets it out
sometimes," replied Gibbs, indicating the red car he had been cleaning.
"Then I'll have it--and you'll drive me, eh? We must overtake them."
"Very good, sir," replied the man, and then I returned to the hotel to
telephone to the owner and fix the price.
Gibbs quickly filled the tank with petrol, poured water into the
radiator, examined the tyres, pumping one that he found a little down;
then he washed himself, put on his leather jacket and cap, and mounted
to the wheel.
A quarter of an hour after I had first entered the garage I was sitting
at the chauffeur's side as the car slowly made its way up the crooked
quaint old-fashioned main street of Swanage and out on the big white
road that ran up hill and down valley, the picturesque highway to
Dorchester. Up to Corfe Castle the way was nearly all uphill, but the
"Fiat" ran splendidly, and in the narrow winding road where we met many
pleasure parties in _chars-a-banc_ Gibbs quickly showed himself a
competent driver.
Seldom he blew his horn, yet he handled the car with a care that at once
convinced me that he was a reliable chauffeur.
As we skirted the great mound upon which stood the cyclopean walls of
Corfe, magnificent relics of the bygone feudal age, and ran again out of
the little village and up on to Purbeck Hill, he handed me a pair of
goggles, saying:--
"You'd better have these, sir. We're going through a lot of dust
presently, and we've a dead head-wind."