“Shan’t be long, then,” said Shelley in composed tones, but Cunningham knew well enough that his chief was feeling the most intense excitement. That look of intense concentration, the steel-grey eyes fixedly following the road that wound its way up the hill ahead of them, was unmistakable.

They followed a road that was now rapidly running into open moorland. Shelley noticed, as Violet had noticed before him, the curious blend of brown in the hills, the granite that projected at their tops, the sheep of an indeterminate dirty colour that were dotted here and there on the perilous slopes of the hills, clinging precariously at points where it would have seemed totally impossible for any animal to secure satisfactory foothold.

“Wait!” exclaimed Cartwright as they passed a gate off the main road. “Yon’s the place.”

The driver obediently stopped the car, and swivelled round in his seat.

“Where? Through that gate?” he asked.

“Ay,” answered Cartwright. “Couple of hundred yards up there. ’Tis a big farmhouse, you know.”

While this explanation was being made the deft driver had reversed the car and reached the gate.

“Hullo,” remarked Cartwright. “That’s queer.”

“What’s queer?” Shelley was, as always, eager to discover any strange things that were happening, for he knew that any which might crop up in any case would probably prove to be valuable clues. Such, at any rate, had been his experience in the past; and such, he was firmly convinced, was to be his destiny in the future.

Cartwright frowned in a puzzled manner. “Never before,” he announced, “have I seen the gate open.”

“How did they get out, then?” asked Cunningham.

“I don’t exactly mean that,” Cartwright said with a somewhat sheepish grin. “I mean that never before have I seen the gate left open. When anybody came in or out they always shut the gate behind them.”

“H’m.” Shelley looked thoughtful. “Probably the birds have flown, then. Wonder how they got wind of it?”

Cunningham had a suggestion to offer. “You remember,” he said, “how, when we left Penistone, we came to the top of a high hill?”

Shelley nodded.

“Well,” his assistant went on, “if a man at the top of this house”—he pointed to the farmhouse which they were now rapidly approaching—“had a telescope and watched the road, as he might if he suspected that he was being followed, he would see us there, a mile or more away, and would be able to get out of the place long before we got near enough to see him.”

“Yes,” Shelley agreed. “And we should be in the valley below, so that we should know nothing whatever about it. I fear very much that something like that has happened, and that we have a bit more chasing to do before the affair is finished, and before the present identity of our friend Mr. Wallace is revealed to us.”

“We shall soon see,” remarked Cunningham.

“Yes,” said Shelley.