As silently as she had descended she climbed the stairs again. The door of Miss Girton's room stood open, and she went in, crossed swiftly, and opened the casement windows. This room was on the opposite side of the house to the drawing room, and just beneath the windows was a kind of shed with a sloping roof. As a schoolgirl, Patricia had often clambered through those windows and taken perilous toboggan rides down the slates, saving herself from the drop by catching her heels in the gutter. Now she was bigger, and the stunt had no terrors for her.

Slithering swiftly over the sill she gathered up her skirt, held on for a second, and then let herself slide. Rotten as it was, the gutter stopped her as safely as it had ever done, in spite of her increased weight. Then she worked herself over the edge, let herself down as far as she could, and let herself fall the remaining five feet, landing lightly on the grass below.

She doubled round the house, and then she had a setback, for the curtains of the drawing-room windows were drawn, and the windows themselves were closed. This had not been so when she came in. Returning from Lapping's, she approached the house from the drawingroom side, and she could not have failed to notice anything so out of the ordinary, for Aunt Agatha verged on the cranky in her passion for fresh air and light even in the most unseasonable weather. Had the visitor, then, arrived after Patricia, or had the curtains been drawn for fear of her nosing round in the garden?

That, however, could be debated later. She stole up and examined both the French windows, but even from the outside she could see that they were fastened, and the hangings had been so carefully arranged that not even a hair's breadth of the room was visible. She could have cried with vexation.

She meditated smashing a pane of glass and bursting in, but a moment's reflection showed her the futility of that course. Simon Templar might have brought it off, but she did not feel so confident of her own power to force the pace. And with two of them against her, in spite of the automatic she might be tricked and overpowered. At a pinch she would have made the attempt, but the issue was too great to take such a chance when a man far more competent to deal with the matter was waiting to do his stuff if she could learn enough to show him where to make the raid. And the one certain thing in a labyrinth of mystery was that a man who visits somebody else's house generally leaves it again sooner or later.

She looked around for a hiding place, and saw at once the summerhouse in a corner of the garden. From there she could watch both the drawing-room windows and the front door — no observation post could have been better placed. She sprinted across to it. There was a window ideally placed, half overgrown with creeper, and through that she could see without being seen. Patricia settled down to, her vigil.

It was about then that her name cropped up in the conversation which was taking place in the drawing room, but that she could not know.

"One little pill — and such a little one!" remarked the man who was talking to Agatha Girton, and he placed the tiny white tablet carefully in the centre of the table. "You wouldn't think it could make a grown woman sleep like a log for about six hours, would you? But that's what it'll do. Just put it in her coffee after dinner — it'll dissolve in no time — and she'll pass out within five minutes. Lay her out comfortably on the sofa, and I'll collect her about eleven."

He was a tall, sparsely built man, and although they were alone he kept his soft hat pulled low down over his eyes and his coat collar was turned up to his chin so that only part of his face was visible.

"You can do your own murdering," snapped Agatha Girton in a strained voice, but the man only laughed.

"Not murder, I promise you. She's strong, and all she'll get will be a slight headache to-morrow morning. You can't imagine I'd kill such a charming girl!"

Miss Girton leaned across the table, thrusting her face down close to him, but in the gloom the shadow of his hat brim fell across his features like a mask.

"Swine!" she hissed.

He moved his hand protestingly.

"Your newly acquired righteousness isn't wasted," he said. "I'm honestly very fond of Patricia, but I'm afraid she wouldn't take me seriously as things are. So let us say that I propose to apply the rather unconventional methods of Miss Hull's sheiks"

"I am also very fond of Patricia," said Miss Girton.

"You ought to tell her," replied the man sardonically. "But mind you break it to her gently. No, my dear, that shouldn't trouble you very much. On a suitable occasion I shall ask Patricia to marry me, and nothing could be more respectable than that."

Miss Girton stared:

"Why lie?" she asked bitterly. "There are no witnesses."

"But I mean it," persisted the man.

The woman's gaunt face twisted in a sneer, and there was a venomous hatred in her eyes,

"Some people say that all crooks are slightly mad," she answered. "I'm beginning to think they're right."

The man lifted his face a trifle, so that he could look reproachfully at her. He ignored her sally, but he spoke again in a soft, dreamy, singsong tone.

"I was never more serious in my life. I have succeeded in my profession. In my way I am a great man. I am educated, clever, cultured, travelled, healthy, entertaining. I have all the wealth that a man could desire. My youth is passing away, though I still look very young. But I see the best years slipping past and leaving me alone. I love Patricia. I must do this to show her that I am in earnest; afterward she will refuse me nothing...."

The voice trailed away, and Miss Girtoff wrenched a chair round savagely.

"Mad!" she muttered, and hesatup with a start.

"What was I saying?" His eye fell on the glistening white pellet marooned in the expanse of polished walnut, "Oh, yes. Do you understand?"

Agatha Girton came close to him again.

"You're mad," she rasped — "I'll tell you so again. With all this money, all this wealth you boast about, why did you have to put the black on me? If you're so rich, what was a mere twenty thousand to you?"

"One can never have too much," said the man. "And now, as things have fallen out, it is all going back where it belongs — as a dowry. Anyway, is twenty thousand so much to pay for liberty, and even life? They might manage to get you for murder, you know, Aunt Agatha."

"Don't call me Aunt Agatha,"

"Then — ”

"Nor that, either."

The man shrugged.

"Very well, O Nameless One," he said with calculated insolence. "Remember this. Nameless One, that I have taken a lot of money from you, but now I want something that money cannot buy. And you will give it to me.... Otherwise — But you dare not be stupid!"

Miss Girton still looked at him with those deep-set eyes of hate.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "For years you've made my life a misery. I've a mind to end it. And putting you where you belong might make them forget some of the things they know about me. The busies are always kind to squeakers."

The man was silent for a short space; then he put up his hand and pulled his hat a little farther over his eyes. He turned his head, but he could only have seen her feet.

"I am not like the busies," he returned in a voice that was cold and flat and hard like a sheet of ice. "Don't talk like that — or I might be tempted to put you where you will have no power to threaten me."

He stood up and walked to the door, his hands in the side pockets of his coat and his shoulders hunched up. He turned the key and pulled the door open quickly and silently. Leaning out, he glanced up and down the hall, then half pulled the door to while he spoke to Miss Girton.

"I can Jet myself out. The lady upstairs, isn’t she?"