The tiger had put through his telephone call at the appointed time, and had been informed by two simple “No’s” that there had been no inquiries about his movements and that I had left the Warren. Encouraged by these replies, he had asked two more questions and again given a date and time when he would telephone for the answers. Meanwhile Gorble had received through the post an envelope with twenty much-used pound notes in it. Damned if Mrs. Melton hadn’t managed to get hold of five of them!

The two new questions were: what had I been doing at Hernsholt and who was my companion? The first was easy to answer. Everyone knew that I had been watching badgers. The second question was harder, for at the cottage I had been alone. Gorble asked Mrs. Melton to get the required information.

Neither she nor Jim knew anything about my attempt to trap the dark gentleman at the badger sett. So far as they were aware, I never had any companion; but, if I did, it could only be Colonel Parrow. Mrs. Melton knew there was something mysterious in my relations with Ian, so she had not answered the truth. She informed Gorble triumphantly:

“Another perfesser!”

She couldn’t have done better. That would dispel the tiger’s suspicions that the goat had been deliberately tied out.

She gave me two other bits of information which fitted neatly into what I already knew. The first call had come from Bath. Fred Gorble heard the operator say: “You’re through, Bath.” The second came from somewhere abroad, through the continental exchange.

So much for tampering with the enemy’s sources of intelligence. But all I had really gained was the certainty that he had no intention of returning to Fred Gorble and had discovered some surer base for attack.

Now that I knew it, it stood to reason. Why go to the trouble of planting those squirrels unless he had decided where to stay and how to take advantage of them? And whatever base he had arranged for murder in the Wen Acre Plantation would serve for murder anywhere else in the central and southern Cotswolds. He might be staying under a false name at a Bath or Bristol hotel. He might be using his true name —playing his distinction and money for all they were worth and spending a magisterial week or two, completely above suspicion, under the roof of some county magnate.

I said good-by to this delightful and rascally family — who from me would never take a penny —and told them that neither they nor Fred Gorble were ever likely to hear any more of the dark gentleman. As I was about to mount Nur Jehan, Mrs. Melton offered to read my hand, assuring me that she really did have a gift. I refused. Like most people, I am thoroughly superstitious without believing a word of it. Whether I had a predictable future or not depended on myself, and any foreboding or false confidence could be deadly.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” she said. “The same fate is on the horse and the goat in the same place.”

This was intriguing, for she had picked the symbol of the goat out of my mind and it didn’t seem to have occurred to her —unless she was being professionally mysterious — that the symbol was myself.

Under the circumstances I simply could not resist asking more.

“What about the goat and the tiger, Mrs. Melton?”

She held my hand for that one, and suddenly turned a little pink as if in genuine anger.

“Tormenting poor dumb animals is a thing I won’t ‘ave, and I won’t look at it,” she said.

I rode off. I did not need Mrs. Melton’s muddle of telepathy and second sight to tell me that the reckoning would be painful for one or both. I had given the tiger time to prepare his plan. I had shown him my routine. I had convinced him that I was unprotected. On my way home the attack would come.

I felt equal to him on the bare tops and more than his equal in the wooded valleys where I hid my camp. I was uneasy, but the sanctuary of trees in the dusk is no less because the unknown may be behind or beneath them. I believe that for the animal always, and for man sometimes, fear is only a vivid awareness of one’s unity with nature.

What I did not like was riding along the verge of the roads when it could not be avoided. A passing car and a burst from a Tommy gun seemed altogether too chancy, gangsterish and out of character, but it was a possibility which I had to consider.

Once we may have been in close contact. Soon after dawn on the third day of my journey back from Brackley I was riding Nur Jehan over the uplands not far from the Rollright Stones. Coming downhill to a desolate crossroad which I had to pass, I saw a gray car drawn up by the side of the road. Nothing else was in sight or likely for another hour to be in sight but the low stone walls marking out two chessboards of grass on each side of a little river. There was no simple reason why a car should be parked at that hour commanding the only two roads by which I could come. A single man was in it, slouched down in the driver’s seat and apparently asleep, but the rising sun was on the windscreen and I could not see his face.

If I hesitated and changed direction I should show prematurely that I was on my guard; if I rode straight ahead I must pass the car at a range of a couple of yards. I compromised by dismounting, unrolling my kit and making a second breakfast. It was a pleasant and natural spot to choose. After half an hour the occupant of the car reversed into the crossroad and drove away. Whether he was awakened by the smell of my coffee or exasperated by my leisurely preparation of it, I never knew.

From here I could have followed the southeastern edge of the Cotswolds and returned Nur Jehan to Chipping Marton in a couple of days. It seemed too soon — a blank ending with all to begin over again and the initiative out of my hands once more. So we traveled west and spent the third night above Broadway.

On the fourth day I followed the watershed to the south, aiming for Roel Gate. This was all open country, silent except for the jingle of Nur Jehan’s bit and the larks which continually sprang up in front of us and hovered singing. On my outward journey I had passed along the edge of it, wishing that I had time to stop and devote a couple of days entirely to the schooling of Nur Jehan. I had arbitrarily set myself Jim Melton’s cottage as a destination and refused to deviate from the stages. But now I had all the time in the world —or as much of it as the tiger was inclined to allow me.

The country seemed short of my own special requirements, which were water for Nur Jehan and close cover for me. So I looked through the list of addresses which Georgina had given me and found a promising spot some three or four miles away, just south of the road from Stow-on-the-Wold to Tewkesbury.

I was welcomed effusively by the hearty lady who owned this immense and probably unproductive farm. Her main interest, to judge by the deep, ripe carpet of dogs around her feet, was the breeding of still more of them. She explained that she was no rider herself — the doggies would be jealous — but that all the pony clubs knew of her lovely barn.

I listened with formal courtesy to a flow of reminiscences larded with the names of distinguished horsewomen—few men —who had stayed at her house or camped at the lovely barn. She insisted on showing me the bedrooms and how comfortable they were. I chose the barn, rather to her surprise. At last I obtained my dismissal and directions to ride up the hill to a clump of trees just over the horizon.

The huge, empty barn stood among a thick windbreak of beeches. It was desolate and austere, I thought, rather than lovely; but it was dry, with the honey smell of centuries of Cotswold hay. The site was perfect in good weather for horse and man. Spring water plashed into a trough. The silent turf stretched away for half a mile to the north and west.

The clump of trees was altogether too easy to find in darkness, and that I was there could be confirmed from a long way off by a good pair of binoculars or even by a discreet use of the telephone. My usual evening reconnaissance would not therefore be of much value. Yet the more I looked at the place, the more I felt this might be the end. The tiger could purr with satisfaction. After a quiet and quick attack he would have all the rest of the night to get clear of the body. But since I was expecting him, the odds were on the defense — so heavily that I reckoned I could deal with him mercifully. And that was still essential. I could not kill him unless he had a gun in his hand. Even so, I hoped to be able to talk before deciding what to do with him.