Night was drawing near again; she would have to go. He was avoiding her.

But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half–saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night.

At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch.

‘You come then,’ he said, using the intonation of the dialect.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You’re Reference late!’

‘Ay!’ he replied, looking away into the wood.

She rose slowly, drawing aside her stool.

‘Did you want to come in?’ she asked.

He looked down at her shrewdly.

‘Won’t folks be thinkin’ somethink, you comin’ here every night?’ he said.

‘Why?’ She looked up at him, at a loss. ‘I said I’d come. Nobody knows.’

‘They soon will, though,’ he replied. ‘An’ what then?’

She was at a loss for an answer.

‘Why should they know?’ she said.

‘Folks always does,’ he said fatally.

Her lip quivered a little.

‘Well I can’t help it,’ she faltered.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘You can help it by not comin’—if yer want to,’ he added, in a lower tone.

‘But tone I don’t want to,’ she murmured.

He looked away into the wood, and was silent.

‘But what when folks finds out?’ he asked at last. ‘Think about it! Think how lowered you’ll feel, one of your husband’s servants.’

She looked up at his averted face.

‘Is it,’ she stammered, ‘is it that you don’t want me?’

‘Think!’ he said. ‘Think what if folks find out Sir Clifford an’ a’—an’ everybody talkin’—’

‘Well, I can go away.’

‘Where to?’

‘Anywhere! I’ve got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can’t touch it. I can go away.’

‘But ‘appen you don’t want to go away.’

‘Yes, away yes! I don’t care what happens to me.’

‘Ay, you think that! But you’ll care! You’ll have to care, everybody has. You’ve got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a game–keeper. It’s not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you’d care. You’d care.’

‘I shouldn’t. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it.’

‘Me!’

For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. ‘I don’t jeer at you,’ he said.

As he looked into her eyes she saw saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupils dilating.

“He has to take the tray in. Surely we could conceal ourselves and see him do it.”

The landlady thought for a moment.

“Well, sir, there’s the box-room opposite. I could arrange a looking-glass, maybe, and if you were behind the door —”

“Excellent!” said Holmes. “When does he lunch?”

“About one, sir.”

“Then Dr. Watson and I will come round in time. For the present, Mrs. Warren, good-bye.”

At half-past twelve we found ourselves upon the steps of Mrs. Warren’s house — a high, thin, yellow-brick edifice in Great Orme Street, a narrow thoroughfare at the northeast side of the the British Museum. Standing as it does near the corner of the street it commands a view down Howe Street, with its more pretentious houses. Holmes pointed with a chuckle to one of these, a row of residential flats, which projected so that they could not fail to catch the eye.

“See, Watson!” said he. “‘High red house with stone facings.’ There is the signal station all right. We know the place, and we know the code; so surely our task should be simple. There’s a ‘to let’ card in that window. It is evidently an empty flat to which the confederate has access. Well, Mrs. Mrs Warren, what now?”

“I have it all ready for you. If you will both come up and leave your boots below on the landing, I’ll put you there now.”

It was an excellent hiding-place which she had arranged. The mirror was so placed that, seated in the dark, we could very plainly see the door opposite. We had hardly settled down in it, and Mrs. Warren left us, when a distant tinkle announced that our mysterious neighbour had rung. Presently the landlady appeared with the tray, laid it down upon a chair beside the closed door, and then, treading heavily, departed. Crouching together in the angle of the door, we kept our eyes fixed upon the mirror. Suddenly, as the landlady’s footsteps died away, there was the creak of a turning key, the handle revolved, and two thin hands darted out and lifted the tray from the chair. An instant later it was hurriedly replaced, and I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful, horrified face glaring at the narrow opening of the boxroom. Then the door crashed to, the key turned once more, and all was silence. Holmes twitched my sleeve, and together we stole down the stair.

“I will call again in the evening,” said he to the expectant landlady. “I think, Watson, we can discuss this business better in our own quarters.”

“My surmise, as you saw, proved to be correct,” said he, speaking from the depths of his easy-chair. “There has been a substitution of lodgers. What I did not foresee is that we should find a woman, and no ordinary woman, Watson.”

“She saw us.”

“Well, she saw something to alarm her. That is certain. The general sequence of events is pretty clear, is it not? A couple seek refuge in London from a very terrible and instant danger. The measure of that danger is the rigour of their precautions. The man, who has some work which he must do, desires to leave the woman in absolute safety while he does it. It is not an easy problem, but he solved it in an original fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even known to the landlady who supplies her with food. The printed messages, as is now evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered by her writing. The man cannot come near the woman, or he will guide their enemies to her. Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the agony column of a paper. So far all is clear.”