went as he was, in hirsute coat and goggles, the butler stalking at arm's length, with an air of personal repudiation happily not lost upon the little London lynx in charge of the car.

[Pg 66]

That artist would have been an endless joy to eyes not turned within. His silent endurance and efficiency, his phlegmatic zest in an adventure which might have a professional interest for him, but obviously did not engage his curiosity, were qualities which even the tormented Dollar had appreciated at intervals on the road. But now he missed a treat. The little Cockney ran his engine till the first flunkey returned and said things through the noise. Then he looked under his bonnet, as a monkey into its offspring's head. But the climax arrived with sandwiches on a lordly tray, when a glass of beer was sent back, and one of champagne brought instead to this choice specimen of a contemporary type. It was scarcely down before the passenger reappeared, accompanied by another swollen[Pg 67] figure in motoring disguise, as well as by my Lord Duke, who saw them off himself, and did look less ducal than the butler after all.

[Pg 67]

The many lights of Stockersham dwindled and disappeared into the night and one long wave of incandescence flowed back as it had come, by finespun hedge and wirework thicket, through dead villages and sleeping towns, like phosphorescent foam before a vessel's bows. And in the torpedo body of the Invincible Talboys, where Dollar now sat behind his companion of the outward trip, and the Home Secretary of England behind a fat cigar, there was a strained silence through two entire counties, but something like an explosion on the confines of the third.

"Do you still refuse to give her name?" demanded Topham Vinson, exactly as though they had been talking all the time. The stump of his second cigar was so short that angry light and angry mouth were one.

"I must," said Dollar, in a muffled voice, and he pointed to the hunched shoulders within a yard of their noses.

"In that case we have no secrets," replied the[Pg 68] Home Secretary with a sneer. "But why must you, Dollar? She seems to have made no reservations with you, yet you would make this enormous one with me."

[Pg 68]

"It's a secret of the consulting-room, Mr. Vinson; those of the confessional are not more sacred, as you know perfectly well."

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