I followed Asta Seymour along the hall, and turning into a corridor on the left, suddenly found myself in a pleasant sitting-room wherein the man I knew as Dawnay stood, his hands behind his back, awaiting me.

As we entered she closed the door behind us. The room bore an old-world air, with chintz-covered furniture and filled with the perfume of pot-pourri.

"At last, Mr Kemball! At last?" cried the fugitive, crossing quickly to me and taking my hand in warm welcome. "So Asta found you all right, eh?"

"Her appearance was certainly a surprise," I said. "I expected you to meet me yourself."

"Well," he laughed, his small narrow-set eyes filled with a merry twinkle. "It would hardly have been a judicious proceeding. So I sent Asta, to whom, I may as well tell you, I entrust all matters of strictest confidence. But sit down, Mr Kemball. Give me your hat and stick."

And he drew forward for me a comfortable chair, while the girl, excusing herself, left us alone.

When she had gone, my friend looked me in the face, and burst out laughing, exclaiming--"I suppose, Mr Kemball, this is rather a surprise to you to find that Harvey Shaw, the occupier of Lydford Hall, and Alfred Dawnay are one and the same person, eh?"

"It is," I admitted. "I have passed the edge of your park many times in my car, but I never dreamed that you lived here."

"Well," he said, "I rely upon your secrecy. You were extremely good to me the other day, so I see no reason why I should not be just a little frank with you."

"Your affairs are, of course, no business of mine," I declared. "But whatever you may reveal to me I shall certainly treat with the strictest confidence."

"Ah! I feel sure that you will. Melvill Arnold would never have taken you into his confidence if he had not been certain that he could trust you. He was one of the very shrewdest men in all England, or he would not have been so enormously successful."From the long windows, with their small leaded panes, I could see from where I sat far away across the park with its fine beech avenue. Over the wide fireplace were carved many heraldic devices in stone, while against the dark oak-panelling the bright chintzes showed clean and fresh. Taste was displayed everywhere--the taste of a refined man.

Mr Shaw, as he was apparently known there, was dressed 

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