The luncheon with Teresa was a pronounced social success. French rather than Irish in character, it was eaten under a plum-tree in the orchard. Micky waited at table with his hat on, and then disappeared for awhile. At two o’clock he rose again above the horizon, and said that the electric car was at the door. Richard and Teresa set off to meet the two-thirty train at Leighton Buzzard. By this time they had certainly become rather intimate, according to the way of young persons thrown together—by no matter what chance—in the month of June—or any other month. It was not, perhaps, unnatural that Raphael Craig, when he emerged from the railway-station and found the two laughing and chatting side by side in the motor-car, should have cast at them a sidelong glance, in which were mingled amusement, alarm, and warning.

Mr. Raphael carried the large brown portmanteau, which was now—as Richard discovered by handling it—quite empty. On the journey home Teresa drove the car, and her father sat by her side. Richard occupied the rear of the car, giving a hint occasionally as to the management of the machine.

‘I think I have nothing further to do here,’ he said when the party had arrived safely at Queen’s Farm. ‘Both the other cars are in order. I will therefore bid you good-day. Should anything go wrong with this car, you will doubtless let us know.’

He spoke in his most commercial manner, though his feelings were far from commercial.

Raphael Craig bent those dark, deep eyes of his upon the youth.

‘I have been telephoning to your firm this morning,’ said Craig, ‘and have arranged with them that you shall take the Panhard back to town. They are going to take it off my hands—at a price.’

‘With pleasure,’ said Richard.

‘But,’ Mr. Craig continued, ‘I wish to use the Panhard this week-end. Therefore you cannot remove it till Monday.’

‘Very good,’ said Richard, ‘I will present myself on Monday morning.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘In the meantime I have other business for my firm in the neighbourhood.’

Teresa’s glance intercepted her father’s, and these two exchanged a look. The old man frowned at his daughter.

‘Good-day,’ said Richard.

Raphael and Teresa shook hands with him. Was he a conceited ass, or did Teresa really seem grieved?

‘Till Monday,’ said Teresa.

Richard walked down to the village, engaged Miss Puddephatt’s room, and dined at the White Horse Hotel. He had not yet definitely decided what course of conduct to follow. He was inclined to do nothing further in the affair, and to tell Simon Lock on Monday that, so far as he could discover, Simon Lock’s suspicions about Raphael Craig were groundless. He had taken no money from Simon Lock, and he would take none. Yet why should he pause now? Why should he not, for his own private satisfaction, probe the mystery to the bottom? Afterwards—when the strange secret stood revealed to him—there would be plenty of time then to decide whether or not to deliver up Raphael Craig into the hands of Simon Lock. Yes, on consideration he would, for his own pleasure, find out whatever was to be found out.

That evening, an hour after sunset, he lay hidden behind a hedge on the west side of Watling Street, exactly opposite the boreen leading to the Queen’s Farm.

Richard slept. He was decidedly short of sleep, and sleep overtook him unawares. Suddenly from the end of the boreen came the faint spit, spit of a motor-car, growing louder as it approached the main road. Would it awake Richard? No, he slept stolidly on. The motor-car, bearing an old man and a young girl, slid down into the valley towards Dunstable, and so out of hearing. An hour passed. The church clock at Houghton Regis, two miles off to the east, struck midnight. Then the car might have been heard returning, it laboured heavily up the hill, and grunted as though complaining of its burden as it curved round into the boreen towards Queen’s Farm.

Richard awoke. In a fraction of a second he was wide awake, alert, eager, excited. He saw the car vanishing towards the outbuildings of Queen’s Farm. Springing out of the hedge, he clambered over the opposite hedge into Craig’s orchard, crossed it, passed the house by its north side, and so came to the quadrangle of outbuildings. By keeping on the exterior of this quadrangle he arrived at last, skirting the walls, at the blind end of the boreen. He peeped cautiously round the angle of the wall, scarcely allowing even the tip of his nose to protrude, and discerned the empty motor-car. He ventured forward into the boreen. It was at this corner of the quadrangle that the locked shed was situated. Rather high up in the wall a light disclosed the presence of a small window. The faintness of the light proved that the window must be extremely dirty. But even if it had been clean he could not have utilized it, for it was seven feet from the earth. He put his hand on the wall and touched a spout. The spout felt rickety, but he climbed up it, and, clinging partly to the spout and partly to the frame of the window, he looked into the locked shed. It had once, he perceived, been used as a stable, but it was being put to other purposes now. The manger was heaped up with bright silver coins. In the middle of the floor stood a large iron receptacle of peculiar shape. He guessed that it had been constructed to fit into the well of the Panhard motor-car. By means of two small buckets Teresa and her father were transferring the contents of this receptacle, which was still half full of silver, into the manger.

The shed was ‘lighted by a single candle stuck insecurely on what had once been a partition between two stalls. The candle flickered and cast strange shadows. The upper part of the chamber was in darkness. Looking straight across it, Richard saw another little window exactly opposite his own; and through this window he discerned another watching face.

‘Micky!’ he exclaimed softly to himself.

Raphael and Teresa were, then, doubly spied upon. But who was Micky?

Richard’s attention was diverted from this interesting inquiry by the gradual growth of a light near the door, of which, being parallel with his window, he had no view. Then a long, licking flame appeared. He could see it creeping across the floor, nearer and nearer to the unconscious heavers of silver. Raphael had turned on the waste tap of the exhaust petrol under the motor-car. The highly combustible quid had run beneath the door of the shed it had there come in contact with the ax match used by Raphael to light the candle and then thrown down. Richard saw next that the door of the shed was on fire; at the same moment, unable any longer to keep his grip on the spout and the window-frame, he fell unexpectedly to the ground.