Mr. Johnson was genuinely surprised at the expression in his companion’s face when, at the end of that drive home through the drowsy afternoon, she put out her hand to wish him good-by. He forgot her shabby little black lace hat with its two rather battered red roses, her scratched and mended gloves, the thin ready-made wrap around her linen frock. She was no longer a sulky, tired, young woman. For a single moment she was beautiful.

“You have given me quite a wonderful afternoon, Mr. Johnson,” she said, “and I am ashamed of myself for having been so quiet all the way home. I am afraid I must have seemed almost ungracious. I wasn’t. I was just enjoying it all, and—thank you!”

She was gone before he could do anything but return heartily the warm pressure of her fingers, but she seemed to him to walk with a new grace as she stepped lightly up the tiled path, turned the shining brass door handle, and disappeared into the Little House. He turned round to his car, but instead of making for his own heavy oak gates, he reversed slowly down the lane, swung round in front of the Ballaston Arms and entered. The same little company were assembled in the bar, with the exception of Rawson and the addition of Walter Beavens, the local wheelwright, and Tom Foulds, the veterinary surgeon.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Mr. Johnson said cheerfully. “A long and dusty ride from Norwich, Mr. Landlord. I’ll take a whisky and soda—a large soda, please, and a piece of lemon, if you have such a thing.”

He settled down into a chair with the air of a man who intends to make himself at home, and began to fill his pipe. Mr. Craske was his immediate neighbour. A little distance away the young man Fielding was busy with a box of flies.

“So you had a look at the Hall this morning, sir,” the grocer remarked. “I saw you coming through the gates.”

“I lunched there,” Mr. Johnson confided. “A magnificent place it is, and full of treasures, too! Why, the pictures and tapestries alone must be worth a fortune.”

Mr. Foulds joined in the conversation. He was a ruddy-faced young man, inclined to be stout, dressed in somewhat sporting fashion, with riding leggings which he was continually tapping with a switch.

“Worth a mint of money, those tapestries,” he declared. “Came from Versailles, some of them—the more modern ones—at the time of the Revolution. Good pictures, too, any quantity of them. I should say the contents of the Hall were worth the best part of half a million. Queer situation, ain’t it?”

“In what way?” Mr. Johnson enquired.

The young man wielded his switch assiduously.

“Well, it’s no secret round here,” he proclaimed, dropping his voice nevertheless, “that Sir Bertram is devilish hard up. They don’t know where to turn for money, any of them. And yet with all that valuable property they can’t touch it.”

“How’s that?”

“Every yard of tapestry, every picture worth a snap of the fingers, is an heirloom,” Foulds explained. “Every acre of property is entailed. I suppose there’s plenty of money been raised on mortgages, but I think they’ve come to the end of that, from what one hears. Shame, too! Fine old family!”

“Sir Bertram, I suppose, has been extravagant?” Mr. Johnson suggested.

The veterinary surgeon glanced around.

“Well,” he said, “our friend Rawson being absent, we may venture to speak of his Lordship of the Manor freely. There isn’t a person in the county could find a word to say against him—him or Mr. Gregory either—but I should say that for making the money fly they are just about the limit.”

“Mr. Gregory is reputed to have led a very fast life in town,” the grocer interposed timidly.

“And then I don’t know as he was a patch on his father,” was the veterinary surgeon’s complacent rejoinder.

“Mr. Henry seems to be the sober one of the family,” Mr. Johnson remarked.

“He’s a character, he is,” Foulds declared. “A real, old-fashioned, Dickens character. You’re right about him being the sober one, though. He’d never spend a sixpence he could help, and I’d back his conscience against the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. Have a drink, Mr. Craske.”

“With pleasure, Tom.”

“Will you honour me, Mr. Johnson?”

“The honour is mine as the thirst certainly is,” was the prompt response. “Very kind of you, I am sure.”

The young man Fielding, having succeeded with his fly, entered diffidently into the conversation.

“Have the family a town house?” he enquired.

“Not now,” Mr. Craske replied. “There was one in Grosvenor Square, but that went ten years ago, the year Sir Bertram lost seventy thousand pounds on the Derby.”

“They spend most of their time down here then, I suppose?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” the grocer rejoined. “Mr. Gregory, soon after the war, disappeared altogether for a year or so, and he’s always taking long trips abroad. The Squire, he just goes up to those things that the gentry from everywhere seem to meet at—the Eton and Harrow, and Varsity Cricket Matches at Lord’s, and Ascot and Goodwood.”

Mr. Johnson made an effort to bring the discussion back to what was to him its point of greatest interest.

“These financial embarrassments of Sir Bertram and his son,” he said, “I presume there is nothing absolutely urgent about them.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to admit that,” Mr. Foulds replied cautiously. “There was a rumour yesterday that there was a conference of lawyers in London fixed for next week. Mr. Jenkins from Norwich—he’s the lawyer who deals chiefly with the mortgages—he did say last week that they couldn’t see the year through.”

The entrance of Rawson interfered with the trend of the conversation. It was a matter of etiquette at the Ballaston Arms that gossip concerning the Hall was not indulged in while he was present unless he himself introduced the subject. The butler greeted the tenant of the Great House with the slightly extra respect to which his recent visit entitled him.

“Glad to see you at the Hall with us to-day, sir,” he remarked. “You will find the Squire a kindly gentleman and hospitable when he takes the fancy.”

“I found him most agreeable,” Mr. Johnson acknowledged. “I enjoyed very much, too, my brief glimpse of your marvellous art treasures.”

“Marvellous they are,” Rawson sighed, as he held up his glass to the light. “A bit of tantalisation about them, though, as you might say. Hundreds of thousands there, doing nobody any good.”

“By the way,” Mr. Johnson continued, “there were two wonderfully carved wooden Images in Mr. Henry’s room. Do they set much store by them?”

“I should say they did, sir. Rather a curious thing about those Images. One of them is damned ugly. That’s the one Mr. Gregory sent home from abroad and that Mr. Henry seemed to take a fancy to. Mr. Gregory himself, he has a sort of dislike to it. All the time it was in Mr. Henry’s room alone, he never went in if he could help it. Then, about a year ago, the other one turned up. A nice bit of work, that. They’re side by side now, and Mr. Gregory don’t seem to mind. I’ve seen him handling them and looking at them for hour after hour, and Sir Bertram too. There’s a man been down from London to examine them—made me think they might be worth a bit of money.”

“I should think they very likely might be,” Mr. Johnson agreed.

“It’s a curious thing,” the butler observed, filling his pipe, “that more than once the Squire has been for having them broken up, but Mr. Gregory wouldn’t listen to it. They had almost words about it one night.”

“Broken up,” Mr. Johnson repeated. “For what purpose?”

“I couldn’t quite follow the argument, sir,” Rawson admitted. “The Squire seemed serious enough at the time, but Mr. Gregory had his own way.”

The tenant of the Great House rose to his feet a few minutes later, and, amidst a little chorus of “good evenings”, strolled out and, starting his car, drove slowly up the lane homewards. Afterwards he left the paved courtyard by a side entrance and paused for a minute or two to look around lovingly at the old kitchen garden, the peaches ripening upon the wall, the apple and pear trees full of fruit, the box-bordered paths, and the little patches of cottage flowers in unexpected places. He walked contentedly around his property, his hands behind his back, his pipe still in his mouth, looked into his tomato house and approved of its appearance, exchanged a few words with the gardener about the trimming of a hedge, and passed out on to the lawn. Here he drew a chair into the shade of a cedar tree and, still in a reflective frame of mind, leaned back with half-closed eyes.

His peaceful surroundings seemed to fade away from him. He was back in the steep tangled streets of a Chinese city, on a hand-borne ’rickshaw out in the country, travelling up to the top of a hill, beyond which, through the wood, gleamed the green dome of the Temple of Yun-Tse. He was back on the turgid river where the cruel sun was blistering the deck of his strange craft, and the sound of his little engine, suddenly breaking the hot silence, brought consternation to the tall, evil figure who had been leaning over the side of his boat to watch the oars thrust through the opened places. He watched the coming to life of the young Englishman, heard his talk, fancied that he smelled again the peculiar odours of that strange warehouse. He saw Endacott once more in his quaint costume, immersed in his beloved labours—dead now, for the sake of the treasure which was still withheld.

The tenant of the Great House sat there until a very slight breeze stirred the leaves of the tall elm trees and the church clock from across the way struck seven. Then he rose to his feet, knocked out the ashes from his pipe, and entered the house.

That rustle of west breeze which, heralding eventide, broke the calm of the summer day, did not, as usual, die away with the setting of the sun. A little bank of clouds crept up from the horizon, and the wind which seemed to come suddenly from nowhere bent the tops of the trees and drove them before it in black and broken pieces. The afterglow from the sunset passed into a stormy obscurity. No rain fell but the wind ever increased in volume and the darkness grew thicker. Mr. Johnson drank his accustomed whisky and soda at ten o’clock and retired to his room a few minutes later. He lay down, however, with a small alarm watch by his side, and at three o’clock he left the silent house, passed through the postern gate and into the street. The morning darkness at first baffled him. He had to feel the wall to know where he was. He stood there with the palm of his hand flat against it, looking in the direction of the Hall. Suddenly, from the middle of the gulf of darkness, three little flashes of light followed one another quickly. There was a brief pause—then two more—then one. Mr. Johnson turned hurriedly back to the house, changed from his sleeping attire and dressing gown back into his discarded dinner clothes, slipped some cartridges into a revolver which he took from his bedside, and, descending the stairs carefully, passed into the library. Silence still reigned throughout the house, and complete darkness. Mr. Johnson, with the composed mien and even pulse of a man who is used to dangers, settled down to wait.