Anthony Barraclough's mother was seventy-eight and still a sport. She loved her garden, she loved her son and she loved adventure. She was very fond of life, of punctuality, of the church, and of good manners. She was deeply attached to the memory of her late husband and her late sovereign, Queen Victoria, upon whom, with certain reservations, she patterned herself. The reservations were a taste for stormy literature and a habit of wearing her ice-white hair bobbed. The bobbing of her hair, and it used to be waist long, was a tribute to patriotism. She sacrificed her "ends" in 1914 to give a lead to hesitating girls of the neighbourhood. This she conceived to be a duty and one that would materially expedite the close of hostilities.

Mrs. Barraclough lived in the sweetly named village of Clyst St. Mary where you will find Devon at its gentlest. She was waited upon by four strapping girls who bore the names Flora, Agnes, Jane and Cynthia. These young women arrived in a body during the spring of 1919 and took possession of the house. Flora who was spokesman of the party bore a note from Anthony in which he wrote—

"Mother Darling,

Am sending these girls to look after you. No more servant worries.
They are tophole. Flora and Jane saved my life when I was in France.

Love,
TONY."

That was all.

Being a dutiful mother, Mrs. Barraclough asked no questions;—instead she arranged accommodation and bought some new dimity chintzes for the top floor bedrooms.

As Anthony declared, the girls were certainly tophole and made their mistress so unreasonably comfortable that she greatly feared the risk of being spoilt. It is true they perplexed her not a little, since no single one of them bestrewed the house with fallen aspirates, sang while sweeping nor spoke ill of her fellow. Herein perhaps they provided some small ground for disappointment for, in company with many ladies of the older school, Mrs. Barraclough dearly loved bestowing an occasional rebuke in words calculated to improve and uplift. This, however, was a trivial concern weighed against the obvious advantages of loyalty, good nature and efficiency.

The house in which Mrs. Barraclough dwelt was called "Chestnuts" and it lay a few miles off the London Exeter main road. To reach it by rail you alighted at Digby Halt and were met by either a car or a governess cart. Mrs. Barraclough possessed both and invariably despatched the governess cart to meet her favourite guests, on the theory that a horse is more of a compliment than a "snuffly engine." As a matter of fact the car was a very sterling, if rather old, Panhard Levassor and in no sense could be accused of snuffling.

When once an enquiring visitor, after vainly searching the garden for chestnut trees, asked why the house was so named, Mrs. Barraclough replied—

"The chestnuts apply to myself and not to the vegetation. I am an old woman with an incurable habit of repeating the same anecdotes over and over again."

To this sanctuary of mid-Victorian calm Isabel Irish came in the late afternoon of the day following Anthony's departure into the unknown. To wait in London for three weeks without word or message was more than she could tolerate. Accordingly she sent a wire to Mrs. Barraclough and followed close upon its heels. Of the presence of Mr. Harrison Smith in the next compartment of the corridor carriage, she, of course, knew nothing, and this circumstance provided that enthusiastic investigator with every opportunity of studying her without attracting attention to himself.

On the pretext of smoking a pipe he lounged up and down the corridor, every now and then glancing at Isabel, who sat alone with compressed lips and chin sunk on her chest. He concluded from her attitude and expression that she must have heard of Barraclough's capture but later on another impression superseded the first, for every now and then a light of excitement and enthusiasm would leap into her eyes as though in imagination she were following her lover along the ways of desperate adventure. Harrison Smith shook his head.

"Don't know what to make of it," he muttered. "Certain sure they've got the man yet—I don't know——"

Once he saw her do a very odd thing but foolishly enough paid little heed to it. A sudden blank look came into the girl's face—the kind of look people wear who have suddenly forgotten an important matter or discovered a loss. Her lips moved rapidly and her brow creased under an intensity of thought. She turned and breathed on the window glass and with quick movements of her forefinger wrote upon it half a dozen figures and characters. But before he had properly noted what they were the moisture evaporated and the glass was clear again. It did not occur to Harrison Smith to worry over his failure to read what she had written, since he regarded the action as symptomatic of mere nervousness, but he noted with surprise that after this little episode the girl seemed to relax and her face assumed lines almost of contentment. After all, no one could blame him for failing to realise the true significance of that hurried, transient scrawl. One does not expect to find the map reference of probably the greatest source of wealth the world has ever known scribbled across the window pane of a South Western Railway carriage by the fat little forefinger of a girl scarcely out of her teens. Such an eventuality never even crossed the mind of Harrison Smith. Nevertheless the girl puzzled him more than he cared to confess.

To reach Digby Halt necessitated a change. Harrison Smith took good care to make his descent from the train as far as possible from Isabel's carriage. He watched her enter the governess cart and drive away before attempting to leave the station. Prior to this it struck him that he might have difficulty in obtaining lodgings in the neighbourhood without bag or baggage and this being probable he had resorted to the unpleasant expedient of stealing a suit case. Its owner, a clergyman, was at the time enjoying a cup of tea in the dining section—the risk therefore was small. The suit case bore no initials and might have belonged to anybody. Harrison Smith showed as little as possible of his face as he passed through the wicket gate. He turned in the opposite direction to the one taken by the governess cart, waited till he was out of sight and climbed through a gap in the hedge. Ten minutes later, dressed as a clergyman and looking very good indeed, he marched down the road in the direction of the village.