‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘It’s as your Ladyship likes. If you get the baby, Sir Clifford’s welcome to it. I shan’t have lost anything. On the contrary, I’ve had a very nice experience, very nice indeed!’—and he stretched in a half–suppressed sort of yawn. ‘If you’ve made use of me,’ he said, ‘it’s not the first time I’ve been made use of; and I don’t suppose it’s ever been as pleasant as this time; though of course one can’t feel tremendously dignified about it.’—He stretched again, curiously, his muscles quivering, and his jaw oddly set.

‘But I didn’t make use of you,’ she said, pleading.

‘At your Ladyship’s service,’ he replied.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I liked your body.’

‘Did you?’ he replied, and he laughed. ‘Well, then, we’re quits, because I liked yours.’

He looked at her with queer darkened eyes.

‘Would you like to go upstairs now?’ he asked her, in a strangled sort of voice.

‘No, not here. Not now!’ she said heavily, though if he had used any power over her, she would have gone, for she had no strength against him.

He turned his face away again, and seemed to forget her. ‘I want to touch you like you touch me,’ she said. said ‘I’ve never really touched your body.’

He looked at her, and smiled again. ‘Now?’ he said. ‘No! No! Not here! At the hut. Would you mind?’

‘How do I touch you?’ he asked.

‘When you feel me.’

He looked at her, and met her heavy, anxious eyes.

‘And do you like it when I feel you?’ he asked, laughing at her still.

‘Yes, do you?’ she said.

‘Oh, me!’ Then he changed his tone. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You know without asking.’ Which was true.

She rose and picked up her hat. ‘I must go,’ she said.

‘Will you go?’ he replied politely.

She wanted him to touch her, to say something to her, but he said nothing, only waited politely.

‘Thank you for the tea,’ she said.

‘I haven’t thanked your Ladyship for doing me the honours of my tea–pot,’ he said.

She went down the path, and he stood in the doorway, faintly grinning. Flossie came running with her tail lifted. And Connie had to plod dumbly across into the wood, knowing he was standing there watching her, with that incomprehensible grin on his face.

She walked home very much downcast and annoyed. She didn’t at all like his saying he had been made use of because, in a sense, it was true. But he oughtn’t to have said it. Therefore, again, she was divided between two feelings: resentment against him, and a desire to make it up with him.

She passed a very uneasy and irritated tea–time, and at once went up to her room. But when she was there it was no good; she could neither sit nor stand. She would have to do something about it. She would have to go back to the hut; if he was not there, well and good.

“There’s a constable in possession,” said Baynes. “I’ll knock at the window.” He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pane. Through the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire, and heard a sharp cry from within the room. An instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand.

“What’s the matter, Walters?” asked Baynes sharply.

The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh of relief.

“I am glad you have come, sir. It has been a long evening, and I don’t think my nerve is as good as it was.”

“Your nerve, Walters? I should not have thought you had a nerve in your body.”

“Well, sir, it’s this lonely, silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen. Then when you tapped at the window I thought it had come again.”

“That what had come again?”

“The devil, sir, for all I know. It was at the window.”

“What was at the window, and when?”

“It was just about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting reading in the chair. I don’t know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir, what a face it was! I’ll see it in my dreams.”

“Tut, tut, Walters. This is not talk for a police-constable.”

“I know sir, I know; but it shook me sir, and there’s no use to deny it. it wasn’t black, sir, nor was it white, nor any colour that I know, but a kind of queer shade like clay with a splash of milk in it. Then there was the size of it — it was twice yours, sir. And the look of it — the great staring goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth like a hungry beast. I tell you, sir, I couldn’t move a finger, nor get my breath, till it whisked away and was gone. Out I ran and through the shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.”

“If I didn’t know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black mark against you for this. If it were the devil himself a constable on duty should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him. I suppose the whole thing is not a vision and a touch of nerves?”

“That, at least, is very easily settled,” said Holmes, lighting his little pocket lantern. “Yes,” he reported, after a short examination of the grass bed, “a number twelve shoe, I should say. If he was all on the same scale as his foot he must certainly have been a giant.”

“What became of him?”

“He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road.”

“Well,” said the inspector with a grave and thoughtful face, “whoever he may have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he’s gone for the present, and we have more immediate things to attend to. Now, Mr. Holmes, with your permission, I will show you round the house.”