I think I must have waited half an hour, when my attention was suddenly attracted by the rattle of wheels over the stones, and turning I saw an old closed carriage drawn by three horses abreast, with bells upon the harness, approaching me rapidly.  When it drew up, the driver, a burly-looking, fair-headed Finn in a huge sheepskin overcoat, motioned me to enter, urging in broken Russian—­

“Quickly, Excellency!—­quickly!—­you must not be seen!”

And then the instant I was seated, and before I could close the door, the horses plunged forward and we were tearing at full gallop out of the town.

For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had already been garnered.  There were no villages.  All around was a houseless land, rolling miles of brown and green, broken and checkered by bits of forest and clumps of dark melancholy pines.  The road ran ever and anon right down to where the cold, green waves broke upon the rocky shore.  In a few weeks that coast would be ice-bound and snow-covered, and then the silence of the God-forsaken country would be complete.

After five miles or so, the driver pulled up and descended to readjust his harness, whereupon I got out and asked him in the best Russian I could command: 

“Where are we going?”

“To Nystad.”

“How far is that?”

“Sixty-eight,” was his reply.

I took him to imply kilometres, as being a Finn he would not speak of versts.

“The Chief of Police has given you directions?” I asked.

“His high Excellency has told me exactly what to do,” was the man’s answer, as he took out his huge wooden pipe and filled it.  “You wish to see the young lady?”

“Yes,” I answered, “to first see her, and I do not know whether it will be necessary for me to make myself known to her.  Where is she?”

“Beyond Nystad,” was his vague answer with a wave of his big fat hand in the direction of the dark pine forest that stretched before us.  “We shall be there about an hour after sundown.”

Then I re-entered the stuffy old conveyance that rocked and rolled as we dashed away over the uneven forest road, and sat wondering to what manner of place I was being conducted.

Elma Heath was in hiding.  Why?  I recollected her curious letter and remembered every word of it.  She wished Hornby to know that she had never revealed her secret.  What secret, I wondered?

I lit an abominable cigar, and tried to smoke, but I was too filled with anxiety, too bewildered by the maze of mystery in which I now found myself.  Two hours later we pulled up before a long log-built post-house just beyond a small town in a hollow that faced the sea, and I alighted to watch the steaming horses being replaced by a trio of fresh ones.  The place was Dadendal, I was informed, and the proprietor of the place, when I entered and tossed off a liqueur-glass of cognac, pointed out to me a row of granite buildings fallen much to decay as the ancient convent.