“Thank you, sir,” said the man, vastly relieved.  “They all have queer dispositions, you see, and I don’t like to trouble them.”

At once Haines made his way back along the path by which they had approached; some distance away they saw him kindle his lantern, and then watched the yellow spark as it glanced fitfully away across the grounds.

The cottage and work-shop of Professor Locke appeared to be set back some little distance from what Haines had called the county road; a grove of tall trees thickened the shadows all about, and it was into these trees that the professor had gone.

“The buzzer must have the button that sounds it attached to a gate opening upon the road,” said Pendleton.

They stood for a short time in silence; then Pendleton nudged his friend with an elbow.

“Look,” he whispered.  “There at the door of the shed.”

Ashton-Kirk did so.  And he was just in time to see a large, iron-gray head, a craggy, powerful face, and a pair of thick shoulders; the expression and attitude were those of a man listening intently.  Almost instantly, as Ashton-Kirk’s gaze fell upon him, the man withdrew.

“Humph,” exclaimed Pendleton under his breath.  “Who’s that, I wonder?”

They waited for some time longer in silence.  But the little man did not return, nor did the head appear again at the shop door.  Ashton-Kirk appeared puzzled.

“Locke intended returning at once,” he said to Pendleton.  “Otherwise he would have closed his work-shop door.”  Then his eyes wandered toward the house, and his grip closed tightly upon his companion’s arm.  “Look,” whispered he, in his turn.

Pendleton’s gaze flew toward the house.  The lower windows had been dimly lighted when they approached; but now the glow from them was high and brilliant.  In one of the rooms they saw Locke; he was striding up and down, his hands clinched and gesturing, his face upturned, writhing hideously.  Seated at a table, calmly engaged in examining something traced upon a sheet of paper, and apparently not paying the slightest attention to the gesticulating man, was a young woman.  And Pendleton felt himself grow suddenly faint and sick as he recognized Edyth Vale.

CHAPTER XV

MISS VALE DEPARTS SUDDENLY

For a moment there was a silence between the two men; then Ashton-Kirk said, dryly: 

“Miss Vale has, apparently, not been altogether frank with us in this matter.”

“You think then—­” began Pendleton in a voice of terror.  But Ashton-Kirk stopped him.

“I think many things,” said he.  “But they are neither here nor there.  Facts are what count.  Put the circumstances together for yourself and see where they lead you.  Miss Vale has been from the first mixed up more or less in this crime.  She explained.  As far as I knew the explanation was made in good faith.  Now we find her here in this lonely place, quietly engaged with a man whom I have convinced myself is one of Hume’s murderers.”