“That is something, Louis.”

“If only Creake was going to poison his wife with hyoscyamine and bury her, instead of blowing her up with a dynamite cartridge and claiming that it came in among the coal.”

“True, true.  Still—­”

“However, the chatty old soul had a simple explanation for everything that Creake did.  Creake was mad.  He had even seen him flying a kite in his garden where it was found to get wrecked among the trees.  A lad of ten would have known better, he declared.  And certainly the kite did get wrecked, for I saw it hanging over the road myself.  But that a sane man should spend his time ‘playing with a toy’ was beyond him.”

“A good many men have been flying kites of various kinds lately,” said Carrados.  “Is he interested in aviation?”

“I dare say.  He appears to have some knowledge of scientific subjects.  Now what do you want me to do, Max?”

“Will you do it?”

“Implicitly—­subject to the usual reservations.”

“Keep your man on Creake in town and let me have his reports after you have seen them.  Lunch with me here now.  ’Phone up to your office that you are detained on unpleasant business and then give the deserving Parkinson an afternoon off by looking after me while we take a motor run round Mulling Common.  If we have time we might go on to Brighton, feed at the ‘Ship,’ and come back in the cool.”

“Amiable and thrice lucky mortal,” sighed Mr. Carlyle, his glance wandering round the room.

But, as it happened, Brighton did not figure in that day’s itinerary.  It had been Carrados’s intention merely to pass Brookbend Cottage on this occasion, relying on his highly developed faculties, aided by Mr. Carlyle’s description, to inform him of the surroundings.  A hundred yards before they reached the house he had given an order to his chauffeur to drop into the lowest speed and they were leisurely drawing past when a discovery by Mr. Carlyle modified their plans.

“By Jupiter!” that gentleman suddenly exclaimed, “there’s a board up, Max.  The place is to be let.”

Carrados picked up the tube again.  A couple of sentences passed and the car stopped by the roadside, a score of paces past the limit of the garden.  Mr. Carlyle took out his notebook and wrote down the address of a firm of house agents.

“You might raise the bonnet and have a look at the engines, Harris,” said Carrados.  “We want to be occupied here for a few minutes.”

“This is sudden; Hollyer knew nothing of their leaving,” remarked Mr. Carlyle.

“Probably not for three months yet.  All the same, Louis, we will go on to the agents and get a card to view whether we use it to-day or not.”

A thick hedge, in its summer dress effectively screening the house beyond from public view, lay between the garden and the road.  Above the hedge showed an occasional shrub; at the corner nearest to the car a chestnut flourished.  The wooden gate, once white, which they had passed, was grimed and rickety.  The road itself was still the unpretentious country lane that the advent of the electric car had found it.  When Carrados had taken in these details there seemed little else to notice.  He was on the point of giving Harris the order to go on when his ear caught a trivial sound.