“Sir,” said the detective, taking off his hat, “I believe these are yours.”

“Sir,” said Fritzing, taking off his cap in his turn and bowing with all the ceremony of foreigners, “I am much obliged to you.”

“Pray don’t mention it, sir,” said the detective, on whose brain the three were in that instant photographed—­the veiled Priscilla, the maid sitting on the edge of the seat as though hardly daring to sit at all, and Fritzing’s fine head and mop of grey hair.

Priscilla, as she caught his departing eye, bowed and smiled graciously.  He withdrew to a little distance, and fell into a reverie:  where had he seen just that mechanically gracious bow and smile?  They were very familiar to him.

As the train slowly left the station he saw the lady in the veil once more.  She was alone with her maid, and was looking out of the window at nothing in particular, and the station-master, who was watching the train go, chanced to meet her glance.  Again there was the same smile and bow, quite mechanical, quite absent-minded, distinctly gracious.  The station-master stared in astonishment after the receding carriage.  The detective roused himself from his reverie sufficiently to step forward and neatly swing himself into the guard’s van:  there being nothing to do in Dover he thought he would go to London.

I believe I have forgotten, in the heat of narration, to say that the fugitives were bound for Somersetshire.  Fritzing had been a great walker in the days when he lived in England, and among other places had walked about Somersetshire.  It is a pleasant county; fruitful, leafy, and mild.  Down in the valleys myrtles and rhododendrons have been known to flower all through the winter.  Devonshire junkets and Devonshire cider are made there with the same skill precisely as in Devonshire; and the parts of it that lie round Exmoor are esteemed by those who hunt.

Fritzing quite well remembered certain villages buried among the hills, miles from the nearest railway, and he also remembered the farmhouses round about these villages where he had lodged.  To one of these he had caused a friend in London to write engaging rooms for himself and his niece, and there he proposed to stay till they should have found the cottage the Princess had set her heart on.

This cottage, as far as he could gather from the descriptions she gave him from time to time, was going to be rather difficult to find.  He feared also that it would be a very insect-ridden place, and that their calm pursuits would often be interrupted by things like earwigs.  It was to be ancient, and much thatched and latticed and rose-overgrown.  It was, too, to be very small; the smallest of labourers’ cottages.  Yet though so small and so ancient it was to have several bathrooms—­one for each of them, so he understood; “For,” said the Princess, “if Annalise hasn’t a bathroom how can she have a bath?  And if she hasn’t had a bath how can I let her touch me?”