As a child in play sports with its doll, so Rupert swung Deede Dawson twice about his head, round and round and then loosed him so that he went hurling through the air with awful force, like a stone shot from a catapult, clean through the window through which Rupert had the moment before tossed his pistol with but little more apparent effort.

Right through the window, bearing panes and sash with him, Deede Dawson flew with the impetus of that great throw and out beyond and down, turning over and over the while, down through the empty air to fall and be shattered like a piece of worthless crockery on the stone threshold of the outhouse door.

Surprised to find himself alone, Rupert put his hand to his forehead and looked vacantly around.

“My God, what have I done?” he thought.

He was trembling violently, and the fury of the passion that had possessed him and had given his mighty muscles a force more than human, was still upon him.

Going to the window, he looked out, for he did not quite know what had happened and from it he looked back at the wardrobe door.

“Oh, yes,” he said.  “Yes.”

He ran to it and tore open the door and from within very tenderly and gently he lifted down the half-swooning Ella who, securely gagged and tightly bound, had been thrust into its interior to conceal her from him.

Hurriedly he freed her from her bonds and from the handkerchief that was tied over her mouth and holding her in his arms like a child, pressing her close to his heart, he carried her lightly out of that dreadful room.

Only once did she stir, only once did she speak, when lifting her pale, strained face to him she murmured very faintly something in which he just caught the words: 

“Deede Dawson.”

“He’ll trouble us no more nor any one else, I think,” answered Rupert, and she said no more but snuggled down in his arms as though with a feeling of perfect security and safety.

He took her to her own room and left her with her mother, and then went down to the hall and took a chair and sat at the front door.

All at once he felt very tired and one of his shoulders hurt him, for he had strained a muscle there rather badly.

His one desire was to rest, and he did not even trouble to go round to the back of the house to see what had happened to Deede Dawson, though indeed that was not a point on which he entertained much doubt.

For a long time he sat there quietly, till at last his father arrived in a motor-car from Wreste Abbey, together with a police-inspector from the county town whom he had picked up on the way.

Rupert took them into the room where Deede Dawson’s chessmen and the board were still standing and told them as briefly as he could what had happened since the first day when he had left his home to try to trace out and defeat the plot hatched by Walter Dunsmore and Deede Dawson.