“Well, my man; had a good sleep?” he said.

“I was tired,” Dunn answered.

“Yes, we had a busy night,” agreed Deede Dawson.  “I slept well, too.  I’ve been wondering what to do with you.  Of course, I ought to hand you over to the police, and it’s rather a risk taking on a man of your character, but I’ve decided to give you a chance.  Probably you’ll misuse it.  But I’ll give you an opportunity as gardener and chauffeur here.  You can drive a car, you say?”

Dunn nodded.

“That’s all right,” said Deede Dawson.

“You shall have your board and lodging, and I’ll get you some decent clothes instead of those rags; and if you prove satisfactory and make yourself useful you’ll find I can pay well.  There will be plenty of chances for you to make a little money—­if you know how to take them.”

“When it’s money,” growled Dunn, “you give me the chance, and see.”

“I think,” added Deede Dawson, “I think it might improve your looks if you shaved.”

Dunn passed his hand over the tangle of hair that hid his features so effectually.

“What for?” he asked.

“Oh, well:  please yourself,” answered Deede Dawson; “I don’t know that it matters, and perhaps you have reasons of your own for preferring a beard.  Come on up to the house now and I’ll tell Mrs. Dawson to give you some breakfast.  And you might as well have a wash, too, perhaps—­unless you object to that as well as to shaving.”

Dunn rose without answering, made his toilet by shaking off some of the dust that clung to him, and followed his new employer out of the tool-house into the open air.

It was a fresh and lovely morning, and coming towards them down one of the garden paths was Ella, looking as fresh and lovely as the morning in a dainty cotton frock with lace at her throat and wrists.

That she could possibly have spent the night tearing across country in a powerful car conveying a dead man to an unknown destination, appeared to Dunn a clean impossibility, and for a moment he almost supposed he had been mistaken in thinking he recognized her voice.

But he knew he had not, that he had made no mistake, that it had indeed been Ella he had seen dash away into the darkness on her strange and terrible errand.

“Oh, my daughter,” said Deede Dawson carelessly, noticing Dunn’s surprise.  “Oh, yes, she’s back—­you didn’t expect to see her this morning.  Well, Ella, Dunn’s surprised to see you back so soon, aren’t you, Dunn?”

Dunn did not answer, for a kind of vertigo of horror had come upon him, and for a moment all things revolved about him in a whirling circle wherein the one fixed point was Ella’s gentle lovely face that sometimes, he thought, had a small round hole with blue edges in the very centre of the forehead, above the nose.

It was her voice, clear and a little loud, that called him back to himself.