Riding thus direct he would save time and distance, and arrive more quickly than by going the necessary distance to secure a motor-car which would have also to take a much more circuitous route.

He jumped the hedge, therefore, that lay at the wood’s edge and slid down the steep bank into the sunken road beyond where he found himself standing in front of Walter, who held in his hands a gun levelled straight at Rupert’s heart.

“I could have shot you time after time in there you know,” he said quietly.  “From behind that bush and from out of the bracken, too.  I don’t know why I didn’t.  I suppose it wasn’t worth while, now I shall never be Lord Chobham.”

He flung down his gun as he spoke and sprang on a bicycle that he had held leaning against his legs.

Quickly he sped away, leaving Rupert standing staring after him, realizing that his life had hung upon the bending of Walter’s finger, and that Walter, with at least two cold-blooded murders to his account, or little more to hope for in this world or the next, had now inexplicably spared him for whose destruction, of life and honour alike, he had a little before been laying such elaborate, hellish plans.

With a gesture of his hands that proved he failed to understand, Rupert ran on and crossed a field to where he saw some horses grazing.

One he knew immediately for one of his father’s mares, and he knew her also for an animal of speed and endurance.

The mare knew him, too, and suffered him to mount her without difficulty, and without a soul on the farm being aware of what was happening and without having to waste any precious time on explanations or declaring his identity, Rupert rode away, sitting the mare bare-backed, through the New Plantation towards Bittermeads, where he hoped, arriving unexpectedly, to be able to save Ella before the danger he was sure threatened her came to a head.

Of one thing he was certain.  Deede Dawson would never do what his companion in villainy had just done, he would spare no one; fierce, malignant and evil to the last, his one thought if he knew they had and vengeance approached would be to do what harm he could before the end.

CHAPTER XXVIII

BACK AT BITTERMEADS

When, riding fast, Rupert Dunsmore came in sight of Bittermeads he experienced a feeling of extreme relief.  Though what he had feared he did not quite know, for he did not see that any alarm could have reached here yet or any hint come to Deede Dawson of the failure of all his plotting.

Even if Walter had had the idea of returning to give his accomplice warning, he could not have come by the road on his bicycle as quickly as Rupert had ridden across country.  And that Walter would spend either time or thought on Deede Dawson did not appear in any way probable.

To Rupert, therefore, it seemed certain that Deede Dawson could know nothing as yet.  But all the same it was an immense relief to see the house again and to know that in a few moments he would be there.