By this time my teeth were clenched as if in the throes of lockjaw.  Had I paused to think for a single instant, all my nerve would have oozed away.  But I had no time to spend on thought; I had to work on, to save Miss Falconer.  The whole ghoulish business would be futile if the inn servants found the body.  The mere flight of all the guests would certainly stir suspicion; let the murder transpire as well, and at once we should be pursued.

The garage, from the looks of it, was not often put to service.  A dusty spot, festooned with cobwebs, it cried to the skies for brooms and mops.  In the background, apparently undisturbed since the days of the First Empire, a great pile of straw mixed with junk of various kinds lay against the wall; and most reluctantly, my every fiber shrieking protest, I saw what use I might make of this debris—­if I could.

“Go for it!” I told myself inexorably, but miserably.  “It’s not a question of liking it, you know.  You’ve got to do it.”  Grimly I wrapped my discarded clothes about the poor chap’s body, dragged it to the straw, and covered it from head to foot.  By this action, I surmised, I was rendering myself a probable accessory and a certain suspect; but the one thing I really cared about was my last glimpse of that patient face.

“Sorry, old man,” was all the apology I could muster.  “And if I ever get a chance at the people who did it, you can count on me!”

With a sigh of complete exhaustion, I rose and looked about.  All signs of the crime had been obliterated from the garage.  “I must be crazy!” I thought, as the enormity of the thing rushed on me.  “I wonder why I did it?  And I wonder whether I can forget it some day—­maybe after twenty years?”

As I opened the door to the garden the dim light was growing clearer.  I was late; the girl, coated and hatted, ready for flitting, was already at the rendezvous.  At sight of me in my leather togs she started backward; then, resolutely controlled, she drew herself up and faced me silently, her hands clutching at her furs, her lips a little apart.

“Won’t you sit down?” I began lamely, indicating an iron bench.  It was all so different from the interview I had planned last night!  “I want to speak to you about your chauffeur, Miss Falconer.  This morning I found him hurt—­very badly hurt—­”

She drove straight through my pretense.

“Not dead?  Oh, Mr. Bayne, not dead?”

“Yes,” I said gently.  “He had been dead some time.  I would have liked to take my chances with him; but I came too late.  No, please!” She had moved forward, and I was barring her passage.  “You mustn’t go.  You can’t help him, and you wouldn’t like the sight.”

How black her eyes were in her white face!

“I don’t understand,” she faltered.  “You mean that he was murdered?  But who would have killed Georges?”

“The men who came last night—­if you can call them men.  At least, appearances point that way,” I said.