There was no sign of her.

Until six o’clock he waited, when, in blank despair, he mounted beside Mead again and drove back to Shapley Manor.  It was curious that Dorise had not come to meet him, but he attributed it to The Sparrow’s inability to convey a message to her.  She might have gone out of town with her mother, he thought.  Or, perhaps, at the last moment, she had been unable to get away.

On his return to Shapley he found Louise and Mrs. Bond sitting together in the charming, old-world drawing-room.  A log fire was burning brightly.

“Did you have a nice run, Hugh?” asked the girl, clasping her hands behind her head and looking up at him as he stood upon the pale-blue hearthrug.

“Quite,” he replied.  “I went around Hindhead down to Frensham Ponds and back through Farnham—­quite a pleasant run.”

“Mr. Benton has had to go to town,” said his hostess.  “Almost as soon as you had gone he was rung up, and he had to get a taxi out from Guildford.  He’ll be back to-morrow.”

“Oh, yes—­and, by the way, Hugh,” exclaimed Louise, “there was a call for you about a quarter of an hour afterwards.  I thought nobody knew you were down here.”

“For me!” gasped Henfrey, instantly alarmed.

“Yes, I answered the ’phone.  It was a girl’s voice!”

“A girl!  Who?”

“I don’t know who she was.  She wouldn’t give her name,” Louise replied.  “She asked if we were Shapley, and I replied.  Then she asked for you.  I told her that you were out in the car and asked her name.  But she said it didn’t matter at all, and rang off.”

“I wonder who she was?” remarked Hugh, much puzzled and, at the same time, greatly alarmed.  He scented danger.  The fact in itself showed that somebody knew the secret of his hiding-place, and, if they did, then the police were bound to discover him sooner or later.

Half an hour afterwards he took Mrs. Bond aside, and pointed out the peril in which he was placed.  His hostess, on her part, grew alarmed, for though Hugh was unaware of it, she had no desire to meet the police.  That little affair in Paris was by no means forgotten.

“It is certainly rather curious,” the woman admitted.  “Evidently it is known by somebody that you are staying with me.  Don’t you think it would be wiser to leave?”

Hugh hesitated.  He wished to take Benton’s advice, and told his hostess so.  With this she agreed, yet she was inwardly highly nervous at the situation.  Any police inquiry at Shapley would certainly be most unwelcome to her, and she blamed herself for agreeing to Benton’s proposal that Hugh should stay there.

“Benton will be back to-morrow,” Hugh said.  “Do you think it safe for me to remain here till then?” he added anxiously.

“I hardly know what to think,” replied the woman.  She herself had a haunting dread of recognition as Molly Maxwell.  She had crossed and recrossed the Atlantic, carefully covering her tracks, and she did not intend to be cornered at last.