There was a little awed murmur.  Dominey’s voice had become quite matter of fact.

“I suppose,” he continued, “his first idea was to revenge himself upon us and this household, by whom he imagined himself badly treated.  The man, however, was half a madman when he came to the neighbourhood and has behaved like one ever since.—­Johnson,” Dominey continued, singling out a sturdy footman with sound common sense, “get ready to take this creature into Norwich Hospital.  Say that if I do not come in during the day, a letter of explanation will follow from me.  The rest of you, with the exception of Parkins, please go to bed.”

With little exclamations of wonder they began to disperse.  Then one of them paused and pointed across the park.  Moving with incredible swiftness came the gaunt, black figure of Rachael Unthank, swaying sometimes on her feet, yet in their midst before they could realise it.  She staggered to the prostrate body and threw herself upon her knees.  Her hands rested upon the unseen face, her eyes glared across at Dominey.

“So you’ve got him at last!” she gasped.

“Mrs. Unthank,” Dominey said sternly, “you are in time to accompany your son to the hospital at Norwich.  The car will be here in two minutes.  I have nothing to say to you.  Your own conscience should be sufficient punishment for keeping that poor creature alive in such a fashion and ministering during my absence to his accursed desire for vengeance.”

“He would have died if I hadn’t brought him food,” she muttered.  “I have wept all the tears a woman’s broken heart could wring out, beseeching him to come back to me.”

“Yet,” Dominey insisted, “you shared his foul plot for vengeance against a harmless woman.  You let him come and make his ghoulish noises, night by night, under these windows, without a word of remonstrance.  You knew very well what their accursed object was—­you, with a delicate woman in your charge who trusted you.  You are an evil pair, but of the two you are worse than your half-witted son.”

The woman made no reply.  She was still on her knees, bending over the prostrate figure, from whose lips now came a faint moaning.  Then the lights of the car flashed out as it left the garage, passed through the iron gates and drew up a few yards away.

“Help him in,” Dominey ordered.  “You can loosen his cords, Johnson, as soon as you have started.  He has very little strength.  Tell them at the hospital I shall probably be there during the day, or to-morrow.”

With a little shiver the two men stooped to their task.  Their prisoner muttered to himself all the time, but made no resistance.  Rachael Unthank, as she stepped in to take her place by his side, turned once more to Dominey.  She was a broken woman.

“You’re rid of us,” she sobbed, “perhaps forever.—­You’ve said harsh things of both of us.  Roger isn’t always—­so bad.  Sometimes he’s more gentle than at others.  You’d have thought then that he was just a baby, living there for love of the wind and the trees and the birds.  If he comes to—­”