- Mr. Meadows and me - in the motor. I have to shatter a
pleasant fancy about that chaperonage! That was the only time
Sir Henry was ever with us.

"It came about like this: It was Thursday morning about nine
o'clock, I think, when Sir Henry, popped in at the Ritz. He was
full of some amazing mystery that had turned up at Benton Court,
a country house belonging to the Duke of Dorset, up the Thames
beyond Richmond. He wanted to go there at once. He was fuming
because an under secretary had his motor, and he couldn't catch
up with him.

"I told him he could have `our' motor. He laughed. And I
telephoned Mr. Meadows to come over and take him up. Sir Henry
asked me to go along. So that's how Lady Monteith happened to
see the three of us crowded into the seat of the big roadster."

The girl went on in her deliberate, even voice

"Sir Henry was boiling full of the mystery. He got us all
excited by the time we arrived at Benton Court. I think Mr.
Meadows was as keen about the thing as Sir Henry. They were both
immensely worked up. It was an amazing thing!"

"You see, Benton Court is a little house of the Georgian period.
It has been closed up for ages, and now, all at once, the most
mysterious things began to happen in it.

"A local inspector, a very reliable man named Millson, passing
that way on his bicycle, saw a man lying on the doorstep. He