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He expressed himself fully satisfied, but urged me to continue my investigations regarding the handsome wife of the Marchese. "Be careful how you act," he added. "If they suspected you of prying something disagreeable might happen to you." I was not surprised at his warning, for I knew the character of some of the international crooks who were Rayne's "friends."
The household at Overstow was certainly a strange and incongruous one, consisting as it did of persons who seemed all in league with each other, the master-criminal whose shrewd, steel-grey eyes were so uncanny, and his accomplices and underlings who all profited and grew fat upon the great coups planned by Rayne's amazing mind.
She was eating some peaches, tearing them apart from the stone with strong, juice-dropping fingers, and dipping them in a saucer of coarse sugar before she devoured them. "Mrs. Libby, who is Agnes Rayne?" I asked. "She is old Martin Rayne's daughter, up to the corner. Seen her down to the beach, I expect. Speak to you? Did? Well, she's as queer as Dick's hat-band, as folks say 'round here.
One day, on entering Rayne's study, I found him in conversation with a tall, dark, fashionably dressed foreign woman Spanish, I believed her to be. As I went in unexpectedly she seemed to have risen and assumed a fierce defiant attitude, while he, seated at his writing-table, was smoking one of his favorite expensive cigars and contemplating her with amusement.
The devilish cunning of Rudolph Rayne was indeed well illustrated by the clever trap which he had set for me by the instrumentality of that pretty woman-thief, Betty Tressider, who called herself Lady Lydbrook. I now realized by Rayne's overbearing attitude that he had, by a ruse, succeeded in his object in compelling me to become an active accomplice of the gang.
The road to Chard, which crosses St Rayne's and Windwhistle Hills, is a breezy highway, and affords an extensive prospect. Cricket Malherbie, a parish 3 m. N.E. of Chard. The church is a handsome modern building with a spire. Cricket St Thomas, 3-1/2 m. E. of Chard, is a parish with a small church charmingly situated above a valley through which flows the Dorset Axe.
Christmas day was unusually gloomy at Mr Rayne's this year, but it was quite a voluntary stillness, that reigned there; no one felt gay, or happy, while the loved master of the house was so low.
She drew over a tiny footstool and sat upon it, and nestled her head on the arm of Henry Rayne's chair. Lovingly he stole his trembling hand over it, and as he toyed with her graceful curls, he began to tell her his little secrets "Honor, you've been going out a great deal of late," he began, "Oh, don't lecture me for always being out late," she interrupted, provokingly.
But mind and keep your mouth shut very tightly." And with that he drew from his pockets a pair of thin surgical rubber gloves, both of which were blood-stained, and hurriedly threw them into the fire. On the following evening about six o'clock I was alone in Rayne's chambers when the evening newspaper was, as usual, pushed through the letter-box.
I was walking back along the passage when Rayne's pretty daughter Lola came out of the room I had first entered. She must have come out expressly to meet me, because when close to me she stopped abruptly, glanced to right and left, and then asked me quickly in an undertone: "Is my father sending you on any journey, Mr. Hargreave?"
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