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Updated: May 24, 2025
John Clive of Ramsdon Place had been injured in an attack made upon him by a gang of ferocious poachers at least a dozen in number but was making good progress towards recovery. Also, he found that Mr. John Clive's visits to Bittermeads had not gone unremarked, or wholly uncriticized, since there was a vague feeling that a Mr. Clive of Ramsdon Place ought to make a better match.
As soon after his departure as possible, Dunn also set out and took his way through the woods towards Ramsdon Place on the look-out for an opportunity to speak to Clive unobserved.
Calculating the direction in which the village of Ramsdon must lie, he turned that way and had gone only a short distance when he was overtaken by a pedestrian with whom he began conversation by asking for a light for his pipe.
Some of these horses were sure to be out in the fields, and it would be easy for him, wasting no time in explanation, to catch one of them, mount bare-backed and ride through the New Plantation the New Plantation was a hundred years old, but still kept that name over the brow of the hill beyond, swim the canal in the valley, and so straight across-country to Ramsdon.
That evening the down train from London deposited at the little country station of Ramsdon but a single passenger, a man of middle height, shabbily dressed, with broad shoulders and long arms and a most unusual breadth and depth of chest.
But though he remained for long hidden at a spot whence he could command the road to Bittermeads from Ramsdon Place, he saw nothing at all of Clive, and the sunny lazy morning was well advanced when he was startled by the sound of a gun shot some distance away.
The man seemed inclined to be conversational, and after a few casual remarks, Dunn made an observation on the length of the wall they were passing and to the end of which they had just come. "Must be a goodish-sized place in there," he said. "Whose is it?" "Oh, that there's Ramsdon Place," the other answered. "Mr. John Clive lives there now his father's dead."
You may be, but I don't think it's likely. Get the motor out and go straight to Wreste Abbey. An attempt on uncle's life will be made tonight, if they still carry out their plans, about dinner-time tonight. See that every possible precaution is taken. See to that first. Then send help as soon as you can to Bittermeads, a house on the outskirts of Ramsdon; any one there will tell you where it is."
Gradually, however, as Dunn held it to the fire, there appeared between the lines fresh writing, which he read very eagerly, and which ran: "Jane Dunsmore, born 1830, married, against family wishes, John Clive and had one son, John, killed early this year in a motor-car accident, leaving one son, John, now of Ramsdon Place and third in line of succession to the Wreste Abbey property."
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