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But Deede Dawson was alert and wary, his pistol never left his hand, he kept so well on his guard he gave Dunn no opening to take him unawares, and Dunn did not wish to run too desperate a chance, since he was sure that sooner or later one giving fair chance of success would present itself.

"Do you want it carried any further?" he asked. "It's very heavy."

"I suppose you mean you're wondering what's in it?" said Deede Dawson sharply.

"It's nothing to me what's in it--silver or anything else," retorted Dunn. "Do you want me to carry it further, that's all I asked?"

"No," answered Deede Dawson. "No, I don't. Do you know, if you knew what was really in it, you'd be surprised?"

"Very likely," answered Dunn. "Why not?"

"Yes, you would be surprised," Deede Dawson repeated, and suddenly shouted into the darkness: "Are you ready? Are you ready there?"

Dunn was very startled, for somehow, he had supposed all along that Deede Dawson was quite alone.

There was no answer to his call, but after a minute or two there was the sound of a motor-car engine starting and then a big car came gliding forward and stopped in front of them, driven by a form so muffled in coats and coverings as to be indistinguishable in that faint light.

"Put the case inside," Deede Dawson said. "I'll help you."

With some trouble they succeeded in getting the case in and Deede Dawson covered it carefully with a big rug.

When he had done so he stepped back.

"Ready, Ella?" he said.

"Yes," answered the girl's soft and low voice that already Dunn could have sworn to amidst a thousand others.

CHAPTER X

THE NEW GARDENER

"Go ahead, then," said Deede Dawson, and the great car with its terrible burden shot away into the night.

For a moment or two Deede Dawson stood looking after it, and then he turned and walked slowly towards the house, and mechanically Dunn followed, the sole thought in his mind, the one idea of which he was conscious, that of Ella driving away into the darkness with the dead body of his murdered friend in the car behind her.

Did she--know? he asked himself. Or was she ignorant of what it was she had with her?

It seemed to him that that question, hammering itself so awfully upon his mind and clamouring for an answer, must soon send him mad.

And still before him floated perpetually a picture of long, dark, lonely roads, of a rushing motor-car driven by a lovely girl, of the awful thing hidden in the car behind her.

Dully he recognized that the opportunity for which he had watched and waited so patiently had come and gone a dozen times, for Deede Dawson had now quite relaxed his former wary care.

It was as though he supposed all danger over, as though in the reaction after an enormous strain he could think of nothing but the immediate relief. He hardly gave a single glance at Dunn, whose faintest movement before had never escaped him. He had even put his pistol back in his pocket, and at almost any moment Dunn, with his unusual strength and agility, could have seized and mastered him.

But for such an enterprise Dunn had no longer any spirit, for all his mind was taken up by that one picture so clear in his thoughts of Ella in her great car driving the dead man through the night. "She must know," he said to himself. "She must, or she would never have gone off like that at that time--she can't know, it's impossible, or she would never have dared."

And again it seemed to him that this doubt was driving him mad.

Deede Dawson entered the house and got a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda-water and mixed himself a drink. For the first time since Ella's departure he seemed to remember Dunn's presence.

"Oh, there you are," he said.

Dunn did not answer. He stood moodily on the threshold, wondering why he did not rush upon the other, and with his knee upon his chest, his hands about his throat, force him to answer the question that was still whispering, shouting, screaming itself into his ears:

"Does she know what it is she drives with her on that big car through the