of days. Can you take me in?”

 

He caught my elbow in his eagerness and drew me towards the house. “You can lie

as snug here as if you were in a moss-hole. I’ll see that nobody blabs, either.

And you’ll give me some more material about your adventures?”

 

As I entered the inn porch I heard from far off the beat of an engine.

 

There silhouetted against the dusky West was my friend, the monoplane.

 

He gave me a room at the back of the house, with a fine outlook over the

plateau, and he made me free of his own study, which was stacked with cheap

editions of his favourite authors. I never saw the grandmother, so I guessed she

was bedridden. An old woman called Margit brought me my meals, and the innkeeper

was around me at all hours. I wanted some time to myself, so I invented a job

for him. He had a motor bicycle, and I sent him off next morning for the daily

paper, which usually arrived with the post in the late afternoon. I told him to

keep his eyes skinned, and make note of any strange figures he saw, keeping a

special sharp look-out for motors and aeroplanes. Then I sat down in real

earnest to Scudder’s note-book.

 

He came back at midday with the _Scotsman_. There was nothing in it, except some

further evidence of Paddock and the milkman, and a repetition of yesterday’s

statement that the murderer had gone North.