"And it's now eleven. Yes, we must hurry. Bradley Rymer's house! So that's where they are."
He hurried away. But before he had changed his clothes a great touring motor-car whirred and stopped in front of the door. When we went out on to the steps of the house there were four constables waiting. We climbed into the car, and the hilly road to Streatley, which had taken me so long and painful a time to traverse, now rose and fell beneath the broad wheels like the waves of a sea. At Streatley we turned uphill along the Aldworth Road, and felt the fresh wind of the downland upon our faces. Then for the first time upon the journey I spoke.
"You know these men?" I asked of Captain Bowyer.
"I know of them," he answered, and he bent forwards to me. "With all these kings and emperors in London for the funeral, of course a great many precautions were taken on the Continent. All the known Anarchists were marked down; most of them on some excuse or another were arrested. But three slipped through the net and reached England."
"But they would be in London," I urged.
"So you would think. We were warned to-day, however, that they had been traced into Berkshire and there lost sight of."
A hundred questions rose to my lips, but I did not put them. We were all in the dark together.
"That's the house," I said at length, and Captain Bowyer touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.
"We'll stop, then, by the road."
Very quietly we got out of the car and crept up the hill. The night was dark; only here and there in a chink of the clouds a star shone feebly. Down in the village a dog barked and the wind whistled amongst the grasses under our feet. We met no one. The lodge at the gates was dark; we could not see the house itself, but a glare striking upon the higher branches of the trees in the garden showed that a room was brightly lit.