"So that's it! But are you sure?" asked Dollar, though he wanted to ask if that was all.
"Certain. I met a flaming brace of 'em on bicycles, just outside my boundary. This is what I was to get for speaking out about them the other night."
"I don't see their literature, and I can't smell their paraffin."
"It's in that bottle on the mantelpiece. Something must have scared them at the last moment—all but one sportswoman."
"What about her?"
"I've got her," said Dale-Bulmer, with sepulchral excitement.
"Got her prisoner?"
"I should hope so! Why, I caught her on the very point of setting fire to that very heap of shavings—and me without a hose-pipe in the house! Those are her matches on the floor; she wasn't going to turn tail till she'd done her job—and didn't till I nearly trod on it! You could hardly expect me to bow her out of the front door after that!"
Dollar could only stare into the jovial face wreathed in rubicund grins, but no longer free from a certain serio-comic compunction and concern.
"But, my dear sir——"