Pegge looked with equal closeness at his questioner.
“That German gentleman that’s staying with our missis!” he answered.
“Baron von Eckhardstein?”
“That’s him! The Baron we calls him.”
“You’re absolutely certain of this, Pegge?”
“Take my dying oath of it!” asserted Pegge.
Blick refilled and lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence for a minute or two.
“Well,” he said at last, “where did he go?”
“Went a few yards down the drive, and then turned into a path that goes through the shrubberies towards the main road,” replied Pegge. “It comes out into the main road very nearly opposite the cottages, just beyond this place—the Sceptre. There’s a little iron swing-gate in the holly-hedge—you’ll maybe have noticed it? He’d come on to the road through that—about two hundred yards from here.”
“And you say that was at about a quarter to two, Tuesday morning?”