"'If you see Mr. Conniston,' she said, 'tell him that I have gone to investigate the value of the Secret.' I don't know what she meant—"
"She said that!" cried Conniston, his face going white.
"But she's all right," Billy Jordan hastened to add. "She's back now."
"You saw her?"
"No." He shook his head. "But I saw the horse she was riding. Just noticed him tied to the back fence as I came in."
Again Conniston hurried to the cottage. Mrs. Ridley was upon the porch.
"Miss Crawford is back?" he called to her from the street.
She shook her head.
"Not yet. Ain't you—"
He did not wait to listen. Running now, he came to the little back yard, and to a tall bay horse, saddled and bridled, standing quietly at the fence. At first glance he thought, as Billy Jordan had thought, that the animal was tied there. And then he saw that the bridle-reins were upon the ground, that they had been trampled upon and broken, that the two stirrups were hanging upside down in the stirrup leathers as stirrups are likely to do when a saddled horse has been running riderless.