Coristine came up at the gallop, and reported that all the people he expected to find at the Carruthers' were there, Grinstun man, Mrs. Carmichael, and Marjorie, included, all except Miss Du Plessis, who was staying at a house three miles this side of the farm, helping to nurse a sick neighbour.
"Has Rawdon seen her?" asked the detective. The lawyer did not know, but suggested that they could find out by calling at the house of Mrs. Talfourd, the sick woman, on the way.
"How far are we from it?" enquired Mr. Nash.
"About a mile or a mile and a-half," replied Coristine.
"Then, Mr. Wilkinson, let us stir our stumps a bit. Can you sing or whistle? There's nothing like a good tune to help a quick march."
"Yes; sing up, Wilks," cried The Cavalry; and the dominie started "Onward, Christian Soldiers," in which the others joined, the detective in a soft falsetto, indistinguishable from a half-cultivated woman's voice. He was combining business with pleasure, dissimulation with outward praise.
"Pretty good that for a blooming young lady of five foot ten," remarked Mr. Nash, at the end of the hymn.
"Blooming young ladies with a tonsure," replied Coristine, gazing on the detective's momentarily uncovered head, "are open to suspicion."
"Wait till you see my hair." chuckled the ex-priest.
The mile and a-half was soon covered, and the trio stood before a roomy farm-house. A boy, not unlike Tommy, but better dressed, was swinging on the gate, and him the detective asked if he could see Miss Du Plessis on important business. The boy ran into the house to enquire, and came back to the gate, accompanied by the lady in question. She changed colour as her eye took in The Cavalry, immovable as a life guardsman on sentry. The detective handed her his professional card, and explained that he and his two friends had been entrusted with the duty of protecting her property and herself. "You need have no doubts, Miss Du Plessis, for the Squire, as a J.P., knows me perfectly," he continued.