“Yes, sir.” Donovan’s hand went to his helmet. “I thought I might get you, Sergeant Brady, as you said you’d drop around about this time.”
“Something doing?”
“Yes, sir, the same old job.”
“The devil you say! Have you seen no one, nor heard anything?”
“Not a soul, sir, nor a sound,” Donovan declared, approaching the gate. “Faith, I think my eyes and ears have gone to the bad. I was round here twenty minutes ago. The padlock then was on the gate, and this thread, tied so that the gate could not be opened without breaking it, was just as I had fixed it. It’s a cinch, now, that this is the gate the rascals have been using. The chief thought, you know, that the padlock might have been taken off only for a blind. The breaking of the thread settles it.”
“That’s a clever scheme, Jim,” Brady said approvingly. “Yes, yes, undoubtedly that’s the gate. Another woman, you say?”
“Yes, sir, and on the same iron seat.”
“I’ll have a look at her.”
“This way, sergeant.”
“The fourth in a fortnight.” Brady spoke with a growl while he and his companion strode across the lawn. “I don’t understand it. I’ll be hanged, Jim, if I can make head or tail to a mystery of this kind. I don’t see why it’s done, or who could quit a winner.”