"YOU'RE a bright sort of friend, Entwistle," was Peter's greeting. "Pushing off with young Farrar and leaving me in solitary contemplation of our host's library. Well, did you get any very important information?"
Entwistle groaned in mock dismay.
"Another of them!" he exclaimed dismally. "Bless my soul, Barcroft, have I to let you into the know, too?"
"You came a cropper once when you didn't take me into your confidence——"
"Don't rub it in," protested the Secret Service man. "I'll cry peccavi. But to return to our original subject. To be brief, young Farrar knocked over my bird. The fellow he shot is von Gobendorff. I've arranged for the man to be moved to Trebalda to-night. Meanwhile—and this is where you come in handy, Peter—Farrar and I are off to complete the coup, and I want you to cover our tracks."
The promise given, Entwistle's spirits rose, when at length, at about four in the afternoon, he bade his host farewell, Barcroft casually suggested that perhaps Farrar would like to walk part of the way with him.
"I'd go myself," added Peter, "only this confounded ankle of mine—an old injury, you know. Besides, Greenwood, we've got a lot to talk about old times."
Farrar and his companion kept along the Trebalda road until they were quite half a mile from the village of Penkestle, then making a considerable detour, they found themselves on the open moor, and roughly three miles N.W. of Broad Tor.
"Here's the spot," said Entwistle, unfolding a large-scale Ordnance map, during a halt made in order to charge and light pipes. "The cottage is shown—about fifty yards from the shaft of a disused copper mine. Whether the two suspects are deliberate traitors to their country, or whether they are unwillingly the tools of the unscrupulous von Gobendorff, remains to be proved; but they are tough characters, so we must be prepared for strong action."
Keeping to the low-lying ground as far as possible, the two men stealthily approached the stone cottage, until it lay revealed at a distance of about a hundred yards. That it was not deserted was evident by a wreath of pale-grey smoke rising into the still air, while tethered to a ring in its stonework was a small, sturdily-built Cornish pony, with a pair of panniers slung across its back.