Ambrotox and Limping Dick

whose eastern branch runs to the coast some thirty miles away, there stands,

urday, June the twenty-first, there drew

tle man with kindly eyes and a

ravelling all night, sir,

ick Bellamy. "I want a h

the landlord waved his

less they've growed in the night-just a low stone house with a bit of a copse back o't. Mr.

er?" ask

district, and never drew tooth in his life. Just drives round so free, takin'

but I'll pay you five shillings a day. I want some f

om his notebook, demanded an envelope, addressed it, and

ost this?"

quarter mile back,

if you'll take

But there's no st

ut," said Dick

wn his kni

rd. "Then you'd better take pa

. Though besieged still by the fear which had haunted him throughout the night, he found comfort, however indefi

reach Scotland Yard in time to bring help in the immediate danger which he foresaw-danger which he would never have run the risk of bringing upon Amaryllis Caldegard but for his conviction of that worse peril threatening her. He was, indeed, s

s" had described: a long, low stone house of two stories, facing south-west; windows neatly curtained, and fitted-an exotic touch-with persiennes; gravelled walks and smooth grass plots, a tree or two, shrubs

common these houses were; in many parts of England he had seen them, grinning,

leer at you through a f

m the road was a patch of colour: a woman's garden hat, bound with an

he turned from the ho

the north-east, but encroached on its eastern side so as to intervene wi

dside, he scrambled down the steep bank. Soon he was among the trees, making his way to the left towards the rear of "The Myrtles." Bushes and tree-trunks

ussa scout, and, once in shelter of the stones, was not long in finding a crev

lid gaped to show the mouthful it could not swallow; a coal-shed from whose door, hanging by one hinge, a blackened track led across the dying grass to a door sta

door tem

f her room! For that Amaryllis was in t

. They would lodge-imprison her at the back, and surely on the upper floor. But even that, on this

lery door and try his luck when, from the third window fr

second, over the roof of the scullery; and the third had beneath i

ive a moment's finger-hold before dropping to earth. But the fall between shoes and ground would be so

ng get even the moment's grasp of

a safe room

s slowly raised until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their fingers under the frame straining to force

a signal above the edge of his c

an empty japanned bucket, was hurrying from the

ired, savage-faced little woman muttering to herself as she scraped and shovelled. He coul

o skivvy in the house this week." And he rem

d, straightened her back, and glan

standing a few yards from the house, shook her fists furiously, pouring out a stream of abuse and threats of which hardly an articulate word reach

attering of coal-shovel and fire-grate told him she had not yet s

ay, and enabled him to bring his eyes above the sill of the window, whi

te. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals, and was now lighting

intense curiosity, his head held horizontally, so that one eye only topped the lower

ittle lumps of coal and drop them in the hottest crevices among t

hat it was of Amaryllis that this l

him, Dick Bellamy, she must be, in what was

n layer of small coal over all. Next she spread a doubled sheet of newsp

ch lay on the further side of the hearth. She now lifted it, holding high, with a finger and thumb pinching ea

its iridescence of interwoven colours, chasing each other as the garment wa

pal. And again, as she ran with that letter to her bedroom, crimson, purple, peacock blu

pushed a fold of the silk into her mouth, and pulled with hands and tore with te

down on the coals, lifted the paper tray of fuel from the floor, laid it in the grate over the

hed Dick's last sh

e on its top, set his right foot on the inside knob of the handle, raised his