“Perhaps,” said Fritzing, bold in his ignorance of Annalise’s real nature, “she could wash at the pump.  People do, I believe, in the country.  I remember there were always pumps.”

“But do pumps make you clean enough?” inquired the Princess, doubtfully.

“We can try her with one.  I fancy, ma’am, it will be less difficult to find a cottage that has only two bathrooms than one that has three.  And I know there are invariably pumps.”

Searching his memory he could recollect no bathrooms at all, but he did not say so, and silently hoped the best.

To the Somerset village of Symford and to the farm about a mile outside it known as Baker’s, no longer, however, belonging to Baker, but rented by a Mr. Pearce, they journeyed down from Dover without a break.  Nothing alarming happened on the way.  They were at Victoria by five, and the Princess sat joyfully making the acquaintance of a four-wheeler’s inside for twenty minutes during which Fritzing and Annalise got the luggage through the customs.  Fritzing’s goggles and other accessories of flight inspired so much interest in the customs that they could hardly bear to let him go and it seemed as if they would never tire of feeling about in the harmless depths of Priscilla’s neat box.  They had however ultimately to part from him, for never was luggage more innocent; and rattling past Buckingham Palace on the way to Paddington Priscilla blew it a cheerful kiss, symbolic of a happiness too great to bear ill-will.  Later on Windsor Castle would have got one too, if it had not been so dark that she could not see it.  The detective, who felt himself oddly drawn towards the trio, went down into Somersetshire by the same train as they did, but parted from them at Ullerton, the station you get out at when you go to Symford.  He did not consider it necessary to go further; and taking a bedroom at Ullerton in the same little hotel from which Fritzing had ordered the conveyance that was to drive them their last seven miles he went to bed, it being close on midnight, with Mr. Pearce’s address neatly written in his notebook.

This, at present, is the last of the detective.  I will leave him sleeping with a smile on his face, and follow the dog-cart as it drove along that beautiful road between wooded hills that joins Ullerton to Symford, on its way to Baker’s Farm.

At the risk of exhausting Priscilla Fritzing had urged pushing on without a stop, and Priscilla made no objection.  This is how it came about that the ostler attached to the Ullerton Arms found himself driving to Symford in the middle of the night.  He could not recollect ever having done such a thing before, and the memory of it would be quite unlikely to do anything but remain fixed in his mind till his dying day.  Fritzing was a curiously conspicuous fugitive.