“He ought to be in bed, anyhow,” responded Ailsa gaily; and then, this giving the conversation a merry turn, they talked and laughed and kept up such a chatter that three-quarters of an hour went like magic and nobody seemed aware of it.  But suddenly Ailsa thought, and then put her thoughts into words.

“What a long time we are in getting home,” she said, and bent forward so that the light from the window might fall upon the dial of her wrist watch, then gave a little startled cry and half rose from her seat.  For the darkness was now tempered by moonlight, and she could see that they were no longer in the populous districts of the town, but were speeding along past woodlands and open fields in the very depths of the country.  “Good gracious!  Johnston must have lost his senses!” she exclaimed agitatedly.  “Look where we are, Captain Hawksley!—­out in the country with only a farmhouse or two in sight.  Johnston!  Johnston!” She bent forward and rapped wildly on the glass panel.  “Johnston, stop!—­turn round!—­are you out of your head?  Captain Hawksley, stop him—­stop him for pity’s sake!”

“Sit down, Miss Lorne.”  He made reply in a low, level voice, a voice in which there was something that made her pluck the child to her and hold him right to her breast.  “You are not going home to-night.  You are going for a ride with me; and if—­Oh, that’s your little game, is it?” lurching forward as she made a frantic clutch at the handle of the door.  “Sit down, do you hear me?—­or it will be worse for you!  There!”—­the cold bore of a revolver barrel touched her temple and wrung a quaking gasp of terror from her—­“Do you feel that?  Now you sit down and be quiet!  If you make a single move, utter a single cry, I’ll blow your brains out before you’ve half finished it.  Look here, do you know who you’re dealing with now?  See!”

His hand reached up and twitched away the fair beard and moustache; he bent forward so that the moonlight through the glass could fall on his face.  It had changed as his voice had now changed, and she saw that she was looking at the man who in those other days of stress and trial had posed as “Gaston Merode,” brother to the fictitious “Countess de la Tour.”

“You!” she said in a bleak voice of desolation and fright.  “Dear heaven, that horrible Margot’s confederate, the King of the Apaches!”

“Yes!” he rapped out.  “You and that fellow Cleek came between us in one promising game, but I’m hanged if you shall do it in this one!  I want this boy, and—­I’ve got him.  Now, you call off Cleek and tell him to drop this case—­to make no effort to follow us or to come between us and the kid—­or I’ll slit your throat after I’ve done with his little lordship here.  Lanisterre!”—­to the chauffeur—­“Lanisterre, do you hear?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Give her her head—­full speed—­and get to the mill as fast as you can.  Margot will be with us in another two hours’ time.”