They reached the study and Quest produced his cigar case.

“Can’t imagine any world that existed before tobacco,” he remarked cheerfully.  “Help yourself, Professor.  It does me good to see you human enough to enjoy a cigar!”

The Professor smiled.

“I never remember to buy any for myself,” he said, “but one of yours is always a treat.  Miss Lenora, I am glad to see, is completely recovered.”

“I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Ashleigh,” Lenora replied.  “I am even forgetting that I ever had nerves.  I have been in the courthouse all the morning, and I even looked curiously at your garage as we drove up.”

“Very good—­very good, my dear!” the Professor murmured.  “At the courthouse, eh?  Were those charming friends of yours from Bethel being tried, Quest?”

Quest nodded.

“Red Gallagher and his mate!  Yes, they got it in the neck, too.”

“Personally,” the Professor exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with appreciation of his own wit, “I think that they ought to have got it round the neck!  However, let us be thankful that they are disposed of.  Their attack upon you, Mr. Quest, introduced rather a curious factor into our troubles.  Even now I find it a little difficult to follow the workings of our friend French’s mind.  It seems hard to believe that he could really have imagined you guilty.”

“French is all right,” Quest declared.  “He fell into the common error of the detective without imagination.”

“What about that unhappy man Craig?” the Professor asked gloomily.  “Isn’t the Durham almost due now?”

Quest took out the cablegram from his pocket and passed it over.  The Professor’s fingers trembled a little as he read it.  He passed it back, however, without immediate comment.

“You see, they have been cleverer over there than we were,” Quest remarked.

“Perhaps,” the Professor assented.  “They seem, at least, to have arrested the man.  Even now I can scarcely believe that it is Craig—­my servant Craig—­who is lying in an English prison.  Do you know that his people have been servants in the Ashleigh family for some hundreds of years?”

Quest was clearly interested.  “Say, I’d like to hear about that!” he exclaimed.  “You know, I’m rather great on heredity, Professor.  What class did he come from then?  Were his people just domestic servants always?”

The Professor’s face was for a moment troubled.  He moved to his desk, rummaged about for a time, and finally produced an ancient volume.

“This really belongs to my brother, Lord Ashleigh,” he explained.  “He brought it over with him to show me some entries concerning which I was interested.  It contains a history of the Hamblin estate since the days of Cromwell, and here in the back, you see, is a list of our farmers, bailiffs and domestic servants.  There was a Craig who was a tenant of the first Lord Ashleigh and fought with him in the Cromwellian Wars as a trooper and since those days, so far as I can see, there has never been a time when there hasn’t been a Craig in the service of our family.  A fine race they seem to have been, until—­”