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They were all strangers, the man at the wheel and the two women in the rear seat, although he felt there was something quite familiar about the grey-haired woman sitting nearest him.

“Is this where the Bards live?” she asked a little nervously. She was a small-bodied woman of perhaps fifty with very fine features, and clear, blue eyes that smiled pleasantly through rimless spectacles and the fawn motor veil that covered her face.

“Yes,” Mauney replied, gazing curiously at her, and then at the others.

The man, chewing the end of an unlighted cigar, looked at the house with a frown and then glancing backward said in a low tone:

“Well, suit yourself, Mary. You might regret it if you didn’t.”

The woman, presumably his wife, looked with an undecided expression toward the house, as if she feared it.

“Is your name Bard, please?” she asked, raising her veil, and minutely inspecting Mauney’s face.

“Yes,” he said, glancing again at the others.

“He looks the dead image of her!” the other woman remarked prosaically to the man.