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His car drew up before the black dates of Chelmsford Jail as the clock was striking seven. He rang the bell and was admitted to a little lobby, whence he was conducted by a warder along a narrow passage out of which opened a door.

The Governor was in his tiny office, alone, for neither the under-Sheriff nor the other officials peculiar to such an occasion had arrived.

"The chaplain is with him now. I hope it isn't going to be very painful for you— I hate these affairs!" Arnold nodded.

"I've been praying all the way down from London that he'd change his mind and wouldn't see me."

The Governor shook his head.

"I don't think that's likely," he said. "The last question he put to me last night was whether you were coming. I told him I'd sent the request to the Home Office, and that I'd had a telegram to say that you would be here this morning."

He rose from his chair, and the detective followed him along the corridor, down two steps, the end of which was barred by a heavy steel door. This the Governor opened, and they were in a large hall, lined on both sides with three tiers of doors. Outside the cell nearest them when they had entered a warder was on duty. The cell door itself was ajar, and a gleam of light showed from the interior.

"Wait," said the Governor, and went into the cell.

Presently he came out and beckoned Long, and, with a heart that beat a little faster, Arnold went into the chamber of death.

Shelton sat on his bed, his hands in his pockets. He was in his shirt-sleeves and colourless. His face was covered with a gray beard, and the detective would not have recognized him.

"Sit down, Long. Give him a chair, will you?"

But Inspector Long stood, waiting— for what?

"I thought I'd see you before I went off."

He took out the cigarette he was smoking and puffed a ring, watching it till it struck the stone roof and was dissipated.

"I've killed four men in my time and never regretted it," he said meditatively. "There was a bank detective in Cape Town, and a bank manager in Bombay. I didn't intend killing this fellow, but the dope I gave him put him out. Then, of course, there was the case in Selby. He trailed me to my houseboat— it was rather a nasty business; you'll find him buried near the two big poplars at Wenham Abbey."

Arnold waited.

"The fourth..." Again Shelton puffed a ring to the ceiling and watched it. "The fourth I will not trouble you about, because it was a singularly unpleasant affair... and rather messy!"

He smiled up at the stern-faced man before him.

"And now I'm going to pay, you think— you're wrong! They will drop me and they will bury me, but I will live! And I will get you, Mr. Betcher Long! I will get every man who brought me to my death!"

Then, seeing the look in the detective's face, he laughed softly.

"You think I'm crazy with the heat! There are things in this world undreamed of in your philosophy, my friend, and the Gallows Hand is one of them!"

His eyes sank to the paved floor and he frowned for a second, then laughed again.

"That is all," he said curtly. "You'll remember that, Mr. Long— the Gallows Hand that will come up from the grave and grip you by the throat sooner or later!"

Long made no reply, and followed the Governor into the big hall.

"What do you make of that?" asked the Deputy, wiping his forehead. He was rather white and shaken. "The Gallows Hand... my God!"

"It won't get me," said Arnold Long, nodding slowly. "And what's more, I'll betcher!"

He did not wait for the end. Just outside Chelmsford is a tiny village with a very old church. He saw the hands approaching the hour, stopped his car, and removed his hat. Suddenly the hour boomed forth, one— two— three— four— five— six— seven— eight.

"God rest the poor gink!" said Betcher Long, for he knew that at that second the soul of Clay Shelton had passed to eternity.

"Gallows Hand!" he mused, and smiled, and at that moment something struck the wind-screen and scattered into fragments.

He jerked the car to a standstill.

Ping!

The second bullet carried away his hat; he felt the wind of the third pass his lips.

In a second he was out of the car, gazing round the placid, smiling countryside. There was nobody in sight, no hedges that could hide an assassin, except-He saw a little hedgerow, above which was a pale vapour of smoke. He sprinted across the meadow which separated him, and as he ran he heard a fourth shot and dropped flat on the ground. No sound of the bullet came to him, and, rising, he continued to run, zigzagging left and right.

Then he saw something that brought his heart to his mouth. Rising above the grasses near the hedgerow was a great white hand, its stiff fingers convulsively clutching at nothingness.

In a second he had reached the spot. A man lay on his back, his hand thrown up to the smiling sky. By his side was a service rifle which the other hand clutched in the grip of death.

And then Arnold saw the face.

It was Harry the Lancer, and he was dead!

Chapter 5

HARRY THE LANCER! Arnold Long stared down into the gray face, almost unable to believe the evidence of his eyes. A brief examination showed the cause of the convict's death. He had been shot at close quarters from behind. Betcher picked up the rifle: the barrel was still hot, and there was a live cartridge in the chamber.

A few yards away was the hedge, and beyond this he discovered a steep bank leading down to a sunken road. There was no sign of life here, but the narrow road twisted out of sight fifty yards beyond, and there were wheel tracks on the white dust. He climbed the bank again to where the body lay, and was stooping when he heard the "pop-pop" of a motor-cycle, and caught a glimpse of the leather-covered head of its rider.

He was going along the road where the detective had left his car, and, raising himself, Long signalled the rider to stop. The man, whoever he was, must have seen him, but he did not arrest his speed, though he seemed to slacken a second as he came abreast of the car. In a few seconds, he was out of sight behind the alders that fringed the road.

The detective looked round for help The shots must have been heard. And then he saw in the distance a black barn which seemed peculiarly familiar, and he remembered that it was at this spot on the road that he had seen the Lancer that morning.

There was nothing for it but to drive into the nearest village and procure help. He was more than halfway across the field when he saw a bright, straight tongue of flame leap up from the place where he had stopped his car; there was a deafening explosion, and in a second the air was filled with scraps of flying wood and metal.

Betcher stood still, paralyzed by the shock, and then, sprinting the remainder of the distance, he leapt over the low hedge into the road. His car was a mass of twisted metal and smouldering wood; and then, by great luck, a cyclist policeman came along. He had heard the explosion and, bending over his handlebars, was flying toward the spot. He leapt off his machine as he came abreast of Arnold.

"What's happened to your car— blown up?"

"It has certainly blown up," said Betcher grimly; "and as certainly I am not troubling to look for the bomb that did it!"

"Bomb?" gasped the rural policeman.

The question of his wrecked machine was an unimportant one to Betcher Long. In a few words, he explained the tragedy and guided the policeman to the spot where the man lay.

"There are car marks in the sunken road," said Betcher, "but unless we have an airplane, I doubt whether we can overtake the two gentlemen responsible for this little surprise."

It was five o'clock that night when he came to the Yard and reported, and Colonel Macfarlane listened with a darkened brow.

"The whole thing is inexplicable and, I would have said, impossible," he said. "Shelton was hanged at eight, and there is no doubt about his being dead. You were unable to trace the motor-cyclist or the car?"

Betcher shook his head.

"No, sir, neither the car nor the bomb-thrower was seen, but that is very easily explained. The car could have turned right and doubled back, joining the main road west of Chelmsford. The only machine that passed through the village was a tradesman's Ford, evidently a greengrocer's, for there were baskets of cabbages and potatoes at the back. The cyclist— well, I know what happened to the cyclist. I want to be mysterious for a week or two. Chief, we're up against the Terrible People!"

Macfarlane frowned at him.

"I don't quite get you," he said. "Shelton worked on his own. He ran no gang, he had no friends. And certainly, as far as we know, there is nobody in the world sufficiently interested in the man's fate to care whether he lived or died."

Betcher bit his lip thoughtfully.

"All that is true," he said, "and yet— well, I'm standing for no Gallows Hand; that supernatural stuff doesn't get past me, not by so much as a millimetre! There's going to be trouble— bad trouble! I don't know where it's coming from, but it will be hot and fierce and gory.

The Terrible People will not sit still. They employed the Lancer, knowing he was a pretty good shot, to settle me on my way back from Chelmsford; and he was easy, because he hated me. When they found he'd missed the target, they shot him. If he hadn't missed the target they would have shot him. He was marked for death the moment he took on his dirty work. "

In the months that followed, Betcher Long found a new zest and interest in life. The knowledge of his own danger, the certainty that somewhere behind this lonely forger existed an organization more terrible than any that he had met with or even had read about in the grisly records of police headquarters, gave his step a new spring and brought a new brightness to his eye.

He had trailed the Lancer from the moment he had left Dartmoor; had interrogated the people with whom the convict had been brought into touch; and at every turn he was puzzled. None of the Lancer's acquaintances could give him the slightest clue that would lead to the detection of his employers.

The year that followed was one of fearful happenings. Murder upon murder was planned and carried into execution, and yet no word of these deeds appeared in any newspaper. Only the wise men in that dark building that broods on the Embankment knew of the terror that stalked abroad. Men, famous and notorious, were sent into the vales of death, and no startling headlines dominated the news pages of the London press.

For the Gallows Hand went cunningly to its task and left no trace of its devilish work.

And then, fate brought to Arnold Long's life an even more poignant interest, and, as it proved, a cause for a fear that had been a stranger to him hitherto. For he met the secretary of Miss Revelstoke.

Chapter 6

MISS REVELSTOKE was a lady of great age and with few observable fads. She garnished neither her parlour with long-haired dogs of diminutive proportions, nor her person with cameo brooches. She preferred radio concerts to solitaire, and never bought a car until the demonstrator had proved to her satisfaction that the machine could hold the road at sixty-five. A tall woman with a lineless yellow face and black, inscrutable eyes, she had, so far as Nora Sanders knew, no objectionable characteristics, which is remarkable in any lady of wealth who employs a companion-secretary.

The big house in Colville Gardens was from every point of view a perfect setting for such a jewel of a woman. Externally it symbolized Victorianism at its stodgiest phase, for there was a sunken area to it and a stolid stucco porch and step that led up to a highly polished black door. The liver-coloured curtains, the flower boxes in the window sills, the two tubs of well-trimmed box-bush that flanked the doorway— all these things fitted the external view of Miss Revelstoke.

The superficial observer imagined horsehair couches of elegant design and gilt pier glasses and rosy-patterned carpets beyond and behind the baffling curtains. Intimately, Miss Revelstoke belonged to the age in which she lived. Even Nora's room was artistically and tastefully furnished, which was also an unusual experience for a companion-secretary who had slept under garret roofs and had once shared a room with a sentimental housemaid.

One day in midsummer, Miss Revelstoke sat at her little writing table and penned an address in her neat hand, damped the small label with a sponge, and fixed it carefully on the oblong parcel.

"You will find Mr. Monkford a very amusing person," she said, in her precise way; "he has the facetiousness which is peculiar to men of his stature. Stout men are invariably humorous. Even as a branch manager, he erred on the side of flippancy, which, as a rule, is not an asset in a banker. The parcel is rather heavy for you?"

Nora lifted the package. It was lighter in weight than she had expected.

"He will probably ask you to stay to tea. I dine at nine, half an hour later. Mr. Henry is coming to dinner, and I feel sure he will never forgive me if you are not here."

The girl laughed at this. It was a tradition, the nearest to a jest that Miss Revelstoke could approach, that Nora was the reason, whatever might be his excuse, for frequent calls of Miss Revelstoke's good-looking young lawyer.

"Tell Monkford that he need not write— he is very welcome to this horrid negress. I shall be seeing him at 'Little Heartsease' next week. You booked the suite?"

A taxicab carried Nora to Paddington and to the beginning of a new and an amazing experience. Life began when she bought a third-class return for Marlow-on-Thames, since, at the end of the line, and within the confines of that sleepy Georgian town, began her acquaintance with the Terrible People and Betcher Long, that unusual detective.

For her part, "terrible people" would have been illustrated in her mind by a picture of uncouth folks who ate with their knives, or that impossible family she had met on a trip to the fjords, or at worst the bookmaker and his lady wife (one hopes) who lived at No. 705 and came home noisily every morning at three and argued thickly with the cabman.

For the Terrible People were as yet in the stage of secrecy; they were mentioned in confidential minutes, as between the Secretary of State and the Chief Commissioner of the Police. Only Betcher Long spoke of them freely, even cheerfully, just as a man might speak of a plague which happened to be in another country. He gave them their title; though in the guarded minutes that went criss-crossing between Whitehall and Scotland Yard were heard "Very Secret and Confidential. Re a Supposed Illegal Organization Operating to Defeat the Ends of Justice."