Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/200

192 ran between the common and the side of the grounds most suitable to philanthropic enterprise. The lane ran from the main road through a wood—that side of the common was wooded—and there was excellent cover right up to the hedge of the Manor-house grounds.

In the letter of the fourth day she said that she had seen Mrs. Jubb, "a loathsome, bloated creature," and she was walking, accompanied by a pack of small dogs, along a path through a shrubbery of deodoras and Wellingtonias which would afford half a dozen good hiding-places from which to spring out upon her. Angel advised us to use bicycles and not a motor-car; for motor-cars had not, curiously enough, yet become common objects by the wayside in that part of the country, and would arrest attention.

In the letters of the fifth and sixth days she said that she had again seen Mrs. Jubb, and on both occasions walking along the same path. This information seemed very good, and we made ready to travel down to Hardstone and set about the business directly Angel summoned us. Bottiger procured from his brilliant but drunken doctor an anæsthetic which took effect quicker than plain chloroform. But when it came to drawing lots for the anæsthetist, Chelubai would not let me draw, and Bottiger backed him up, on the ground that as the holder of Marmaduke Jubb's note of