“I’m going,” said Henry. He continued to hold Jane’s hand and appeared immovable. Jane could of course have taken her hand away and left the cupboard, but this did not occur to her till afterwards.
Quite suddenly Henry kissed her wrist, and a piece of the red flannel cuff. The next minute he was really gone. Perhaps it had occurred to him that he was a chaperon.
Jane lay awake for a long time.
Henry went away by an early train, and Jane came down to what, as a child, she had once described as a crumpled kind of day. She remembered “darling Jimmy” looking at her in a vague way, and saying in his gentle, cultivated voice:
“Crumpled, my dear Jane? What do you mean by crumpled?”
And Jane, frowning and direct:
“I mean a thing that’s got crumps in it, Jimmy darling,” and when Mr. Carruthers did not appear to find this a sufficient explanation, she had burst into emphatic elucidation:
“I was cross, and Nurse was cross, and you were cross. Yes, you were, and I had only just opened the study door ever so little; and I didn’t mean to upset the milk or to break the soap-dish; and oh, Jimmy, you must know what a crump is, and this day has been just chock-full of them. That’s why I said it was crumpled.”
The day of Henry’s departure was undoubtedly a crumpled day. To start with, a letter from Mr. Molloy awaited Jane at the breakfast table. It began, “My dear Renata,” and was signed, “Your affectionate father, Cornelius R. Molloy.” Mr. Ember remarked at once upon the unusual circumstance of there being a letter for Miss Molloy, and Jane, acting on an impulse which she afterwards regretted, replied:
“It’s from my father. Do you want to see what he says?”
“Thank you,” said Jeffrey Ember. He glanced casually at the bald sentences in which Mr. Molloy hoped that his daughter was well, and expressed dislike of the climatic conditions which he had encountered on the voyage. His eyes rested for a moment upon the signature, and quite suddenly he cast a bombshell at Jane.
“What does the ‘R’ stand for?” he said.
Jane had the worst moment of panic with which her adventure had yet provided her. She was about to say that she did not know, and take the consequences, when Mr. Ember saved her.
“Is it Renatus?” he asked. Jane broke into voluble speech.
“Oh no,” she said, “my name has nothing to do with his. I was called Renata after an aunt, my mother’s twin sister. They were exactly alike and devoted to each other, and I was called after my Aunt Renata, and her only daughter was called after my mother.” Here Jane bit the tip of her tongue and stopped, but she had not stopped in time. Mr. Ember’s eyes had left Molloy’s signature and were fixed upon her face.
“And your mother’s name?” he said.
“Jane,” faltered Jane.
“And are you and your cousin as much alike as your mothers were?”
Jane stared at her plate. She stared so hard that the gilt rim seemed to detach itself and float like a nimbus above a half-finished slice of buttered toast.
“I—I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t remember my mother, and I never saw my aunt.” Once again she bit her tongue, and this time very hard indeed. She had been within an ace of saying, “My Aunt Jane——”
“But you have seen your cousin; by the way, what is her surname?”
“Smith—Jane Smith.”
“You have seen your cousin, Jane Smith? Are you alike?”
“I have only seen her once.” Jane grasped her courage, and looked straight at Mr. Ember. He either knew something, or this was just idle teasing. In either case being afraid would not serve her. A spice of humour might.
“You’re frightfully interested in my aunts and cousins,” she said. “Do you want to find another secretary just like me for some one? But I’m afraid my Cousin Jane isn’t available. She’s married to a man in Bolivia.”
At this point Lady Heritage looked over the edge ofThe Timeswith a frown, and the conversation dropped. Jane finished her buttered toast, and admired herself because her hand did not shake.
Lady Heritage seemed to be in a frowning mood. This, it appeared, was not one of the days when she disappeared behind the steel grating with Ember, leaving Jane to pursue her appointed tasks in the library. Instead, there was a general sorting of correspondence and checking of work already done, with the result that Jane found herself being played upon, as it were, by a jet or spray of hot water. The temperature varied, but the spray was continuous. A letter to which Lady Heritage particularly wished to refer was not to be found, a package of papers wrongly addressed had come back through the Dead Letter Office, and an unanswered invitation was discovered in the “Answered” file. By three o’clock that afternoon Jane had been made to feel that it was possible that the world might contain a person duller, more inept, and less competent than herself—possible, but not probable.
“I think you had better go for a walk, Miss Molloy,” said Lady Heritage; “perhaps some fresh air....” She did not finish the sentence, and Jane, only too thankful to escape, made haste from the presence.
Ember had been right when he said that the grounds were extensive.
Jane skirted the house and made her way through a space of rather formally kept garden to where a gravel path followed the edge of the cliff. For a time it was bordered by veronica and fuchsia bushes, but after a while these ceased and left the bare down with its rather coarse grass, tiny growing plants, tangled brambles, and bright yellow clumps of gorse. The path went up and down. Sometimes it almost overhung the sea. Always a tall hedge of barbed wire straggled across the view and spoilt it.
The fact that a powerful electric current ran through the wire and made it dangerous to touch added to the dislike with which she regarded it.
It was a grey afternoon with a whipping wind from the north-west that beat up little crests of foam on the lead-coloured waves and made Jane clutch at her hat every now and then. She thought it cold when she started, but by and by she began to enjoy the sense of motion, the wind’s buffets, and the wide, clear outlook. At the farthest point of the headland she stopped, warm and glowing. The path ran out to the edge of the cliff. On the landward side the rock rose sharply, naked of grass, and heaped with rough boulders. A small cave or hollow ran inwards for perhaps four feet. In front of it, in fact almost within it, stood a stone bench pleasantly sheltered by the overhanging rock and curving sides of the hollow. Jane felt no need of shelter. Instead of sitting down, she climbed upon the back of the bench and, steadying herself against a rock, looked out over the wire and saw how the cliff fell away, sheer at first, and then in a series of jagged, tumbled steps until the rocks went down into the sea.
After a time Jane scrambled down and was hesitating as to whether she would turn or not when a sound attracted her attention.
The path ended by the stone bench, but there seemed to be quite a practicable grassy track beyond.
The sound which Jane had heard was the sound made by a stone which has become displaced on a hillside. It must have been a very heavy stone. It fell with a muffled crash. Then came another sound which she could not place. She looked all round and could see nothing.
Something frightened her.
All at once she realised that she was a long way from the house and quite out of sight. Turning quickly, she began to walk back along the way that she had come, but she had not gone a dozen paces before she heard scrambling footsteps behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the man George Patterson standing beside the stone seat which she had just left. He made some sort of beckoning sign with his hand and called out, but a puff of wind took away the words, and only a hoarse, and as she thought, threatening sound reached her ears.
Without waiting to hear or see any more she began to run, and with the first flying step that she took there came upon her a blind, driving panic which sent her racing down the path as one races in a nightmare.
George Patterson started in pursuit. He called again twice, and the sound of his voice was a whip to Jane’s terror. After at the most a minute he gave up the chase, and Jane flew on, pursued by nothing worse than her own fear.
Just by the first fuchsia bush she ran, blind and panting, into the very arms of Mr. Ember. The impact nearly knocked him down, and it may be considered as certain that he was very much taken aback.
Jane came back to a knowledge of her whereabouts to find herself gripping Mr. Ember’s arm and stammering out that something had frightened her.
“What?” inquired Ember.
“I—don’t—know,” said Jane, half sobbing, but already conscious that she did not desire to confide in Jeffrey Ember.
“But youmustknow.”
“I don’t.”
With a little gasp Jane let go, and wished ardently that her knees would stop shaking. Ember looked at her very curiously.
Jane had often wondered what his queer cold eyes reminded her of. Curiously enough, it was now, in the midst of her fright, that she knew. They were like pebbles—the greeny-grey ones which lie by the thousand on the seashore. As a rule they were dull and hard, just as the pebbles are dull and hard when they are dry. But sometimes when he was angry, when he cross-questioned you, or when he looked at Lady Heritage the dullness vanished and they looked as the pebbles look when some sudden wave has touched them. Jane did not know when she disliked them most.
They brightened slowly now as they fixed themselves upon her, and Ember said:
“Do you know, I was hoping I might meet you. We haven’t had a real talk since you came.”
“No,” said Jane.
Her manner conveyed no ardent desire for conversation.
“Shall we walk a little?” pursued her companion; “the wind’s cold for standing. I really do want to talk to you.”
Jane said nothing at all. If Ember wished to talk, let him talk. She was still shaky, and not at all in the mood for fencing.
“Well, how do you like being here? How do we strike you?”
Ember spoke quite casually, and Jane thought it was strange that he and Henry should both have asked her the same question. Her reply, however, differed.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Don’t you? My dear Miss Renata, what a really extraordinary number of things you—don’t know! You don’t know what frightened you, and you don’t know whether you like us or not.”
Jane’s temper carried her away.
“Oh yes, I do,” she said viciously, and looked full at the bright pebble eyes.
Ember laughed.
“What do you think of Lady Heritage? Wonderful, isn’t she?”
“Oh yes,” said Jane. “She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Too beautiful, don’t you think?”
If she desired to interest Jeffrey Ember, it appeared that she had succeeded. His attention was certainly arrested.
“Why too beautiful?”
Jane had an impulse towards frankness.
“I think she’s too ... everything. She has so many gifts, it does not seem as if there could be scope for them all.”
Ember looked at Jane for a moment. Then he looked away. In that moment Jane saw something—she could not really tell what. The nearest that she could get to it was “triumph.” Yes, that was it, triumph.
As he looked away he said, very low, “She will have scope enough,” and there was a little tingling silence.
He broke it in an utterly unforeseen manner. With an abrupt change of voice he asked:
“Ever learn chemistry?”
“No,” said Jane, and then wondered whether she was telling the truth about Renata.
“’M—know what a formula is?”
Jane put a dash of ignorant conviction into her voice:
“Oh, I think so—oh yes, of course.”
“Well, what is it?”
She looked puzzled.
“It’s difficult to explain things, isn’t it? Of course I know ‘formulate,’ and er—‘formal.’ But it’s—it’s something learned, isn’t it?”
Ember’s sarcastic smile showed for a moment. With a horrid inward qualm Jane wondered whether she had overdone Renata’s ignorance.
“A formula is a prescription,” said Ember slowly. “If you remember that, I think you’ll find it all quite simple. So that Formula ‘A’ is simply a prescription for making something up, labelled ‘A’ for convenience’ sake.”
Jane let her eyes become quite round.
“Is it?” she said in the blankest tone at her command. “But ... but what is Formula ‘A,’ Mr. Ember?”
“That, my dear Miss Renata, is what a good many people would like to know.”
“Would they? Why?”
“They would. In fact, some of them—person or persons unknown—wanted to know so much that they have gone to the length of stealing Formula ‘A.’ That, at least, is Captain March’s opinion, and the reason for his visit here. So I should be careful, very careful indeed, about betraying any knowledge of Formula ‘A.’”
Jane whisked round, stared blankly, and said in largest capitals:
“ME?”
Then, after a pause, she burst out laughing. “What do you mean?”
“You either know, or you don’t know,” said Jeffrey Ember. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. If you do, I have just given you a warning. A very valuable Government secret has been stolen, and if Captain March were to suspect that you were in any way involved—well, I suppose ... I need not tell you that the consequences would be serious beyond words.”
Jane gazed at him in a breathless delight which she hoped was not apparent. The day had been singularly lacking in pleasantness, but it was undoubtedly pleasing to receive a solemn warning of the dreadful fate that might overtake her if Henry should suspect that she knew anything about Formula “A.”
“But I haven’t the slightest idea what Formula ‘A’ can be,” she said. “It sounds frightfully exciting. Do tell me some more. Was it stolen? And how could anything be stolen here?”
“Who frightened you?” he said suddenly.
Jane caught her breath.
“It was a stone,” she said. “I don’t know why it frightened me so. It fell over the edge of the cliff and gave me a horrid nightmare-ish sort of feeling. I started running and then I couldn’t stop. It was frightfully stupid of me.”
They walked on a few paces. Then Ember said:
“Captain March will probably come down here again. I managed to save you from an interview with him this time, but if he comes again, and if he sees you, remember there is only one safe way for you—you know nothing, you never have known anything, as far as you are concerned there is nothing to know. You shouldn’t find that difficult. You have quite a talent for not knowing things. Improve it.” He paused, smiled slightly, and went on, “You said just now that it was frightfully stupid of you to be frightened. Sometimes, Miss Renata, it is a great deal more stupid not to be frightened. Believe me, this is one of those times.”
They walked home in silence.
Whilst Jane was running away from fear, down the gravel path of the cliff’s edge, Captain March was about midway through an interview with his chief.
Henry’s chief was a large man who strongly resembled a clean and highly intelligent pig. A very little hair appeared to grow reluctantly on his head; his face was pink and clean-shaven. He had inherited the patronymic of Le Mesurier, his parents in his baptism had given him the romantic name of Julian, and a grateful Government had conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add that, from the moment that he emerged from the nursery and set foot within the precincts of his first preparatory school, he had been known exclusively as “Piggy.”
There is a story of a débutante who, at a large and formal dinner-party, was discovered during a sudden silence to be addressing him as Sir Piggott. The dinner-party waited breathlessly. Piggy smiled his benign smile and explained that it had not been his good fortune to be called after his aunt, Miss Piggott.... “I expect you have heard of her? She left all her money to a home for cats, whereas, if my parents had done their duty and invited her to be my godmother, I should be paying at least twice as much income tax as I do now. Never undervalue your relations, my dear Miss Browne.” The aunt was, of course, apocryphal; and after dinner each of the older ladies in turn took the débutante aside, and told her so—as a kindness. To each of them she made the same reply, which was to the effect that “Piggy” was a darling. She married him two years later. But all this has nothing to do with Henry’s interview with his chief.
Sir Julian was speaking:
“It’s very unsatisfactory. You say they have been complying with all the suggestions in the original Government instructions?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sir Julian frowned.
“It’s very unsatisfactory,” he repeated. “Sir William ... well, it’s six months since I saw him, and he looked all right then.”
“He looks all right now,” said Henry. “He is all right except on his own particular subject. He’d discuss politics, unemployment, foreign affairs, or anything else, and you wouldn’t notice anything, but the minute he comes to his own subject everything worries and irritates him. He’s lost grip. As far as I can make out, he leaves everything to his daughter and the secretary. They are competent enough, but....” Henry did not finish his sentence.
“Ah yes, the secretary,” said Sir Julian. “What’s his name? Yes, Ember, Jeffrey Ember....” He turned an indicator under his hand, and spoke rapidly into the telephone beside him. “As soon as possible,” he concluded.
“This girl now,” he said, looking at Henry. “I don’t see how this statement of hers can be squared with any of the facts as we know them.”
As he spoke he picked up the notes which Henry had taken in the dark cupboard.
“She made a suggestion herself,” said Henry. He paused, and looked with a good deal of diffidence at Sir Julian.
“Well?”
“It is just within the bounds of possibility that the Government experiments are being used as a blind. That was her suggestion, sir.”
Sir Julian was busily engaged in drawing on his blotting-paper. He drew in rapid succession cats with arched backs and bottle-brush tails, always beginning with the tail and finishing with the whiskers, three on each side. Henry rightly interpreted this as a sign that he was to continue.
“The conversation which was overheard at Molloy’s flat referred to a Formula ‘A,’ which cannot possibly be the Formula ‘A’ which we know. There may be a Formula ‘A’ of which we know nothing, and it may constitute a grave danger. Ember”—Henry paused—“Ember is not only in a position of great responsibility with regard to our—the official Formula ‘A,’ but he also appears to be mixed up with this other unofficial and possibly dangerous Formula ‘A.’ The question, to my mind, is, ‘What about Ember?’”
Sir Julian continued to draw cats. Suddenly he looked up, and said:
“How long has Patterson been there?”
“A fortnight,” said Henry. “We recalled Jamieson, you remember, and sent him down.”
“Then, if there were unofficial experiments, they would be before his time?”
“Yes,” said Henry.
“Would it be possible—no, I’ll put it another way. Officially Luttrell Marches is impregnable, but unofficially—come March, the place practically belongs to you—is there any way in which there might be coming and going that would defy detection? You see, your hypothesis demands either wholesale corruption of Government workmen, or the introduction of other experiments.”
There was a pause. Then Henry said:
“In confidence, sir, thereisa way, but, to the best of my knowledge, it is known only to myself and one other person.”
“It might be discovered.”
“I don’t think so. It never has been.”
“Well, I would suggest your ascertaining, in conjunction with the other person, whether there is any evidence to show that the secret has been discovered and the way made use of.”
The telephone bell rang. Sir Julian lifted the receiver and listened.
“Yes,” he said—“yes.” Then he began to take notes. “Spell the name, please—yes. Nineteen hundred and five? Is that all? Thank you.”
He hung up the receiver, and turned to Henry.
“Ember’s dossier,” he said. “Not much in it at first sight. ‘Born 1880. Son of Charles Ember, partner in Jarvis & Ember—manufacturing chemists; firm liquidated in 1896. Education till then at Harrow, and subsequently at Heidelberg, where he took degrees in medicine and science. From 1905 to 1912 at Chicago, U. S. A., as personal assistant to Eugene K. Blumfield of Nitrates Ltd. Engaged as secretary by Sir William Carr-Magnus during his American tour in autumn of 1912. Total exemption during War on Sir William’s representations.’ ’M—blameless as a blancmange—at first sight. We wouldn’t have him here at all if we hadn’t been told to get the record of every one employed at Luttrell Marches. Well, March?”
Henry looked up with his candid, diffident air.
“Heidelberg—Chicago—nitrates,” he said, with a little pause after each word. Then—“I wonder if it was in Chicago that he met Molloy. Molloy was a leading light of the I. W. W. there in 1911.”
Piggy looked up for a moment.
“’M, yes,” he said. “Did you get on to the subject of Molloy at all?”
“I had to be very careful,” said Henry, with a worried air. “I was introduced to Miss Molloy, so I felt that it would look odd if I asked no questions. On the other hand, I was afraid of asking too many. You see, sir, if there’s really some infernal, underground plot going on, with the general smash-up of civilisation as its object, that girl is in a most awfully dangerous position. I wish to Heaven she was out of it, but I’m not at all sure that she isn’t right when she says that the most dangerous thing of all would be for her to give the show away by bolting.”
“’M, yes,” said Piggy. “Your concern for the young lady’s safety does you credit—attractive damsel in distress, eh? Nice, pretty young thing, and all that?”
Henry blushed furiously, and said with some stiffness, “As I told you, sir, we are old friends, and I think, it’s natural——”
“Entirely, entirely.” Piggy waved a large, fat hand with a pencil in it. “But to get back to Ember—what did you ask him?”
“Well, I said I had known one or two Molloys, and asked whether Miss Molloy was the cricketer’s daughter. Ember was quite forthcoming, rather too forthcoming, I thought. Said he’d met Molloy in the States, and that he was a queer card, but good company. Explained how surprised he was when he ran into him at Victoria Station after not seeing him for years. Then, quite casually and naturally, gave me to understand that Molloy had put him up for a couple of nights. He really did it very well. Said the daughter was a nice little thing just from school, that he thought she would suit Lady Heritage, and how grateful Molloy was, as he was just off to the States, and didn’t know what to do with the girl. The impression I got was that he was taking no chances—not leaving anything for me to find out afterwards.” Henry hesitated for a moment, and then said, “The thing that struck me most was this. I didn’t ask to interview Miss Molloy because I didn’t want to make her position more dangerous than it already is. That is to say, I assumed that therewasdanger, which really means assuming a criminal conspiracy. Now, if there were no danger and no criminal conspiracy, why on earth did every one make it so easy for me not to interview Miss Molloy? It seems a little thing, but it struck me—it struck me awfully, sir. You see, I took a roll-call of the employés first, and checked them by the official list. Then I went down to the stables with Sir William, and we went through all the outdoor servants. And I finished up in Sir William’s study, where I saw the domestic staff—and Mr. Ember. From first to last, no one suggested that I should see Miss Molloy. In the end, I thought it would be too marked not to bring her in at all, so I said to Lady Heritage, ‘What about your secretary?’ and she said, ‘Why, she’s only just come ... you don’t need to see her.’ I got nervous and left it at that. I think now that I ought to have seen her, with Lady Heritage and Ember in the room; then they couldn’t have suspected her of telling me anything.”
Piggy looked up from his cats, and looked down again. Very carefully he gave each cat a fourth whisker on the left-hand side. Then he fixed his small, light eyes on Henry and said:
“They?”
* * * * * * * *
At 9.30 that evening Sir Julian marked a place in his book with a massive thumb, glanced across the domestic hearth at his wife, and observed:
“M’ dear.”
Lady Le Mesurier raised her charming blue eyes from the child’s frock which she was embroidering.
“I have news to break to you—news concerning the lad Henry. Prepare for a shock. He is another’s. You have lost him, my poor Isobel.”
“I never had him,” said Isobel placidly.
“His mamma thought you had. She did her very best to warn me. I rather think she considered that your young affections were also entangled. I said to her solemnly, ‘My dear Mrs. March—I beg your pardon—my dear Mrs.de LuttrelleMarch—of course he is in love with Isobel. I expect young men to be in love with her. I am in love with her myself.’”
“Piggy, you didn’t!”
“No, m’ dear, but I should have liked to. She is so very large and pink that the temptation to say it, and to watch the pink turn puce, was almost more than I could resist. But you have interrupted me. I was about to break to you a portentous fact. Our Henry is in love.”
“Oh, Piggy!” said Isobel.
“Yes,” continued Henry’s chief—“Henry is undoubtedly for it. Another lost soul. It’s always these promising lads that are snatched by the predatory sex.”
“Piggy—we’re not——”
“M’ dear, youare. It’s axiomatic, beyond cavil or argument. Like the python in the natural history books, you fascinate us first, and then engulf us.”
Isobel allowed a fleeting smile to lift the corners of her very pretty mouth.
“Oh, Piggy, what a mouthful you would be!” she murmured.
“Henry,” pursued Sir Julian—“Henry is in the fascinated stage. He blushed one of the most modestly revealing blushes I have ever beheld. The whole story is of the most thrillingly romantic and intriguing nature, and I regret to say, m’ dear, that I cannot tell you a single word of it.”
Lady Le Mesurier took up a blue silk thread.
“Oh, Piggy!” she said reproachfully.
Sir Julian beamed upon her.
“My official duty forbids,” he said, with great enjoyment. “Dismiss the indecent curiosity which I see stamped upon your every feature. Upon Henry’s affair my lips are sealed. I am a tomb. I merely wish to have a small bet with you as to whether Henry’s mamma will queer his pitch or not.”
“But, Piggy darling, how can I lay odds if I don’t know anything? Tell me, is she pretty?”
“Isobel, is that the spirit in which to approach this solemn subject? As an old married woman, you should ask, Is she virtuous? Is she thrifty? Is she worthy of Henry? And to all these questions I should make the same reply—I do not know.”
Isobel leaned forward, and still with that faint, delightful smile she pricked the back of Sir Julian’s hand sharply with the point of her embroidery needle.
“The serpent’s tooth!” he said, and opened his book. “Isobel, you interrupt my studies. I merely wish to commend three aspects of the case to your feminine intuition. First—Henry is in love; second—he has yet to reckon with his mamma; third—I may at any time ring you up and instruct you to prepare the guest chamber for Henry’s girl.”
Lady Le Mesurier began to work a blue ribbon bow round the stalks of some pink and white daisies.
“You’re rather a lamb, Piggy,” she said.
It was next morning, whilst Jane was sorting and arranging the papers for the library table, that she caught sight of Henry’s first message. She very nearly missed it, for the fold of the paper cut right across the agony column, and what caught her eye was the one word that passed as a signature, “Thursday.” It startled her so much that she dropped the paper, and, in snatching at it, knocked over a pile of magazines.
Lady Heritage looked over her shoulder with a frown, tapped with her foot, and then went on with her writing in a silence that uttered more reproof than words could have done.
Jane picked everything up as silently as possible. As she put the papers on the table, she laidThe Timesout flat, and, bending over it, read the message:
“You will receive a letter from me. Trust the bearer. Thursday.”
She put all the papers neatly in their places, and went to her writing-table with an intense longing to be alone, to be able to think what this might mean, and to wonder who—who would be the bearer of Henry’s letter. She hoped ardently that Lady Heritage would have business in the laboratories, and whilst these thoughts, and hopes, and wonderings filled her mind, she had to write neat and legible replies to the apparently inexhaustible number of persons who desired Lady Heritage to open bazaars, speak at public meetings, subscribe to an indefinite number of charities, or contribute to the writer’s support.
When, at last, she was alone in her own room, she was tingling with excitement. At any moment some one, some unknown friend and ally, might present himself. It was exciting, but, she thought, rather risky.
For instance, supposing Henry’s letter came, by any mischance, into the wrong hands—and letters were mislaid and stolen sometimes—what a perfectly dreadful chapter of misfortunes might ensue. She frowned, and decided that Henry had been rash.
It was with a pleasant feeling of superiority that she put on her hat and went out into the garden to pick tulips.
The weather had changed in the night, and it was hot and sunny, with the sudden dazzling heat of mid-April. In the walled garden the south border was full of violet-scented yellow tulips, each looking at this new hot sun with a jet-black eye. A sheet of forget-me-nots repeated the sheer blue of the sky.
Jane picked an armful of tulips and a sheaf of leopard’s bane. Strictly speaking, she should then have gone in to put the flowers in water for the adornment of the Yellow Drawing-Room. Instead, she made her way to the farthest corner of the garden and basked.
At first she looked at the flowers, but after a while her eyelids fell.
Jane has never admitted that she went to sleep, but, if she was thinking with her eyes shut, her thoughts must have been of an extremely engrossing nature, for it is certain that she heard neither the opening nor the shutting of a door in the wall beside her. She did feel a shadow pass between herself and the sun, and opening her eyes quickly she saw standing beside her the very man from whom she had fled in terror yesterday.
The sunlight fell from upon him, showing the shabby clothes, the tall, stooping figure, the grizzled beard, and that disfiguring scar.
With a great start Jane attempted to rise, only to discover that a wheelbarrow may make a very comfortable chair, but that it is uncommonly difficult to get out of in a hurry. To her horror the man, George Patterson, took her firmly by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. She shrank intensely from his touch, received an impression of unusual strength, and then, to her overwhelming surprise, she heard him say in a low, well-bred voice, “I have a letter for you, Miss Smith.”
“Oh, hush!” said Jane—“oh, please, hush!”
“All right, I won’t do it again. Look here, I want to say a few words to you, but we had better not be seen together. Here’s your letter. Stay where you are for five minutes, and then come down to the potting-shed. Don’t come in; stay by the door and tie your shoe-lace.”
He went off with his dragging step, and left Jane dumb. There was a folded note in her hand, and in her mind so intense a shock of surprise as to rob her very thoughts of expression.
After what seemed like a long paralysed month, she opened the note which bore no address, and read, pencilled in Henry’s clear and very ornamental hand, “The bearer is trustworthy.—H. L. M.”
When she had looked so long at Henry’s initials that they had blurred and cleared again, not once but many times, she walked mechanically down the path until she came to the shed. Beside it was a barrel full of rain-water. Into this she dipped Henry’s note, made sure that the words were totally illegible, poked a hole in the border, and covered the sodden paper with earth. Then at the potting-shed door she knelt and became occupied with her shoe-lace.
“Henry saw me after he saw you,” said George Patterson’s voice. “He thought it might be a comfort to you to know there is a friend on the spot; but I’m afraid I gave you a fright yesterday.”
“You did,” said Jane, “but I don’t know why. I was a perfect fool, and I ran right into Mr. Ember’s arms.”
“Did you tell him what frightened you?” said Patterson quickly.
“No, I wasn’t quite such a fool as that. Please, who are you?”
“My name here is George Patterson. I’m a friend of Henry’s. If you want me, I’m here.”
“If I want you,” said Jane, “how am I to get at you?”
Mr. Patterson considered.
“There’s a wide sill inside your window.” (And how on earth do you know that? thought Jane.) “If you put a big jar of, say, those yellow tulips there, I’ll know you want to speak to me, and I’ll come here to this potting-shed as soon as I can. You know they keep us pretty busy with roll-calls and things of that sort. I only got back yesterday by the skin of my teeth—I had to bolt.”
“Did you—you didn’t pass me.”
“No, I didn’t pass you.” There was just a trace of amusement in Mr. Patterson’s voice.
Jane pulled her shoe-lace undone, and began to tie it all over again.
“Hush!” she said very quick and low. “Some one is coming.”
Just where the path ended, not half a dozen yards away, the red-brick wall was pierced by a door. Two round, Scotch rose-bushes, all tiny green leaf and sharp brown prickle, grew like large pin-cushions on either side of the interrupted border. Bright pink nectarine buds shone against the brick like coral studs. The ash-coloured door, rough and sun-blistered, was opening slowly, and into the garden came Raymond Heritage, pushing the door with one hand and holding a basket of bulbs in the other. She was looking back over her shoulder, at something or someone beside her.
From inside the potting-shed came Patterson’s voice—just a breath:
“Who?”
“Lady Heritage.”
Jane was up as she spoke and moving away. She reached the door just as Raymond closed it and, turning, saw her.
“Oh, Miss Molloy—I was really looking for you. Is Garstin anywhere about?”
“I haven’t seen him,” murmured Jane, as if the absent gardener might be blooming unnoticed in one of the borders.
“He’s not in the potting-shed? I’ll just look in and see. I want to stand over him and see that he puts these black irises where I want them to go. They come from Palestine, and the last lot failed entirely because he was so obstinate. I’ll get a trowel and mark the place I think.” She moved forward as she spoke, and Jane, horror-struck, stammered:
“Letmelook. It’s so dusty in there.”
She was back at the door of the shed, but Lady Heritage was beside her. “I want a trowel, too,” she said, and Jane felt herself gently pushed over the threshold.
They were both just inside the door. It seemed dark after the strong light outside. There was a row of windows along one side, and a broad deal shelf under them. There were piles and piles of pots and boxes. There were hanks of bass and rows of tools, There were watering-cans. There was a length of rubber hose. But there was no George Patterson.
Jane put her hand behind her, gripped the jamb of the door, and moved back a pace so that she could lean against it. The pots, the tools, the bass and the rubber hose danced before her bewildered eyes.
Lady Heritage put her basket of bulbs down on the wide shelf and said:
“Garstin ought to be here. He’s really very tiresome. That’s the worst of old servants. When a gardener has been in a place for forty years as Garstin has, he owns it.”
“Shall I find him?” said Jane.
“No, not now. I really want to talk to you. I’ve just been speaking to Jeffrey Ember, and he tells me you had a fright yesterday. What frightened you?”
“Nothing—my own silliness.”
Jane felt as if she must scream. George Patterson had disappeared as if by a conjuring trick. Where had he gone to? Where was he? It was just like being in a dream.
Raymond Heritage seemed to tower before her in her white dress. Her uncovered head almost touched the low beam above the door.
“Jeffrey said you were blind with fright—that you ran right into him. He said you were as white as a sheet and shaking all over. I want to know what frightened you?”
“A stone—it fell into the sea——”
“What made it fall? A man? What man?”
Jane leaned against the door-post, her breath coming and going, her eyes held by those imperious eyes.
“A stone,” she said; “it fell—I ran away.”
“Miss Molloy,” said Lady Heritage, “you walked to the end of the headland, out of sight of the house. Whilst you were there something gave you a serious fright. Something—or somebody. This is all nonsense about a stone. Whom did you see on the headland, for you certainly saw somebody? No, don’t look away; I want you to look at me, please.”
“I don’t know why I was so frightened,” said Jane. “It just came over me.”
Lady Heritage looked at her very gravely.
“If you saw any stranger on the headland, it is your absolute duty to tell me. Where secrets of such value are in question it is necessary to watch every avenue and to neglect no suspicious circumstance. If you are trying to screen any one, you are acting very foolishly—very foolishly indeed. I warn you, and I ask you again. What frightened you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane in a little whispering voice. “Why, why do you think there was any one?”