It was the next day that there arrived by the morning post a letter for Dunn.
Deede Dawson raised his eyebrows slightly when he saw it; and he did not hand it on until he had made himself master of its contents, though that did not prove to be very enlightening or interesting. The note, in fact, merely expressed gratification at the news that Dunn had secured steady work, a somewhat weak hope that he would keep it, and a still fainter hope that now perhaps he would be able to return the ten shillings borrowed, apparently from the writer, at some time in the past.
Mr. Deede Dawson, in spite of the jejune nature of the communication, read it very carefully and indeed even went so far as to examine the letter through a powerful magnifying-glass.
But he made no discovery by the aid of that instrument, and he neglected, for no man thinks of everything, to expose the letter to a gentle heat, which was what Dunn did when, presently, he received it, apparently unopened and with not the least sign to show that it had been tampered with in any way whatever.
Gradually, however, as Dunn held it to the fire, there appeared between the lines fresh writing, which he read very eagerly, and which ran:
“Jane Dunsmore, born 1830, married, against family wishes, John Clive and had one son, John, killed early this year in a motor-car accident, leaving one son, John, now of Ramsdon Place and third in line of succession to the Wreste Abbey property.”
When he had read the message thus strangely and with such precaution conveyed to him, Dunn burnt the letter and went that day about his work in a very grave and thoughtful mood.
“I knew it couldn't be a mere coincidence,” he mused. “It wasn't possible. I must manage to warn him, somehow; but, ten to one, he won't believe a word, and I don't know that I blame him—I shouldn't in his place. And he might go straight to Deede Dawson and ruin everything. I don't know that it wouldn't be wiser and safer to say nothing for the present, till I'm more sure of my ground—and then it may be too late.”
“Just possibly,” he thought, “the job Deede Dawson clearly thinks he can make me useful in may have something to do with Clive. If so, I may be able to see my way more clearly.”
As it happened, Clive was away for a few days on some business he had to attend to, so that for the present Dunn thought he could afford to wait.
But during the week-end Clive returned, and on the Monday he came again to Bittermeads.
It was never very agreeable to Dunn to have to stand aloof while Clive was laughing and chatting and drinking his tea with Ella and her mother, and of those feelings of annoyance and vexation he made this time a somewhat ostentatious show.
That his manner of sulky anger and resentment did not go unnoticed by Deede Dawson he was very sure, but nothing was said at the time.
Next morning Deede Dawson called him while he was busy in the garage and insisted on his trying to solve another chess problem.
“I haven't managed the other yet,” Dunn protested. “It's not too easy to hit on these key-moves.”
“Never mind try this one,” Deede Dawson said; and Ella, going out for a morning stroll with her mother, saw them thus, poring together over the travelling chess-board.
“They seem busy, don't they?” she remarked. “Father is making quite a friend of that man.”
“I don't like him,” declared Mrs. Dawson, quite vigorously for her. “I'm sure a man with such a lot of hair on his face can't be really nice, and I thought he was inclined to be rude yesterday.”
“Yes,” agreed Ella. “Yes, he was. I think Mr. Clive was a little vexed, though he took no notice, I suppose he couldn't very well.”
“I don't like the man at all,” Mrs. Dawson repeated. “All that hair, too. Do you like him?”
“I don't know,” Ella answered, and after she and her mother had returned from their walk she took occasion to find Dunn in the garden and ask him some trifling question or another.
“You are interested in chess?” she remarked, when he had answered her.
“All problems are interesting till one finds the answer to them,” he replied.
“There's one I know of,” she retorted. “I wish you would solve for me.”
“Tell me what it is,” he said quickly. “Will you?”
She shook her head slightly, but she was watching him very intently from her clear, candid eyes, and now, as always, her nearness to him, the infinite appeal he found in her every look and movement, the very fragrance of her hair, bore him away beyond all purpose and intention.
“Tell me what it is,” he said again. “Won't you? Miss Cayley, if you and I were to trust each other—it's not difficult to see there's something troubling you.”
“Most people have some trouble or another,” she answered evasively.
He came a little nearer to her, and instead of the gruff, harsh tones he habitually used, his voice was singularly pleasant and low as he said:
“People who are in trouble need help, Miss Cayley. Will you let me help you?”
“You can't,” she answered, shaking her head. “No one could.”
“How can you tell that?” he asked eagerly. “Perhaps I know more already than you think.”
“I daresay you do,” she said slowly. “I have thought that a long time. Will you tell me one thing?—Are you his friend or not?”
There was no need for Dunn to ask to whom the pronoun she used referred.
“I am so much not his friend,” he answered as quietly and deliberately as she had spoken. “That it's either his life or mine.”
At that she drew back in a startled way as though his words had gone beyond her expectations.
“How do I know I can trust you?” she said presently, half to herself, half to him.
“You can,” he said, and it was as though he flung the whole of his enigmatic and vivid personality into those two words.
“You can,” he said again. “Absolutely.”
“I must think,” she muttered, pressing her hands to her head. “So much depends—how can I trust you? Why should I—why?”
“Because I'll trust you first,” he answered with a touch of exultation in his manner. “Listen to me and I'll tell you everything. And that means I put my life in your hands. Well, that's nothing; I would do that any time; but other people's lives will be in your power, too—yes, and everything I'm here for, everything. Now listen.”
“Not now,” she interrupted sharply. “He may be watching, listening—he generally is.” Again there was no need between them to specify to whom the pronoun referred. “Will you meet me tonight near the sweet-pea border—about nine?”
She glided away as she spoke without waiting for him to answer, and as soon as he was free from the magic of her presence, reaction came and he was torn by a thousand doubts and fears and worse.
“Why, I'm mad, mad,” he groaned. “I've no right to tell what I said I would, no right at all.”
And again there returned to him his vivid, dreadful memory of how she had started on that midnight drive with her car so awfully laden.
And again there returned to him his old appalling doubt:
“Did she not know?”
And though he would willingly have left his life in her hands, he knew he had no right to put that of others there, and yet it seemed to him he must keep the appointment and the promise he had made.
About nine that evening, then, he made his way to the sweet-pea border, though, as he went, he resolved that he would not tell her what he had said he would.
Because he trusted his own strength so little when he was with her, he confirmed this resolution by an oath he swore to himself: and even that he was not certain would be a sure protection against the witchery she wielded.
So it was with a mind doubtful and troubled more than it had ever been since the beginning of these things that he came to the border where the sweet-peas grew, and saw a dark shadow already close by them.
But when he came a little nearer he saw that it was not Ella who was there but Deede Dawson and his first thought was that she had betrayed him.
“That you, Dunn?” Deede Dawson hailed him in his usual pleasant, friendly manner.
“Yes,” Dunn answered warily, keeping himself ready for any eventuality.
Deede Dawson took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it and offered one to Dunn, who refused it abruptly.
Deede Dawson laughed at that in his peculiar, mirthless way.
“Am I being the third that's proverbially no company?” he asked. “Were you expecting to find some one else here? I thought I saw a white frock vanish just as I came up.”
Dunn made no answer, and Deede Dawson continued after a pause
“That's why I waited. You are being just a little bit rapid in this affair, aren't you?”
“I don't know why. You said something, didn't you?” muttered Dunn, beginning to think that, after all, Deede Dawson's presence here was due to accident—or rather to his unceasing and unfailing watchfulness, and not to any treachery of Ella's.
“Yes, I did, didn't I?” he agreed pleasantly. “But you are a working gardener taken on out of charity to give you a chance and keep you out of gaol, and you are looking a little high when you think of your master's ward and daughter, aren't you?”
“There was a time when I shouldn't have thought so,” answered Dunn.
“We're talking of the present, my good man,” Deede Dawson said impatiently. “If you want the girl you must win her. It can be done, but it won't be easy.”
“Tell me how,” said Dunn.
“Oh, that's going too fast and too far,” answered the other with his mirthless laugh. “Now, there's Mr. John Clive—what about him?”
“I'll answer for him,” replied Dunn slowly and thickly. “I've put better men than John Clive out of my way before today.”
“That's the way to talk,” cried Deede Dawson. “Dunn, dare you play a big game for big stakes?”
“Try me,” said Dunn.
“If I showed you,” Deede Dawson's voice sank to a whisper, “if I showed you a pretty girl for a wife—a fortune to win—what would you say?”
“Try me,” said Dunn again, and then, making his voice as low and hoarse as was Dunn's, he asked:
“Is it Clive?”
“Later—perhaps,” answered Deede Dawson. “There's some one else—first. Are you ready?”
“Try me,” said Dunn for the third time, and as he spoke his quick ear caught the faint sound of a retreating footstep, and he told himself that Ella must have lingered near and had perhaps heard all they said.
“Try me,” he said once more, speaking more loudly and clearly this time.
Dunn went to his room that night with the feeling that a crisis was approaching. And he wished very greatly that he knew how much Ella had overheard of his talk with her stepfather, and what interpretation she had put upon it.
He determined that in the morning he would take the very first opportunity he could find of speaking to her.
But in the morning it appeared that Mrs. Dawson had had a bad night, and was very unwell, and Ella hardly stirred from her side all day.
Even when Clive called in the afternoon she would not come down, but sent instead a message begging to be excused because of her mother's indisposition, and Dunn, from a secure spot in the garden, watched the young man retire, looking very disconsolate.
This day, too, Dunn saw nothing of Deede Dawson, for that gentleman immediately after breakfast disappeared without saying anything to anybody, and by night had still not returned.
Dunn therefore was left entirely to himself, and to him the day seemed one of the longest he had ever spent.
That Ella remained so persistently with her mother troubled him a good deal, for he did not think such close seclusion on her part could be really necessary.
He was inclined to fear that Ella had overheard enough of what had passed between him and Deede Dawson to rouse her mistrust, and that she was therefore deliberately keeping out of his way.
Then too, he was troubled in another fashion by Deede Dawson's absence, for he was afraid it might mean that plans were being prepared, or possibly action being taken, that might mature disastrously before he himself was ready to act.
All day this feeling of unrest and apprehension continued, and at night when he went upstairs to bed it was stronger than ever. He felt convinced now that Ella was deliberately avoiding him. But then, if she distrusted him, that must be because she feared he was on her stepfather's side, and if it seemed to her that who was on his side was of necessity an object of suspicion to herself, then there could be no such bond of dread and guilt between them as any guilty knowledge on her part of Wright's death would involve.
The substantial proof this exercise in logic appeared to afford of Ella's innocence brought him much comfort, but did not lighten his sense of apprehension and unrest, for he thought that in this situation in which he found himself his doubts of Ella had merely been turned into doubts on Ella's part of himself, and that the one was just as likely as the other to end disastrously.
“Though I don't know what I can do,” he muttered as he stood in his attic, “if I gain Deede Dawson's confidence I lose Ella's, and if I win Ella's, Deede Dawson will at once suspect me.”
He went over to the window and looked out, supporting himself on his elbows, and gazing moodily into the darkness.
As he stood there a faint sound came softly to his ear through the stillness of the quiet night in which nothing stirred.
He listened, and heard it again. Beyond doubt some one was stirring in the garden below, moving about there very cautiously and carefully, and at once Dunn glided from the room and down the stairs with all that extraordinary lightness of tread and agility of movement of which his heavy body and clumsy-looking build gave so small promise.
He had not been living so many days in the house without having taken certain precautions, of which one had been to secure for himself a swift and silent egress whenever necessity might arise.
Keys to both the front and back doors were in his possession, and the passage window on the ground floor he could at need lift bodily from its frame, leaving ample room for passage either in or out. This was the method of departure he chose now since he did not know but that the doors might be watched.
Lifting the window down, he swung himself outside, replacing behind him the window so that it appeared to be as firmly in position as ever, but could be removed again almost instantly should need arise.
Once outside he listened again, and though at first everything was quiet, presently he heard again a cautious step going to and fro at a little distance.
Crouching in the shadow of the house, he listened intently, and soon was able to assure himself that there was but one footstep and that he would have only one individual to deal with.
“It won't be Deede Dawson's,” he thought to himself, “but it may very likely be some one waiting for him to return. I must find out who—and why.”
Slipping through the darkness of the night, with whose shadows he seemed to melt and mingle, as though he were but another one of them, he moved quickly in the direction of these cautious footsteps he had listened to.
They had ceased now, and the silence was profound, for those faint multitudinous noises of the night that murmur without ceasing in the woods and fields are less noticeable near the habitations of men.
A little puzzled, Dunn paused to listen again and once more crept forward a careful yard or two, and then lay still, feeling it would not be safe to venture further till he was more sure of his direction, and till some fresh sound to guide him reached his ears.
He had not long to wait, for very soon, from quite close by, he heard something that surprised and perplexed him equally—a deep, long-drawn sigh.
Again he heard it, and in utter wonder asked himself who this could be who came into another person's garden late at night to stand and sigh, and what such a proceeding could mean.
Once more he heard the sigh, deeper even than before, and then after it a low murmur in which at first he could distinguish nothing, but then caught the name of Ella being whispered over and over again.
He bent forward, more and more puzzled, trying in vain to make out something in the darkness, and then from under a tree, whose shadow had hitherto been a complete concealment, there moved forward a form so tall and bulky there could be little doubt whom it belonged to.
“John Clive—what on earth—!” Dunn muttered, his bewilderment increasing, and the next moment he understood and had some difficulty in preventing himself from bursting out laughing as there reached him the unmistakable sound of a kiss lightly blown through the air.
Clive was sending a kiss through the night towards Ella's room and his nocturnal visit was nothing more than the whim of a love-sick youth.
With Dunn, his first amusement gave way almost at once to an extreme annoyance.
For, in the first place, these proceedings seemed to him exceedingly impertinent, for what possible right did Clive imagine he had to come playing the fool like this, sighing in the dark and blowing kisses like a baby to its mammy?
And secondly, unless he were greatly mistaken, John Clive might just as sensibly and safely have dropped overboard from a ship in mid-Atlantic for a swim as come to indulge his sentimentalities in the Bittermeads garden at night.
“You silly ass!” he said in a voice that was very low, but very distinct and very full of an extreme disgust and anger.
Clive fairly leaped in the air with his surprise, and turned and made a sudden dash at the spot whence Dunn's voice had come, but where Dunn no longer was.
“What the blazes—?” he began, spluttering in ineffectual rage. “You—you—!”
“You silly ass!” Dunn repeated, no less emphatically than before.
Clive made another rush that a somewhat prickly bush very effectually stopped.
“You—who are you—where—what—how dare you?” he gasped as he picked himself up and tried to disentangle himself from the prickles.
“Don't make such a row,” said Dunn from a new direction. “Do you want to raise the whole neighbourhood? Haven't you played the fool enough? If you want to commit suicide, why can't you cut your throat quietly and decently at home, instead of coming alone to the garden at Bittermeads at night?”
There was a note of sombre and intense conviction in his voice that penetrated even the excited mind of the raging Clive.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and then:
“Who are you?”
“Never mind who I am,” answered Dunn. “And I mean just what I say. You might as well commit suicide out of hand as come fooling about here alone at night.”
“You're crazy, you're talking rubbish!” Clive exclaimed.
“I'm neither crazy nor talking rubbish,” answered Dunn. “But if you persist in making such a row I shall take myself off and leave you to see the thing through by yourself and get yourself knocked on the head any way you like best.”
“Oh, I'm beginning to understand,” said Clive. “I suppose you're one of my poaching friends—are you? Look here, if you know who it was who attacked me the other night you can earn fifty pounds any time you like.”
“Your poaching friends, as you call them,” answered Dunn, “are most likely only anxious to keep out of your way. This has nothing to do with them.”
“Well, come nearer and let me see you,” Clive said. “You needn't be afraid. You can't expect me to take any notice of some one I can't see, talking rubbish in the dark.”
“I don't much care whether you take any notice or not,” answered Dunn. “You can go your own silly way if you like, it's nothing to me. I've warned you, and if you care to listen I'll make my warning a little clearer. And one thing I will tell you—one man already has left this house hidden in a packing-case with a bullet through his brain, and I will ask you a question: 'How did your father die?'”
“He was killed in a motor-car accident,” answered Clive hesitatingly, as though not certain whether to continue this strange and puzzling conversation or break it off.
“There are many accidents,” said Dunn. “And that may have been one, for all I know, or it may not. Well, I've warned you. I had to do that. You'll probably go on acting like a fool and believing that nowadays murders don't happen, but if you're wise, you'll go home to bed and run no more silly risks.”
“Of course I'm not going to pay the least attention,” began Clive, when Dunn interrupted him sharply.
“Hush! hush!” he said sharply. “Crouch down: don't make a sound, don't stir or move. Hush!”
For Dunn's sharp ear had caught the sound of approaching footsteps that were drawing quickly nearer, and almost instantly he guessed who it would be, for there were few pedestrians who came along that lonely road so late at night.
There were two of them apparently, and at the gate of Bittermeads they halted.
“Well, good night,” said then a voice both Dunn and Clive knew at once for Deede Dawson's. “That was a pretty check by the knight I showed you, wasn't it?”
A thin, high, somewhat peculiar voice cursed Deede Dawson, chess, and the pretty mate by the knight very comprehensively.
“It's young Clive that worries me,” said the voice when it had finished these expressions of disapproval.
“No need,” answered Deede Dawson's voice with that strange mirthless laugh of his. “No need at all; before the week's out he'll trouble no one any more.”
When he heard this, Clive would have betrayed himself by some startled movement or angry exclamation had not Dunn's heavy hand upon his shoulder held him down with a grave and steady pressure there was no disregarding.
Deede Dawson and his unknown companion went on towards the house, and admitted themselves, and as the door closed behind them Clive swung round sharply in the darkness towards Dunn.
“What's it mean?” he muttered in the bewildered and slightly-pathetic voice of a child at once frightened and puzzled. “What for? Why should any one—?”
“It's a long story,” began Dunn, and paused.
He saw that the unexpected confirmation of his warning Clive had thus received from Deede Dawson's own lips had rendered his task of convincing Clive immensely more easy.
What he had wished to say had now at least a certainty of being listened to, a probability of being believed, and there was at any rate, he supposed, no longer the danger he had before dreaded of Clive's going straight with the whole story to Deede Dawson in arrogant disbelief of a word of it.
But he still distrusted Clive's discretion, and feared some rash and hasty action that might ruin all his plans, and allow Deede Dawson time to escape.
Besides he felt that the immediate task before him was to find out who Deede Dawson's new companion was, and, if possible, overhear anything they might have to say to each other.
That, and the discovery of the new-comer's identity, might prove to be of the utmost importance.
“I can't explain now,” he said hurriedly. “I'll see you tomorrow sometime. Don't do anything till you hear from me. Your life may depend on it—and other people's lives that matter more.”
“Tell me who you are first,” Clive said quickly, incautiously raising his voice. “I can manage to take care of myself all right, I think, but I want to know who you are.”
“H-ssh!” muttered Dunn. “Not so loud.”
“There was a fellow made an attack on me one night a little while ago,” Clive went on unheedingly. “You remind me of him somehow. I don't think I trust you, my man. I think you had better come along to the police with me.”
But Dunn's sharp ears had caught the sound of the house door opening cautiously, and he guessed that Deede Dawson had taken the alarm and was creeping out to see who invaded so late at night the privacy of his garden.
“Clear out quick! Quiet! If you want to go on living. I'll stop them from following if I can. If you make the least noise you're done for.”
Most likely the man they had seen in his company would be with him, and both of them would be armed. Neither Clive nor Dunn had a weapon, and Dunn saw the danger of the position and took the only course available.
“Go,” he whispered fiercely into Clive's ear.
He melted away into the darkness as he spoke, and through the night he slipped, one shadow more amongst many, from tree to bush, from bush to tree. Across a patch of open grass he crawled on his hands and knees; and once lay flat on his face when against the skyline he saw a figure he was sure was Deede Dawson's creep by a yard or two on his right hand.
On his left another shadow showed, distinguishable in the night only because it moved.
In a moment both shadows were gone, secret and deadly in the dark, and Dunn was very sure that Clive's life and his own both hung upon a slender chance, for if either of them was discovered the leaping bullet would do the rest.
It would be safe and easy—suspected burglars in a garden at midnight—nothing could be said. He lay very still with his face to the dewy sod, and all the night seemed full to him of searching footsteps and of a swift and murderous going to and fro.
He heard distinctly from the road a sudden, muffled sound as Clive in the darkness blunderingly missed his footing and fell upon one knee.
“That's finished him,” Dunn thought grimly, his ears straining for the sharp pistol report that would tell Clive's tale was done, and then he was aware of a cat, a favourite of Ella's and often petted by himself, that was crouching near by under a tree, most likely much puzzled and alarmed by this sudden irruption of hurrying men into its domain. Instantly Dunn saw his chance, and seizing the animal, lifted it and threw it in the direction where he guessed Deede Dawson to be.
His guess was good and fortune served him well, for the tabby flying caterwauling through the air alighted almost exactly in front of Deede Dawson on top of a small bush. For a moment it hung there, quite unhurt, but very frightened, and emitted a yell, then fled.
In the quietness the tumult of its scrambling flight sounded astonishingly loud, so that it sounded as through a miniature avalanche had been let loose in the garden.
“Only cats,” Deede Dawson exclaimed disgustedly, and from behind, nearer the house, Dunn called:
“Who's there? What is it? What's the matter? Is it Mr. Dawson? Is anything wrong?”
“I think there is,” said Deede Dawson softly. “I think, perhaps, there is. What are you doing out here at this time of night, Charley Wright?”
“I heard a noise and came down to see what it was,” answered Dunn. “There was a light in the breakfast-room, but I didn't see any one, and the front door was open so I came out here. Is anything wrong?”
“That's what I want to know,” said Deede Dawson. “Come back to the house with me. If any one is about, he can just take himself off.”
He spoke the last sentence loudly, and Dunn took it as a veiled instruction to his companion to depart.
He realized that if he had saved Clive he had done so at the cost of missing the best opportunity that had yet come his way of obtaining very important, and, perhaps, decisive information.
To have discovered the identity of this stranger who had come visiting Deede Dawson might have meant much, and he told himself angrily that Clive's safety had certainly not been worth purchasing at the cost of such a lost chance, though he supposed that was a point on which Clive himself might possibly entertain a different opinion.
But now there was nothing for it but to go quietly back to the house, for clearly Deede Dawson's suspicions were aroused and he had his revolver ready in his hand.
“I suppose it was only cats all the time,” he observed, with apparent unconcern. “But at first I made sure there were no burglars in the house.”
“And I suppose,” suggested Deede Dawson. “You think one burglar's enough in a household.”
“I don't mean to have any one else mucking around,” growled Dunn in answer.
“Very admirable sentiments,” said Deede Dawson and asked several more questions that showed he still entertained some suspicion of Dunn, and was not altogether satisfied that his appearance in the garden was quite innocent, or that the noise heard there was due solely to cats.
Dunn answered as best he could, and Deede Dawson listened and smiled, and smiled again, and watched him from eyes that did not smile at all.
“Oh, well,” Deede Dawson said at last, with a yawn. “Anyhow, it's all right now. You had better get along back to bed, and I'll lock up.” He accompanied Dunn into the hall and watched him ascend the stairs, and as Dunn went slowly up them he felt by no means sure that soon a bullet would not come questing after him, searching for heart or brain.
For he was sure that Deede Dawson still suspected him, and he knew Deede Dawson to be very sudden and swift in action. But nothing happened, he reached the broad, first landing in safety, and he was about to go on up to his attic when he beard a door at the end of the passage open and saw Ella appear in her dressing-gown.
“What is the matter?” she asked, in a low voice.
“It's all right,” he answered. “There was a noise in the garden, and I came down to see what it was, but it's only cats.”
“Oh, is that all?” she said distrustfully.
“Yes,” he answered, in a lower voice still, he said:
“Will you tell me something? Do you know any one who talks in a very peculiar shrill high voice?”
She did not answer, and, after a moment's hesitation, went back into her room and closed the door behind her.
He went on up to his attic with the feeling that she could have answered if she had wished to, and lay down in a troubled and dispirited mood.
For he was sure now that Ella mistrusted him and would give him no assistance, and that weighed upon him greatly, as did also his conviction that what it behoved him above all else to know—the identity of the man who, in this affair, stood behind Deede Dawson and made use of his fierce and fatal energies—he had had it in his power to discover and had failed to make use of the opportunity.
“I would rather know that,” he said to himself, “than save a dozen Clives ten times over.” Though again it occurred to him that on this point Clive might hold another opinion. “If he hadn't made such a blundering row I might have got to know who Deede Dawson's visitor was. I must try to get a word with Clive tomorrow by hook or crook, though I daresay Deede Dawson will be very much on the lookout.”
However, next morning Deede Dawson not only made no reference to the events of the night, but had out the car and went off immediately after breakfast without saying when he would be back.
As soon after his departure as possible, Dunn also set out and took his way through the woods towards Ramsdon Place on the look-out for an opportunity to speak to Clive unobserved.
He thought it most likely that Clive would be drawn towards the vicinity of Bittermeads by the double fascination of curiosity and fear, and he supposed that if he waited and watched in the woods he would be sure presently to see him.
But though he remained for long hidden at a spot whence he could command the road to Bittermeads from Ramsdon Place, he saw nothing at all of Clive, and the sunny lazy morning was well advanced when he was startled by the sound of a gun shot some distance away.
“A keeper shooting rabbits, I suppose,” he thought, looking round just in time to see Ella running through the wood from the direction whence the sound of the shot had seemed to come, and then vanish again with a quick look behind her into the heart of a close-growing spinney.
There had been an air of haste, almost of furtiveness, about this swift appearance and more swift vanishing of Ella, that made Dunn ask himself uneasily what errand she could have been on.
He hesitated for a moment, half expecting to see her return again, or that there would be some other development, but he heard and saw nothing.
He caught no further glimpse of Ella, whom the green depths of the spinney hid well; and he heard no more shots.
After a little, he left the spot where he had been waiting and went across to where he had seen her.
The exact spot where she had entered the spinney was marked, for she had broken the branch of a young tree in brushing quickly by it, and a bramble she had trodden on had not yet lifted itself from the earth to which she had pressed it.
By other signs like these, plain enough and easy to read—for she had hurried on in great haste and without care, almost, indeed, as one who fled from some great danger or from some dreadful sight, and who had no thought to spare save for flight alone—he followed the way she had gone till it took him to a beaten public path that almost at once led over a stile to the high road which passed in front of Bittermeads. Along this beaten path, trodden by many, Ella's light foot had left no perceptible mark, and Dunn made no attempt to track her further, since it seemed certain that she had been simply hurrying back home.
“She was badly frightened over something or another,” he said to himself. “She never stopped once, she went as straight and quick as she could. I wonder what upset her like that?”
He went back the way he had come, and at the spot where he had seen her enter the spinney he set to work to pick up her trail in the direction whence she had appeared, for he thought that if he followed it he might find out what had been the cause of her evident alarm.
The ground was much more open here, and the trail correspondingly more difficult to follow, for often there was little but a trodden blade of grass to show where she had passed; and sometimes, where the ground was bare and hard, there was no visible sign left at all.
Once or twice at such places he was totally at fault, but by casting round in a wide circle like a dog scenting his prey he was able to pick up her tracks again.
They seemed to lead right into the depths of the wood, through lonely spots that only the keepers knew, and where others seldom came.
But that he was on the right trail he presently had proof, for on the bank of a lovely and hidden dell he picked up a tiny embroidered handkerchief with the initials “E. C.” worked in one corner.
It had evidently been lying there only a very short time, for it was perfectly clean and fresh, and he picked it up and held it for a moment in his hands, smiling to himself with pleasure at its daintiness and smallness, and yet still uneasily wondering why she had come here, and why she had fled away again so quickly.
The morning was very fine and calm, though in the west heavy clouds were gathering and seemed to promise rain soon. But overhead the sun shone brightly, the air was calm and warm, and the little dell on whose verge he stood a very pretty and pleasant place.
A small stream wandered through it, the grass that carpeted it was green and soft, near by a great oak stood alone and spread its majestic branches far out on every side to give cool shelter from the summer heat.
The thought occurred to Dunn that this was just such a pretty and secluded spot as two lovers might choose to exchange their vows in, and the thought stung him intolerably as he wondered whether it was for such a reason that Ella had come here.
But if so, why had she fled away again in such strange haste?
He walked on slowly for a yard or two, not now attempting to follow Ella's trail, for he had the impression that this was her destination, and that she had gone no further than here.
All at once he caught sight of the form of a man lying hidden in the long grass that nearly covered him from view just where the far-spreading branches of the great oak ceased to give their shade.
At first Dunn thought he was sleeping, and he was just about to call out to him when something in the rigidity of the man's position and his utter stillness struck him unpleasantly.
He went quickly to the man's side, and the face of dead John Clive, supine and still, stared up at him from unseeing eyes.
He had been killed by a charge of small shot fired at such close quarters that his breast was shot nearly in two and his clothing and flesh charred by the burning powder.
But Dunn, standing staring down at the dead man, saw not him, but Ella. Ella fleeing away silently and furtively through the trees as from some sight or scene of guilt and terror.
He stooped closer over the dead man. Death had been instantaneous. Of course there could be no doubt. From one hand a piece of folded paper had fallen.
Dunn picked it up, and saw that there was writing on it, and he read it over slowly.