A Traitor's Wooing Part 16

She looked up as her father came out and joined her. "I have heard from my young man," she said, proffering the letter. "We don't indulge in sentiment or secrets. Read it and see how the poor boy is going to be worked to death in serving an ungrateful country."

But Mr. Mallory waved the letter aside with one of his fugitive smiles.

"I will take your word for it, child," he said. "Those secrets used to be considered sacred in my courting days, but I am growing old-fas.h.i.+oned, I suppose. Reggie got back to his s.h.i.+p all right yesterday, then?"

"Yes, he is where he loves best to be I really believe--on board his 'thirty-knot sardine-box,' as he calls it," Enid replied. "He seems very pleased with himself and with the prospect of having plenty to do. He has got to take the destroyer out for torpedo practice every day for a week, leaving port at four in the morning."

"Ah well!" sighed Mr. Mallory, gently, "there is nothing like the strenuous life for the young. I often wish I was back in harness again instead of rusting here."

Enid stole an affectionately impudent glance at her father's keen face.

"Why, for the past week you have been simply revelling in the atmosphere of intrigue, which is the breath of life to you, dad," she said with a little laugh. "I am due at the links to play golf with Mona Dartring, but I had to wait and ask you if there are any new developments. I mean about the French onion-seller in whom you were interested?"

Mr. Mallory shook his head. "I seem to have run up against a dead wall in that direction," he replied. "I am utterly unable to trace a connexion between him and Nugent, yet I am morally certain that they are both concerned in the murder of Levison in greater or lesser degree.

Last night at the Manor House the air was charged with mystery which I could not pierce. At dinner Chermside was silent and preoccupied, while Miss Maynard was almost hysterically vivacious. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, she had a long confabulation with Nugent of the latter's seeking; then she withdrew into the orangery with Chermside for an interview from which they both returned as glum as if they had been mourners at their own funerals. There is some devilish trickery going on, with Nugent pulling the strings, but I can do nothing but wait and watch."

"Watch Mr. Nugent?" suggested Enid with more than her usual gravity.

"Him and others. If one could spend a few hours inside The Hut in a state of invisibility much would be made clear. For instance, an unseen listener at a conference between either that coquettish maid of Miss Maynard's, or the onion-seller, or even Chermside himself, and Nugent would go far towards the solution I am striving for."

"What has Louise, the maid, got to do with it, father?"

"Possibly nothing. On the other hand, I think it extremely probable that she is the pivot of the whole situation--so far as the murder of Levison goes. It is established that the onion-seller, whom the worthy Miss Dymmock chastised out of the park, was jealous of some one in respect of the maid; but unfortunately unless one has a chance of cross-examining the maid herself there is no way of proving whether Levison was the unknown admirer who had excited her compatriot's jealousy."

"I'll take that in hand," came Enid's eager answer. "I often see Louise when I am with Violet Maynard at the Manor. I'll pump the hussey as limp as a punctured tyre the next time I'm over there, and it's sure to be in a day or two."

Mr. Mallory patted his daughter's shoulder in mock encouragement. "Go ahead, Miss c.o.c.ksure," he smiled at her. "But, if I am not mistaken, you will find that Mademoiselle Louise carries too many guns for an honest English craft like my little Enid. There! that's a nautical simile suitable for a sailor's bride. Now run away to your golf and leave an old fogey to worry the thing out as best he can. I am past the age for personal adventures in disguise, or I should be sorely tempted to explore The Hut in some other character than my own."

Enid pouted a little at the disparagement of her detective powers, and then, after a dutiful peck at the clean-shaven paternal cheek, shouldered her clubs and made for the garden gate. Half-way across the lawn she wheeled round and shouted back--

"Don't wait lunch for me. Mona and I have arranged to have a snack on the links and go out for another round in the afternoon."

Mr. Mallory nodded and turned to re-enter the house. As a resident at a seaside resort where most people were engaged in amusing themselves, he had grown accustomed to the ordinary meals being movable feasts, sometimes omitted altogether so far as Enid was concerned. During the summer months she would frequently disappear after breakfast, and not be seen again till she arrived late but apologetic at the dinner table.

Even that important function was occasionally allowed to go by the board when the popular little lady was intercepted on her way home and dragged into some neighbour's house to spend the evening.

To-day, keen sportswoman though she was, Enid's thoughts were chained quite as much by her father's self-imposed anxieties as by the game she loved. Pa.s.sing by the entrance gates of The Hut, she looked in vain up the drive for any signs of the persons enumerated by her father as probably connected with the case, and it was only when she had reached the links on the breezy moor and had been duly chid by her waiting friend for unpunctuality that she shook off her absorption and gave herself up to the game. Conscious of her slackness, she forced herself to play rather better than usual, but at the close of the afternoon round she allowed her obsession to resume its sway.

Concocting some frivolous pretext, she avoided walking down the road to the town with other homeward-bound golfers, and contrived to slip away unseen along a moorland path which led to the town by another and longer route at the edge of the cliff. It had in Enid's eyes the merit of pa.s.sing quite close to the rear of The Hut, whereas the road was separated from the house by the whole extent of a fairly long carriage drive. Somehow the secluded abode of Mr. Travers Nugent had for her that day the attraction of a magnet. She simply could not keep away from it.

There was no definite plan in her head, only an intense longing that something might happen which would enable her to fill the gap in her father's investigations. Before it struck out on to the cliff the path led her through a maze of gorse bushes very near the back gate out of which Nugent had shown Pierre Legros on the night of his first interview with him. When Enid came opposite this gate, which was of oak set in an impenetrable hedge of blackthorn, she was seized with an irresistible impulse to see if the gate was fastened. She fought against it for as long as it took her to walk resolutely ten paces by, and then there recurred to her her father's words--

"I am past the age for adventures, or I should be sorely tempted to explore The Hut in some other character than my own."

The temptation was too strong for her. Retracing her steps, she picked her way across the few intervening yards of heather and tried the gate.

To her surprise it was neither locked nor bolted, but opened inwards to the extent of the couple of inches for which she only dared apply pressure at first. Growing bolder, she pushed the gate further open and peered in. The house was partly visible fifty yards away through a screen of copper beeches, but an intense silence brooded over it, nor in the foreground of garden was there any sign of human life.

"Dad was pleased to be sarcastic about my ability to find out things,"

she murmured to herself. "All the same I think I'll do a little scout on my own account. It would be good fun to take the old dear a t.i.t-bit of information that he hadn't been able to ferret out himself."

So at first tentatively, and then more surely, the gate was pushed wider still, and the trim figure in the short skirt stood with bated breath in the quiet garden. The coy retreat of Mr. Travers Nugent was beautifully kept. Tall trees and winding shrubberies afforded a grateful shade, and the well-shaven turf of the lawn was dotted with beds ablaze with brilliant summer flowers. In the bright yellow of the gravel walks never a weed showed. But it was past six, and the gardener who had wrought all this perfection was not there to make trouble for Enid on the threshold of her adventure.

Still without any definite plan except to "find out things," Miss Enid softly shut the gate and advanced a few steps towards the house, taking care to tread on the gra.s.s and not on the crunchy gravel. After all was said and done she could trump up an excuse if she was discovered. Mr.

Nugent had always treated her with semi-paternal playfulness, and he was, ostensibly at any rate, on amicable terms with her father.

On the left the garden was bounded by a high brick wall covered with ripening peaches; on the right lay a thick belt of shrubbery, extending up to the house. Enid chose the latter as affording the best shelter from any one standing at the windows, and, darting into the friendly cover, she commenced her stealthy approach. With any luck, she told herself, Mr. Nugent might be in his library interviewing one or other of the people whom her father deemed his accomplices, and she might pick up some useful crumbs of information to take home.

She had traversed half the length of the shrubbery in safety when her heart was set thumping by a sound behind her. It was the click of the latch of the gate through which she had so recently entered the garden.

Glancing over her shoulder she caught, through the foliage, a glimpse of a man who to her dismay was making straight for the shrubbery, taking a diagonal course across the lawn which would bring him to the very spot she had reached. Acting, as was her habit, on impulse, she did a thing the folly of which she only recognized when it was too late to remedy it. Just ahead of her, almost hidden in a tangle of thicket, was a small, one-storied structure built of stone--a sort of grotto or summer-house. Its walls were covered with green mould, never a ray of sun reaching them, and it looked damp, disused and forgotten. The doorway stood open, and Enid darted through, finding herself almost in darkness, for the place was only furnished with a small circular window, nearly obscured by ivy and high up in the wall.

It would serve well enough as a refuge if the man had not seen the fluttering of her white skirt amid the leafy screen. He would pa.s.s on his way to the house and all would be well. But if he had seen her, and was of an inquisitive turn of mind, her retreat would be cut off, for there were no signs of an exit at the rear. It was sure to be some one belonging to the house, or at any rate a privileged person, for the gate was a private one, intended only for the use of the master of The Hut.

Would the man pa.s.s by, or would he come in and tax her with unwarrantable trespa.s.s? Her hasty glance had not told her whether he had a right to do so, as it had not enabled her to recognize him.

But a moment later she did, when the doorway darkened and on the threshold there stood the individual whom she had dubbed "The Bootlace Man"--the seeming pedlar who had sneaked in and out of the side entrance at her father's house two days before, and who in other garb had called out of the train to draw the attention of Montague Maynard's picnic party to "the face in the pool."

He blinked in his efforts to pierce the gloom of the dim interior, and then with a muttered oath produced a box of wax matches and struck a light. As the tiny flame flared up and showed him the pale but defiant face of the girl, he gave a little cackling laugh and puffed out his bloated cheeks in evil triumph.

"Golly, but this is a bit of all right!" his alcoholic exclamation smote Enid's ears and nose. "The governor will chalk this up to my score like the generous patron he is. Now you stay there, Missy, and meditate on the sin of curiosity till--well, till some one comes and lets you out."

With which he stepped back and slammed the door in the girl's face. A moment later the grating of the key in the lock told her that she was a prisoner.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TRAP IS SET

About the time when the door of the stone grotto in the grounds of The Hut swung to on Enid Mallory, Mr. Travers Nugent's motor car was rus.h.i.+ng up the avenue at the Manor House two miles away. At the main entrance of the mansion Nugent got down and rang the bell, and while waiting turned and spoke to his chauffeur.

"I shall want you to be busy this evening, Dixon," he said. "When we get home see that your tanks are full, and have the car ready for any emergency. I may want you at any moment."

The smart young fellow touched his cap, and the butler flinging open the door put an end to further possible instructions. Nugent, who was aware that the great manufacturer had gone to London that morning to attend a board meeting, blandly inquired if Mr. Maynard was in. On receiving the expected reply that the master would not be back till next day, he affected to consider deeply, caressing his long moustache.

"That is annoying," he said at last. "I wished to see him very particularly. Are the ladies at home?"

"Miss Dymmock is in the drawing-room, sir; but Miss Maynard is either in the park or in the gardens--probably in the rosery, which is her favourite place," said the butler.

"Ah!" murmured Nugent, and again he seemed to be plunged into perplexity by Mr. Maynard's absence. "I had better see Miss Dymmock, perhaps. No, on second thoughts I won't trouble her. I will leave a message with Miss Maynard, if you will be good enough to show me where I shall be likely to find her."

So did this past-master in the art of chicane take elaborate pains to have it understood at the Manor that Violet was the last person whom he had originally set out to see. The butler called a footman to pilot the visitor to the embowered pleasaunce where four days earlier Leslie Chermside's declaration of love had been wrung from his headstrong tongue. With an unread book at her side, Violet was sitting on the same seat where her brief wooing had begun and ended. Nugent's eyes gleamed with momentary satisfaction as he noted the sadness in the beautiful face, the listless droop in the att.i.tude of the graceful figure. But by the time he reached her and bent over the proffered hand his manner was that of the courtly gentleman, tinged with a trace of grave concern which yielded to a semblance of uncontrolled agitation as soon as the footman had retired. His pose and facial expression was that of the bearer of ill tidings to the life. Violet, strung to a pitch of nervous tension by her lover's strange demeanour in the orangery the preceding night, read in Nugent's countenance the exact emotion he intended to show.

"This is not a duty call, Mr. Nugent?" she said, as she motioned him to a seat at her side. Nugent preferred to stand, looking down at her. He wanted to mark the effect of every word he had to say.

"No," he replied, deftly throwing off his "society" manner, and, with the consummate skill of the genuine artist, speaking almost harshly. "I wish it was, Miss Maynard. I am here on very serious business--so serious that if I did not know you were a brave woman I should not dare to approach you about it. As it is I am sorely tempted to run away and leave matters as they are."

"I beg you will not do that," said Violet gravely. "It would be more cruel than if you had not come to me at all. I presume that it is about the suspicion that has been cast on Mr. Chermside?"

Nugent smiled inwardly as he noticed the change in her tone since last night. No longer did she heap contempt upon the inference as to Chermside's meeting with Levison. She was serious, and almost pathetically meek. Like Mr. Mallory he had watched the lovers on their return from the orangery to the drawing-room, and he had at the time gloated over the coolness that had evidently arisen between them. That ineffable idiot Chermside had, he congratulated himself, said or done something to shake her confidence--just as he, Nugent, had expected and intended.

But aloud he said, "Yes, it is about Chermside. Greatly against my will, I have consented to be his amba.s.sador--to bring you a message from him, Miss Maynard. It will be kindest to break the worst to you without beating about the bush. Chermside is leaving England to-night. He is going to sail for South America in the yacht which has been kept in readiness for him at Weymouth."