The Bittermeads Mystery Part 22

"Well, then, the man I took that packing-case to had a voice just like that--high and shrill, whistling almost."

"I thought as much," said Dunn. "May I ask you another question?"

She nodded.

"May I smoke?"

She nodded again with a touch of impatience.

He took a cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth and lighted a match, but the match, when he had lighted it, he used to put light to a sc.r.a.p of folded paper with writing on it, like a note.

This piece of paper he used to light his cigarette with and when he had done so he watched the paper burn to an ash, not dropping it to the ground till the little flame stung his fingers.

The ash that had fallen he ground into the path where they stood with the heel of his boot.

"What have you burned there?" she asked, as if she suspected it was something of importance he had destroyed.

In fact it was the note that had fallen from dead John Clive's hand wherein Ella had asked him to meet her at the oak where he had met his death.

That bit of paper would have been enough, Dunn thought, to place a harsh hempen noose about the soft white throat he watched where the little pulse still fluttered up and down. But now it was burnt and utterly destroyed, and no one would ever see it.

At the thought he laughed and she drew back, very startled.

"Oh, what is the matter?" she exclaimed.

"Nothing," he answered. "Nothing in all the world except that I love you."

CHAPTER XVIII. ROBERT DUNN'S ENEMY

When he had said this he went a step or two aside and sat down on the stump of a tree. He was very agitated and disturbed for he had not in the very least meant to say such a thing, he had not even known that he really felt like that.

It was, indeed, a rush and power of quite unexpected pa.s.sion that had swept him away and made him for the moment lose all control of himself.

Ella showed much more composure. She had become extraordinarily pale, but otherwise she did not appear in any way agitated.

She remained silent, her eyes bent on the ground, her only movement a gesture by which she rubbed softly and in turn each of her wrists as though they hurt her.

"Well, can't you say something?" he asked roughly, annoyed by her persistent silence.

"I don't see that there's anything for me to say," she answered.

"Oh, well now then," he muttered; quite disconcerted.

She raised her eyes from the ground, and for the first time looked full at him, in her expression both curiosity and resentment.

"It is perfectly intolerable," she said with a heaving breast. "Will you tell me who you are?"

"I've told you one thing," he answered sullenly, his eyes on fire. "I should have thought that was enough. I'll tell you nothing more."

"I think you are the most horrid man I ever met," she cried. "And the very, very ugliest--all that hair on your face so that no one can see anything else. What are you like when you cut it off?"

"Does that matter?" he asked, in the same gruff and surly manner.

"I should think it matters a good deal when I ask you," she exclaimed.

"Do you expect any one to care for a man she has never seen--nothing but hair. You hurt my wrists awfully that night," she added resentfully.

"And you've never even hinted you're sorry."

His reply was unexpected and it disconcerted her greatly and for the first time, for he caught both her wrists in his hands and kissed them pa.s.sionately where the cords had been.

"You mustn't do that, please don't do that," she said quickly, trying to release herself.

Her strength was nothing to his and he stood up and put his arm around her and strained her to him in an embrace so pa.s.sionate and powerful she could not have resisted it though she had wished to.

But no thought of resistance came to her, since for the moment she had lost all consciousness of everything save the strange thrill of his bright, clear eyes looking so closely into hers, of his strong arms holding her so firmly.

He released her, or rather she at last freed herself by an effort he did not oppose, and she fled away down the path.

She had an impression that her hair would come down and that that would make her look a fright, and she put up her hands hurriedly to secure it.

She never looked back to where he stood, breathing heavily and looking after her and thinking not of her, but of two dead men whom he had seen of late.

"Shall I make the third?" he wondered. "I do not care if I do, not I."

The path Ella had fled by led into another along which when she reached it she saw Deede Dawson coming.

She stopped at once and began to busy herself with a flower-bed overrun with weeds, but she could not entirely conceal her agitation from her stepfather's cold grey eyes.

"Oh, there you are, Ella," he said, with all that false geniality of his that filled the girl with such loathing and distrust. "Have you seen Dunn? Oh, there he is, isn't he? I wanted to ask you, Ella, what do you think of Dunn?"

She glanced over her shoulder towards where Dunn stood, and she managed to answer with a pa.s.sable air of indifference.

"Well, I suppose," she said, "that he is quite the ugliest man I ever saw. Of course, if he cut all of that hair off--"

Deede Dawson laughed though his eyes remained as hard and cold as ever.

"I shall have to give him orders to shave," he said. "Your mother was telling me I ought to the other day, she said it didn't look respectable to have a man about with all that hair on his face. Though I don't see myself why hair isn't respectable, do you?"

"It looks odd," answered Ella carelessly.

Deede Dawson laughed again, and walked on to where Dunn was standing waiting for him. With his perpetual smile that his cold and evil eyes so strangely contradicted, he said to him:

"Well, what have you and Ella been talking about?"

"Why do you ask?" growled Dunn.

"Because she looks upset," answered Deede Dawson. "Oh, don't be shy about it. Shall I give you a little good advice?"