The Bungalow Mystery (13 page)

“He—I can't explain, Zoe, but for my sake, if you are questioned again, say that you didn't know what he was referring to; temporize, do anything rather than let him know that you were not at Freshfield.”

His anxiety, the fear underlying his words, were infectious; Zoe's face paled, her eyes met his questioningly.

“What is it, Roger? I don't understand. What does it matter to anyone whether I played at Freshfield or not? This surveyor—Mr. Gregg, his name was—remembered my name, and said he had admired my acting. I told him it was a mistake, that I had been prevented from going, that was all.”

He rose and walked to the window.

“All!” Roger groaned. His eyes saw nothing of the life of the street outside; instead, they were picturing the cool shade of the beech-wood, the shadowed sweetness of Elizabeth Luxmore's smile. Had the blow he had been fearing fallen? Was Detective Collins on the track at last?

Zoe watched him with troubled eyes: she could not help seeing that the question which had seemed so unimportant to her was of terrible significance to him. At last she touched him timidly.

“Can't you tell me what it is, Roger? I am so sorry!”

Lavington did not answer for a moment. He caught Zoe's soft hand and crushed it.

“It was not your fault, Zoe,” he said unsteadily. “I ought to have thought—I ought to have warned you! Good heavens, how could I have left one loophole unguarded?”

Zoe's face paled; she was puzzled, frightened; across the trivialities that made up her existence, the sight of her cousin's emotion, though she had no knowledge of its cause, came as an awakening, a thunderclap. All her pretty frivolities fell away from her.

“I didn't know, Roger, indeed. But if I told Mr. Gregg that it was a mistake—that I was thinking of some other time—”

“Gregg! Gregg!” Roger repeated bitterly. His clasp of her hands tightened. “There is no Gregg, Zoe. What do you take that man for?”

Zoe winced. The pain in her hands was becoming intolerable. Lavington had long since lost all sense of what he was gripping.

“He was a surveyor for the London County Council, I told you.”

Lavington laughed—a short, hard laugh that was not pleasant to hear. He threw her hands from him; one soft palm hit the corner of the china cabinet, raising a red lump.

“He was a detective! You will hear no more of your new schemes of drainage, Zoe. I think he got all he wanted.”

Tears rose in Zoe's eyes.

“How was I to know, Roger?” she faltered. “If I have hurt you, how can I make amends? What can I do?”

At the sight of her emotion, Lavington's better nature reasserted itself.

“You were not to blame. It was I who ought to have known. But now, I wonder, what is the best thing to do? I must think.” He turned to the door.

“Where are you going, Roger? Father will be home directly; we will ask him. He will know what is best to be done.”

He caught her arm.

“Don't you understand, Zoe? You mustn't say one word of this to any living soul—neither to your father nor anyone else!”

There were great, blue finger-marks on Zoe's rounded when she undressed that night, but she felt no pain now.

“I will not tell anyone unless you wish me, Roger, I promise you that,” she said simply. “But you must wait to see Father. Think how hurt he would be to know he had missed you.”

Roger laughed recklessly.

“Tell him I was telegraphed for—that I came up to a consultation, and hadn't a minute to spare,” he suggested. “No, it is no use, Zoe. I must get back; I must make up my mind what is best to be done now.”

Zoe found that further remonstrance was useless, his resolution was taken; and, sorely puzzled and frightened, she had to let him go.

To Lavington himself, the couple of hours that must elapse before he could get back to Oakthorpe seemed an endless time to look forward to. What might not be happening to them.

He thought of Detective Collins's smug face as he had seen him at Sutton Boldon. So he had known then—he had been deliberately laying a trap. Had he walked into it? There had been no allusion in the morning's paper to the Bungalow murder, but Lavington knew enough of police methods to feel sure that the matter would not rest there.

Whatever might have been the supposed clue—the identification of the victim of the Northchester disaster, or some thing, as he was now inclined to think, entirely different—there could be small doubt that Collins was on the right track at last. And suave and pleasant-mannered as the little man might be, Roger guessed that his prey would not easily escape him, that he would work until every little piece of evidence was complete, until not one link in the chain of circumstances was wanting, and then he would pounce upon his unsuspecting prey.

If only Daphne Luxmore would go away out of his reach, if she would hide her identity under another name in a foreign land, it might still be possible for her to escape, he thought. But if she waited, not knowing, it might be that she would not awake to her danger until it was too late. He turned the matter over in his mind. Clearly she must be warned—but how?

A letter was not safe. No. The warning must be given by word of mouth. Then a third course suggested itself. He had been told that Daphne went every evening to the old trysting-place by the bridge; he had seen her there himself. Would it not be wiser to speak to her, to tell her of her danger, there.

Roger had not long to wait. As he came in sight of the bridge a tall, veiled figure emerged from the wood on the Luxmore side. Lavington recognized the graceful gait, the luxuriant golden air that not even the thick motor-veil could entirely hide.

He stepped forward to meet her, raising his hat.

“Miss Luxmore, I have ventured to come, hoping to see you—

At the first sound of his voice the girl halted; as he crossed the bridge she turned and retraced her steps.

Roger hastened after her.

“Indeed, it is not idle curiosity; if you remember Freshfield you—”

In his eagerness to overtake her, he did not notice a gnarled, projecting tree-root. He caught his right foot in it, and came heavily to the ground. He got up with an exclamation of annoyance at his awkwardness, and then looked round in amazement. Of the tall, grey-clad figure of which he had been in pursuit there was not a sign to be seen.

At last, baffled and humiliated, he had to confess that she had eluded him, that he had lost his opportunity. He turned back disconsolately. There, on the ground before him, as he neared the place where he had fallen, lay a book face downwards, evidently dropped. He picked it up. As he expected, Daphne Luxmore was the name on the title-page. Beneath it, in the same half-foreign handwriting, there was a verse of “The Revolt of Islam.”

With a feeling as though he had been prying into something not intended for his eyes, Roger shut the book and put it in his pocket; it would, at least, give him an opportunity of asking to see Miss Luxmore, to restore her lost property. But the words haunted him as he turned across the park.

“A world in which I moved alone,” he repeated to himself. ‘‘Poor girl—poor Daphne Luxmore!” If things were as he feared, of her these words might be well said. Alone she must ever be with the shadow of a terrible dread, black despair separating her from her fellows!

“Is Miss Luxmore at home?”

“No, sir.”

Roger hesitated; the footman, blandly irresponsive, waited with the door in his hand.

“I have found something which I think must belong to Miss Luxmore. Will you be good enough to give it to her as soon as possible?”

“Certainly, sir.”

The footman glanced somewhat superciliously at the red seals with which the brown outer covering of the parcel was adorned, and Roger turned away.

This plan, which he had evolved as the result of much agitation, did not strike him as particularly brilliant, but, for want of a better, he had been forced to adopt it. He had written a note telling Daphne that if, as he felt certain, he had met her at Freshfield, circumstances had arisen which made it necessary that he should see her. He begged her to give him an interview, and said that, unless he heard from her to the contrary, he would be this evening where he had seen her yesterday.

As he was going down the drive there was a quick, springy step on the turf; a hand was thrust through 
his arm.

“I say, Dr. Lavington!” It was Reggie Luxmore's pleasant boyish voice. “The dad is out,” he went on familiarly. “Gone up to town for the day. Did you want to see him?”

“Not to-day. As a matter of fact, my business was with your elder sister.”

“With Daphne?” Young Luxmore opened his eyes. “Oh, I say, you know. Daphne never sees anyone! If it had been Elizabeth now—”

“I believe I found a book of hers the other day,” Roger went on, “and I hoped she might have allowed me to return it personally.”

“Bless you, she wouldn't!” Reggie returned easily. “Very queer, Daphne is. Soon be as bad as Courtenay himself I say. But it is no use talking to her. But I was hoping to see you soon, for, you know, Elizabeth and I are no end grateful to you for saving that kid the other day. It was touch and go too.”

“You make too much of it,” Roger disclaimed. “I had no time to think; it was all over in a moment—”

Suddenly Reggie broke in, to say:

“I wonder who those fellows are? They have been stopping at the Corbetts' farm for a fortnight or more—at least, the eldest one has. I have only seen the other this last day or two. Cadging sort of fellow the tall one is; he tacked himself on to me the other day, and asked me all sorts of questions; but I soon sent him about his business.”

Lavington glanced carelessly in the direction he indicated. Two men were leaning over the palings of the local cricket-field apparently interested in the game that was in progress; one was short and stout, with a bushy black beard; the other tall and thin, with a ragged-looking, ginger-coloured moustache.

Roger did not recognize the faces as belonging to any of the loiterers on the village green with whom he occasionally exchanged a word as he passed. As he turned his head away, however, something familiar about the shoulders, about the whole pose of the figure of the shorter one, caught his eye. Of whom did it remind him, he wondered. Then, suddenly, he remembered. The bushy beard, the rather long black hair were wholly unlike; but the attitude, his gesture, as he turned to speak to his companion, were those of Detective Collins. Just so had he looked when he was admiring Inspector Spencer's carnations in the garden at Sutton Boldon. Lavington glanced at the broad back again. Was it merely a chance resemblance, or was it Detective Collins in disguise come to spy out the land?

Reggie Luxmore was inclined to resent his silence and his preoccupation. He gave his arm an impatient twitch.

“What is it? You have not seen the fellows before, have you?”

“I don't know,” Lavington answered dreamily. He was mistaken, he told himself; of course he was mistaken and yet—“I fancy I may have met one of them,” he said as carelessly as he could. “Shall we walk round that way, and I shall be able to see whether it is the man I know?”

Reggie acquiesced somewhat sulkily. Lavington's interest in his stories had waned unaccountably.

“You said you had spoken to him?”

“Him? Who?” Reggie inquired ungrammatically; his attention had wandered to the play. “Oh, of course, those chaps! The ginger-coloured one is always trying to make up to me. Doesn't seem to care about it to-day though.”

Roger glanced back. The two men had mounted bicycles that had been leaning against the palings beside them, and were now speeding down the road at a pace which rendered any idea of overtaking them out of the question.

Roger was left a prey to torturing doubt. Had he been mistaken by a fancied resemblance—or was Detective Collins like a sleuth-hound already on the trail? Was the secret that Roger would have given his life to guard already known? Was it possible that any minute might bring irremediable disgrace and ruin upon Daphne Luxmore—upon Elizabeth? He dared not think further. Only one point was clear—important as he had deemed it hitherto that Daphne should be warned of her danger, it had become doubly imperative now.

He parted from Reggie, who rushed off to speak to some new acquaintance, and walked back to the Manor, still puzzling over this new problem. It seemed to him that the afternoon was interminable, the hours that must elapse before he could hope to see Daphne were endless.

As soon as the high clock over the stables had chimed six, he started. Would Daphne come? he wondered. Would she suspect his
bona fides
, or would she suspect a trap, and refuse to meet him?

He had not arrived at any satisfactory solution when he came in sight of the stream. His heart beat faster as he saw a tall, slight figure, in white gown, leaning against the bridge.

He quickened his steps. The girl's back was towards him; beneath the white transparent motor-veil he could catch a glimpse of the golden hair.

“Miss Luxmore,” he said slowly, as he laid his hand on the railing. She turned her head slowly. The motor-veil was twisted round her hat, and tied in a coquettish bow beneath her chin; the golden hair curling round the temples, the great brown eyes, the haunting, elusive smile were those of the girl he had found in The Bungalow.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yes.” Roger looked round and hesitated. Until this moment he had hardly known that a faint hope still lingered in his heart that, in spite of the likeness undoubtedly borne to her by Elizabeth he might yet be proved to have made a mistake. Now however, when all doubt in his mind was at an end, he was for a time taken aback, tongue-tied.