CHAPTER III
A MEETING IN THE DARK
I HAD not long to wait before making further acquaintance with my pretty midnight visitor. Our second meeting took place within a few hours of the police call and on the same day. I had been out for a long walk across the hills and was tramping steadily along the high road towards Stone Hollow, when I saw, gleaming through the darkness—it was already dark though only late afternoon—at probably the loneliest and most desolate spot in the Dale, the headlights of a motor-car evidently at a standstill.
“It’s a weird place for a halt and worse if it’s a breakdown,” I murmured, and involuntarily quickened my steps.
But as I approached the car I saw a moving light and then the shadow of a woman walking towards me, carrying, apparently, a small electric torch. Evidently she had heard my approach and had set out to meet me. As she stepped momentarily into the light of the car I recognised her. It was the girl of the midnight visit.
“Who is it, Kitty?” demanded a quick, imperious voice somewhere in the darkness. “Tell him to come here. Do you know him?”
“Lady Clevedon is in the car,” the girl said a little hurriedly. “Will you come and speak to her?”
“Is it a breakdown?” I queried.
“No,” the girl responded, “it is Hartrey. We have lost him.”
But I had no immediate opportunity of questioning her as to the missing Hartrey, or the manner of his going, for “Kitty,” as the old lady had addressed her, had run to the door of the car and pulled it open, to reveal old Lady Clevedon, white of hair, very erect of figure, rather stern of face and with keen, searching eyes that just now were full of wrath.
“Is there anything I can do?” I began.
“You can find Hartrey,” her ladyship responded, not exactly snappily, but quite ungently; she was evidently used to giving orders, and it never occurred to her, apparently, that I would do any other than obey.
“Who is Hartrey?” I demanded.
“He is the chauffeur,” the girl explained. “We sent him with a message to Lepley’s farm—it is over there.”
She pointed vaguely into the darkness, and I followed her gesture with my eyes. But I could see no sign of house or light or living creature—only the darkness and, in the fore-ground, the blurred outlines of masses of rock.
“It should not have taken him ten minutes,” the girl went on, “but he has been gone for more than half an hour.”
“How far is the farm-house?” I asked. “It is rather queer we cannot see any lights.”
“Oh, I think there are some barns or something of the sort between the road and the house,” Miss Kitty Clevedon told me. “And, besides, it lies in a hollow and the rocks may hide it. I have seen the place before, but only in daylight, and I forget just how it stands.”
“If you will allow me I will go as far as the house and inquire,” I said, producing my own electric lamp. “Possibly your man has tripped over a stone—”
“Tripped over a stone!” her ladyship cried scornfully. “He’s more likely philandering with the Lepley girl. Do you know her?”
I replied in the negative, adding that, indeed I had never heard of her.
“Well, you’re the only man in the Dale that doesn’t know her,” the old lady retorted. “Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong with the girl, but the men are crazy over her, and Hartrey with the rest, I suppose.”
I could not help being a little entertained by the idea that I might be a competitor with the chauffeur for the favours of the fair Lepley. But I did not put the thought into words. I hadn’t an opportunity, indeed, for the old lady threw off her rugs and made evident preparations to alight.
“If you would wait here, I could go alone,” I ventured, thinking the search would be hampered rather than helped by the old lady’s presence. But she did not even answer me. She stepped from the car with an agility which showed that her body was still younger than her years, and herself led the way towards a gap in the tumble-down, rubble wall where once apparently had been a gate. The car, I noticed, was standing well aside on the rough turf that flanked the roadway, and, in any case, there was little enough traffic in those parts at that time of the year. We might leave it there in safety. And accordingly the three of us made our way along the very rough and uneven road that led to Lepley’s farm.
“No,” said the farmer’s wife, who answered my rap at the door, “Mr. Hartrey has not been here to-night.”
She called to somebody who was evidently in a kitchen at the rear of the house.
“Perhaps he tripped ovver a stoan and hurt hisself,” the farmer’s wife went on, “though if it’s that it seems queer you saw nowt of him as you came along. Besides, I don’t know what he would be doing tripping ovver a boulder, anyway. I reckon he knows the road blindfolded, and there are no boulders to hurt if you keep to the path.”
I could have argued that point with her, for I had nearly twisted my ankle on one group of boulders and had badly barked my shins on another. But it was hardly worth while debating it, since apparently Hartrey had not tripped over a boulder or we should have tripped over him. At this moment, too, a girl emerged from the kitchen, carrying a lamp held high so that she might see who the visitors were. Her sharper eyes discovered the two ladies, and she made a step towards them.
“Her ladyship!” she cried, “and Miss Kitty! Come right in. What is the trouble?”
That was my first introduction to Nora Lepley, a young woman of whom I was to know a good deal more before I finished with her. She was tall and finely built, with plentiful hair so dark as to be almost black, and eyes that in some lights seemed to be of a rich purple and in others of a sombre, rather heavy blue. They were wonderful eyes and one had no need to wonder that the men of the Dale should be, to use Lady Clevedon’s words, “crazy over her.” She had then more admirers than she could count on the fingers of both her slim, capably hands, and is still unmarried. I think I know why, though I have hardly any right to say so.
She spoke with an educated intonation, in curious contrast with her mother, who used the ordinary dialect of the Dale. Beautiful, clever, educated, entirely self-possessed, she was certainly something of a novelty to discover in a Cartordale farm-house.
“I thought you were at White Towers with your aunt,” Lady Clevedon said.
“I have just run home to get some clothes,” the girl replied. “I am going back to-night to stay with Aunty. She is terribly upset. But what is the trouble here?”
“The trouble is,” Lady Clevedon retorted grimly, “that I have a fool for a chauffeur. I sent him here with a message, but he hasn’t been nor did he come back to us. He went off into the darkness and apparently stopped there, leaving me and the car on the roadway for anybody to run into.”
“Well, he hasn’t been here,” the girl said, with a decision that was evidently characteristic of her. “Wait until I get a lantern and we’ll look for him.”
Lady Clevedon followed Mrs. Lepley and her daughter into the house, and for a minute or two Miss Kitty Clevedon and I were left together in the porch. She could have followed the others into the house, but for some reason preferred to wait outside. Possibly she wanted to see what I would do. She did not look at me—I noticed that—but stood near the door, not quite with her back to me, but so that if it had been light I could not have seen her face. She did not speak to me, but I had of course no intention that she should get off as easily as that.
“I hope your arm is better,” I said, speaking softly, so that no sound of my voice might reach those inside.
“I beg your pardon,” the girl returned icily.
“I was expressing the hope that your arm was better,” I explained.
“But there is nothing the matter with my arm—thank you.”
The girl’s voice was perfectly cool and without the slightest sign of flurry or perturbation.
“I may congratulate you on a wonderfully quick recovery, then,” I responded.
“I do not understand you—what was supposed to be the matter with my arm?”
“I was told—it was rumoured—that you had cut it—climbing a wall—a wall with glass on top.”
“I do not climb walls.”
“I don’t suppose you make a hobby of it, but every one does queer things now and again.”
“Such as addressing impertinent observations to a lady one meets for the first time,” she rapped out.
There was a rather lengthy pause, and then I made one more attempt to break down her defences.
“I was very sorry to hear of the—the tragedy at White Towers,” I said softly. “It was a queer coincidence—”
But if I thought to disconcert her by that remark I had miscalculated. She made no reply, but simply walked a few steps away and left me standing. Her acting was perfect. I could not forbear a smile, though at the same time I admired both her courage and her cleverness. Anyone less alert would have admitted our meeting and tried in some way to secure my silence. She did nothing of the sort, but ignored the whole matter, putting up a big bluff in the assurance that since there had been no witnesses to the little midnight incident I should hesitate to tell the story lest I should not be believed. Of course I knew very well that if I had really been guilty of the impertinence of which she had accused me she would not have received it quite in that way. However, I had no opportunity for further efforts because just at that moment the Lepley girl reappeared with a shawl over her head and a big lantern in her hand, her mother and Lady Clevedon following her.
We went slowly along in a sort of zigzag, going for six or eight yards to the left of the roadway and then recrossing it and covering a similar space on the opposite side. It was a lengthy process and it was wasted time, because, as we neared the car, we saw Hartrey standing by it, looking from left to right into the darkness, evidently with rather dismal forebodings.
“He’s there!” Miss Kitty Clevedon cried in accents of relief, but the tone in which her ladyship echoed the phrase was quite otherwise. The latter approached the car and demanded to know what Hartrey meant by leaving her alone there on the high road and why he had not gone to the farm to deliver her message.
“I lost my way, my lady, in the darkness,” the man replied. “I found myself at the bend of the road higher up—”
“Now, Hartrey,” her ladyship said severely, “when I engaged you I gave you extra wages on condition that you should be teetotal.”
“My lady, I have not touched anything of the sort for nearly seven years.”
“And you—what is your name?” the old lady demanded, turning suddenly on me.
“My name is Dennis Holt and I live at Stone Hollow,” I replied, amused and not at all offended at the old lady’s brusqueness.
“Oh, yes, I know, nephew to Mrs. Mackaluce. I remember hearing about you from Dr. Crawford. Well, thanks for your help. Now, Kitty, come along. Good bye, Mr. Holt.”
“Can you find your way back all right?” I said, turning to Nora Lepley, who had stood silent during the conversation and whom the old lady had not thanked.
“But I live here,” she replied, with a quick laugh, “and I don’t always come home by daylight. Good night, Mr. Holt.”
Old Lady Clevedon had amused me hugely. She was evidently what the country people would call “a character” whose acquaintance might be worth cultivating. But it was the pretty niece who attracted all my attention, and I made up my mind that I must become interested in the tragedy at White Towers. There might be no connection between that and Miss Kitty Clevedon’s midnight wanderings. The latter might be susceptible of the most innocent explanation. But it was in that case a queer coincidence, and though I am far from denying that coincidences play a large and weighty part in human affairs, I instinctively distrust them. This might be one, but until I could prove the affirmative I preferred to admit a possible negative, or at all events to keep an open mind.