Chapter VII

He expected some such question after he had noted the excitement under which the old woman was labouring. But the lady appeared speechless with surprise, for it was a moment or two before he heard her stammer a reply:

"A--a man in this house?"

"Yes, a man you're a-hiding."

"Are you crazy? The question is an insult. What gave you such a ridiculous suspicion, Mrs. Spedding?"

"Several things, m'lady. Perhaps I am crazy." She sighed heavily. "It is a crazy question, come to think of it." She paused doubtfully.

"Then don't think of it any more, Betsy. The weather must have got on your nerves."

"Maybe 'tis so. That wind a-whistling all day and a-howling all through the night gives you the idea there's voices all round ye. Last night while I lay wakeful in bed I could have took my oath I 'eard Joe Spedding a-callin' to me from the garden, though ee's lain up in the churchyard nigh thirty years."

The old woman seemed shaken. Kinloch heard the low murmur of sympathy with which she was led away down the passage.

Later they talked over the incident. Kinloch thought she should have found out what had raised the old woman's suspicion of his presence. But it appeared she had been too frightened to ask, and had preferred to leave well alone. Mrs. Spedding had gone away reassured, and would probably be thoroughly ashamed of herself next day. But all the same he noted that she had now put off her intention of going for the newspaper as soon as the old woman left. He himself shared in the feeling of vague insecurity he divined in her. Discovery by Mrs. Spedding neither of them had ever thought likely. Yet something had evidently awakened the suspicions of that quite unsuspicious creature. What was it? Neither of them could guess. But they would have to find out if the same danger was to be avoided in the future. For the old woman's suspicions once awakened would be more easily reawakened, but not be so easily dispelled a second time.

Kinloch brooded long over the situation, when after dusk fell he was left alone in the house. His thoughts were not about himself. He had no apprehension for his own safety. Once he might not have minded much had Mrs. Spedding seen him, and been able to identify him afterwards and so far corroborate his story. But now that he had all that was necessary sewn inside the collar of his coat, identification by her, if arrest came, was unnecessary. By a hundred details of the life in that house he could prove his presence there, and secure Mrs. Spedding's support in what he said. But he was conscious now that he was unwilling to see the girl come to grief. She carried some dark secret, and was fighting well. He tried to analyze his feelings about her. What if the man for whom she fought was a criminal? Many a good soldier has fought in a bad cause. Like himself she was the victim of that man. And, he saw now, it was because he did not mean her to be left in that man's hands that he had been content to remain with her in that house.

A long time he sat absorbed in the thoughts that followed. But a moment came when he sat up with a start, all at once alert and fully conscious of his surroundings. Something had happened to disturb him. He saw that. But it puzzled him to think what it could be. A noise in the house? He listened hard, and heard nothing beyond the wind whistling on the roof. Then a door banged. The wind, he told himself, only half believing. But if so the noise had been caused by a sudden inrush of air as some other door or window was opened.... He waited, rigid with attention. Then he heard a board creak. There was a loose one--he knew it well--at the threshold of the sitting-room. _That_, at least, was not the wind. His mouth went suddenly dry, and he sat petrified. He could hear the wind moaning above the interior stillness. Then the distant door banged again.

After a long time he ceased to listen and began to urge himself into a belief that it was nothing, that no one had stared at him from the open door. Doors do sometimes bang mysteriously, and even a mouse can make a board creak. Anyway, nothing had happened. He was getting as nervous as Mrs. Spedding herself, and far more fanciful. They had nothing to be afraid of. It was impossible that the police could trace them to that lonely house. Any clue they might have held would have been used long ago. And since none had been used it was now obvious they had none to use. He ought therefore with every day that passed to be getting less and less, instead of more and more, jumpy and uneasy.

And yet some unknown sense seemed to be telling him as he sat on that danger was drawing nearer. The storm seemed to have spent itself, for the wind had dropped quite suddenly, half an hour ago. And now there had come what seemed after those days of unending tumult a great calm in which nothing moved. He was almost sorry the storm had passed. That gale was like a wall that shut off the rest of the world from them. But in this sudden hush and stillness there was somehow not peace but expectancy. The world seemed stilled with the sense of something terrible about to happen.

Yet it was a good hour before he heard the sound for which he had sat listening, the quick, sharp click of a key in the lock of the front door. He stood up to meet her, noting the hurry of her approach.

"You have news," he said to her.

"You know?"

"Felt it in my bones. What is it?"

She did not reply, but when he heard the glass shade tinkle as with a trembling hand, when she removed it to light the lamp, he knew both that the news was bad and that it was something she must read to him. He heard her spread out a newspaper on the table.

THE EALING MYSTERY

ARREST IMPENDING

"Events continue to move rapidly in connection with this crime,
and the general public will learn with relief that it is not one
destined to be added to the long list of unsolved mysteries which
have of late so frequently baffled the police. The strictures this
paper was impelled to make on the out-of-date methods of the police
will yet be fresh in the memory of our readers. In consequence of
the strong exception taken in certain quarters to what we then
said, we may now reveal the fact that to justify our contention
this paper set a specially selected crime expert to work upon the
case. And the peculiar qualifications possessed by our agent have
yielded the most gratifying results. Working along lines quite
different from those being followed by the many police engaged on
the case, he is now so close on his quarry that an arrest may be
looked for within the next twenty-four hours.

"In the interests of justice we must of course still write in the
most guarded terms. But in amplification of what we have said
in previous issues we may assert that the public interest will
not cease with the arrest of the man and woman concerned in this
remarkable case."

Kinloch heard her put down the paper. He was silent too. It was not the confident tone of the paragraph that shook him, but the reference to the man and woman implicated. The precision of that reference impressed him; and from its correctness he did not doubt that much was known which was left unsaid.

He heard her get up and begin to walk about the room. There might be a doubt as to whether the wanted man were the other man or himself; but there could be no doubt that this was the woman wanted. And now Kinloch found that he wished to save the woman. That was the discovery he made as he sat there. He wished to save her. Men, he told himself, are what they make themselves, and women are what men make them. His hands clenched in hate of that man. Her voice came in a hoarse whisper:

"How long do you think we've got?"

"Is that to-day's paper?"

"Yes. Oh, I shouldn't have minded the weather. The weather! And there were things in the paper that would have shown me sooner what was coming. But for five days I haven't seen a paper, on account of the bad weather. Oh, but I felt so safe--safe with you here."

He was not listening to her. If this was that day's paper then they might expect to hear that peremptory knock on the door at any moment now. Half hypnotized by the expectation he lifted his head to listen. And it was so quiet after the storm that he could hear the girl's steps, and even her breathing, as she passed restlessly up and down the room.

"Is it worth while trying to get away--is there time?" she asked, stopping in front of him.

He shook his head doubtfully.

"Don't know."

Then just as he spoke his ear, tuned to listening, caught a sound somewhere in the house. The remembrance of his earlier suspicion of some one in the house returned. He knew it now! Of course that had been no fancy: they had merely waited till she came back to take them both together. He held up his hand.

"Listen," he whispered sharply. "Listen!... There is the answer to your question."

And the quick indraw of breath told him she too had heard. But the next moment she had him on his feet, and half leading, half pushing, scrambled him into the embrasure of the nearest window. Kinloch yielded himself, aware of the uselessness of the attempt at concealment. Not till the house was surrounded would they be offered a chance of escape by a window. But, making no attempt to open the window, she stood him behind the curtains and herself stepped back into the room. Though he believed this to be equally futile he played up to her, leaning back against the glass to avoid contact with the curtains. There followed the briefest interval in which nothing happened. Then a sharp exclamation came from the girl. This Kinloch read as meaning that the intruder was not the person she had expected to see.

"Oho," the voice came, "popped out o' sight again, 'as ee, that Jack-in-the-box o' yourn?"

"Mrs. Spedding, what on earth--"

The girl's indignant expostulation was cut short.

"Oh, I seen 'im, not 'alf an hour agone, and not for the first time neither, and seein's believing, they say. Locked 'im in, did ye, while yu was away? Yes, but I unlatched the kitchen window this morning. So I crept in and had a good look at 'im settin' before the fire. Leastways I saw enough of him to know from the picture in the paper that _he_ wasn't the man what went to church with you."

The old woman was almost shrill with reproach and anger.

"The innocent I was! I believed you about them two cups on the table the first mornin'. But I didn't know I'd been doing only half the washin' up ever since. Nor the lot you eat didn't start me suspecting. Nor even the smell o' baccy. Nor nothing else, till I saw you was buying things elsewheres. I knowed it from the printed names on the bags as ye sometimes forgot to burn. See? 'Something queer, 'ere,' I says to myself."

"And you came to spy?"

"That's just what I done," the old woman cried defiantly. "But with no bad in my mind. You wouldn't 'ave me to sleep 'ere as I wanted to do, and the thought of you all alone wouldn't let me rest o' nights. So I began to come round 'ere in the dark to see if yu was all right. Yes, but I soon found out you wasn't so lonely as I thought for."

"But he's only a friend, you silly old thing."

This assurance seemed to exasperate rather than to mollify Mrs. Spedding.

"Only a friend, is he? Didn't I see ye setting with him last night? Didn't I see ye through the window whenever the draught swayed the curtains, and you a-brushing your hair wi' your arms and shoulders white in shameless nakedness afore his very eyes? 'That ought by rights to be 'er 'usband,' I says, 'but if so,' I says to myself, 'if so, why be she a-hiding of un?' So I made up my mind as I'd have a closer look. See?"

"But there's nothing wrong."

"Nothing wrong? Then what's he a-hiding for? Having a game of peek-a-boo with old Spedding, I s'pose, like what you played in the old days? I reckon not! Townified ways this--us country folk don't hold wi' them. It ain't proper for him to be livin' 'ere, not you and him alone." The voice began to quiver and break. "Us--us country folk knows the same conduc' as we 'olds to isn't to be expected from gentlefolk, but--" Mrs. Spedding broke down.

Behind the curtain the man stifled the curse that rose to his lips, and listened to hear the girl defend herself. Not a word came from her. And so still was it in that room that he could hear the old woman's heavy, agitated breathing.

"You're--you're in love with him, that's how 'tis."

"Y-es. Of course I--I love him. Why else should he be here?"

The words came quickly.

So that was the line she was taking! Well, it did explain his presence.

"Oh, it ain't right, it ain't right."

"One can't help one's feelings. They get too--too strong before you know."

"Oh, but we can all help what we do. And, oh, Miss Stella, even if you can't, why didn't ee go somewheres else? Why didn't ee take him where ye wasn't known, and leave us free to think on ee as us used to think."

Mrs. Spedding seemed to go closer, raising her voice in a quick passionate appeal.

"Give him up," she cried. "No good can come of it--nothing but scandal. And that mayn't be so far off, neither." She drew near to whisper loudly. "Look, m'lady, when I was a-coming across the common I came on a stranger man."

"A stranger?"

"Yes, a man I didn't know, and who didn't know the common from the way he was movin' among the gorse bushes. Didn't 'ear my feet on the grass, and he seemed to be looking for something. Then the thought came to me. 'What if it should be her husband?' I says to myself."

"What was he like, this man?"

"Couldn't tell. It were too dark. Turned away soon as he saw me, but he was a big man, and nobody belonging to these parts. Oh, I don't go for to say as 'twas your husband, but it's a warning, it might well have been. So give him up, m'lady, give this other up."

There was no reply at first. But presently the words came in a rush:

"Yes, I'm taking him away to-night--to-night. You'll never see or hear of him again. But you'll tell no one, will you? If--if any one came asking about him, you won't tell, Betsy?"

"Tell? Tell a thing like that? Wild 'orses couldn't drag it from my mouth."

Half an hour later Kinloch was sheltering in the lee of a haystack in the corner of a field. He had been hurried out of the house by the back door; and they had scaled a fence and wormed a way through several hedges to reach this shelter. Then before either had recovered breath she had gone back to get the car, bring it round as quietly as possible and pick him up.

Left to himself Kinloch made some of the hay into a little heap and sat down against the rick to think things out. She had warned him that she might not be able to come back for a long time. Who was this man who had been seen nosing about on the common? Mrs. Spedding, to frighten her, had suggested it might be the girl's husband. Well, it might be. But on the whole the man was more likely to belong to the police. Anyhow she might have to face this man, and even outwit him, before she could get away with the car. Kinloch here considered a notion that came suddenly to him. Why not go away alone? Walk clean out of the business--and leave all trouble behind. His presence in that house had put the girl into a horrible position with Mrs. Spedding, forcing her to lie brazenly, and in the end forcing her to pretend to be in love with him. With him! She said that unwillingly--he recalled her low, halting murmur--and only when hard pressed by the necessities of the situation. There simply was nothing else left for her to say. That, and that alone, certainly was the only convincing reason, short of the truth, which she could give for keeping a man hidden in that house.

Yet the curious thing was that, lie though he felt her pretence of love to be, ever since he had heard her faltering admission to Mrs. Spedding, he wanted to help her. Up till then he had fought her to find out what he could--fought her not unfairly considering his handicap. It had been a struggle between them, each wary of the other, fencing, feinting, each alert, he for what he needed to know, and she determined to conceal it. But now, as he sat there with his head leaning back against the pungent hay, he was conscious of a complete change in his attitude towards her. In the presence of this new danger he felt wholly on her side. And the question arose in his mind as to whether the best help he could give her would be to go away, to disappear before she returned. Was not that, he asked himself, the decent thing to do? But no sooner had he reached this conclusion than a doubt arose in his mind. Would it be fair to go off and leave her uncertain as to why he had gone and what he meant to do? He tried to imagine what her feeling would be when she came back and found him gone. Would she feel relief or fear? He could not decide. He did not know enough. Perhaps, if he fell into the hands of the police, they could infer from whatever he told them more than he meant them to know. He might blunder out some damaging fact which he himself took to be quite innocent. He could not tell. It depended on how much the police already knew.

That advertisement asking for information about Alexander David Kinloch's whereabouts seemed to show they knew something about himself. At least they seemed to know he could not read. And if it were known he was blind how quickly they would get their hands on a blind stranger found wandering about a neighbourhood which they were evidently then searching. No; he must stay there till she came back. And having reached this conclusion he was surprised to find himself rather glad.

Then in this moment of danger Kinloch's thoughts ran back once more to the thing's beginning, and the tragic night when he had become involved in the crime. The murdered man himself had no desire to be known, he remembered. There was his delight, his unconcealed delight, on learning that he had found a blind man who did not know who he was. Kinloch smiled grimly. Too clever by half that man had been. The carefully staged trap, and all his neat pre-arrangements to frighten his visitor, had only served to make the assassin's job easier. Probably the deed would not be discovered for hours afterwards. For the victim who, like the murderer, had laid his plans so carefully, would have seen to it that there was no likelihood of any intrusion into that room by any member of his own household.

But some one must open that door sooner or later. The speculation as to who it would be somehow fascinated Kinloch. In the end he decided it would be a housemaid, a sleepy housemaid, early next morning. He pictured her opening the door, pulling up the blinds with a yawn, and turning broom in hand to begin her work. And then he could see the wild-eyed horror come suddenly to her face, and the stupid stare, before she began to scream, when she saw what lay there on the floor.