Part 21 (1/2)

”Tanner. He was somethin' the same sort as Delane. We've a lot of them in Canada--remittance men, we call them--men as can't get on in the old country--and their relations pay 'em to go--and pay 'em to keep away. But Tanner was a nice sort of fellow--quite different from Delane. He painted pictures. I remember his showin' some o' them in Winnipeg. But he was always down on his luck. He couldn't make any money, and he couldn't keep it.”

”You saw Miss Henderson there?”

Dempsey gave a guffaw.

”Oh, Lor, no! I don't say that. Why, I'd get into trouble--shouldn't I?

But I saw Mrs. Delane. I was driving past Tanner's place, with two horses, and a heavy load, November two years ago--just before we pa.s.sed our Military Service Act, and I joined up. And an awful storm came on--a regular blizzard. Before I got to Tanner's I was nearly wore out, an' the horses, too. So I stopped to ask for a hot drink or somethin'. You couldn't see the horses' heads for the snow. And Tanner brought me out some hot coffee--I'm a teetotaller, you see--an' a woman stood at the door, and handed it to him. She was holdin' a lamp, so I saw her quite plain. And I knew her at once, though she was only there a minute. It was Mrs. Roger Delane.”

He stopped to light a cigarette. No sound came from his companion. All round them spread the great common, with its old thorns, its clumps of fir, its hollows and girdling woods, faintly lit by a ghostly moonlight that was just beginning to penetrate the misty November dusk. The cheerful light of Dempsey's cigarette shone a moment in the gloom. Delane was conscious of an excitement which it took all his will to master. But he spoke carelessly.

”And what was Mrs. Delane doing there?”

Dempsey chuckled.

”How should I know? Tanner used to have a sister staying with him sometimes. Perhaps she and Mrs. Delane were friends. But I saw that woman quite plain. It was Mrs. Delane--that I'll swear. And Miss Henderson is as like her as two peas. It might have been her sister. Miss Henderson's very uncommon-looking. You don't often see that complexion and that hair.

And she has lived in Canada.”

”How do you know?”

”She told old Halsey. Well, there's my road, just ahead. And if you're going to Moor End, you keep straight on. The moon's coming up. It won't be very dark.” And with a careless good-night, the Canadian turned a corner, and disappeared along a road which diverged at a right angle from the main road, and led, as Delane knew, direct to Ips...o...b...

He himself walked on, till he found a lane tunnelled through one of the deep woods that on their western side ran down to Great End Farm. In the heart of that wood there was a keeper's hut, disused entirely since the war. Delane had discovered it, and was quite prepared to spend a night there at a pinch. There was a rude fireplace in it, and some old sacks.

With some of the fallen wood lying about, a man could make a fire, and pa.s.s a winter night in very tolerable comfort.

He made his way in, managed to prop a sack against the small cobwebbed window, fastened the door with a rusty bolt, and brought out an electric torch he always carried in his pocket.

There was not a house within a long distance. There were no keepers now on Colonel Shepherd's estate. Darkness--the woods--and the wild creatures in them--were his only companions. Half a mile away, no doubt, Rachel in her smart new parlour was talking to the Canadian fellow.

_Tanner!_ Ye G.o.ds! At last he had the clue to it all.

X

Dempsey did not find Rachel Henderson at home when he called at Great End Farm, after his meeting with his unknown companion on the common.

Ellesborough and Rachel had gone to London for the day. Ellesborough's duties at the Ralstone camp were in a state of suspended animation, since, in these expectant days before the signing of the armistice, there had been a general slackening, as though by silent and general consent, in the timber felling due to the war throughout the beautiful district in which Millsborough lay. Enough damage had been done already to the great wood-sanctuaries. On one pretext or another men held their hands.

Ellesborough then was free to take time off when he would, and to spend it in love-making. The engagement had been announced, and Ellesborough believed himself a very happy man--with the slight drawbacks that may be imagined.

In the first place--although, as he became better acquainted with Rachel's varying moods and aspects, he fell more and more deeply under the charm of her temperament--a temperament at once pa.s.sionate and childish, crude, and subtle, with many signs, fugitive and surprising, of a deep and tragic reflectiveness; he became also more and more conscious of what seemed to him the lasting effects upon her of her miserable marriage. The nervous effects above all; shown by the vague ”fears” of which she had spoken to him, on one of their early walks together; and by the gulfs of depression and silence into which she would often fall, after periods of high, even wild spirits.

It was this constant perception of a state of nervous suffering and irritability in this splendid physical creature--a state explained, as he thought, by her story, which had put him instantly on his guard, when that sinister vision at the window had sprung for a moment out of the darkness. Before almost he could move towards it, it had gone. And with a farewell smile at the woman he had just been holding in his arms, a smile which betrayed nothing, he had hurried away from her to investigate the mystery. A hasty word to Janet Leighton in the kitchen, and he was making a rapid circuit of the farm, and searching the farm-yard; with no results whatever.

Then he, Janet, and Hastings had held a hurried and secret colloquy in a corner of the great cow-shed, as far from Rachel's sight and hearing as possible. Clearly some one was haunting the farm for some malicious purpose. Hastings, for the first time, told the story of the blood-marks, and of two or three other supposed visions of a man, tall and stooping, with a dark sallow face, which persons working on the farm, or walking near it on the hill, had either seen or imagined. Ellesborough finally had jumped on his motor-bicycle and ridden off to the police depot at Millsborough. Some wind of the happenings at Great End Farm had already reached the police, but they could throw no light on them. They arranged, however, with Ellesborough to patrol the farm and the neighbourhood after dark as often as their diminished force would allow.

They were inclined to believe that some half-witted person was concerned, drawn, perhaps, from the alien population which had been floating through the district, and bent on mischief or robbery--or a mixture of both.