When he had finished his breakfast, and after he had had the wash of
which he certainly stood in considerable need, Dunn made his way to the
garage and there occupied himself cleaning the car. He noticed that the
mud with which it was liberally covered was of a light sandy sort, and
he discovered on one of the tyres a small shell.
Apparently, therefore, last night's wild journey had been to the coast,
and it was a natural inference that the sea had provided a secure
hiding-place for the packing-case and its dreadful contents.
But then that meant that there was no evidence left on which he could
take action.
As he busied himself with his task, he tried to think out as clearly as
he could the position in which he found himself and to decide what he
ought to do next.
To his quick and hasty nature the swiftest action was always the most
congenial, and had he followed his instinct, he would have lost no time
in denouncing Deede Dawson. But his cooler thoughts told him that he
dared not do that, since it would be to involve risks, not for himself,
but for others, that he simply dared not contemplate.
He felt that the police, even if they credited his story, which he
also felt that very likely they would not do, could not act on his sole
evidence.
And even if they did act and did arrest Deede Dawson, it was certain no
jury would convict on so strange a story, so entirely uncorroborated.
The only result would be to strengthen Deede Dawson's position by the
warning, to show him his danger, and to give him the opportunity, if he
chose to use it, of disappearing and beginning again his plots and plans
after some fresh and perhaps more deadly fashion.
“Whereas at present,” he mused, “at any rate, I'm here and he doesn't
seem to suspect me, and I can watch and wait for a time, till I see my
way more clearly.”
And this decision he came to was a great relief to him, for he desired
very greatly to know more before he acted and in especial to find out
for certain what was Ella's position in all this.
It was Deede Dawson's voice that broke in upon his meditations.
“Ah, you're busy,” he said. “That's right, I like to see a man working
hard. I've got some new things for you I think may fit fairly well, and
Mrs. Dawson is going to get one of the attics ready for you to sleep
in.”
“Very good, sir,” said Dunn.
He wondered which attic was to be assigned to him and if it would be
that one in which he had found his friend's body. He suspected, too,
that he was to be lodged in the house so that Deede Dawson might watch
him, and this pleased him, since it meant that he, in his turn, would be
able to watch Deede Dawson.
Not that there appeared much to watch, for the days passed on and it
seemed a very harmless and quiet life that Deede Dawson lived with his
wife and stepdaughter.
But for the memory, burned into Dunn's mind, of what he had seen that
night of his arrival, he would have been inclined to say that no more
harmless, gentle soul existed than Deede Dawson.
But as it was, the man's very gentleness and smiling urbanity filled him
with a loathing that it was at times all he could do to control.
The attic assigned to him to sleep in was that where he had made his
dreadful discovery, and he believed this had been done as a further test
of his ignorance, for he was sure Deede Dawson watched him closely to
see if the idea of being there was in any way repugnant to him.
Indeed at another time he might have shrunk from the idea of sleeping
each night in the very room where his friend had been foully done
to death, but now he derived a certain grim satisfaction and a
strengthening of his nerves for the task that lay before him.
Only a very few visitors came to Bittermeads, especially now that Mr.
John Clive, who had come often, was laid up. But one or two of the
people from the village came occasionally, and the vicar appeared two or
three times every week, ostensibly to play chess with Deede Dawson,
but in reality, Dunn thought, drawn there by Ella, who, however, seemed
quite unaware of the attraction she exercised over the good man.
Dunn did not find that he was expected to do very much work, and in
fact, he was left a good deal to himself.
Once or twice the car was taken out, and occasionally Deede Dawson
would come into the garden and chat with him idly for a few minutes on
indifferent subjects. When it was fine he would often bring out a little
travelling set of chessmen and board and proceed to amuse himself,
working out or composing problems.
One day he called Dunn up to admire a problem he had just composed.
“Pretty clever, eh?” he said, admiring his own work with much
complacence. “Quite an original idea of mine and I think the key move
will take some finding. What do you say? I suppose you do play chess?”
“Only a very little,” answered Dunn.
“Try a game with me,” said Deede Dawson, and won it easily, for in fact,
Dunn was by no means a strong player.
His swift victory appeared to delight Deede Dawson immensely.
“A very pretty mate I brought off there against you,” he declared. “I've
not often seen a prettier. Now you try to solve that problem of mine,
it's easy enough once you hit on the key move.”
Dunn thought to himself that there were other and more important
problems which would soon be solved if only the key move could be
discovered.
He said aloud that he would try what he could do, and Deede Dawson
promised him half a sovereign if he solved it within a week.
“I mayn't manage it within a week,” said Dunn. “I don't say I will. But
sooner or later I shall find it out.”
During all this time he had seen little of Ella, who appeared to come
very little into the garden and who, when she did so, avoided him in a
somewhat marked manner.
Her mother, Mrs. Dawson, was a little faded woman, with timid eyes and
a frightened manner. Her health did not seem to be good, and Ella looked
after her very assiduously. That she went in deadly fear of her husband
was fairly evident, though he seemed to treat her always with great
consideration and kindness and even with a show of affection, to which
at times she responded and from which at other times she appeared to
shrink with inexplicable terror.
“She doesn't know,” Dunn said to himself. “But she suspects
--something.”
Ella, he still watched with the same care and secrecy, and sometimes he
seemed to see her walking amidst the flowers as an angel of sweetness
and laughing innocence; and sometimes he saw her, as it were, with
the shadow of death around her beauty, and behind her gentle eyes and
winning ways a great and horrible abyss.
Of one thing he was certain--her mind was troubled and she was not at
ease; and it was plain, also, that she feared her smiling soft-spoken
stepfather.
As the days passed, too, Dunn grew convinced that she was watching him
all the time, even when she seemed most indifferent, as closely and as
intently as he watched her.
“All watching together,” Dunn thought grimly. “It would be simple
enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I suppose
no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't very well
be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here like this. I
suppose he is simply waiting his time.”
As for the chess problem, that baffled him entirely. He said as much
to Deede Dawson, who was very pleased, but would not tell him what the
solution was.
“No, no, find it out for yourself,” he said, chuckling with a merriment
in which, for once his cold eyes seemed to take full share.
“I'll go on trying,” said Dunn, and it grew to be quite a custom between
them for Deede Dawson to ask him how he was getting on with the problem;
and for Dunn to reply that he was still searching for the key move.
Several times little errands took Dunn into the village, where,
discreetly listening to the current gossip, he learned that Mr. John
Clive of Ramsdon Place had been injured in an attack made upon him by a
gang of ferocious poachers--at least a dozen in number--but was making
good progress towards recovery.
Also, he found that Mr. John Clive's visits to Bittermeads had not gone
unremarked, or wholly uncriticized, since there was a vague feeling that
a Mr. Clive of Ramsdon Place ought to make a better match.
“But a pretty face is all a young man thinks of,” said the more
experienced; and on the whole, it seemed to be felt that the open
attention Clive paid to Ella was at least easily to be understood.
Almost the first visit Clive paid, when he was allowed to venture out,
was to Bittermeads; and Dunn, returning one afternoon from an errand,
found him established on the lawn in the company of Ella, and looking
little the worse for his adventure.
He and Ella seemed to be talking very animatedly, and Dunn took the
opportunity to busy himself with some gardening work not far away, so
that he could watch their behaviour.
He told himself it was necessary he should know in what relation they
stood to each other, and as he heard them chatting and laughing together
with great apparent friendliness and enjoyment, he remembered with
considerable satisfaction how he had already broken one rib of Clive's,
and he wished very much for an opportunity to break another.
For, without knowing why, he was beginning to conceive an intense
dislike for Clive; and, also, it did not seem to him quite good taste
for Ella to sit and chat and laugh with him so readily.
“But we were told,” he caught a stray remark of Ella's, “that it was a
gang of at least a dozen that attacked you.”
“No,” answered Clive reluctantly. “No, I think there was only one. But
he had a grip like a bear.”
“He must have been very strong,” remarked Ella thoughtfully.
“I would give fifty pounds to meet him again, and have it out in the
light, when one could see what one was doing,” declared Clive with great
vigour.
“Oh, you would, would you?” muttered Dunn to himself. “Well, one of
these days I may claim that fifty.”
He looked round at Clive as he thought this, and Clive noticed him, and
said:
“Is that a new man you've got there Miss Cayley? Doesn't he rather want
a shave? Where on earth did Mr. Dawson pick him up?”
“Oh, he came here with the very best testimonials, and father engaged
him on the spot,” answered Ella, touching her wrists thoughtfully. “He
certainly is not very handsome, but then that doesn't matter, does it?”
She spoke more loudly than usual, and Dunn was certain she did so
in order that he might hear what she said. So he had no scruple in
lingering on pretence of being busy with a rose bush, and heard Clive
say:
“Well, if he were one of my chaps, I should tell him to put the
lawn-mower over his own face.”
Ella laughed amusedly.
“Oh, what an idea, Mr. Clive,” she cried, and Dunn thought to himself:
“Yes, one day I shall very certainly claim that fifty pounds.”