"THE BOOTLACE MAN"
On the following morning Enid Mallory, clad in a serviceable jersey and
a short skirt, and carrying her golf clubs, was walking up and down the
lawn at her father's house, perusing a letter received from Reggie by
the early delivery. She had already read it twice, once before and once
after breakfast, but like all maidens in similar cases she wanted to
make sure that she had missed none of its honey, implied or expressed.
She looked up as her father came out and joined her. "I have heard from
my young man," she said, proffering the letter. "We don't indulge in
sentiment or secrets. Read it and see how the poor boy is going to be
worked to death in serving an ungrateful country."
But Mr. Mallory waved the letter aside with one of his fugitive smiles.
"I will take your word for it, child," he said. "Those secrets used to
be considered sacred in my courting days, but I am growing
old-fashioned, I suppose. Reggie got back to his ship all right
yesterday, then?"
"Yes, he is where he loves best to be I really believe--on board his
'thirty-knot sardine-box,' as he calls it," Enid replied. "He seems very
pleased with himself and with the prospect of having plenty to do. He
has got to take the destroyer out for torpedo practice every day for a
week, leaving port at four in the morning."
"Ah well!" sighed Mr. Mallory, gently, "there is nothing like the
strenuous life for the young. I often wish I was back in harness again
instead of rusting here."
Enid stole an affectionately impudent glance at her father's keen face.
"Why, for the past week you have been simply revelling in the atmosphere
of intrigue, which is the breath of life to you, dad," she said with a
little laugh. "I am due at the links to play golf with Mona Dartring,
but I had to wait and ask you if there are any new developments. I mean
about the French onion-seller in whom you were interested?"
Mr. Mallory shook his head. "I seem to have run up against a dead wall
in that direction," he replied. "I am utterly unable to trace a
connexion between him and Nugent, yet I am morally certain that they are
both concerned in the murder of Levison in greater or lesser degree.
Last night at the Manor House the air was charged with mystery which I
could not pierce. At dinner Chermside was silent and preoccupied, while
Miss Maynard was almost hysterically vivacious. Afterwards, in the
drawing-room, she had a long confabulation with Nugent of the latter's
seeking; then she withdrew into the orangery with Chermside for an
interview from which they both returned as glum as if they had been
mourners at their own funerals. There is some devilish trickery going
on, with Nugent pulling the strings, but I can do nothing but wait and
watch."
"Watch Mr. Nugent?" suggested Enid with more than her usual gravity.
"Him and others. If one could spend a few hours inside The Hut in a
state of invisibility much would be made clear. For instance, an unseen
listener at a conference between either that coquettish maid of Miss
Maynard's, or the onion-seller, or even Chermside himself, and Nugent
would go far towards the solution I am striving for."
"What has Louise, the maid, got to do with it, father?"
"Possibly nothing. On the other hand, I think it extremely probable that
she is the pivot of the whole situation--so far as the murder of Levison
goes. It is established that the onion-seller, whom the worthy Miss
Dymmock chastised out of the park, was jealous of some one in respect of
the maid; but unfortunately unless one has a chance of cross-examining
the maid herself there is no way of proving whether Levison was the
unknown admirer who had excited her compatriot's jealousy."
"I'll take that in hand," came Enid's eager answer. "I often see Louise
when I am with Violet Maynard at the Manor. I'll pump the hussey as limp
as a punctured tyre the next time I'm over there, and it's sure to be in
a day or two."
Mr. Mallory patted his daughter's shoulder in mock encouragement. "Go
ahead, Miss Cocksure," he smiled at her. "But, if I am not mistaken,
you will find that Mademoiselle Louise carries too many guns for an
honest English craft like my little Enid. There! that's a nautical
simile suitable for a sailor's bride. Now run away to your golf and
leave an old fogey to worry the thing out as best he can. I am past the
age for personal adventures in disguise, or I should be sorely tempted
to explore The Hut in some other character than my own."
Enid pouted a little at the disparagement of her detective powers, and
then, after a dutiful peck at the clean-shaven paternal cheek,
shouldered her clubs and made for the garden gate. Half-way across the
lawn she wheeled round and shouted back--
"Don't wait lunch for me. Mona and I have arranged to have a snack on
the links and go out for another round in the afternoon."
Mr. Mallory nodded and turned to re-enter the house. As a resident at a
seaside resort where most people were engaged in amusing themselves, he
had grown accustomed to the ordinary meals being movable feasts,
sometimes omitted altogether so far as Enid was concerned. During the
summer months she would frequently disappear after breakfast, and not be
seen again till she arrived late but apologetic at the dinner table.
Even that important function was occasionally allowed to go by the board
when the popular little lady was intercepted on her way home and dragged
into some neighbour's house to spend the evening.
To-day, keen sportswoman though she was, Enid's thoughts were chained
quite as much by her father's self-imposed anxieties as by the game she
loved. Passing by the entrance gates of The Hut, she looked in vain up
the drive for any signs of the persons enumerated by her father as
probably connected with the case, and it was only when she had reached
the links on the breezy moor and had been duly chid by her waiting
friend for unpunctuality that she shook off her absorption and gave
herself up to the game. Conscious of her slackness, she forced herself
to play rather better than usual, but at the close of the afternoon
round she allowed her obsession to resume its sway.
Concocting some frivolous pretext, she avoided walking down the road to
the town with other homeward-bound golfers, and contrived to slip away
unseen along a moorland path which led to the town by another and longer
route at the edge of the cliff. It had in Enid's eyes the merit of
passing quite close to the rear of The Hut, whereas the road was
separated from the house by the whole extent of a fairly long carriage
drive. Somehow the secluded abode of Mr. Travers Nugent had for her that
day the attraction of a magnet. She simply could not keep away from it.
There was no definite plan in her head, only an intense longing that
something might happen which would enable her to fill the gap in her
father's investigations. Before it struck out on to the cliff the path
led her through a maze of gorse bushes very near the back gate out of
which Nugent had shown Pierre Legros on the night of his first interview
with him. When Enid came opposite this gate, which was of oak set in an
impenetrable hedge of blackthorn, she was seized with an irresistible
impulse to see if the gate was fastened. She fought against it for as
long as it took her to walk resolutely ten paces by, and then there
recurred to her her father's words--
"I am past the age for adventures, or I should be sorely tempted to
explore The Hut in some other character than my own."
The temptation was too strong for her. Retracing her steps, she picked
her way across the few intervening yards of heather and tried the gate.
To her surprise it was neither locked nor bolted, but opened inwards to
the extent of the couple of inches for which she only dared apply
pressure at first. Growing bolder, she pushed the gate further open and
peered in. The house was partly visible fifty yards away through a
screen of copper beeches, but an intense silence brooded over it, nor in
the foreground of garden was there any sign of human life.
"Dad was pleased to be sarcastic about my ability to find out things,"
she murmured to herself. "All the same I think I'll do a little scout on
my own account. It would be good fun to take the old dear a tit-bit of
information that he hadn't been able to ferret out himself."
So at first tentatively, and then more surely, the gate was pushed wider
still, and the trim figure in the short skirt stood with bated breath in
the quiet garden. The coy retreat of Mr. Travers Nugent was beautifully
kept. Tall trees and winding shrubberies afforded a grateful shade, and
the well-shaven turf of the lawn was dotted with beds ablaze with
brilliant summer flowers. In the bright yellow of the gravel walks never
a weed showed. But it was past six, and the gardener who had wrought
all this perfection was not there to make trouble for Enid on the
threshold of her adventure.
Still without any definite plan except to "find out things," Miss Enid
softly shut the gate and advanced a few steps towards the house, taking
care to tread on the grass and not on the crunchy gravel. After all was
said and done she could trump up an excuse if she was discovered. Mr.
Nugent had always treated her with semi-paternal playfulness, and he
was, ostensibly at any rate, on amicable terms with her father.
On the left the garden was bounded by a high brick wall covered with
ripening peaches; on the right lay a thick belt of shrubbery, extending
up to the house. Enid chose the latter as affording the best shelter
from any one standing at the windows, and, darting into the friendly
cover, she commenced her stealthy approach. With any luck, she told
herself, Mr. Nugent might be in his library interviewing one or other of
the people whom her father deemed his accomplices, and she might pick up
some useful crumbs of information to take home.
She had traversed half the length of the shrubbery in safety when her
heart was set thumping by a sound behind her. It was the click of the
latch of the gate through which she had so recently entered the garden.
Glancing over her shoulder she caught, through the foliage, a glimpse of
a man who to her dismay was making straight for the shrubbery, taking a
diagonal course across the lawn which would bring him to the very spot
she had reached. Acting, as was her habit, on impulse, she did a thing
the folly of which she only recognized when it was too late to remedy
it. Just ahead of her, almost hidden in a tangle of thicket, was a
small, one-storied structure built of stone--a sort of grotto or
summer-house. Its walls were covered with green mould, never a ray of
sun reaching them, and it looked damp, disused and forgotten. The
doorway stood open, and Enid darted through, finding herself almost in
darkness, for the place was only furnished with a small circular window,
nearly obscured by ivy and high up in the wall.
It would serve well enough as a refuge if the man had not seen the
fluttering of her white skirt amid the leafy screen. He would pass on
his way to the house and all would be well. But if he had seen her, and
was of an inquisitive turn of mind, her retreat would be cut off, for
there were no signs of an exit at the rear. It was sure to be some one
belonging to the house, or at any rate a privileged person, for the gate
was a private one, intended only for the use of the master of The Hut.
Would the man pass by, or would he come in and tax her with
unwarrantable trespass? Her hasty glance had not told her whether he had
a right to do so, as it had not enabled her to recognize him.
But a moment later she did, when the doorway darkened and on the
threshold there stood the individual whom she had dubbed "The Bootlace
Man"--the seeming pedlar who had sneaked in and out of the side entrance
at her father's house two days before, and who in other garb had called
out of the train to draw the attention of Montague Maynard's picnic
party to "the face in the pool."
He blinked in his efforts to pierce the gloom of the dim interior, and
then with a muttered oath produced a box of wax matches and struck a
light. As the tiny flame flared up and showed him the pale but defiant
face of the girl, he gave a little cackling laugh and puffed out his
bloated cheeks in evil triumph.
"Golly, but this is a bit of all right!" his alcoholic exclamation smote
Enid's ears and nose. "The governor will chalk this up to my score like
the generous patron he is. Now you stay there, Missy, and meditate on
the sin of curiosity till--well, till some one comes and lets you out."
With which he stepped back and slammed the door in the girl's face. A
moment later the grating of the key in the lock told her that she was a
prisoner.