"GOOD DOG!"
Two dancing eyes of flame were streaming up the lane towards the girls, a
long shadow slanted across the white pathway, the steady flick of hoofs
drew nearer. Then the hoofs ceased their smiting of the dust and a man's
voice spoke.
"Better turn and wait for us by the farm, driver," the voice said. "Bell,
can you manage, man?"
"Who was that?" Enid whispered. "A stranger?"
"Not precisely," Ruth replied. "That is Mr. David Steel. Oh, I am sure
we can trust him. Don't annoy him. Think of the trouble he is in for
our sakes."
"I do," Enid said, drily. "I am also thinking of Reginald. If our dear
Reginald escapes from the fostering care of the dogs we shall be ruined.
That man's hearing is wonderful. He will come creeping down here on those
large flat feet of his, and that cunning brain will take in everything
like a flash. Good dog!"
A hound in the distance growled, and then another howled mournfully. It
was the plaint of the beast who has found his quarry, impatient for the
gaoler to arrive. So long as that continued Henson was safe. Any attempt
to escape, and he would be torn to pieces. Just at the present moment
Enid almost hoped that the attempt would be made. It certainly was all
right for the present, but then Williams might happen along on his way to
the stables at any moment.
The two men were coming nearer. They both paused as the dogs gave tongue.
Through the thick belt of trees lights gleamed from one or two windows of
the house. Steel pulled up and shuddered slightly in spite of himself.
"Crimson blinds," he said. "Crimson blinds all through this business.
They are beginning to get on my nerves. What about those dogs, Bell?"
"Dogs or no dogs, I am not going back now," Bell muttered. "It's
perfectly useless to come here in the daytime; therefore we must fall
back upon a little amateur burglary. There's a girl yonder who might have
assisted me at one time, but--"
Enid slipped into the road. The night was passably light and her
beautiful features were fairly clear to the startled men in the road.
"The girl is here," she said. "What do you want?"
Bell and his companion cried out simultaneously: Bell because he was so
suddenly face to face with one who was very dear to him, David because it
seemed to him that he recognised the voice from the darkness, the voice
of his great adventure. And there was another surprise as he saw Ruth
Gates side by side with the owner of that wonderful voice.
"Enid!" Bell cried, hoarsely. "I did not expect--"
"To confront me like this," the girl said, coldly. "That I quite
understand. What I don't understand is why you intrude your hated
presence here."
Bell shook his handsome head mournfully. He looked strangely downcast and
dejected, and none the less, perhaps, because a fall in crossing the down
had severely wrenched his ankle. But for a belated cab on the Rottingdean
road he would not have been here now.
"As hard and cruel as ever," he said. "Not one word to me, not one word
in my defence. And all the time I am the victim of a vile conspiracy--"
"Conspiracy! Do you call vulgar theft a conspiracy?"
"It was nothing else," David put in, eagerly. "A most extraordinary
conspiracy. The kind of thing that you would not have deemed possible out
of a book."
"And who might this gentleman be?" Enid asked, haughtily.
"A thousand pardons for my want of ceremony," David said. "If I had not
been under the impression that we had met before I should never have
presumed--"
"Oh, a truce to this," Bell cried. "We are wasting time. The hour is not
far distant, Enid, when you will ask my pardon. Meanwhile I am going up
to the house, and you are going to take me there. Come what way, I don't
sleep to-night until I have speech with your aunt."
David had drawn a little aside. By a kind of instinct Ruth Gates
followed him. A shaft of grey light glinted upon her cycle in the grass
by the roadside. Enid and Bell were talking in vehement whispers--they
seemed to be absolutely unconscious of anybody else but themselves.
David could see the anger and scorn on the pale, high-bred face; he
could see Bell gradually expanding as he brought all his strength and
firm power of will to bear.
"What will be the upshot of it?" Ruth asked, timidly.
"Bell will conquer," David replied. "He always does, you know."
"I am afraid you don't take my meaning, Mr. Steel."
David looked down into the sweet, troubled face of his companion, and
thence away to the vivid crimson patches beyond the dark belt of foliage.
Ever and anon the intense stillness of the night was broken by the
long-drawn howl of one of the hounds. David remembered it for years
afterwards; it formed the most realistic chapter of one of his most
popular novels.
"Heaven only knows," he said. "I have been dragged into this business,
but what it means I know no more than a child. I am mixed up in it,
and Bell is mixed up in it, and so are you. Why we shall perhaps know
some day."
"You are not angry with me?"
"Why, no. Only you might have had a little more confidence in me."
"Mr. Steel, we dared not. We wanted your advice, and nothing more. Even
now I am afraid I am saying too much. There is a withering blight over
yonder house that is beyond mere words. And twice gallant gentlemen have
come forward to our assistance. Both of them are dead. And if we had
dragged you, a total stranger, into the arena, we should morally have
murdered you."
"Am I not within the charmed circle now?" David smiled.
"Not of our free will," Ruth said, eagerly. "You came into the tangle
with Hatherly Bell. Thank Heaven you have an ally like that. And yet I am
filled with shame--"
"My dear young lady, what have you to be ashamed of?"
Ruth covered her face with her hands for a moment and David saw a tear or
two trickle through the slim fingers. He took the hands in his, gently,
tenderly, and glanced into the fine, grey eyes. Never had he been moved
to a woman like this before.
"But what will you think of me?" Ruth whispered. "You have been so good
and kind and I am so foolish. What can you think of a girl who is all
this way from home at midnight? It is so--so unmaidenly."
"It might be in some girls, but not in you," David said, boldly. "One has
only to look in your face and see that only the good and the pure dwell
there. But you were not afraid?"
"Horribly afraid. The very shadows startled me. But when I discovered
your errand to-night I was bound to come. My loyalty to Enid demanded it,
and I had not one single person in the world whom I could trust."
"If you had only come to me, Miss Ruth--"
"I know, I know now. Oh, it is a blessed thing for a lonely girl to have
one good man that she can rely upon. And you have been so very good, and
we have treated you very, very badly."
But David would not hear anything of the kind. The whole adventure was
strange to a degree, but it seemed to matter nothing so long as he had
Ruth for company. Still, the girl must be got home. She could not be
allowed to remain here, nor must she be permitted to return to Brighton
alone. Bell strode up at the same moment.
"Miss Henson has been so good as to listen to my arguments," he said. "I
am going into the house. Don't worry about me, but send Miss Gates home
in the cab. I shall manage somehow."
David turned eagerly to Ruth.
"That will be best," he said. "We can put your machine on the cab, and
I'll accompany you part of the way home. Our cabman will think that you
came from the house. I shan't be long, Bell."
Ruth assented gratefully. As David put her in the cab Bell whispered to
him to return as soon as possible, but the girl heard nothing of this.
"How kind--how kind you are," she murmured.
"Perhaps some day you will be kind to me," David said, and Ruth blushed
in the darkness.