A MEETING IN THE DARK
I HAD not long to wait before making further acquaintance with my pretty
midnight visitor. Our second meeting took place within a few hours of
the police call and on the same day. I had been out for a long walk
across the hills and was tramping steadily along the high road towards
Stone Hollow, when I saw, gleaming through the darkness—it was already
dark though only late afternoon—at probably the loneliest and most
desolate spot in the Dale, the headlights of a motor-car evidently at a
standstill.
“It’s a weird place for a halt and worse if it’s a breakdown,” I
murmured, and involuntarily quickened my steps.
But as I approached the car I saw a moving light and then the shadow of a
woman walking towards me, carrying, apparently, a small electric torch.
Evidently she had heard my approach and had set out to meet me. As she
stepped momentarily into the light of the car I recognised her. It was
the girl of the midnight visit.
“Who is it, Kitty?” demanded a quick, imperious voice somewhere in the
darkness. “Tell him to come here. Do you know him?”
“Lady Clevedon is in the car,” the girl said a little hurriedly. “Will
you come and speak to her?”
“Is it a breakdown?” I queried.
“No,” the girl responded, “it is Hartrey. We have lost him.”
But I had no immediate opportunity of questioning her as to the missing
Hartrey, or the manner of his going, for “Kitty,” as the old lady had
addressed her, had run to the door of the car and pulled it open, to
reveal old Lady Clevedon, white of hair, very erect of figure, rather
stern of face and with keen, searching eyes that just now were full of
wrath.
“Is there anything I can do?” I began.
“You can find Hartrey,” her ladyship responded, not exactly snappily, but
quite ungently; she was evidently used to giving orders, and it never
occurred to her, apparently, that I would do any other than obey.
“Who is Hartrey?” I demanded.
“He is the chauffeur,” the girl explained. “We sent him with a message to
Lepley’s farm—it is over there.”
She pointed vaguely into the darkness, and I followed her gesture with my
eyes. But I could see no sign of house or light or living creature—only
the darkness and, in the fore-ground, the blurred outlines of masses of
rock.
“It should not have taken him ten minutes,” the girl went on, “but he has
been gone for more than half an hour.”
“How far is the farm-house?” I asked. “It is rather queer we cannot see
any lights.”
“Oh, I think there are some barns or something of the sort between the
road and the house,” Miss Kitty Clevedon told me. “And, besides, it lies
in a hollow and the rocks may hide it. I have seen the place before, but
only in daylight, and I forget just how it stands.”
“If you will allow me I will go as far as the house and inquire,” I said,
producing my own electric lamp. “Possibly your man has tripped over a
stone—”
“Tripped over a stone!” her ladyship cried scornfully. “He’s more likely
philandering with the Lepley girl. Do you know her?”
I replied in the negative, adding that, indeed I had never heard of her.
“Well, you’re the only man in the Dale that doesn’t know her,” the old
lady retorted. “Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong with the girl, but the men
are crazy over her, and Hartrey with the rest, I suppose.”
I could not help being a little entertained by the idea that I might be a
competitor with the chauffeur for the favours of the fair Lepley. But I
did not put the thought into words. I hadn’t an opportunity, indeed, for
the old lady threw off her rugs and made evident preparations to alight.
“If you would wait here, I could go alone,” I ventured, thinking the
search would be hampered rather than helped by the old lady’s presence.
But she did not even answer me. She stepped from the car with an agility
which showed that her body was still younger than her years, and herself
led the way towards a gap in the tumble-down, rubble wall where once
apparently had been a gate. The car, I noticed, was standing well aside
on the rough turf that flanked the roadway, and, in any case, there was
little enough traffic in those parts at that time of the year. We might
leave it there in safety. And accordingly the three of us made our way
along the very rough and uneven road that led to Lepley’s farm.
“No,” said the farmer’s wife, who answered my rap at the door, “Mr.
Hartrey has not been here to-night.”
She called to somebody who was evidently in a kitchen at the rear of the
house.
“Perhaps he tripped ovver a stoan and hurt hisself,” the farmer’s wife
went on, “though if it’s that it seems queer you saw nowt of him as you
came along. Besides, I don’t know what he would be doing tripping ovver
a boulder, anyway. I reckon he knows the road blindfolded, and there are
no boulders to hurt if you keep to the path.”
I could have argued that point with her, for I had nearly twisted my
ankle on one group of boulders and had badly barked my shins on another.
But it was hardly worth while debating it, since apparently Hartrey had
not tripped over a boulder or we should have tripped over him. At this
moment, too, a girl emerged from the kitchen, carrying a lamp held high
so that she might see who the visitors were. Her sharper eyes discovered
the two ladies, and she made a step towards them.
“Her ladyship!” she cried, “and Miss Kitty! Come right in. What is the
trouble?”
That was my first introduction to Nora Lepley, a young woman of whom I
was to know a good deal more before I finished with her. She was tall
and finely built, with plentiful hair so dark as to be almost black, and
eyes that in some lights seemed to be of a rich purple and in others of a
sombre, rather heavy blue. They were wonderful eyes and one had no need
to wonder that the men of the Dale should be, to use Lady Clevedon’s
words, “crazy over her.” She had then more admirers than she could count
on the fingers of both her slim, capable hands, and is still unmarried.
I think I know why, though I have hardly any right to say so.
She spoke with an educated intonation, in curious contrast with her
mother, who used the ordinary dialect of the Dale. Beautiful, clever,
educated, entirely self-possessed, she was certainly something of a
novelty to discover in a Cartordale farm-house.
“I thought you were at White Towers with your aunt,” Lady Clevedon said.
“I have just run home to get some clothes,” the girl replied. “I am
going back to-night to stay with Aunty. She is terribly upset. But what
is the trouble here?”
“The trouble is,” Lady Clevedon retorted grimly, “that I have a fool for
a chauffeur. I sent him here with a message, but he hasn’t been nor did
he come back to us. He went off into the darkness and apparently stopped
there, leaving me and the car on the roadway for anybody to run into.”
“Well, he hasn’t been here,” the girl said, with a decision that was
evidently characteristic of her. “Wait until I get a lantern and we’ll
look for him.”
Lady Clevedon followed Mrs. Lepley and her daughter into the house, and
for a minute or two Miss Kitty Clevedon and I were left together in the
porch. She could have followed the others into the house, but for some
reason preferred to wait outside. Possibly she wanted to see what I
would do. She did not look at me—I noticed that—but stood near the door,
not quite with her back to me, but so that if it had been light I could
not have seen her face. She did not speak to me, but I had of course no
intention that she should get off as easily as that.
“I hope your arm is better,” I said, speaking softly, so that no sound of
my voice might reach those inside.
“I beg your pardon,” the girl returned icily.
“I was expressing the hope that your arm was better,” I explained.
“But there is nothing the matter with my arm—thank you.”
The girl’s voice was perfectly cool and without the slightest sign of
flurry or perturbation.
“I may congratulate you on a wonderfully quick recovery, then,” I
responded.
“I do not understand you—what was supposed to be the matter with my arm?”
“I was told—it was rumoured—that you had cut it—climbing a wall—a wall
with glass on top.”
“I do not climb walls.”
“I don’t suppose you make a hobby of it, but every one does queer things
now and again.”
“Such as addressing impertinent observations to a lady one meets for the
first time,” she rapped out.
There was a rather lengthy pause, and then I made one more attempt to
break down her defences.
“I was very sorry to hear of the—the tragedy at White Towers,” I said
softly. “It was a queer coincidence—”
But if I thought to disconcert her by that remark I had miscalculated.
She made no reply, but simply walked a few steps away and left me
standing. Her acting was perfect. I could not forbear a smile, though
at the same time I admired both her courage and her cleverness. Anyone
less alert would have admitted our meeting and tried in some way to
secure my silence. She did nothing of the sort, but ignored the whole
matter, putting up a big bluff in the assurance that since there had been
no witnesses to the little midnight incident I should hesitate to tell
the story lest I should not be believed. Of course I knew very well that
if I had really been guilty of the impertinence of which she had accused
me she would not have received it quite in that way. However, I had no
opportunity for further efforts because just at that moment the Lepley
girl reappeared with a shawl over her head and a big lantern in her hand,
her mother and Lady Clevedon following her.
We went slowly along in a sort of zigzag, going for six or eight yards to
the left of the roadway and then recrossing it and covering a similar
space on the opposite side. It was a lengthy process and it was wasted
time, because, as we neared the car, we saw Hartrey standing by it,
looking from left to right into the darkness, evidently with rather
dismal forebodings.
“He’s there!” Miss Kitty Clevedon cried in accents of relief, but the
tone in which her ladyship echoed the phrase was quite otherwise. The
latter approached the car and demanded to know what Hartrey meant by
leaving her alone there on the high road and why he had not gone to the
farm to deliver her message.
“I lost my way, my lady, in the darkness,” the man replied. “I found
myself at the bend of the road higher up—”
“Now, Hartrey,” her ladyship said severely, “when I engaged you I gave
you extra wages on condition that you should be teetotal.”
“My lady, I have not touched anything of the sort for nearly seven
years.”
“And you—what is your name?” the old lady demanded, turning suddenly on
me.
“My name is Dennis Holt and I live at Stone Hollow,” I replied, amused
and not at all offended at the old lady’s brusqueness.
“Oh, yes, I know, nephew to Mrs. Mackaluce. I remember hearing about you
from Dr. Crawford. Well, thanks for your help. Now, Kitty, come along.
Good bye, Mr. Holt.”
“Can you find your way back all right?” I said, turning to Nora Lepley,
who had stood silent during the conversation and whom the old lady had
not thanked.
“But I live here,” she replied, with a quick laugh, “and I don’t always
come home by daylight. Good night, Mr. Holt.”
Old Lady Clevedon had amused me hugely. She was evidently what the
country people would call “a character” whose acquaintance might be worth
cultivating. But it was the pretty niece who attracted all my attention,
and I made up my mind that I must become interested in the tragedy at
White Towers. There might be no connection between that and Miss Kitty
Clevedon’s midnight wanderings. The latter might be susceptible of the
most innocent explanation. But it was in that case a queer coincidence,
and though I am far from denying that coincidences play a large and
weighty part in human affairs, I instinctively distrust them. This might
be one, but until I could prove the affirmative I preferred to admit a
possible negative, or at all events to keep an open mind.