Later, as I sauntered toward the Tudor garden, where I had hoped to encounter Miss Beverley, I heard the clicking of billiard balls; and there was Harley at the table, practising fancy shots.
He glanced up at me as I paused by the open window, stopped to relight his pipe, and then bent over the table again.
“Leave me alone, Knox,” he muttered; “I am not fit for human society.”
Understanding his moods as well as I did, I merely laughed and withdrew.
I strolled around into the library and inspected scores of books without forming any definite impression of the contents of any of them. Manoel came in whilst I was there and I was strongly tempted to send a message to Miss Beverley, but common sense overcame the inclination.
When at last my watch told me that the hour for dressing was arrived, I heaved a sigh of relief. I cannot say that I was bored, my ill-temper sprang from a deeper source than this. The mysterious disappearance of the inmates of Cray’s Folly, and a sort of brooding stillness which lay over the great house, had utterly oppressed me.
As I passed along the terrace I paused to admire the spectacle afforded by the setting sun. The horizon was on fire from north to south and the countryside was stained with that mystic radiance which is sometimes called the Blood of Apollo. Turning, I saw the disk of the moon coldly rising in the heavens. I thought of the silent birds and the hovering hawk, and I began my preparations for dinner mechanically, dressing as an automaton might dress.
Paul Harley’s personality was never more marked than in his evil moods. His power to fascinate was only equalled by his power to repel. Thus, although there was a light in his room and I could hear Lim moving about, I did not join him when I had finished dressing, but lighting a cigarette walked downstairs.
The beauty of the night called to me, although as I stepped out upon the terrace I realized with a sort of shock that the gathering dusk held a menace, so that I found myself questioning the shadows and doubting the rustle of every leaf. Something invisible, intangible yet potent, brooded over Cray’s Folly. I began to think more kindly of the disappearance of Val Beverley during the afternoon. Doubtless she, too, had been touched by this spirit of unrest and in solitude had sought to dispel it.
So thinking. I walked on in the direction of the Tudor garden. The place was bathed in a sort of purple half-light, lending it a fairy air of unreality, as though banished sun and rising moon yet disputed for mastery over earth. This idea set me thinking of Colin Camber, of Osiris, whom he had described as a black god, and of Isis, whose silver disk now held undisputed sovereignty of the evening sky.
Resentment of the treatment which I had received at the Guest House still burned hotly within me, but the mystery of it all had taken the keen edge off my wrath, and I think a sort of melancholy was the keynote of my reflections as, descending the steps to the sunken garden, I saw Val Beverley, in a delicate blue gown, coming toward me. She was the spirit of my dreams, and the embodiment of my mood. When she lowered her eyes at my approach, I knew by virtue of a sort of inspiration that she had been avoiding me.
“Miss Beverley,” I said, “I have been looking for you all the afternoon.”
“Have you? I have been in my room writing letters.”
I paced slowly along beside her.
“I wish you would be very frank with me,” I said.
She glanced up swiftly, and as swiftly lowered her lashes again.
“Do you think I am not frank?”
“I do think so. I understand why.”
“Do you really understand?”
“I think I do. Your woman’s intuition has told you that there is something wrong.”
“In what way?”
“You are afraid of your thoughts. You can see that Madame de Stämer and
Colonel Menendez are deliberately concealing something from Paul
Harley, and you don’t know where your duty lies. Am I right?”
She met my glance for a moment in a startled way, then: “Yes,” she said, softly; “you are quite right. How have you guessed?”
“I have tried very hard to understand you,” I replied, “and so perhaps up to a point I have succeeded.”
“Oh, Mr. Knox.” She suddenly laid her hand upon my arm. “I am oppressed with such a dreadful foreboding, yet I don’t know how to explain it to you.”
“I understand. I, too, have felt it.”
“You have?” She paused, and looked at me eagerly. “Then it is not just morbid imagination on my part. If only I knew what to do, what to believe. Really, I am bewildered. I have just left Madame de Stämer— ”
“Yes?” I said, for she had paused in evident doubt.
“Well, she has utterly broken down.”
“Broken down?”
“She came to my room and sobbed hysterically for nearly an hour this afternoon.”
“But what was the cause of her grief?”
“I simply cannot understand.”
“Is it possible that Colonel Menendez is dangerously ill?”
“It may be so, Mr. Knox, but in that event why have they not sent for a physician?”
“True,” I murmured; “and no one has been sent for?”
“No one.”
“Have you seen Colonel Menendez?”
“Not since lunch-time.”
“Have you ever known him to suffer in this way before?”
“Never. It is utterly unaccountable. Certainly during the last few months he has given up riding practically altogether, and in other ways has changed his former habits, but I have never known him to exhibit traces of any real illness.”
“Has any medical man attended him?”
“Not that I know of. Oh, there is something uncanny about it all. Whatever should I do if you were not here?”
She had spoken on impulse, and seeing her swift embarrassment:
“Miss Beverley,” I said, “I am delighted to know that my company cheers you.”
Truth to tell my heart was beating rapidly, and, so selfish is the nature of man, I was more glad to learn that my company was acceptable to Val Beverley than I should have been to have had the riddle of Cray’s Folly laid bare before me.
Those sweetly indiscreet words, however, had raised a momentary barrier between us, and we walked on silently to the house, and entered the brightly lighted hall.
The silver peal of a Chinese tubular gong rang out just when we reached the veranda, and as Val Beverley and I walked in from the garden, Madame de Stämer came wheeling through the doorway, closely followed by Paul Harley. In her the art of the toilette amounted almost to genius, and she had so successfully concealed all traces of her recent grief that I wondered if this could have been real.
“My dear Mr. Knox,” she cried, “I seem to be fated always to apologize for other people. The Colonel is truly desolate, but he cannot join us for dinner. I have already explained to Mr. Harley.”
Harley inclined his head sympathetically, and assisted to arrange Madame in her place.
“The Colonel requests us to smoke a cigar with him after dinner, Knox,” he said, glancing across to me. “It would seem that troubles never come singly.”
“Ah,” Madame shrugged her shoulders, which her low gown left daringly bare, “they come in flocks, or not at all. But I suppose we should feel lonely in the world without a few little sorrows, eh, Mr. Harley?”
I loved her unquenchable spirit, and I have wondered often enough what I should have thought of her if I had known the truth. France has bred some wonderful women, both good and bad, but none I think more wonderful than Marie de Stämer.
If such a thing were possible, we dined more extravagantly than on the previous night. Madame’s wit was at its keenest; she was truly brilliant. Pedro, from the big bouffet at the end of the room, supervised this feast of Lucullus, and except for odd moments of silence in which Madame seemed to be listening for some distant sound, there was nothing, I think, which could have told a casual observer that a black cloud rested upon the house.