"Oh, then you have heard from the lady?" I put in. "Indirectly, yes." He brought out his bill-fold and extracted a written sheet from it. "It's a letter to her father. The old scoundrel popped off last week. They found him in his room at the club. He had been reading this. Maybe he had enough decency left in him to die of the shock of what's in the letter, but I doubt it. It was the drinking finished him off. The club people turned over his few effects to his solicitor, who happens to be mine, too. The lawyer had enough sense to be a bit alarmed about Margery's letter and he thought I might be the proper person to come to in the absence of any relative who would take the trouble to attend the funeral. In short, he turned the letter over to me and I'm asking you now. What do you think?"
I studied the pathetic scrawl, apparently dashed off in haste and under considerable emotional stress, for the taller letters all leaned like trees in a hurricane and half the lines ran off the page.
"Please, papa," the girl had written, "you must come now — at once — and take me away from him. He won't let me go alone. I know you don't believe about the poison fumes, but it's literally, awfully, devilishly true, papa, and I swear that I am not sick or anything and I haven't got hallucinations and this is not a trick to get away. If it happens once more, it will kill me. Get me out of this now, papa! Haven't I done enough? Margery."
"Well?" he demanded as I finished the reading.
"It's a perfect riddle," I ventured. "I should say, though, that the writer thinks she is in some kind of danger."
"Thinks she is!" he cried. "You don't know her. She isn't the kind that's afraid of a twig scratching against a pane. No — there's something wrong." He got up and stormed about the room."Come on, Mac. We've got to act at once."
"Do what?" I reasoned with him. "Go up to the chateau at this hour, drag this Drurock, whom we do not know, out of his bed and tell him we are taking his wife away because she doesn't like the weather? Be reasonable. Sleep on it."
"And do nothing?"
"We'll do something, but we'll do it tomorrow. My suggestion would be to have breakfast, hire a car, and go over to call like civilised people. Drurock can hardly pull up a portcullis and drop hot lead on us. The chances are we'll get a fair sort of reception and you'll get a chance to talk to the lady in private for a moment and clear up the whole thing."
He calmed sufficiently to consider the programme.
"I mustn't go as myself," he said. "If there's anything really wrong, my turning up would give the show away. Drurock must know me by name. He must have seen those London papers." He warmed to my proposal and his own somewhat melodramatic revision of it. "I'll be an artist, sketching around, loafing in the neighbourhood with you. As for you, you're quite unimpeachably explained. A frog-catcher come to where frogs are caught. That's it. Peter McAllister, RA, FRGS, sub-curator of his Majesty's pollywogs and his artist friend, dropping in for some scientific chit-chat and a cup of tea. If that's a bargain, I'll get to bed."
"It's a bargain."
Old Ord's mumblings about Drurock came to my mind as I tucked myself in and bade my room-mate goodnight. I was on the point of telling Aubrey the tale, but soon thought better of it. The excitable fellow's suspicions and dreads already were feeding on too much food. I slept. * * *
The day was steaming hot. Aubrey complained that his paints ran on the palette. However, he was obviously complaining for the sake of talking, for he was no more interested in the daub he was perpetrating than I, and that was not at all.
We were established on a little hump of ground overlooking Low Fennel and Aubrey's composition on canvas took in the old tower which I had previously seen and the modern section which I now saw for the first time. This brick wing of the venerable pile of buildings had been carefully designed not to clash with the rest, but it was plainly of recent date, and a materialistic eye, such as my own, could pick out the exterior indications of modem fittings within. A pair of telephone wires, branching off from the overland line up to the village, ended near what I took to be library windows in this modern wing. The grounds, to this side of the house, had been made as attractive as gardening skill could accomplish.
We had come on our expedition loaded like pack mules. Our equipment was principally painter's gear and included a ridiculous garden parasol which was set up on the knoll to give the artist shade.
"Certainly, it's ridiculous,** agreed Aubrey when I complained. "But it's excellent advertising. I want to be noticed. Do you think we can be seen from the windows of Low Fennel?"
The question was redundant. The extravagant parasol would be seen and talked about for miles around. I pulled on my gloves. I was interested in a brambly gully which sloped down from this highland toward the bog behind the chateau.
"I'll do a bit of self-advertising, too," I informed him. "We meet at lunch hour and beg bread at Low Fennel; is that the programme?"
He nodded and I went about my affairs." I carried net and pail, but these tools of my much ridiculed profession remained idle. An interest other than scientific urged me on. I rebelled against it, but the sum of the extravagant talk I had heard in the last twenty-four hours was beginning to have its effect on the more unreliable and romantic sections of my brain. What was at the bottom of all this fantastic nonsense about an airpoisoned castle, prison for a London girl who cried desperately for rescue from something which, if it happened once again, would kill her? Scientific dispassionateness deserted me. I confess I stumbled down the gully, prey to an excitement which had nothing to do with the peculiar professional interests of Peter McAllister, zoologist.
The sides of the gully became steeper. It was turning in fact into a ravine. I had not judged the depression on this side of Low Fennel to be so deep. I approached a turn in the gorge and found myself face to face with — the master of Low Fennel!
I knew it was he the moment I saw him. For one thing, the man was London tailored and I knew that there was no other man of wealth living in the neighbourhood. For another, a portrait photograph of the landlord of the countryside hung in the parlour of the inn up in the village and I recognised the striking features at once. For a rough picture of the man as a whole, he was a fairly average sample of the genus, country gentleman. The tweeds were the suitable costume of the heavy-set man, strong-jawed and choleric, who first looked up in surprise and then advanced cordially toward me.
"You are the Londoner, the scientist staying at the inn?" He groped for and found my name. "Mr McAllister, isn't it?" He did not wait for my affirmation, but continued. "You must forgive my not having dug you up earlier. Mrs Drurock and I planned to make you welcome, but some other matters intervened. You must forgive us — and come up for lunch. Today? Now? Certainly. Let's make it now."
"I have a guest down from London." I embarked on Aubrey's arranged lie, stammeringly. I felt at a disadvantage, exchanging for this courteous and candid hospitality my discourteous guile. "He's a painter — Alfred Hume."
He nodded sagely. I could not guess him. I never quite did. Whether he had us identified from the start, or whether he caught on to Aubrey later; this is a puzzle without solution. He never gave any sign. I could assume that my whopper had gone down with ease.
"Alfred Hume — " he echoed the name and professed to have heard it before. "Though I am not as well acquainted with our English artists as I should wish," he apologised. "Your Mr Hume — do you think he will risk provincial hospitality — or is he a growling bear, like so many artists?"