She was provided with a torch, but there was still sufficient light for her to see her way. She was standing at a crossroads. A signpost above her head pointed the road to Norton, and pulling up the collar of her coat to keep the rain from trickling down her neck, she set off at a brisk pace down the lane.
It was apparently a second-class road but in quite good repair. It wound between straggling hedges, passing an occasional cottage or farmstead. Two or three cyclists overtook her, and one car, but the road seemed to be little used. Once she saw a pedestrian ahead and rapidly overhauled him. A bucolic voice bade her good evening in the friendly fashion of country folk. She returned the greeting and pressed on.
A mile from the main road a cluster of twinkling lights showed where a small hamlet lay in a slight hollow. Beyond that the habitations were few. There seemed to Shirley, peering through the dusk, to be nothing but fields stretching sombrely to a far horizon that still showed faintly grey in the distance. About half a mile past the hamlet some trees broke the monotonous landscape, and presently these grew more thickly. Shirley could smell pines and see in the waning light the silvergrey bark of birch trees. The leaves were sodden and dripped onto the tarred road. No life seemed to be stirring. Perhaps it was too wet, Shirley thought, for the rabbits that were usually to be seen at this hour scuttling across the road, to venture out of their burrows.
She had no means of measuring the distance she had walked, but she supposed that she must have covered nearly a couple of miles, and began to look out for a gate. Half in anger at herself, half in a kind of scornful amusement, she blamed the weather and the twilight for her nervousness. The rain fell softly, steadily; there was no wind to stir the leaves of the trees; there did not seem to be a soul abroad. Yet several times she had caught herself straining her ears to catch the sound of - she scarcely knew what. Footsteps, perhaps; perhaps the hush of tyres on the wet road. Once she thought she heard a car purring in the distance, but nothing passed her, and she concluded that she had either been mistaken or that another road ran somewhere near at hand.
A gleam of white ahead of her attracted her attention. She went on and found a gate leading into the wood to her right. It stoodd half-open on to a grassride cut through the trees. She hesitated and searched for a name on cracked posts.
With a wry little smile she reflected that she brought a suburban mind into the country. Of course there was no name; country people always knew who lived where; you never found names on any gateposts. It was little tiresome for strangers, all the same.
She went on a few yards, feeling herself rather at a loss, but after five minutes' walking she saw big iron gate ahead and the lights of a lodge. These must certainly belong to the manor; she turned and went quickly back towards the first gate.
The wood looked dark and mysterious; there was a good deal of undergrowth, bracken standing three feet high turning brown with the fall of the year, and blackberry bushes. Under Shirley's feet the ground was slippery with wet; in the wheel-ruts of the ride there were muddy puddles.
She walked forward cautiously, peering through the gathering darkness for a cottage. A little way from the gate the ride forked; she saw a light at the end of the shorter fork and bore onwards, leaving it on her right.
She smelled pines again, and a few steps brought her to clearer ground. The earth grew more sandy under her feet; a carpet of pine needles deadened the sound of her footsteps. Fallen cones were scattered over the ride; the undergrowth had come to an end; slim tree-trunks, gleaming with wet, surrounded her, stretching away, line upon line of them, into the mist and the enveloping gloom.
The silence was almost eerie; the rain which was falling soundlessly and fast, seemed like a blanket, cutting off all small, ordinary noises of the wood. Shirley gritted her together and felt, in the big pocket of her coat, the reassuring butt of her automatic.
The ride took a turn, and immediately lights became visible in the distance. Shirley had come to the lake, an artificial sheet of water set at the end of a broad avenue that had been cut to the south of the manor. There were little glowing lights in the distance; she could just discern the outline of the manor against the sky and see the sweep of a lawn running to meet the edge of the wood.
On the opposite side of the lake from the manor, forming part of the view to be had from the south windows, was a white pavilion built in the classical style so much in favour during the eighteenth century. It stood like a ghost in the darkness, its windows blank and uncurtained.
Shirley was aware of a pulse that throbbed in her throat. The pavilion, waiting for her amongst the trees, looked deserted and strangely forbidding. She had an instinct to tiptoe away from it, and for several moments she stood in the shadow of the trees staring at the quiet building with a queer sense of foreboding hammering at her brain.
She stood so still that her very heartbeats seemed to thud in the silence. Somewhere not far distant the unmistakable cry of a pheasant broke the dead calm, and she heard the whirr of wings. She jumped uncontrollably and waited, listening. No other sound succeeded the startled bird's flight; she decided, but uneasily, that some prowling fox had disturbed the pheasant.
She drew the gun out of her pocket and cocked it. The snap of the breech sounded comfortingly in her ears; she thumbed the safety-catch up and walked quietly toward the pavilion.
The door was not locked; the handle squeaked nastily as she turned it. She pushed the door inwards, standing backed against the wall. After a moment, since not the tiniest sound came to betray the presence of any living creature, she pulled her torch out of her pocket and switched it on.
The pavilion was empty. Some garden furniture was placed in it, wicker chairs and a table, several gaily coloured boating cushions. Shirley's torch travelled slowly round it, lighting every corner. She went in, closing the door behind her, and forced herself to sit down in one of the chairs and to switch off the torch.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light she was able to distinguish, vaguely, the various objects in the room. The warning instinct that had urged her not to approach the pavilion prompted her to draw her chair back to the wall. The windows, grey oblongs in the darkness, seemed to be all round her. She had to assure herself that no one could see her from outside without the aid of a lamp.
She could hear her watch ticking and pulled down her glove to look at it. The luminous hands stood at twenty minutes past six; Collins was late. A fear that he might be going to play her false dispelled for a moment her growing sense of foreboding, Her lips tightened; she began to listen for the sound of an approach-footstep.
She heard nothing, not so much as the snap of a twig, until the scrape of the door-handle made her heart give a frightened jump. She got up, pressing down the safetycatch of her gun.
A man stood in the doorway; she could not distinguish his features. She waited, hardly breathing.
"Are you there, miss?" The words were spoken so softly that she barely heard them. The voice was the valet's.
"Yes. You're very late," she said, and switched on her torch.
He seemed to leap towards her. "Put it out! Don't show a light!" he whispered urgently.
She obeyed him but said as coolly as she was able: "Take care. You're likely to get shot if you dash at me like that. What's the matter?" The torch-light had given her a brief glimpse of his face, unnaturally pallid, sweat glistening on his forehead. He sounded out of breath and seemed to be listening intently, his head a little bent.