“I didn’t get on very well with him; I used to think he was a bit overbearing. But it must have been rather a trial for him, poor fellow!” A pause, and then: “I seem to have come at a pretty bad time, Miss – Leslie. Would you like me to go back to London?”

“Wait,” said her hostess, and, running downstairs, called Dick on the phone. He had just returned to the house as she rang.

“Surely,” he said. “Bring her up. I think that would be rather a good idea. And, Leslie, perhaps you would like to stay here the night. Arthur can come along too – you might leave him a note or wire him.”

The idea was so appealing that she put no obstacles in the way, and returned to carry Dick’s invitation to her guest. Miss Wenner accepted with an alacrity that was almost indelicate.

“I may be able to be of some help,” she said. “I know the ins and outs of that place, and all the nooks and crannies. It is the treasure that’s done it all, Leslie! He was always after that silly Life Water, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t got into bad company.”

“But Harry never went out.”

“Oh, yes, he did,” was the surprising reply. “He often slipped off to London when Mr Alford was away. And there was something queer about it, because Harry made me promise I would never tell Mr Richard, as he called him.”

“How often did that happen?” asked Leslie.

“Sometimes once a month, sometimes twice or three times a month. He never went to the front drive; he followed the field path through the cutting, and I used to arrange for a Horsham motor cab to meet him. He used to go from Horsham and come back the same way, and I’ve known him to ring me up before he came back, to ask me if Mr Richard had returned.”

Leslie wondered if Dick knew this.

“I’ve known him to go as many as three times a week when Mr Richard was up in Yorkshire, looking after the Doncaster estate,” added Mary, and, virtuously: “I hope I have not let any cats out of the bag: all young men are a bit wild.”

46

The adaptability of Miss Wenner was never more strikingly illustrated than in her greeting of Dick Alford. There was a coyness, a shy friendliness, in her glance which might have deceived an uninitiated spectator into believing that they were old lovers, parted by cruel circumstances and meeting after an absence of years. Dick, weary and heartbroken as he was, found in her the first cause for amusement he had had in twenty-four hours.