XXV
She leaned on the gray stone balustrade and looked down upon the wind-stirred tresses of great golden chrysanthemums, each as big as a large-sized saucer. They were not all gold; there were deep red blooms and snowy white and flaming orange, and beyond them a huge bed of late-flowering roses; even from this distance, she could catch the delicate fragrance of them.
“It’s a beautiful old place,” she said in a hushed voice. “I don’t wonder that you love it. How long has your family owned this estate, Dick?”
“Eight hundred years,” he said. “The first of the Chelfords sliced off the head of the original owner and stole the property. Successive generations of Chelfords, whose own heads were cut off with monotonous regularity, enclosed a few thousand acres of common land belonging to the people—and there you are!”
She laughed softly.
“You have very few illusions, have you?”
“None,” was his curt reply, and somehow the answer hurt her.
They had to send twice for Harry before he put in an appearance, and he seemed disappointed to find that Puttler was not there.
“That is quite an intelligent fellow, Dick,” he said, delicately spearing a cucumber sandwich. “He has an extraordinary knowledge of history, particularly English history. Unfortunately, he doesn’t read German” [Harry read German as well as he read English, French, or Italian] “but I have persuaded him to take up the study. Have you everything you want, Leslie?”
He had helped her to nothing, and was happy to find that her requirements had been supplied. Only twice he spoke to her: once to ask about Arthur, and the other time when he made an oblique reference to his forthcoming marriage.
“Marriage ceremonies and the pomp of them are a little indelicate, I think. It is a barbarous custom, these veils and bridesmaids and barbaric orange-blossoms. Now in America I am told that it is quite the usual thing to be married in a drawing-room. I’m sure that could be arranged, couldn’t it, Dick? The bishop is quite an obliging old gentleman.”
“Turn Puttler on him: he’s an authority on church ritual,” said Dick.
“The man is an authority on most things,” said Harry, with unaccustomed enthusiasm. “He was telling me that possibly there was some cryptogram in existence which would give a direct clue as to the treasure.” And then, seeing the half smile on the girl’s face, he gave one of his rare boyish laughs. “We are still chasing shadows, Leslie, but it is a very substantial shadow, believe me. Now, Puttler thinks…”
They listened without comment to Puttler’s views, which in this case were neither informative nor particularly brilliant.
“Puttler’s mind apparently runs to dungeons, and there are dungeons to this place,” said Harry vigorously. “I am going to have a look round to-morrow. There are probably secret places under the floor which might be profitably examined.”
“The dungeons, as you call them, are wine cellars,” said Dick ominously; “and if Puttler goes fooling around my port there will be trouble! Besides which, Harry, I don’t suppose there has been a single ancestor of ours who hasn’t dug up the floor of that unfortunate dungeon—one of them in the days of the Regency had the walls stripped, and the beggar never replaced the stone. It cost our father the best part of a thousand pounds to repair the damage done by this old gold-hound!”
Dick noticed that whilst Harry was present the girl’s manner was just a little strained and unreal, and she was nervous, too, started when she was addressed, and was content to listen without including herself in the conversation. It was not until Harry had gone, with a lame apology, back to the library that she became her real self again, and the old Leslie crept forth from its hiding place. Once, whilst he and his brother were discussing the affair of the dungeons, she had walked on to the terrace, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her in profile, a slim, frail-looking girl, with her delicate face and her glorious hair, and in the setting she looked almost ethereal. It was as though some old masterpiece of Botticelli had come to life.
When the door had closed on Harry she came back and sat down with a little grimace.
“Was it very rude of me to go out? Dicky, I can’t work up any interest in the things that really fascinate Harry! Whatever will he talk about when the treasure is found?”
“The treasure? Oh, you mean the gold? He will probably talk about you.”
She made a little moue.
“I’m too young to be interesting to Harry, three hundred years too young,” she said. “Now tell me about your detective. I liked what I saw of him. He is to be your little guardian angel? And, Dick, will he have a beat—is that the word? Because, if he has, I do hope he’ll take in Willow House. I’ll even lend him my car.”
“Are you really frightened?”
She thought for a while before she replied.
“I think I am,” she said. “When I was a child the first air raids fascinated me, the second were interesting, but after the third or fourth they became—just air raids. And the Black Abbot—well, he’s very picturesque, Dick, but he’s rather terrifying. Didn’t you tell me that Harry feared him?”
“He does a little.”
“Why, I wonder?”
“Harry is naturally of a nervous temperament,” said Dick. “People are born that way, and it is absurd to talk of ‘cowardice’ where they are concerned. Now I was born without the knowledge of nerves, and I daresay if you saw me chasing the Black Abbot you would think I was terribly brave. As a matter of fact, it is simply because I’ve no imagination.”
“That isn’t true,” she said. “Why do you always belittle yourself?”
“Because I am by nature excessively modest,” he said gravely, and at that moment they caught sight of Mr. Puttler strolling through the long lines of rose trees that ran parallel with the eastern wing. Together they went down the terrace steps and intercepted him.
“It is a lovely place,” said Mr. Puttler, shaking his head in admiration. “I’ve never seen so many roses together in my life, except at Covent Garden Market, and they’re not roses, they’re just merchandise.”
“I’ve told Miss Gwyn that you’re a detective, Puttler.”
Puttler frowned at this.
“You know Miss Gwyn better than I do,” he said good-humouredly. “Speaking for myself, I find that life is much easier to live if you keep your mouth shut. Not,” he added hastily, “that I want to be offensive. That’s only my way of reasoning and my way of talking. There used to be an officer in our division who rose from the rank of plain police constable to superintendent by the simple process of never saying anything to anybody. If he was asked for his opinion on a matter he used to shake his head and say there was much to be said on both sides but he had his own private opinion, and even when he was called into a case he’d say nothing, but listen to what everybody else said and smile. That smile was worth a thousand a year to him.”
They crossed the rose garden and were strolling across the lawn. Under a huge elm Mr. Puttler stopped to continue a story which was fated never to be finished.
“One day the superintendent said to this man, whose name was Carter, ‘Carter,’ he said, ‘I can’t understand——’”
Crack!
A bullet snicked past the detective’s face, struck the bole of the tree, and sent the bark splintering. From a clump of rhododendron bushes two hundred yards away floated a pale blue cloud.
“Down on your face!” said Dick hoarsely, and dragged the girl to the ground, only just in time.
Crack!
The second bullet struck a little lower. A splinter of bark hummed past the girl’s ear.
“There’s someone in those bushes who doesn’t like me,” said Mr. Puttler.
Pulling a long-barrelled Browning from his pocket and bending low, he sprinted toward the bushes, zigzagging as he ran.
A third shot rang out and the running man pitched forward on his face and lay still.