After such confirmation it could no longer be doubted that Varney had run the supposed Stent to earth. He felt a distinct sense of triumph.
He had hoped his exertions might have produced some startling results, but still, he had done something.
Smeaton was not an envious man, and congratulated him heartily. "It"s really a feather in your cap, my dear Varney," he said amiably. "You got on the right track this time."
Varney thanked him for his encouraging words. "Now, what"s the next move? I leave it to you."
Smeaton thought a few seconds before he answered. When he spoke, he voiced the man"s inmost thoughts.
"I think the best thing you can do is to go back and keep up the sketching business. We want to find out all we can about that house and its mysterious inmates. And we especially want to know something about that invalid visitor. There is just a chance, of course, that you may find Mrs Saxton popping up there."
As all this exactly coincided with his own theory, Varney acquiesced readily. He would go back to Horsham the next day, and resume his watch on Forest View.
"You can"t be watching in two places at once," added Smeaton presently.
"So we will take up Farloe."
So it was decided. Mrs Saxton having disappeared, with small likelihood of her return, there remained three people to be shadowed: the secretary, Bolinski, and the man who went by the name of Strange, and who, for reasons of his own, was keeping away from the Savoy, and coming to London as seldom as possible.
Varney"s discovery, of which he was not a little proud, was duly reported to Sheila by the young man himself, who called upon her as soon as he had left Smeaton.
She could not but admire his energy and determination, and she told him so, in no measured terms. But when he had gone, she could not help thinking how futile it all seemed.
"They all find a little something, and then they seem to come up against a dead end," she said to Wingate, when he paid her his usual daily visit. "Weeks have gone by, and the mystery is as deep as ever. How can it be otherwise? What have they got to go upon?"
And Wingate, taking her slender hand in his and pressing it, agreed that it was so. He felt, as she did, that anything would be better than this horrible uncertainty.
They had grown very dear to each other in these dark and dismal days.
She had liked him from the first, and recognised in him one of those straight, clean-living young Englishmen to whom a girl might safely entrust her life and happiness. He was so tender, so chivalrous, so sympathetic.
If, for a few moments, she threw off the heavy load of sorrow weighing upon her, and showed some semblance of her former bright spirit, he fell at once into her mood. And if she preferred silence, her sorrow-laden eyes filled with tears, he sat silent too, only evincing by a glance, or the pressure of her hand, that he understood and sympathised.
It was not a time for ardent love-making. But for this tragedy in her life, he might never have summoned courage to make love to her at all.
The daughter of Reginald Monkton, the rich and popular statesman, seemed so far out of his reach. With her beauty and her advantages, she could aspire to a brilliant match.
Her position now, that of a lonely and orphaned girl, had altered everything, and swept away social barriers. Insensibly, she had been drawn to him, till it seemed he was part of her life.
And a time came when he could tell her of the desire of his heart. One evening, when they had been saying good-bye, she had suddenly broken down, and burst into bitter sobbing.
He had taken her in his arms, and whispered soothing words, while his pulses beat at the contact of her slender form. She had lain in the big chair, crying more quietly as he strove to comfort her. And then she had lifted up her pitiful face to his, and said:
"Oh! Austin, how good and gentle you are with me. How could I have borne it without you?"
He took heart of grace at those tender words. His clasp round her tightened.
"I have been of some help to you, then, dearest?"
"The greatest," she answered fervently. "If you did not come to me every day, I think I should go mad."
He bent down and laid his lips upon her bowed head.
"Dearest, if I have been able to comfort you now, could you let me comfort and cherish you all my life? It is hardly a time to speak of such things, but I have loved you from the first moment we met--do you remember that day on the river, and afterwards, when I saw you at Hendon, and you asked me to call?"
"Yes, I remember," she said in a low whisper.
"Well, dearest, even if the worst should befall, you will want somebody to share your grief with you till time heals your sorrow. I shall not press you till the first bitterness has pa.s.sed. Then, when you feel you can take up your life again, may I come to you, and repeat what I have said to-night?"
"Yes. Come again some day when my tears have had time to dry, and I will answer as you wish."
Reverently he kissed the lips that were still trembling from her recent emotion. That night he seemed to walk on air when he left the house, where he had spent so many happy hours before this terrible tragedy had overtaken them.
He had loved her in the bloom and brightness of her youthful beauty, courted and caressed by all who knew her, the idol of her father, the light of his home, moving like a young princess among her subjects. But he loved her ten times more now--pale and sad, with sorrow for her companion day and night.
Meanwhile, down at Forest View things were going very quietly. Varney had long chats with the landlord, and of an evening he picked up a few acquaintances in the inn, and talked with them, always leading the conversation round to the subject of Mr Strange.
But he could discover nothing of any value. n.o.body knew anything of the man"s antecedents. As a matter of fact, he did not seem to interest anybody in the place. They simply regarded him as an eccentric sort of person who wished to have nothing to do with his neighbours.
He learned that, immediately on his arrival. Strange had ordered a telephone to be installed. He also gathered from the local postman, whose acquaintance he cultivated, that very few letters were received.
Further, that most of them were in a feminine hand. And these had been coming rather more frequently of late.
He at once jumped to the conclusion that the female correspondent was Mrs Saxton. But that did not help him much. They knew already that Strange and she were closely connected.
The two maids walked down to Horsham occasionally. So far he had not set eyes upon the cook, who, apparently, did not require any change of scene.
He was a presentable young fellow enough, and he imagined it would not be difficult to sc.r.a.pe up an acquaintance with the young women. The one whom he took to be the parlourmaid, by her superior bearing, was a good-looking girl.
He tried her first. He opened his campaign by overtaking her on the road, and remarking on the pleasantness of the weather. If she resembled the majority of her cla.s.s, she would not object to exchanging a few remarks with a decent-looking member of the other s.e.x.
For himself, he was quite prepared to indulge in a flirtation, even a little mild love-making, if it would enable him to worm something out of her about the mysterious inmates of Forest View.
But the parlourmaid was one too many for him. She made no answer to his remark, and when he continued to walk along beside her, in the hope that her silence was only meant for coquetry, she stopped suddenly and faced him.
"Look here, young man," she said, regarding him with a distinctly hostile countenance; "I"ll thank you not to address any more remarks to me. I suppose you think yourself a gentleman, and because I"m in service I shall be flattered by your taking notice of me. Well, just understand I"m not that sort. When you meet me again, perhaps you"ll remember it."
She quickened her footsteps, and left Varney feeling very foolish. It was a rebuff alike to the man and the amateur detective. Yes, he had blundered.
She had a good figure, and she carried herself well, walking with a light springy step. She was dressed plainly in neat but evidently inexpensive clothes, such as were suitable to her cla.s.s. If she had been attired in proper garments, she would have been taken for a young lady immediately.
The thing that puzzled him most was her voice. She had addressed him as "young man," and there was a certain blunt insolence in her remarks which negatived the idea of refinement.
But even if her speech had been absolutely vulgar, the voice was unmistakably high-bred and cultivated; in a word, the voice of a lady.
How came it that Mr Strange"s parlourmaid wore the clothes of a servant, and spoke in the tones of a highly educated young woman? It was one more mystery.
Nothing daunted, he pursued the same tactics with the housemaid when he met her walking alone. She was a plain girl, evidently of a different cla.s.s. At the start she was more civil, but after a minute or two, during which she had given the briefest answers to his ingratiating questions, she had turned upon him like the other, only in a less hostile manner, and explained to him that she did not desire either his conversation or his company.
She was a little more polite than the parlourmaid, but that was all.
She addressed him respectfully but firmly.
"Excuse me, sir, but if it"s the same to you, I"d rather walk alone.
I"m not fond of making the acquaintance of gentlemen I know nothing about."