"I have been looking for you for a long while," she cried in a quick, agitated voice. "Are you free for this dance?"
"Yes."
Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.
"Then will you take me into the garden?"
He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the hearing of the rest.
"We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his counsel as Harry"s friend. It might be one of the little trifling discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon a different topic.
"You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now."
She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.
"I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean.
If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be horrible, but of course I will."
Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in her att.i.tude.
"It will not be necessary, Joan," he answered. "I have quite enough evidence already to put him away until the end of the war."
Joan turned to him with quivering lips.
"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape--what I have no right to escape, I can hardly believe it."
"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.
Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her face.
"You need not call upon me at all?"
"No."
"I don"t want to shirk--any more," she insisted. "I should not hesitate."
"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop"s Ring which marks the crest of Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to Graffham.
"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very grateful."
"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"
"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.
Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and searching there and watching the ports for him, he was lying almost within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.
"But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now," Joan added, remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and the haste with which he had fled.
Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o"clock in the morning.
"You are in a hurry?" she asked.
"I ought to send a message." He turned to Joan. "You know this house, of course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?"
"Yes, Mrs. Willoughby"s sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you may use it?"
"If you please."
Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after a few minutes. "Come," she said, and led the way upstairs to the room.
Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.
"I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.
"You want me to go," answered Joan, and she moved towards the door reluctantly.
"No. But you will be missing your dances."
Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.
"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I would rather wait with you."
"Of course."
He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too.
He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old waterway of the Thames.
"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the address at which Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added, and hearing a short "That"s all right," he rang off.
"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."
They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.
She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop"s Ring, small as a b.u.t.ton upon the great shoulder of the Down.
"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"
"Yes."
"You said to me, "If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into the rank and file." And I cried out, "Oh, I understand that!""
"I remember."
"What a fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn"t understand at all. I thought that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was to be different."
Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.
"All this week," Joan began again, "I have found myself standing unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You are very kind to me, Martin."