"Hush! Mr Homfray! Don"t say a word. But look at this! Do you recognise it?" she whispered in breathless anxiety.
He glanced at it as she held it before his bewildered eyes.
"Why--yes!" he gasped, staring at her in blank amazement. "That"s-- that"s the girl I found in Welling Wood!"
CHAPTER SEVEN.
THE GIRL NAMED EDNA.
"Hush!" cried Elma. "Say nothing at present." And next instant the old rector re-entered with a gla.s.s of water which his son drank with avidity.
Then he sat staring straight into the fire without uttering a word.
"Is your head better?" asked the girl a moment later; and she slipped the photograph back into her bag.
"Yes, just a little better. But it still aches horribly," Roddy replied. "I"m anxious to get to that spot in the wood."
"To-morrow," his father promised. "It"s already dark now. And to-morrow you will be much better."
"And I"ll come with you," Miss Sandys volunteered. "The whole affair is certainly most mysterious."
"Yes. Neither Denton nor the doctor at Pangbourne can make out the nature of the drug that was given to me. It seems to have upset the balance of my brain altogether. But I recollect that house--the man and the woman and--and how she compelled me to do her bidding to--"
"To what?" asked the girl.
The young mining engineer drew a long breath and shook his head despairingly.
"I hardly know. Things seem to be going round. When I try to recall it I become bewildered."
"Then don"t try to remember," urged his father in a sympathetic voice.
"Remain quiet, my boy, and you will be better to-morrow."
The young fellow looked straight at the sweet-faced girl standing beside his chair. He longed to ask her how she became possessed of that photograph--to ask the dead girl"s name. But she had imposed silence upon him.
"We will go together to the spot to-morrow, Miss Sandys," he said.
"People think I"m telling a fairy story about the girl. But I a.s.sure you I"m not. I held her in my arms and stroked her hair from her face.
I remember every incident of that tragic discovery."
"Very well," said the girl. "I"ll be here at ten o"clock, and we will go together. Now remain quiet and rest," she urged with an air of solicitude. "Don"t worry about anything--about anything whatever," she added with emphasis. "We shall clear up this mystery and bring your enemies to book without a doubt."
And with that Roddy Homfray had to be satisfied, for a few moments later she b.u.t.toned up her warm fur coat and left, while old Mrs Bentley went upstairs and prepared his bed.
His friend Denton called again after he had retired, and found him much better.
"You"re pulling round all right, Roddy," he laughed. "You"ll be your old self again in a day or two. But what really happened to you seems a complete enigma. You evidently fell into very bad hands for they gave you a number of injections--as your arm shows. But what they administered I can"t make out. They evidently gave you something which acted on your brain and muddled it, while at the same time you were capable of physical action, walking, and perhaps talking quite rationally."
Then Roddy told his chum the doctor of the weird but misty recollections which from time to time arose within him of having been compelled to act as the handsome woman had directed. Exactly what he did he could not recall--except that he felt certain that while beneath the woman"s influence he had committed some great and terrible crime.
"Bah! my dear Roddy?" laughed Denton as he sat beside the other"s bed.
"Your nerves are all wrong and awry. After those mysterious doses you"ve had no wonder you"re upset, and your imagination has grown so vivid."
"I tell you it isn"t imagination!" cried Roddy in quick protest. "I know that the whole thing sounds utterly improbable, but--well, perhaps to-morrow--perhaps to-morrow I can give you some proof."
"Of what!"
"Of the ident.i.ty of the girl I found dying in Welling Wood."
Hubert Denton smiled incredulously, and patting his friend upon the shoulder, said:
"All right, my dear fellow. Go to sleep. A good rest will do you a lot of good. I"ll see you in the morning."
The doctor left and Roddy Homfray, tired and exhausted after an exciting day, dropped off to sleep--a sleep full of strange, fantastic dreams in which the sweet calm face of Elma Sandys appeared ever and anon.
Next morning at about nine o"clock, when Roddy awakened to find the weather bright and crisp, he called his father, and said:
"I don"t want Inspector Freeman to know about what I"ve told you--about the girl in Welling Wood."
"Certainly not," replied the quiet old rector rea.s.suringly. "That is your own affair. They found nothing when they searched the wood for you."
"Perhaps they didn"t look in the right spot," remarked his son. "Elma will be here at ten, and we"ll go together--alone--you don"t mind, father?"
"Not in the least, my boy," laughed the old man. "Miss Sandys seems deeply distressed concerning you."
"Does she?" asked Roddy, with wide-open eyes. "Do you really think she is? Or is it the mystery of the affair which appeals to her. Mystery always appeals to women in a greater sense than to men. Every mystery case in the newspapers is read by ten women to one man, they say."
"Perhaps. But I think Miss Sandys evinces a real interest in you, Roddy, because you are ill and the victim of mysterious circ.u.mstances,"
he said.
Over the old man"s mind rested the shadow of that unscrupulous pair, Gray and the woman Crisp. Had they done some of their devil"s work upon his beloved son? He had forgiven them their threats and their intentions, but he remained calm to wait, to investigate, and to point the finger of denunciation against them if their villainy were proved.
At ten o"clock Elma Sandys arrived upon her motorcycle, which she constantly used for short distances when alone. Though in the garage her father had two big cars, and she had her own smart little two-seater in which she frequently ran up to London and back, yet she enjoyed her cycle, which she used with a fearlessness begotten of her practice during the war when she had acted as a driver in the Air Force at Oxford--one of the youngest who had taken service, be it said.
As soon as she arrived she helped Roddy into his coat, and both went down the Rectory garden, climbed the fence, walked across the paddock, and at last entered the wood with its brown frosted bracken and thick evergreen undergrowth. Through the half-bare branches, for the weather had been mild, the blue sky shone, though the wintry sun was not yet up, and as Roddy led the way carefully towards the footpath, he warned his pretty companion to have a care as there were a number of highly dangerous but concealed holes from which gravel had been dug fifty years or so ago, the gulfs being now covered with the undergrowth.
Scarcely had he spoken ere she stumbled and narrowly escaped being precipitated into a hole in which water showed deep below through the tangled briars.
Soon they reached the footpath along which he had gone in the darkness on that fatal Sunday night. He paused to take his bearings. He recognised the thick, stout trunk of a high Scotch fir, the only one in the wood. His flash-lamp had shone upon it, he remembered, just at the moment when he had heard the woman"s cries.
He halted, reflected for a few moments, and then struck out into the undergrowth, confident that he was upon the spot where the unknown girl had sunk dying into his arms. Elma, who watched, followed him. He scarcely spoke, so fully absorbed was he in his quest.
At last he crossed some dead and broken bracken, and said:
"Here! This is where I found her!"
His pretty companion halted at his side and gazed about her. There was nothing save a tangle of undergrowth and dead ferns. Above were high bare oaks swaying slowly in the wintry wind.
"Well," said Elma at last. "There"s nothing here, is there?"