The Bittermeads Mystery | Page 4

you was a bunch of radishes."
For some distance after leaving the station, Dunn walked on slowly.
He seemed to know the way well or else to be careless of the direction he took, for he walked along deep in thought with his eyes fixed on the ground and not looking in the least where he was going.
Abruptly, a small child appeared out of the darkness and spoke to him, and he started violently and in a very nervous manner.
"What was that? What did you say, kiddy?" he asked, recovering himself instantly and speaking this time not in the gruff and harsh tones he had used before but in a singularly winning and pleasant voice, cultivated and gentle, that was in odd contrast with his rough and battered appearance. "The time, was that what you wanted to know?"
"Yes, sir; please, sir," answered the child, who had shrunk back in alarm at the violent start Dunn had given, but now seemed reassured by his gentle and pleasant voice. "The right time," the little one added almost instantly and with much emphasis on the "right."
Dunn gravely gave the required imformation with the assurance that to the best of his belief it was "right," and the child thanked him and scampered off.
Resuming his way, Dunn shook his head with an air of grave dissatisfaction.
"Nerves all to pieces," he muttered. "That won't do. Hang it all, the job's no worse than following a wounded tiger into the jungle, and I've done that before now. Only then, of course, one knew what to expect, whereas now - And I was a silly ass to lose my temper with that boy at the station. You aren't making a very brilliant start, Bobby, my boy."
By this time he had left the little town behind him and he was walking along a very lonely and dark road.
On one side was a plantation of young trees, on the other there was the open ground, covered with furze bush, of the village common.
Where the plantation ended stood a low, two-storied house of medium size, with a veranda stretching its full length in front. It stood back from the road some distance and appeared to be surrounded by a large garden.
At the gate Dunn halted and struck a match as if to light a pipe, and by the flickering flame of this match the name "Bittermeads," painted on the gate became visible.
"Here it is, then," he muttered. "I wonder - "
Without completing the sentence he slipped through the gate, which was not quite closed, and entered the garden, where he crouched down in the shadow of some bushes that grew by the side of the gravel path leading to the house, and seemed to compose himself for a long vigil.
An hour passed, and another. Nothing had happened - he had seen nothing, heard nothing, save for the passing of an occasional vehicle or pedestrian on the road, and he himself had never stirred or moved, so that he seemed one with the night and one with the shadows where he crouched, and a pair of field-mice that had come from the common opposite went to and fro about their busy occupations at his feet without paying him the least attention.
Another hour passed, and at last there began to be signs of life about the house.
A light shone in one window and in another, and vanished, and soon the door opened and there appeared two people on the threshold, clearly visible in the light of a strong incandescent gas-burner just within the hall.
The watcher in the garden moved a little to get a clearer view.
In the paroxysm of terror at this sudden coming to life of what they had believed to be a part of the bushes, the two little field-mice scampered away, and Dunn bit his lip with annoyance, for he knew well that some of those he had had traffic with in the past would have been very sure, on hearing that scurrying-off of the frightened mice, that some one was lurking near at hand.
But the two in the lighted doorway opening on the veranda heard and suspected nothing.
One was a man, one a woman, both were young, both were extraordinarily good-looking, and as they stood in the blaze of the gas they made a strikingly handsome and attractive picture on which, however, Dunn seemed to look from his hiding-place with hostility and watchful suspicion.
"How dark it is, there's not a star showing," the girl was saying. "Shall you be able to find your way, even with the lantern? You'll keep to the road, won't you?"
Her voice was low and pleasant and so clear Dunn heard every word distinctly. She seemed quite young, not more than twenty or twenty-one, and she was slim and graceful in build and tall for a woman.