The Postmasters Daughter

The Postmaster's Daughter

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Title: The Postmaster's Daughter
Author: Louis Tracy
Release Date: November 17, 2003 [eBook #10110]
Language: English
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THE POSTMASTER'S DAUGHTER
by Louis Tracy
Author of "The Terms of Surrender," "The Wings of the Morning," etc.,
etc.

1916

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
II. P. C ROBINSON "TAKES A LINE"
III. THE GATHERING CLOUDS
IV. A CABAL
V. THE SEEDS OF MISCHIEF
VI. SCOTLAND YARD TAKES A HAND
VII. "ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS"
VIII. AN INTERRUPTED SYMPOSIUM
IX. HE WHOM THE CAP FITS--
X. THE CASE AGAINST GRANT
XI. P. C. ROBINSON TAKES ANOTHER LINE
XII. WHEREIN WINTER GETS TO WORK
XIII. CONCERNING THEODORE SIDDLE
XIV. ON BOTH SIDES OF THE RIVER
XV. A MATTER OF HEREDITY

XVI. FURNEAUX MAKES A SUCCESSFUL BID
XVII. AN OFFICIAL HOUSEBREAKER
XVIII. THE TRUTH AT LAST
CHAPTER I
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
John Menzies Grant, having breakfasted, filled his pipe, lit it, and
strolled out bare-headed into the garden. The month was June, that
glorious rose-month which gladdened England before war-clouds
darkened the summer sky. As the hour was nine o'clock, it is highly
probable that many thousands of men were then strolling out into many
thousands of gardens in precisely similar conditions; but, given youth,
good health, leisure, and a fair amount of money, it is even more
probable that few among the smaller number thus roundly favored by
fortune looked so perplexed as Grant.
Moreover, his actions were eloquent as words. A spacious French
window had been cut bodily out of the wall of an old-fashioned room,
and was now thrown wide to admit the flower-scented breeze. Between
this window and the right-hand angle of the room was a smaller
window, square-paned, high above the ground level, and deeply
recessed--in fact just the sort of window which one might expect to find
in a farm-house built two centuries ago, when light and air were
rigorously excluded from interiors. The two windows told the history
of The Hollies at a glance. The little one had served the needs of a
"best" room for several generations of Sussex yeomen. Then had come
some iconoclast who hewed a big rectangle through the solid
stone-work, converted the oak-panelled apartment into a most
comfortable dining-room, built a new wing with a gable, changed a
farm-yard into a flower-bordered lawn, and generally played havoc
with Georgian utility while carrying out a determined scheme of
landscape gardening.
Happily, the wrecker was content to let well enough alone after

enlarging the house, laying turf, and planting shrubs and flowers. He
found The Hollies a ramshackle place, and left it even more so, but
with a new note of artistry and several unexpectedly charming vistas.
Thus, the big double window opened straight into an irregular garden
which merged insensibly into a sloping lawn bounded by a river-pool.
The bank on the other side of the stream rose sharply and was well
wooded. Above the crest showed the thatched roofs or red tiles of
Steynholme, which was a village in the time of William the Conqueror,
and has remained a village ever since. Frame this picture in flowering
shrubs, evergreens, a few choice firs, a copper beech, and some sturdy
oaks shadowing the lawn, and the prospect on a June morning might
well have led out into the open any young man with a pipe.
But John Menzies Grant seemed to have no eye for a scene that would
have delighted a painter. He turned to the light, scrutinized so closely a
strip of turf which ran close to the wall that he might have been
searching for a lost diamond, and then peered through the lowermost
left-hand pane of the small window into the room he had just quitted.
The result of this peeping was remarkable in more ways than one.
A stout, elderly, red-faced woman, who had entered the room soon
after she heard Grant's chair being moved, caught sight of the intent
face. She screamed loudly, and dropped a cup and saucer with a clatter
on to a Japanese tray.
Grant hurried back to the French window. In his haste he did not notice
a long shoot of a Dorothy Perkins rose which trailed across his path,
and it struck him smartly on the cheek.
"I'm afraid I startled you, Mrs. Bates,"