Still, since no life can completely defend itself from the unforeseen, it was evident that all Boyne's precautions would sooner or later prove unavailable, and Mary concluded that he had cut short a tiresome visit by walking with his caller to the station, or at least accompanying him for part of the way.
This conclusion relieved her from farther preoccupation, and she went out herself to take up her conference with the gardener.Thence she walked to the village post-office, a mile or so away; and when she turned toward home, the early twilight was setting in.
She had taken a foot-path across the downs, and as Boyne, meanwhile, had probably returned from the station by the highroad, there was little likelihood of their meeting on the way.She felt sure, however, of his having reached the house before her; so sure that, when she entered it herself, without even pausing to inquire of Trimmle, she made directly for the library.But the library was still empty, and with an unwonted precisionof visual memory she immediately observed that the papers on her husband's desk lay precisely as they had lain when she had gone in to call him to luncheon.
Then of a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of the unknown.She had closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood alone in the long, silent, shadowy room, her dread seemed to take shape and sound, to be there audibly breathing and lurking among the shadows.Her short- sighted eyes strained through them, half- discerning an actual presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from that intangible propinquity she threw herself suddenly on the bell-rope and gave it a desperate pull.
The long, quavering summons brought Trimmle in precipitately with a lamp, and Mary breathed again at this sobering reappearance of the usual.
"You may bring tea if Mr.Boyne is in," she said, to justify her ring."Very well, Madam.But Mr.Boyne is not in," said Trimmle, puttingdown the lamp.
"Not in? You mean he's come back and gone out again?" "No, Madam.He's never been back."The dread stirred again, and Mary knew that now it had her fast."Not since he went out with--the gentleman?""Not since he went out with the gentleman.""But who WAS the gentleman?" Mary gasped out, with the sharp note of some one trying to be heard through a confusion of meaningless noises."That I couldn't say, Madam." Trimmle, standing there by the lamp, seemed suddenly to grow less round and rosy, as though eclipsed by thesame creeping shade of apprehension.
"But the kitchen-maid knows--wasn't it the kitchen-maid who let him in?""She doesn't know either, Madam, for he wrote his name on a folded paper."Mary, through her agitation, was aware that they were both designating the unknown visitor by a vague pronoun, instead of the conventional formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within the bounds of custom.And at the same moment her mind caught at thesuggestion of the folded paper.
"But he must have a name! Where is the paper?"She moved to the desk, and began to turn over the scattered documents that littered it.The first that caught her eye was an unfinished letter in her husband's hand, with his pen lying across it, as though dropped there at a sudden summons.
"My dear Parvis,"--who was Parvis?--"I have just received your letter announcing Elwell's death, and while I suppose there is now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer--"She tossed the sheet aside, and continued her search; but no folded paper was discoverable among the letters and pages of manuscript which had been swept together in a promiscuous heap, as if by a hurried or a startled gesture.
"But the kitchen-maid SAW him.Send her here," she commanded, wondering at her dullness in not thinking sooner of so simple a solution.
Trimmle, at the behest, vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be out of the room, and when she reappeared, conducting the agitated underling, Mary had regained her self-possession, and had her questions pat.
The gentleman was a stranger, yes--that she understood.But what had he said? And, above all, what had he looked like? The first question was easily enough answered, for the disconcerting reason that he had said so little--had merely asked for Mr.Boyne, and, scribbling something on a bit of paper, had requested that it should at once be carried in to him.
"Then you don't know what he wrote? You're not sure it WAS his name?"The kitchen-maid was not sure, but supposed it was, since he had written it in answer to her inquiry as to whom she should announce.
"And when you carried the paper in to Mr.Boyne, what did he say?"The kitchen-maid did not think that Mr.Boyne had said anything, but she could not be sure, for just as she had handed him the paper and he was opening it, she had become aware that the visitor had followed her into the library, and she had slipped out, leaving the two gentlemen together.
"But then, if you left them in the library, how do you know that they went out of the house?"This question plunged the witness into momentary inarticulateness, from which she was rescued by Trimmle, who, by means of ingenious circumlocutions, elicited the statement that before she could cross the hall to the back passage she had heard the gentlemen behind her, and had seen them go out of the front door together.
