The Bittermeads Mystery Part 13

"Try a game with me," said Deede Dawson, and won it easily, for in fact, Dunn was by no means a strong player.

His swift victory appeared to delight Deede Dawson immensely.

"A very pretty mate I brought off there against you," he declared. "I've not often seen a prettier. Now you try to solve that problem of mine, it's easy enough once you hit on the key move."

Dunn thought to himself that there were other and more important problems which would soon be solved if only the key move could be discovered.

He said aloud that he would try what he could do, and Deede Dawson promised him half a sovereign if he solved it within a week.

"I mayn't manage it within a week," said Dunn. "I don't say I will. But sooner or later I shall find it out."

During all this time he had seen little of Ella, who appeared to come very little into the garden and who, when she did so, avoided him in a somewhat marked manner.

Her mother, Mrs. Dawson, was a little faded woman, with timid eyes and a frightened manner. Her health did not seem to be good, and Ella looked after her very a.s.siduously. That she went in deadly fear of her husband was fairly evident, though he seemed to treat her always with great consideration and kindness and even with a show of affection, to which at times she responded and from which at other times she appeared to shrink with inexplicable terror.

"She doesn't know," Dunn said to himself. "But she suspects --something."

Ella, he still watched with the same care and secrecy, and sometimes he seemed to see her walking amidst the flowers as an angel of sweetness and laughing innocence; and sometimes he saw her, as it were, with the shadow of death around her beauty, and behind her gentle eyes and winning ways a great and horrible abyss.

Of one thing he was certain--her mind was troubled and she was not at ease; and it was plain, also, that she feared her smiling soft-spoken stepfather.

As the days pa.s.sed, too, Dunn grew convinced that she was watching him all the time, even when she seemed most indifferent, as closely and as intently as he watched her.

"All watching together," Dunn thought grimly. "It would be simple enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I suppose no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't very well be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here like this. I suppose he is simply waiting his time."

As for the chess problem, that baffled him entirely. He said as much to Deede Dawson, who was very pleased, but would not tell him what the solution was.

"No, no, find it out for yourself," he said, chuckling with a merriment in which, for once his cold eyes seemed to take full share.

"I'll go on trying," said Dunn, and it grew to be quite a custom between them for Deede Dawson to ask him how he was getting on with the problem; and for Dunn to reply that he was still searching for the key move.

Several times little errands took Dunn into the village, where, discreetly listening to the current gossip, he learned that Mr. John Clive of Ramsdon Place had been injured in an attack made upon him by a gang of ferocious poachers--at least a dozen in number--but was making good progress towards recovery.

Also, he found that Mr. John Clive's visits to Bittermeads had not gone unremarked, or wholly uncriticized, since there was a vague feeling that a Mr. Clive of Ramsdon Place ought to make a better match.

"But a pretty face is all a young man thinks of," said the more experienced; and on the whole, it seemed to be felt that the open attention Clive paid to Ella was at least easily to be understood.

Almost the first visit Clive paid, when he was allowed to venture out, was to Bittermeads; and Dunn, returning one afternoon from an errand, found him established on the lawn in the company of Ella, and looking little the worse for his adventure.

He and Ella seemed to be talking very animatedly, and Dunn took the opportunity to busy himself with some gardening work not far away, so that he could watch their behaviour.

He told himself it was necessary he should know in what relation they stood to each other, and as he heard them chatting and laughing together with great apparent friendliness and enjoyment, he remembered with considerable satisfaction how he had already broken one rib of Clive's, and he wished very much for an opportunity to break another.

For, without knowing why, he was beginning to conceive an intense dislike for Clive; and, also, it did not seem to him quite good taste for Ella to sit and chat and laugh with him so readily.

"But we were told," he caught a stray remark of Ella's, "that it was a gang of at least a dozen that attacked you."

"No," answered Clive reluctantly. "No, I think there was only one. But he had a grip like a bear."

"He must have been very strong," remarked Ella thoughtfully.

"I would give fifty pounds to meet him again, and have it out in the light, when one could see what one was doing," declared Clive with great vigour.

"Oh, you would, would you?" muttered Dunn to himself. "Well, one of these days I may claim that fifty."

He looked round at Clive as he thought this, and Clive noticed him, and said:

"Is that a new man you've got there Miss Cayley? Doesn't he rather want a shave? Where on earth did Mr. Dawson pick him up?"

"Oh, he came here with the very best testimonials, and father engaged him on the spot," answered Ella, touching her wrists thoughtfully. "He certainly is not very handsome, but then that doesn't matter, does it?"

She spoke more loudly than usual, and Dunn was certain she did so in order that he might hear what she said. So he had no scruple in lingering on pretence of being busy with a rose bush, and heard Clive say:

"Well, if he were one of my chaps, I should tell him to put the lawn-mower over his own face."

Ella laughed amusedly.

"Oh, what an idea, Mr. Clive," she cried, and Dunn thought to himself:

"Yes, one day I shall very certainly claim that fifty pounds."

CHAPTER XII. AN AVOWAL

When Clive had gone that afternoon, Ella, who had accompanied him as far as the gate, and had from thence waved him a farewell, came back to the spot where Dunn was working.

She stood still, watching him, and he looked up at her and then went on with his work without speaking, for now, as always, the appalling thought was perpetually in his mind: "Must she not have known what it was she had with her in the car when she went driving that night?"

After a little, she turned away, as if disappointed that he took no notice of her presence.

At once he raised himself from the task he had been bending over, and stood moodily watching the slim, graceful figure, about which hung such clouds of doubt and dread, and she, turning around suddenly, as if she actually felt the impact of his gaze, saw him, and saw the strange expression in his eyes.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked quickly, her soft and gentle tones a little shrill, as though swift fear had come upon her.

"Like what?" he mumbled.

"Oh, you know," she cried pa.s.sionately. "Am I to be the next?" she asked.

He started, and looked at her wonderingly, asking himself if these words of hers bore the grim meaning that his mind instantly gave them.

Was it possible that if she did know something of what was going on in this quiet country house, during these peaceful autumn days, she knew it not as willing accomplice, but as a helpless, destined victim who saw no way of escape.

As if she feared she had said too much, she turned and began to walk away.

At once he followed.