CHAPTER X.
THE GREEN FROCK.
Seven miles south of Millsborough, just before you come to thecross-roads, whose eastern branch runs to the coast some thirty milesaway, there stands, the only house in sight, a little roadside inncalled "The Coach and Horses."
At half-past seven on the morning of Saturday, June the twenty-first,there drew up before it a long, low two-seater car.
The landlord, a sharp-faced little man with kindly eyes and a shrewdmouth, came to the door.
"Looks like you've been travelling all night, sir," he remarkedpleasantly.
"It looks right," said Dick Bellamy. "I want a house called TheMyrtles."
Turning to the north, the landlord waved his hand towards the right.
"Two mile, mebbe more, mebbe less. Lies in a bit of a hollow. But youwon't see no myrtles--less they've growed in the night--just a low stonehouse with a bit of a copse back o't. Mr. Melchard you're seekin', like?He's a girt man wi' the teeth," said the landlord, chuckling.
"Big eater?" asked Dick.
"Dentist's my meanin', sir. They do say he keeps seven shops inMillsborough district, and never drew tooth in his life. Just drivesround so free, takin' t'money. But I reckon, if you're goin' tot'Myrtles, you know the gentleman."
"I'm going to leave my car here. Don't know how long, but I'll pay youfive shillings a day. I want some food and I've only got five minutes.Can you manage it?"
Waiting, he scribbled a note in pencil, tore the leaf from his notebook,demanded an envelope, addressed it, and attacked the cold beef and beerhurriedly set before him.
"Can you post this?" he asked.
"You passed t'box quarter mile back," said the landlord.
"Half-a-crown if you'll take it yourself."
"All right, sir. But there's no stamp in the house."
"Post it without," said Dick, well pleased.
He laid down his knife and fork.
"Walkin'?" inquired the landlord. "Then you'd better take path acrosst'moor. I'll show'ee."
Alone on the heath, Dick felt he had at last a few minutes to considerhis position. Plans must come with events. Though besieged still by thefear which had haunted him throughout the night, he found comfort,however indefinite, in the daylight. Time was everything; but if he wereindeed in time, it was well to have the day before him.
The letter to his brother, which he had posted in York at three o'clockin the morning, though it gave the address of the man he was hunting,could not, any more than that which he had just entrusted to thelandlord of "The Coach and Horses," reach Scotland Yard in time to bringhelp in the immediate danger which he foresaw--danger which he wouldnever have run the risk of bringing upon Amaryllis Caldegard but for hisconviction of that worse peril threatening her. He was, indeed, surethat his course, rash as it would be accounted in the event of failure,offered the best, and perhaps the only chance of taking home with him anAmaryllis as happy and full of laughter as he had known on the roadbetween Oxford and Chesham.
Twenty minutes' walking led him up a sharp rise to the level of theroad, from which he looked down into the corresponding hollow on theother side. And there he saw what the little man of "The Coach andHorses" had described: a long, low stone house of two stories, facingsouth-west; windows neatly curtained, and fitted--an exotic touch--with_persiennes_; gravelled walks and smooth grass plots, a tree or two,shrubs and a few garden saplings; a garage big enough for one car whichwould look bigger than its envelope as it came out; and a pretentiousgate--suburban villa half-heartedly aping country house--guarding thedrive.
He stood in the road, boldly looking down at the blinded windows,thinking how common these houses were; in many parts of England he hadseen them, grinning, sulking, boasting, counterfeiting, smirking at aworld that would not look twice.
But this house seemed to leer at you through a filthy parade of modesty.
On a bench in the shade of a large tree not more than thirty yards fromthe road was a patch of colour: a woman's garden hat, bound with anorange scarf. Since it was not hers, it seemed the best thing in sight.
Fearing observation, he turned from the house, walking eastward.
The copse of which he had been told lay not only behind the building tothe north-east, but encroached on its eastern side so as to intervenewith the tops of its younger trees between him and the back of thebuilding.
He followed the highway until he came to a field of ragged oats runningfrom the road northward behind the little wood. Vaulting the stone fenceat the roadside, he scrambled down the steep bank. Soon he was among thetrees, making his way to the left towards the rear of "The Myrtles."Bushes and tree-trunks gave him cover until he was within five yards ofthe low wall of unmortared stone which made an irregular and dilapidatedfence about the back of the house.
From the wood's edge to the wall he crawled with the speed and silenceof a Houssa scout, and, once in shelter of the stones, was not long infinding a crevice roughly funnel-shaped, which gave him, with smalleyepiece, a wide outlook.
Wretched grass-plots trodden into patches of bare earth, ashes, bones,potato-parings, a one-legged wheelbarrow; a brick dustbin overfilledtill its rickety wooden lid gaped to show the mouthful it could notswallow; a coal-shed from whose door, hanging by one hinge, a blackenedtrack led across the dying grass to a door standing open outwards fromthe structural excrescence which must be kitchen or scullery: these madethe sordid complement of the hypocrisy which exuded from the front.
That open door tempted him.
If only he could find some indication of her room! For that Amarylliswas in that house he had less doubt than proof.
From the front the windows looked out at no great distance on the highroad. Signals were possible. They would lodge--imprison her at the back,and surely on the upper floor. But even that, on this side, had sixwindows, and he searched their flat glitter in vain for a peg to hang aguess upon.
He had almost made up his mind to creep to that open scullery door andtry his luck when, from the third window from the right, behind theglass there shone something white.
Now the first window in this row was next the end of the house; thesecond, over the roof of the scullery; and the third had beneath it astraight drop--some seventeen feet of unbroken wall--to the ground.
There was, indeed, three feet below the window-sill a roughstring-course, which might give to a fugitive a moment's finger-holdbefore dropping to earth. But the fall between shoes and ground would besome two and a half yards--a serious matter even for an acrobat soplaced that he could not watch his feet.
And how should man or woman escaping get even the moment's grasp of thattwo-inch projection of stone?
It was, then, a safe room for a prison.
Bad glass refracted grotesquely the white shape behind it, but could notmake its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raiseduntil it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed theirfingers under the frame straining to force it higher, Dick's heart leaptto the belief that they were those pretty, expressive hands he hadwatched so often in lazy pleasure.
He was upon the point of making a signal above the edge of his coverwhen a footfall checked him.
A woman, dressed in a blue overall and carrying an empty japannedbucket, was hurrying from the scullery along the grimy track to thecoal-shed.
This out-house was so near to the watcher, that he could hear thepretty, eager, flaxen-haired, savage-faced little woman muttering toherself as she scraped and shovelled. He could, after a fashion, speakthe Taal, and knew her more distinct phrases for European Dutch.
"Not used to the job," reasoned Dick. "And no skivvy in the house _this_week." And he remembered the garden hat with the orange band.
Half-way back she set down her load, straightened her back, and glancedat the upper part of the house.
The sight of the partly-opened window and the white figure now drawnback a little into the room seemed to fill her with rage. She ranforward and, standing a few yards fr
om the house, shook her fistsfuriously, pouring out a stream of abuse and threats of which hardly anarticulate word reached Dick's ears. Having come to a climax with ashriek, hoarsely suppressed, she ran back to the bucket and with itstumbled quickly into the house.
Dick was over the wall almost before she was out of sight; butclattering of coal-shovel and fire-grate told him she had not yetstarted on her way upstairs, and he followed with extreme caution.
The door which stuck out into the yard soon hid him from the opendoorway, and enabled him to bring his eyes above the sill of the window,which must be passed to reach the house, without fear of attack frombehind.
In the scullery, at the end further from the main building, was a smallhobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals,and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and thewood began already to crackle.
In this commonplace task she seemed so unnaturally absorbed that Dickwatched her with intense curiosity, his head held horizontally, so thatone eye only topped the lower edge of the window-sill, thus making theleast possible exposure of his head above it.
Every now and then she would turn and pick out with her fingers littlelumps of coal and drop them in the hottest crevices among the sticks;and each time he saw a face of cruelty more determined.
He thought of Amaryllis, and knew that it was of Amaryllis that thislittle Dutch devil also was thinking.
"Melchard's!" he thought; and knew that for him, Dick Bellamy, she mustbe, in what was coming, not a woman but a tiger or a bad man.
The fire now glowed under its blaze. She took a shovel and strewed athin layer of small coal over all. Next she spread a doubled sheet ofnewspaper on the stone floor, and laid on it small sticks and againsmall coal.
Several times during this fire-lighting Dick had seen her glance, as sheturned, at a small mound of stuff which lay on the further side of thehearth. She now lifted it, holding high, with a finger and thumbpinching each shoulder-strap, a woman's frock--a light, slender slip, ofthese latter days, to add the last exquisite grace.
The fire flared, and shed its changing light on the green silk, so thatby its iridescence of interwoven colours, chasing each other as thegarment wavered in the draught, he knew it. Amaryllis had worn it atdinner last night.
Under the light of the big lamp in the hall it had made her figure turncolour like an opal. And again, as she ran with that letter to herbedroom, crimson, purple, peacock blue and a green never the same, hadchased each other down the swaying folds of her skirt.
The little Dutchwoman eyed the frock, hating while she admired; thensuddenly she pushed a fold of the silk into her mouth, and pulled withhands and tore with teeth until long streamers of silk flickered theirreds and greens towards the fire.
At last, with a sound between purring and growling, she bunched thestuff together and pushed it down on the coals, lifted the paper tray offuel from the floor, laid it in the grate over the silk, turned away,threw off her overall and ran cat-footed into the house and out of hissight.
And with her vanished Dick's last shadow of hesitation.
He crept from behind the door, faced its outer edge, laid a hand fromeach side on its top, set his right foot on the inside knob of thehandle, raised his left to the outer, and thence with a quick movementsprang astride of the top.