“I did,” my friend replied, lighting his cigar, “but only if it would amuse you to show me.”
“Decidedly. Mr. Knox will join us?”
Harley, unseen by the Colonel, glanced at me in a way which I knew.
“Thanks all the same,” I said, smiling, “but following a perfect luncheon I should much prefer to loll upon the lawn, if you don’t mind.”
“But certainly I do not mind,” cried the Colonel. “I wish you to be happy.”
“Join you in a few minutes, Knox,” said Harley as he went out with our host.
“All right,” I replied, “I should like to take a stroll around the gardens. You will join me there later, no doubt.”
As I walked out into the bright sunshine I wondered why Paul Harley had wished to be left alone with Colonel Menendez, but knowing that I should learn his motive later, I strolled on through the gardens, my mind filled with speculations respecting these unusual people with whom Fate had brought me in contact. I felt that Miss Beverley needed protection of some kind, and I was conscious of a keen desire to afford her that protection. In her glance I had read, or thought I had read, an appeal for sympathy.
Not the least mystery of Cray’s Folly was the presence of this girl. Only toward the end of luncheon had I made up my mind upon a point which had been puzzling me. Val Beverley’s gaiety was a cloak. Once I had detected her watching Madame de Stämer with a look strangely like that of fear.
Puffing contentedly at my cigar I proceeded to make a tour of the house. It was constructed irregularly. Practically the entire building was of gray stone, which created a depressing effect even in the blazing sunlight, lending Cray’s Folly something of an austere aspect. There were fine lofty windows, however, to most of the ground-floor rooms overlooking the lawns, and some of those above had balconies of the same gray stone. Quite an extensive kitchen garden and a line of glasshouses adjoined the west wing, and here were outbuildings, coach-houses and a garage, all connected by a covered passage with the servants’ quarters.
Pursuing my enquiries, I proceeded to the north front of the building, which was closely hemmed in by trees, and which as we had observed on our arrival resembled the entrance to a monastery.
Passing the massive oaken door by which we had entered and which was now closed again, I walked on through the opening in the box hedge into a part of the grounds which was not so sprucely groomed as the rest. On one side were the yews flanking the Tudor garden and before me uprose the famous tower. As I stared up at the square structure, with its uncurtained windows, I wondered, as others had wondered before me, what could have ever possessed any man to build it.
Visible at points for many miles around, it undoubtedly disfigured an otherwise beautiful landscape.
I pressed on, noting that the windows of the rooms in the east wing were shuttered and the apartments evidently disused. I came to the base of the tower, To the south, the country rose up to the highest point in the crescent of hills, and peeping above the trees at no great distance away, I detected the red brick chimneys of some old house in the woods. North and east, velvet sward swept down to the park.
As I stood there admiring the prospect and telling myself that no Voodoo devilry could find a home in this peaceful English countryside, I detected a faint sound of voices far above. Someone had evidently come out upon the gallery of the tower. I looked upward, but I could not see the speakers. I pursued my stroll, until, near the eastern base of the tower, I encountered a perfect thicket of rhododendrons. Finding no path through this shrubbery, I retraced my steps, presently entering the Tudor garden; and there strolling toward me, a book in her hand, was Miss Beverley.
“Holloa, Mr. Knox,” she called; “I thought you had gone up the tower?”
“No,” I replied, laughing, “I lack the energy.”
“Do you?” she said, softly, “then sit down and talk to me.”
She dropped down upon a grassy bank, looking up at me invitingly, and I accepted the invitation without demur.
“I love this old garden,” she declared, “although of course it is really no older than the rest of the place. I always think there should be peacocks, though.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “peacocks would be appropriate.”
“And little pages dressed in yellow velvet.”
She met my glance soberly for a moment and then burst into a peal of merry laughter.
“Do you know, Miss Beverley,” I said, watching her, “I find it hard to place you in the household of the Colonel.”
“Yes?” she said simply; “you must.”
“Oh, then you realize that you are— ”
“Out of place here?”
“Quite.”
“Of course I am.”
She smiled, shook her head, and changed the subject.
“I am so glad Mr. Paul Harley has come down,” she confessed.
“You know my friend by name, then?”
“Yes,” she replied, “someone I met in Nice spoke of him, and I know he is very clever.”
“In Nice? Did you live in Nice before you came here?”
Val Beverley nodded slowly, and her glance grew oddly retrospective.
“I lived for over a year with Madame de Stämer in a little villa on the Promenade des Anglaise,” she replied. “That was after Madame was injured.”
“She sustained her injuries during the war, I understand?”
“Yes. Poor Madame. The hospital of which she was in charge was bombed and the shock left her as you see her. I was there, too, but I luckily escaped without injury.”
“What, you were there?”
“Yes. That was where I first met Madame de Stämer. She used to be very wealthy, you see, and she established this hospital in France at her own expense, and I was one of her assistants for a time. She lost both her husband and her fortune in the war, and as if that were not bad enough, lost the use of her limbs, too.”
“Poor woman,” I said. “I had no idea her life had been so tragic. She has wonderful courage.”
“Courage!” exclaimed the girl, “if you knew all that I know about her.”
Her face grew sweetly animated as she bent toward me excitedly and confidentially.
“Really, she is simply wonderful. I learned to respect her in those days as I have never respected any other woman in the world; and when, after all her splendid work, she, so vital and active, was stricken down like that, I felt that I simply could not leave her, especially as she asked me to stay.”
“So you went with her to Nice?”
“Yes. Then the Colonel took this house, and we came here, but— ”
She hesitated, and glanced at me curiously.
“Perhaps you are not quite happy?”
“No,” she said, “I am not. You see it was different in France. I knew so many people. But here at Cray’s Folly it is so lonely, and Madame is— ”
Again she hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Well,” she laughed in an embarrassed fashion, “I am afraid of her at times.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, in a silly, womanish sort of way. Of course she is a wonderful manager; she rules the house with a rod of iron. But really I haven’t anything to do here, and I feel frightfully out of place sometimes. Then the Colonel— Oh, but what am I talking about?”
“Won’t you tell me what it is that the Colonel fears?”
“You know that he fears something, then?”
“Of course. That is why Paul Harley is here.”
A change came over the girl’s face; a look almost of dread.
“I wish I knew what it all meant.”
“You are aware, then, that there is something wrong?”
“Naturally I am. Sometimes I have been so frightened that I have made up my mind to leave the very next day.”