"Now then, Roger. She's not out there, you know. Why, man, this ought to be a job after your own heart."
Roger drew back guiltily and looked round.
"Well, you see, Colin, I don't believe she's here at all."
"What does that matter?" demanded Nicolson robustly. "A game of hide - and - seek's a game of hide - and - seek, wherever the person's hiding. Off with you, and search like a man."
"Has anyone tried the sun parlour?" Roger asked languidly.
"I expect so, but no one of your skill. Who knows? She may have dug into the big bed and be disguised as a sweet - pea by now."
"More probably a cactus," said Roger sourly and went up to look.
Electric light was laid on to the sun parlour, but the place was in darkness when Roger reached it. He was about to turn on the switch, when a slight movement on the farther side of the room made him jump violently. There is nothing more disconcerting than a human movement in the darkness when one has been quite sure there is nothing human there. The next instant he smiled.
"I've got her!" he said to himself.
He could see now the figure whose movement had startled him. It was leaning out of an opened window, just as he had been leaning out of the room below two minutes ago, and evidently it had not heard his approach. It was small and slight, and quite obviously feminine.
"I've a jolly good mind to smack her hard, as she stands," thought Roger vindictively. "She deserves a fright."
It was Roger, however, who got the fright; for the figure shifted its position slightly, and Roger saw that it was not a woman at all. The faint moonlight gave just enough illumination to throw up the whitewashed wall underneath the windows, and Roger could now see white wall between the figure's legs. Moreover those legs were clothed in unmistakable trousers.
Roger stared at it with something like alarm. No man in the party was nearly so small or so slight as that. Who on earth could it be? He solved the problem by switching on the light - and the rather witchlike face of Mrs. Williamson shot round over her shoulder with a little exclamation.
"Oh, how you frightened me!"
"Not before you'd already frightened me. I thought you must be an elf or a hobgoblin or something, brooding out of that window."
Mrs. Williamson laughed. "The night was so perfect. I simply had to get away from everyone and drink a little of it in."
'Funny,' thought Roger; 'she can say that sort of thing and one accepts it, because she's natural, whereas exactly the same words from Ena Stratton would sound just nauseating.'
"I'm sorry I disturbed you," he said. "I was sent by Colin, to search this place."
"She's not here. I looked round before I turned the light out. All I could find here was someone's pipe." She nodded towards one of the wicker tables, on which lay a brier pipe.
Roger picked it up. "I expect someone's missing this. I'd better take it to Ronald."
"They haven't found her yet, then?"
"No. I suppose I must go and help look. Shall I turn out the light again and leave you and the night together?"
"No, I feel better now. Do people ever make you feel like that - that you simply must get away from everybody, to get the bad taste out of your mouth?"
"I can quite believe that Ena Stratton would leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth," said Roger, as he stood aside for Mrs. Williamson to precede him up the steps.
In the house the search had now spread to the lower floors.
Roger could hear Colin Nicolson, in one of the bedrooms, protesting his fears to his hostess.
"It's no good, Celia, I won't be able to get a wink of sleep tonight, and that's the truth. Each time I shut an eye I'll imagine the pestilential woman ready to pop out at me from every nook and cranny." He pulled open the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers and peered hopefully inside.
"Well, I don't suppose she's in there," said Celia, somewhat literally.
"Who knows what she may not have squeezed herself into?" Colin lifted the lid of a powder box, which happened to be that of Mrs. Lefroy, on the dressing table, and then opened the door of an extremely small cupboard in the wall into which one could with difficulty have squeezed a top hat. "Hey, I see you! Come oot now, will you? Come away oot! Ach, who knows where she is?"
"Curse the woman," said Celia with feeling. "I want to go to bed. I'm simply dropping."
"It's a bit thick. It is really. Besides, Roger's sure she isn't here. Can't we call it off and all get to our beds?"
"David really is rather worried," Celia said doubtfully.
"Why is he worried? He ought to be glad to be rid of her for a bit."
"He doesn't know what she might do, you see."
"And isn't that just playing her own game? Why do you think she's hiding like this at all and giving us all this bother looking for her? Just to make herself important, of course. She just wants us to be bothered about her, and here we are, playing her game. It's sickening, that's what it is."
"Colin, Colin, what's this?" said Roger, walking into the room. "You, who were hounding us all on, to be fainting by the roadside like this!"
"Ah, a joke's a joke, but this is too much. Here's poor Celia dropping with fatigue, and all of us wanting our beds. No, it's too much. Besides, we're just playing the woman's own game."
"Yes, that's her idea, of course; you're perfectly right. She must be the centre of the picture, even when she isn't in it. I agree, we'd much better go to bed."
"Well, then, where's wee Ronald?"
"Wee Ronald's downstairs, I think, with wee David, having a look round there," said Celia.
"Very well, let's go down and tell him we've struck. Come along and back me up, Roger."
"But don't be too hard on David," said Celia, as the two men went out of the room. "It isn't the poor lad's fault, and it's a rotten position for him."
"It's certainly a rotten position for David," Roger agreed to Colin outside, "having to admit tacitly to a lot of strangers that he's got an imbecile for a wife. Very rotten."
"Ach, why doesn't he give the woman a sound thrashing? That's what she needs. A jolly good hiding."
"I'd like to have the administering of it," wistfully said Roger, who also would have liked to get to bed.
Ronald and David were discovered in the hall outside the morning room. They looked at the two inquiringly.
"No luck," said Roger. "Honestly, Ronald, I don't think she's here. Better call the search off, don't you think?"
"Yes, I think so. I'm sure we've looked everywhere now, David."
"All right," David nodded. "Can I use your telephone before I go?"
"Whom on earth do you want to telephone to at this time of night?"
"The police."
"Oh, come, Stratton," Roger said, with a slight smile. "That's hardly necessary, is it?"
"You don't know my wife, Sheringham," David Stratton said ruefully. "In these moods of hers she simply isn't responsible. I wouldn't put anything past her."
"You mean, she might walk into the pond at Westerford and pretend to drown herself?" said Ronald.
"For all one knows, she might actually drown herself."