Antony was silent for a moment.
"I didn't see anything, Bill. Or rather, I did see something; I saw a door in the wall, a cupboard. And it's locked. So if there's anything we want to find, that's where it is."
"Could Mark be hiding there?"
"I called through the keyhole in a whisper 'Mark, are you there?' he would have thought it was Cayley. There was no answer.
"Well, let's go down and try again. We might be able to get the door open."
Antony shook his head.
"Aren't I going at all?" said Bill in great disappointment.
When Antony spoke, it was to ask another question:
"Can Cayley drive a car?"
"Yes, of course. Why?"
"Then he might easily drop the chauffeur at his lodge and go off to Stanton, or wherever he wanted to, on his own?"
"I suppose so if he wanted to."
"Yes." Antony got up. "Well, look here, as we said we were going into the village, and as we promised to leave that letter, I almost think we'd better do it."
"Oh!…. Oh, very well."
"Jallands. What were you telling me about that? Oh, yes; the Widow Norbury."
"That's right. Cayley used to be rather keen on the daughter. The letter's for her."
"Yes; well, let's take it. Just to be on the safe side."
"Am I going to be done out of that secret passage altogether?" asked Bill fretfully.
"There's nothing to see, really, I promise you."
"You're very mysterious. What's upset you? You did see something down there, I'm certain of it."
"I did and I've told you about it."
"No, you haven't. You only told me about the door in the wall."
"That's it, Bill. And it's locked. And I'm frightened of what's behind it."
"But then we shall never know what's there if we aren't going to look."
"We shall know to-night," said Antony, taking Bill's arm and leading him to the hall, "when we watch our dear friend Cayley dropping it into the pond."
Chapter XV — Mrs. Norbury Confides in Dear Mr. Gillingham
They left the road, and took the path across the fields which sloped gently downwards towards Jallands. Antony was silent, and since it is difficult to keep up a conversation with a silent man for any length of time, Bill had dropped into silence too. Or rather, he hummed to himself, hit at thistles in the grass with his stick and made uncomfortable noises with his pipe. But he noticed that his companion kept looking back over his shoulder, almost as if he wanted to remember for a future occasion the way by which they were coming. Yet there was no difficulty about it, for they remained all the time in view of the road, and the belt of trees above the long park wall which bordered its further side stood out clearly against the sky.
Antony, who had just looked round again, turned back with a smile.
"What's the joke?" said Bill, glad of the more social atmosphere.
"Cayley. Didn't you see?"
"See what?"
"The car. Going past on the road there."
"So that's what you were looking for. You've got jolly good eyes, my boy, if you recognize the car at this distance after only seeing it twice."
"Well, I have got jolly good eyes."
"I thought he was going to Stanton."
"He hoped you'd think so obviously."
"Then where is he going?"
"The library, probably. To consult our friend Ussher. After making quite sure that his friends Beverley and Gillingham really were going to Jallands, as they said."
Bill stopped suddenly in the middle of the path.
"I say, do you think so?"
Antony shrugged his shoulders.
"I shouldn't be surprised. We must be devilishly inconvenient for him, hanging about the house. Any moment he can get, when we're definitely somewhere else, must be very useful to him."
"Useful for what?"
"Well, useful for his nerves, if for nothing else. We know he's mixed up in this business; we know he's hiding a secret or two. Even if he doesn't suspect that we're on his tracks, he must feel that at any moment we might stumble on something."
Bill gave a grunt of assent, and they went slowly on again.
"What about to-night?" he said, after a lengthy blow at his pipe.
"Try a piece of grass," said Antony, offering it to him. Bill pushed it through the mouthpiece, blew again, said, "That's better," and returned the pipe to his pocket.
"How are we going to get out without Cayley knowing?"
"Well, that wants thinking over. It's going to be difficult. I wish we were sleeping at the inn…. Is this Miss Norbury, by any chance?"
Bill looked up quickly. They were close to Jallands now, an old thatched farmhouse which, after centuries of sleep, had woken up to a new world, and had forthwith sprouted wings; wings, however, of so discreet a growth that they had not brought with them any obvious change of character, and Jallands even with a bathroom was still Jallands. To the outward view, at any rate. Inside, it was more clearly Mrs. Norbury's.
"Yes Angela Norbury," murmured Bill. "Not bad-looking, is she?"
The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something more than "not bad-looking," but in this matter Bill was keeping his superlatives for another. In Bill's eyes she must be judged, and condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine. To Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite simply, beautiful.
"Cayley asked us to bring a letter along," explained Bill, when the necessary handshakings and introductions were over. "Here you are."
"You will tell him, won't you, how dreadfully sorry I am about what has happened? It seems so hopeless to say anything; so hopeless even to believe it. If it is true what we've heard."
Bill repeated the outline of events of yesterday.
"Yes…. And Mr. Ablett hasn't been found yet?" She shook her head in distress. "It still seems to have happened to somebody else; somebody we didn't know at all." Then, with a sudden grave smile which included both of them, "But you must come and have some tea."
"It's awfully decent of you," said Bill awkwardly, "but we — er—"
"You will, won't you?" she said to Antony.
"Thank you very much."
Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility. When her life-work was completed, and summed up in those beautiful words: "A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury…." then she would utter a grateful Nunc dimittis and depart in peace to a better world, if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law's more dignified establishment. For there was no doubt that eligibility meant not only eligibility as a husband.
But it was not as "eligibles" that the visitors from the Red House were received with such eagerness to-day, and even if her special smile for "possibles" was there, it was instinctive rather than reasoned. All that she wanted at this moment was news — news of Mark. For she was bringing it off at last; and, if the engagement columns of the "Morning Post" were preceded, as in the case of its obituary columns, by a premonitory bulletin, the announcement of yesterday would have cried triumphantly to the world, or to such part of the world as mattered: "A marriage has very nearly been arranged (by Mrs. Norbury), and will certainly take place, between Angela, only daughter of the late John Norbury, and — Mark Ablett of the Red House." And, coming across it on his way to the sporting page, Bill would have been surprised. For he had thought that, if anybody, it was Cayley.
To the girl it was neither. She was often amused by her mother's ways; sometimes ashamed of them; sometimes distressed by them. The Mark Ablett affair had seemed to her particularly distressing, for Mark was so obviously in league with her mother against her. Other suitors, upon whom her mother had smiled, had been embarrassed by that championship; Mark appeared to depend on it as much as on his own attractions; great though he thought these to be. They went a-wooing together. It was a pleasure to turn to Cayley, that hopeless ineligible.