'You're rather splendid, you know, Mr Chalmers. You make a great partner for an adventure of this kind. You're nice and solid.'
The outhouse lay in the neighbourhood of the hives, a gaunt, wooden structure surrounded by bushes. Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder as she drew the key from her pocket.
'You can't think how nervous I was this afternoon,' she said. 'I thought every moment one of those newspaper men would look in here. I--James! James! I thought I heard James in those bushes--I kept heading them away. Once I thought it was all up.' She unlocked the door. 'One of them was about a yard from the window, just going to look in. Thank goodness, a bee stung him at the psychological moment, and--Oh!'
'What's the matter?'
'Come and get a banana.'
They walked to the house. On the way Elizabeth stopped.
'Why, you haven't had any dinner either!' she said.
'Never mind me,' said Bill, 'I can wait. Let's get this thing finished first.'
'You really are a sport, Mr Chalmers,' said Elizabeth gratefully. 'It would kill me to wait a minute. I shan't feel happy until I've got it over. Will you stay here while I go up and see that Nutty's safe in his room?' she added as they entered the house.
She stopped abruptly. A feline howl had broken the stillness of the night, followed instantly by a sharp report.
'What was that?'
'It sounded like a car backfiring.'
'No, it was a shot. One of the neighbours, I expect. You can hear miles away on a night like this. I suppose a cat was after his chickens. Thank goodness, James isn't a pirate cat. Wait while I go up and see Nutty.'
She was gone only a moment.
'It's all right,' she said. 'I peeped in. He's doing deep breathing exercises at his window which looks out the other way. Come along.'
When they reached the outhouse they found the door open.
'Did you do that?' said Elizabeth. 'Did you leave it open?'
'No.'
'I don't remember doing it myself. It must have swung open. Well, this saves us a walk. He'll have gone.'
'Better take a look round, what?'
'Yes, I suppose so; but he's sure not to be there. Have you a match?'
Bill struck one and held it up.
'Good Lord!'
The match went out.
'What is it? What has happened?'
Bill was fumbling for another match.
'There's something on the floor. It looks like--I thought for a minute--' The small flame shot out of the gloom, flickered, then burned with a steady glow. Bill stooped, bending over something on the ground. The match burned down.
Bill's voice came out of the darkness:
'I say, you were right about that noise. It was a shot. The poor little chap's down there on the floor with a hole in him the size of my fist.'
17
Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious. Dudley Pickering had escaped boyhood at the time when his contemporaries were contracting it. It is true that for a few years after leaving the cradle he had exhibited a certain immatureness, but as soon as he put on knickerbockers and began to go about a little he outgrew all that. He avoided altogether the chaotic period which usually lies between the years of ten and fourteen. At ten he was a thoughtful and sober-minded young man, at fourteen almost an old fogy.
And now--thirty-odd years overdue--boyhood had come upon him. As he examined the revolver in his bedroom, wild and unfamiliar emotions seethed within him. He did not realize it, but they were the emotions which should have come to him thirty years before and driven him out to hunt Indians in the garden. An imagination which might well have become atrophied through disuse had him as thoroughly in its control as ever he had had his Pickering Giant.
He believed almost with devoutness in the plot which he had detected for the spoliation of Lord Wetherby's summer-house, that plot of which he held Lord Dawlish to be the mainspring. And it must be admitted that circumstances had combined to help his belief. If the atmosphere in which he was moving was not sinister then there was no meaning in the word.
Summer homes had been burgled, there was no getting away from that--half a dozen at least in the past two months. He was a stranger in the locality, so had no means of knowing that summer homes were always burgled on Long Island every year, as regularly as the coming of the mosquito and the advent of the jelly-fish. It was one of the local industries. People left summer homes lying about loose in lonely spots, and you just naturally got in through the cellar window. Such was the Long Islander's simple creed.
This created in Mr Pickering's mind an atmosphere of burglary, a receptiveness, as it were, toward burglars as
