evening the net and posts had been stowed away and the rather gruesome triple gallows erected in their place. Over a subsidiary roof, a few feet lower than the main roof and reached from it by a short flight of steps, had been erected a fair - sized hothouse, where Stratton amused himself with growing certain exotic plants, or, it might be more accurate to say, trying to grow them. It was called the sun parlour and furnished with wicker chairs and tables, and was usually in considerable use at dances.
As for the rest of the house, the main bedrooms and bathrooms occupied the first floor; while the library and a small morning room opened off one side of the big hall on the ground floor, the drawing room off the other. The kitchens were stowed away somewhere at the back, with access to the hall and, through a service door, to the dining room.
To search such a house thoroughly was no small task. At first the party confined itself to the top floor and the roof, in spite of the extreme unlikelihood of the lady being stowed away in either. Roger himself felt a little perfunctory in his seeking. He had no expectation that Mrs. Stratton really was still on the premises. Most probably she had gone off to wake up some unfortunate friend and explain, with sobs and heroic gestures, and complete untruth, that her husband had practically barred her own door against her.
Nevertheless, slightly annoyed as he was at having been cut short so abruptly in his story - telling, his sense of the picturesque appreciated the appropriateness of its setting for such a search. The heavy oak beams which formed the fireplace opening and studded the unevenly plastered walls gleamed with age and generations of elbow grease as they threw back the red glow of the log fire; and the carefully placed electric lights left the quaint angles of the ceiling, which Ronald had thrown up from its original seven feet to a dozen or more to show off the roof timbers, dim and mysterious. On the outside walls long casement windows, with the original tiny diamond panes of greenish, much - scratched glass, heavily leaded, looked out over the blackness which covered that part of the grounds lying between the house and the main road a hundred yards away. Roger opened one and leaned out. Everything was still and remote and obscure. It was odd to remember that London was within eighteen miles.
'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
