that led to the Slaters’ Cottage. What had once been a rough wagon track was now a smoothly gravelled road. A few yards down the drive she saw the tall column of a light standard.
“Yes, we’re putting in all modern improvements,” he said when she called his attention to this innovation. “Only the evil love the dark. I, who am of a virtuous disposition, use this thousand-candle-power arc to advertise my rectitude!”
Suddenly he stopped, and she perforce must halt too.
“I said the other day that Narth had a pull with you, and you didn’t deny it,” he said. “I discovered the pull a few days ago. Your brother was accidentally killed whilst leaving the country with money taken from Narth’s office.”
“Yes,” she said in a low voice.
“That was it, eh?”
She heard his sigh of relief. What else could he have imagined? she wondered.
“I get it now,” he went on as they resumed their walk. “It was that ‘after all I’ve done for you’ stuff? Otherwise, I should have been completely rejected. I’m glad.”
He said this so simply and sincerely that she felt the colour coming to her face.
“Has your friend arrived?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered shortly: “he came an hour ago, the–-” He smothered an imprecation.
“One would think–-” she began, when suddenly he gripped her arm.
“Don’t speak,” he whispered.
Joan saw that he was looking back the way they had come, his head bent in a listening attitude, and her heart began to thump painfully. Then, without warning, he led her to the side of the road and to the cover of a great fir tree and pushed her behind it.
“Stay there,” he said in the same low tone.
Almost immediately he disappeared, making his way noiselessly over a carpet of pine needles from tree to tree. She stared back after him; all she could see was the pale evening sky behind a belt of tall firs, and the sky’s reflection of a puddle which had gathered at the side of the drive. She was not usually nervous, but now she felt her knees trembling under her, and her breath came shallowly. After a while she saw him emerge from the gloom near at hand.
“It was nothing,” he said, but she noticed that he still kept his voice down. “I thought I heard somebody following us. I’ll have these trees down tomorrow; they make too good cover–-“
Something came past them with the sound of a hissing whip. There was a thud, and silence. He said something in a strange language, and then he stepped back and, reaching up, pulled something from the trunk of a fir.
“A throwing knife,” he whispered. “I tell you, these Yun Nan murderers are wonderful shots, and the devils can see in the dark! Where’s the nearest policeman?”
In spite of herself she was shivering.
“The patrol won’t be near here for another hour,” she faltered. “Did somebody throw a knife?”
“Not for another hour, eh?” he said, almost brightly. “Providence is on my side!”
He took a thing from his pocket—in the half light it looked to be a fat silver cylinder; she saw he was fitting it to the end of a long, black pistol.
“Mustn’t alarm the neighbours,” he said, and slipping from her side, again vanished into the darkness.
She waited, her heart in her mouth, and suddenly:
‘
The squawk that followed came from somewhere surprisingly near. She heard on the gravel drive a patter of feet that grew fainter and fainter. When it had ceased, Clifford rejoined her, and he was unfixing the silver box.
“Got him, but not seriously,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t kill him. I should either have had to bury him in the wood and risk a scandal, or take him before a magistrate and make a newspaper sensation.”
“Did you shoot him?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, I shot him all right,” he said carelessly. “I think he was alone.”
Again he took her by the arm and led her along the drive, and they walked swiftly towards the Slaters’ Cottage. There was no sign of life: the shuttered windows were dead, and even the sound of the muffled explosion had not roused the interest or curiosity of Clifford Lynne’s guest.
He waited for almost a minute on the step of the cottage, listening.
“I think there was only one man,” he said with a little sigh of relief, “and probably a watcher, who reckoned he’d improve the shining hour by a little target practice. You’re not frightened?”
“Yes, I am,” she said; “I’m horribly frightened!”
“So am I,” he said. “I hate myself for taking this risk with you, but I had no idea there was any danger— yet.”
He put a key in the lock and opened the door. They were in a narrow passageway, from which, she saw as he switched on the light, two doors led left and right.
“Here we are.” He walked before her, turned the handle of the left-hand door and threw it open.
The room was newly and well furnished. Two large bulkhead lights fixed to the ceiling threw a diffused light through opalescent globes upon the apartment and its contents.
Sitting before the wood fire was a big man. She judged him to be sixty, and he was curiously attired. He wore, over a pair of neatly creased trousers, a huge red dressing-gown, behind which a stiff shirt shone whitely. He had on neither collar nor tie, and an immaculate morning coat hung over the back of a chair. As the door opened he looked up, took out the short clay pipe he had been smoking, and stared soberly at the visitor.
“Meet Miss Joan Bray,” said Lynne curtly.
The big stranger got heavily to his feet, and the girl noticed that on his many-chinned face was the cowed look of a schoolboy detected in an unlawful act.
“Now, Joan,” said Lynne grimly, “I want you to know a relative of yours. Let me introduce you to the late Joe Bray, who was dead in China and is alive in England!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Joan Could only stare, speechless, at her relative. Joe Bray! If she had indeed seen a ghost she could not have been more staggered.
He turned a sheepish face to Clifford.
“Have a heart, Cliff!” he pleaded feebly. “Have a heart!”
“I have a heart and I have a head too, and that’s where I’ve the advantage, you foolish old conspirator!”
Joe blinked from Clifford to the girl.
“It’s like this–-” he began loudly.
“Sit down.” Clifford pointed to the chair. “I’ve had your version six times; I don’t think I can stand it again. Joan,” he said, “this is the veritable Joseph Bray, of the Yun Nan Concession. Any mourning which you may have ordered for him you can cancel.”
“It’s like this–-” began Joe again.
“It isn’t a bit like that,” interrupted Lynne.
There was a twinkle in his eye which she had seen once before.
“This Joe Bray is romantic.” He pointed an accusing finger at the humbled man. “He has just brains enough to dream. And one of his crazy dreams was that I should marry into his family. And in order to drive me to this desperate step he invented a fake story about his being on the point of death. To support which—he has confessed this now—he procured the assistance of a doping, boozing doctor from Canton, who would certify a man insane for the price of a double whisky.”
“It’s like this–-” attempted Joe, louder still.
“The moment he got me out of the way,” continued the other remorselessly, “he sneaked down to Canton with his pal the doctor and followed me home on the next boat, leaving instructions that the death wire was to be sent as soon as he reached England.”
Here Joe asserted himself violently.
“You never would have married nobody if I hadn’t done it!” he roared. “You’ve got a hard heart, Cliff! Dying wishes don’t mean no more to you than a beer-stain on a policeman’s boot. I had to die! I thought I’d come along to the wedding and give you all a surprise–-“
