But Number Forty was no snug little cottage with peaked gables and green blinds.
Number Forty was an imposing modem functional house, flat-roofed, with sun decks and casement windows and inserts of glass brick.
Leonidas caught his breath.
Then he began to wonder what genius had fitted the house within the clumps of slender birches. Because it did fit. It fitted as if it had grown there on the hillside, always. The great elms were gone— Cassie had cabled that they were victims of the hurricane. But the tall evergreens growing in their places looked as if they, too, had been there always.
Leonidas smiled as he walked up the shoveled front walk. He chuckled aloud as he read the builder’s sign that sat rakishly on the doorstep.
“Weaver & Briggs, Builders.
C. W. Dow, Architect.”
He began to understand, as he stared at the sign, the machinations of young Mr. Dow. Things began to clear up. The unpredictable Cassie Price had done the unexpected. She had junked his plans and hired Dow, and together they had built this house. Now they both had cold feet at the thought of the consequences.
It was entirely characteristic of Cassie to have planted Dow on his trail, to prepare him and break the shock.
Leonidas couldn’t guess how Dow had managed to land on the train, but at any rate, Dow’s role was plain. There was no longer any mystery surrounding his statement that no one would be meeting Leonidas at the station. Dow simply knew it.
For the rest, fate had played into Dow’s hands. Or out of them, Leonidas amended, depending on your point of view. Fate had popped open the door of the empty drawing room and enabled Dow to render yeoman service to his unconscious form. Dow had nothing to do with the girl or the mousy woman or the person under the gray blankets, or with any of that confused, tantalizing episode. On the other hand, fate had also aroused Leonidas’s suspicions to such an extent that Dow, realizing them, had no earthly opportunity of bringing up in any graceful manner the matter of the changed house.
There had been one moment, when they first met in the corridor, but Dow had lost his nerve.
But neither Cassie nor Dow needed to go to such elaborate lengths, Leonidas reflected as he tried the key in the front door. Because he liked his new house. He thought it was one of the loveliest things he had ever seen in his life. He was delighted.
The key didn’t fit the front door, so Leonidas followed the path around to the rear of the house. The curved wall of a bay window fascinated him. He could hardly wait to find out what it meant and what it was.
As he turned the key, he noticed the arbor vitae hedge that formed a little enclosure to his left. Probably a terrace lay under the snow, he decided. A terrace where he could sit and look over the winding James River to the Camavon Hills beyond.
The prospect pleased him. Leaving the key in the lock, Leonidas started through the snow to investigate. With what amounted to shame, he remembered that the gabled cottage had a garage in that spot. He didn’t know why. He owned no car. But now he could sit on his terrace, hidden from the street by the tree hedge, and survey that beautiful view to his heart’s content.
Suddenly, Leonidas stopped short in his tracks.
Someone was moving behind the hedge, creeping past the far corner. Someone had been watching him at the back door, and was now sneaking away at his unexpected advance.
Cassie, of course. Dow had probably telephoned her of his escape, and Cassie had set out at once for the hill.
“Cassie!” Leonidas started to wade through the snow. “Wait, Cassie! Don’t run away! I like it! I think it’s superb!”
He waded across the drifts of the terrace to cut off her retreat.
But she was too quick for him.
She was speeding ‘down the front walk before Leonidas finished wriggling his way through the hedge. He wasn’t very efficient in his wriggling, because he was dazed to a point where he couldn’t co-ordinate very well.
The woman was not Cassie Price.
Leonidas almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Because he had caught a fleeting but photographic glimpse of a face already etched forever on his memory.
It was the face of the mousy woman of the train.
CHAPTER 3
A BRAWNY, mittened paw reached out and grabbed his shoulder as Leonidas started after her.
“Hold it, bud!”
Leonidas looked from the paw along a stretch of official blue coat sleeve to the massive Dalton policeman standing behind him.
“That woman!” Leonidas said urgently. “I’ve got to get that woman—”
“Tch, tch.” The cop clucked his tongue in reproof. “Tch, tch!”
“Officer,” Leonidas said, “if you won’t let me chase that woman, won’t you?”
“And if I don’t fall for that one,” the cop returned, “I suppose you got a baby for me to hold, huh?”
Leonidas put on his pince-nez.
“Exactly what do you mean, officer?”
“Listen, bud, don’t get fresh with me! There wasn’t no woman, and I ain’t going to run off and chase her, and you ain’t neither. I wasn’t born yesterday!”
“There was a woman,” Leonidas said. “A woman with whom I’ve had a peculiar and somewhat trying experience today.”
The cop eyed him.
“I bet they just can’t keep away from you, can they, bud?”
“Officer,” Leonidas said, “that woman was watching me—”
“I been watching you too, see, bud? I seen you prowling around. I seen you try the front door. There’s been enough of that around here. So you come along with me.”
“My name,” Leonidas said, “is Witherall. This happens to be my house.”
The cop found that statement hilariously funny, and he said so.
“And, bud,” he lowered his voice, “don’t never breathe it to a soul, but my name’s Windsor. I own Buckingham Palace, myself.”
Leonidas fumbled in the inner pocket of his coat.
“Here,” he said, “is my wallet, and here is my passport. If those don’t convince
