Loveday watched him out of sight down the slope of the hill, then, instead of following him as she had said she would ‘at a leisurely pace’, she turned her steps in the opposite direction along the village street.
It was an altogether ideal country village. Neatly-dressed chubby-faced children, now on their way to the schools, dropped quaint little curtsies, or tugged at curly locks as Loveday passed; every cottage looked the picture of cleanliness and trimness, and although so late in the year, the gardens were full of late-flowering chrysanthemums and early-flowering Christmas roses.
At the end of the village, Loveday came suddenly into view of a large, handsome, red-brick mansion. It presented a wide frontage to the road, from which it lay back amid extensive pleasure grounds. On the right hand, and a little in the rear of the house, stood what seemed to be large and commodious stables, and immediately adjoining these stables was a low-built, red-brick shed, that had evidently been recently erected.
That low-build, red-brick shed excited Loveday’s curiosity.
‘Is this house called North Cape?’ she asked of a man, who chanced at that moment to be passing with a pickaxe and shovel.
The man answered in the affirmative, and Loveday then asked another question: could he tell her what was that small shed so close to the house – it looked like a glorified cowhouse – now what could be its use?
The man’s face lighted up as if it were a subject on which he liked to be questioned. He explained that that small shed was the engine-house where the electricity that lighted North Cape was made and stored. Then he dwelt with pride upon the fact, as if he held a personal interest in it, that North Cape was the only house, far or near, that was thus lighted.
‘I suppose the wires are carried underground to the house,’ said Loveday, looking in vain for signs of them anywhere.
The man was delighted to go into details on the matter. He had helped to lay those wires, he said: they were two in number, one for supply and one for return, and were laid three feet below ground, in boxes filled with pitch. These wires were switched on to jars in the engine-house, where the electricity was stored, and, after passing underground, entered the family mansion under its flooring at its western end.
Loveday listened attentively to these details, and then took a minute and leisurely survey of the house and its surroundings. This done, she retraced her steps through the village, pausing, however, at the ‘Postal and Telegraph Office’ to dispatch a telegram to Inspector Gunning.
It was one to send the Inspector to his cipher-book. It ran as follows:
‘Rely solely on chemist and coal-merchant throughout the day. – LB.’
After this, she quickened her pace, and in something over three-quarters of an hour was back again at her hotel.
There she found more of life stirring than when she had quitted it in the early morning. There was to be a meeting of the ‘Surrey Stags’, about a couple of miles off, and a good many hunting men were hanging about the entrance to the house, discussing the chances of sport after last night’s frost. Loveday made her way through the throng in leisurely fashion, and not a man but what had keen scrutiny from her sharp eyes. No, there was no cause for suspicion there: they were evidently one and all just what they seemed to be – loud-voiced, hard-riding men, bent on a day’s sport; but – and here Loveday’s eyes travelled beyond the hotel courtyard to the other side of the road – who was that man with a bill-hook hacking at the hedge there – a thin-featured, round-shouldered old fellow, with a bent-about hat? It might be as well not to take it too rashly for granted that her spies had withdrawn, and had left her free to do her work in her own fashion.
She went upstairs to her room. It was situated on the first floor in the front of the house, and consequently commanded a good view of the high road. She stood well back from the window, and at an angle whence she could see and not be seen, took a long, steady survey of the hedger. And the longer she looked the more convinced she was that the man’s real work was something other than the bill-hook seemed to imply. He worked, so to speak, with his head over his shoulder, and when Loveday supplemented her eyesight with a strong field-glass, she could see more than one stealthy glance shot from beneath his bent-about hat in the direction of her window.
There could be little doubt about it: her movements were to be as closely watched today as they had been yesterday. Now it was of first importance that she should communicate with Inspector Gunning in the course of the afternoon: the question to solve was how it was to be done?
To all appearance Loveday answered the question in extraordinary fashion. She pulled up her blind, she drew back her curtain, and seated herself, in full view, at a small table in the window recess. Then she took a pocket inkstand from her pocket, a packet of correspondence cards from her letter-case, and with rapid pen, set to work on them.
About an hour and a half afterwards, White, coming in, according to his promise, to report proceedings, found her still seated at the window, not, however, with writing materials before her, but with needle and thread in her hand with which she was mending her gloves.
‘I return to town by the first train tomorrow morning,’ she said as he entered, ‘and I find these wretched things want no end of stitches. Now for your report.’
White appeared to be in an elated frame of mind. ‘I’ve seen her!’ he cried, ‘my Annie – they’ve got her,
