“Yes.”
“What a wonderful place it would be for you to think in if you were a writer too.”
James held no high opinion of women’s literary taste, but nevertheless he was conscious of an unpleasant shock.
“I am a writer,” he said coldly. “I write detective stories.”
“I—I’m afraid,”—she blushed—“I’m afraid I don’t often read detective stories.”
“You no doubt prefer,” said James, still more coldly, “the sort of thing my aunt used to write.”
“Oh, I love her stories!” cried the girl, clasping her hands ecstatically. “Don’t you?”
“I cannot say that I do.”
“What?”
“They are pure apple sauce,” said James sternly; “just nasty blobs of sentimentality, thoroughly untrue to life.”
The girl stared.
“Why, that’s just what’s so wonderful about them, their trueness to life! You feel they might all have happened. I don’t understand what you mean.”
They were walking down the garden now. James held the gate open for her and she passed through into the road.
“Well, for one thing,” he said, “I decline to believe that a marriage between two young people is invariably preceded by some violent and sensational experience in which they both share.”
“Are you thinking of Scent o’ the Blossom, where Edgar saves Maud from drowning?”
“I am thinking of every single one of my aunt’s books.” He looked at her curiously. He had just got the solution of a mystery which had been puzzling him for some time. Almost from the moment he had set eyes on her she had seemed somehow strangely familiar. It now suddenly came to him why it was that he disliked her so much. “Do you know,” he said, “you might be one of my aunt’s heroines yourself? You’re just the sort of girl she used to love to write about.”
Her face lit up.
“Oh, do you really think so?” She hesitated. “Do you know what I have been feeling ever since I came here? I’ve been feeling that you are exactly like one of Miss Pinckney’s heroes.”
“No, I say, really!” said James, revolted.
“Oh, but you are! When you jumped through that window it gave me quite a start. You were so exactly like Claude Masterton in Heather o’ the Hills.”
“I have not read Heather o’ the Hills,” said James, with a shudder.
“He was very strong and quiet, with deep, dark, sad eyes.”
James did not explain that his eyes were sad because her society gave him a pain in the neck. He merely laughed scornfully.
“So now, I suppose,” he said, “a car will come and knock you down and I shall carry you gently into the house and lay you—Look out!” he cried.
It was too late. She was lying in a little huddled heap at his feet. Round the corner a large automobile had come bowling, keeping with an almost affected precision to the wrong side of the road. It was now receding into the distance, the occupant of the tonneau, a stout red-faced gentleman in a fur coat, leaning out over the back. He had bared his head—not, one fears, as a pretty gesture of respect and regret, but because he was using his hat to hide the number plate.
The dog Toto was unfortunately uninjured.
James carried the girl gently into the house and laid her on the sofa in the morning-room. He rang the bell and the apple-cheeked housekeeper appeared.
“Send for the doctor,” said James. “There has been an accident.”
The housekeeper bent over the girl.
“Eh, dearie, dearie!” she said. “Bless her sweet pretty face!”
The gardener, he who technically owned William, was routed out from among the young lettuces and told to fetch Dr. Brady. He separated his bicycle from William, who was making a light meal off the left pedal, and departed on his mission. Dr. Brady arrived and in due course he made his report.
“No bones broken, but a number of nasty bruises. And, of course, the shock. She will have to stay here for some time, Rodman. Can’t be moved.”
“Stay here! But she can’t! It isn’t proper.”
“Your housekeeper will act as a chaperon.”
The doctor sighed. He was a stolid-looking man of middle age with side whiskers.
“A beautiful girl, that, Rodman,” he said.
“I suppose so,” said James.
“A sweet, beautiful girl. An elfin child.”
“A what?” cried James, starting.
This imagery was very foreign to Dr. Brady as he knew him. On the only previous occasion on which they had had any extended conversation, the doctor had talked exclusively about the effect of too much protein on the gastric juices.
“An elfin child; a tender, fairy creature. When I was looking at her just now, Rodman, I nearly broke down. Her little hand lay on the coverlet like some white lily floating on the surface of a still pool, and her dear, trusting eyes gazed up at me.”
He pottered off down the garden, still babbling, and James stood staring after him blankly. And slowly, like some cloud athwart a summer sky, there crept over James’s heart the chill shadow of a nameless fear.
It was about a week later that Mr. Andrew McKinnon, the senior partner in the well-known firm of literary agents, McKinnon & Gooch, sat in his office in Chancery Lane, frowning thoughtfully over a telegram. He rang the bell.
“Ask Mr. Gooch to step in here.” He resumed his study of the telegram. “Oh, Gooch,” he said when his partner appeared, “I’ve just had a curious wire from young Rodman. He seems to want to see me very urgently.”
Mr. Gooch read the telegram.
“Written under the influence of some strong mental excitement,” he agreed. “I wonder why he doesn’t come to the office if he wants to see you so badly.”
“He’s working very hard, finishing that novel for Prodder & Wiggs. Can’t leave it, I suppose. Well, it’s a nice day. If you will look after things here I think I’ll motor down and let him give me lunch.”
As Mr. McKinnon’s car reached the crossroads a mile from Honeysuckle Cottage, he was aware of a gesticulating figure by the hedge. He stopped the car.
“Morning, Rodman.”
“Thank God, you’ve come!” said James. It seemed to
