Mary shuddered.
“No—no! Couldn’t I get out of it? I couldn’t go through it all again. I should be sick. I’m feeling awful. No, don’t come in. I don’t want you. Ring the bell for Ellen. No, let go; go away! I don’t want you, Peter!”
Peter hesitated, a little alarmed.
“Much better not, my lord, if you’ll excuse me,” said Bunter’s voice at his ear. “Only produce hysterics,” he added, as he drew his master gently from the door. “Very distressing for both parties, and altogether unproductive of results. Better to wait for the return of her grace, the Dowager.”
“Quite right,” said Peter. He turned back to pick up his paraphernalia, but was dexterously forestalled. Once again he lifted the lid of the chest and looked in.
“What did you say you found on that skirt, Bunter?”
“Gravel, my lord, and silver sand.”
“Silver sand.”
Behind Riddlesdale Lodge the moor stretched starkly away and upward. The heather was brown and wet, and the little streams had no color in them. It was six o’clock, but there was no sunset. Only a paleness had moved behind the thick sky from east to west all day. Lord Peter, tramping back after a long and fruitless search for tidings of the man with the motorcycle, voiced the dull suffering of his gregarious spirit. “I wish old Parker was here,” he muttered, and squelched down a sheep-track.
He was making, not directly for the Lodge, but for a farmhouse about two and a half miles distant from it, known as Grider’s Hole. It lay almost due north of Riddlesdale village, a lonely outpost on the edge of the moor, in a valley of fertile land between two wide swells of heather. The track wound down from the height called Whemmeling Fell, skirted a vile swamp, and crossed the little river Ridd about half a mile before reaching the farm. Peter had small hope of hearing any news at Grider’s Hole, but he was filled with a sullen determination to leave no stone unturned. Privately, however, he felt convinced that the motorcycle had come by the high road, Parker’s investigations notwithstanding, and perhaps passed directly through King’s Fenton without stopping or attracting attention. Still, he had said he would search the neighborhood, and Grider’s Hole was in the neighborhood. He paused to relight his pipe, then squelched steadily on. The path was marked with stout white posts at regular intervals, and presently with hurdles. The reason for this was apparent as one came to the bottom of the valley, for only a few yards on the left began the stretch of rough, reedy tussocks, with slobbering black bog between them, in which anything heavier than a water-wagtail would speedily suffer change into a succession of little bubbles. Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noise like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly upon the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great War; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will. This was his nadir, however. Realizing that his feet were cold and his stomach empty, and that he had still some miles to go, he crossed the stream on a row of slippery stepping-stones and approached the gate of the farm, which was not an ordinary five-barred one, but solid and uncompromising. A man was leaning over it, sucking a straw. He made no attempt to move at Wimsey’s approach. “Good evening,” said that nobleman in a sprightly manner, laying his hand on the catch. “Chilly, ain’t it?”
The man made no reply, but leaned more heavily, and breathed. He wore a rough coat and breeches, and his leggings were covered with manure.
“Seasonable, of course, what?” said Peter. “Good for the sheep, I daresay. Makes their wool curl, and so on.”
The man removed the straw and spat in the direction of Peter’s right boot.
“Do you lose many animals in the bog?” went on Peter, carelessly unlatching the gate, and leaning upon it in the opposite direction. “I see you have a good wall all round the house. Must be a bit dangerous in the dark, what, if you’re thinkin’ of takin’ a little evenin’ stroll with a friend?”
The man spat again, pulled his hat over his forehead, and said briefly:
“What doost ’a want?”
“Well,” said Peter, “I thought of payin’ a little friendly call on Mr.—on the owner of this farm, that is to say. Country neighbors, and all that. Lonely kind of country, don’t you see. Is he in, d’ye think?”
The man grunted.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Peter; “it’s so uncommonly jolly findin’ all you Yorkshire people so kind and hospitable, what? Never mind who you are, always a seat at the fireside and that kind of thing. Excuse me, but do you know you’re leanin’ on the gate so as I can’t open it? I’m sure it’s a pure oversight, only you mayn’t realize that just where you’re standin’ you get the maximum of leverage. What an awfully charmin’ house this is, isn’t it? All so jolly stark and grim and all the rest of it. No creepers or little rose-grown porches or anything suburban of that sort. Who lives in it?”
The man surveyed him up and down for some moments, and replied, “Mester Grimethorpe.”
“No, does he now?” said Lord Peter. “To think of that. Just the fellow I want to see. Model farmer, what? Wherever I go throughout
