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.—L. B.”
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 traveled beyond the hotel courtyard to the other side of the road—who was that man with a billhook 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 It might be as well not to take it too rashly for granted that her spies had withdrawn, and had left her free to do her work in her own fashion.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 billhook 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 or 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, those confounded Sisters; but they shan’t keep her—no, not if I have to pull the house down about their ears to get her out.”
“Well, now you know where she is, you can take your time about getting her out,” said Loveday. “I hope, however, you haven’t broken faith with me, and betrayed yourself by trying to speak with her, because, if so, I shall have to look out for another deputy.”
“Honour, Miss Brooke!” answered White indignantly. “I stuck to my duty, though it cost me something to see her hanging over those kids and tucking them into the cart, and never say a word to her, never so much as wave my hand.”
“Did she go out with the donkey-cart today?”
“No, she only tucked the kids into the cart with a blanket, and then went back to the house. Two old Sisters, ugly as sin, went out with them. I watched them from the window, jolt, jolt, jolt, round the corner, out of sight, and then I whipped down the stairs, and on to my machine, and was after them in a trice and managed to keep them well in sight for over an hour and a half.”
“And their destination today was?”
“Wootton Hall.”
“Ah, just as I expected.”
“Just as you expected?” echoed White.
“I forgot. You do not know the nature of the suspicions that are attached to this Sisterhood, and
