I put my hand in my pocket, and there it was right enough.
“My dear Jack, here it is. It never was sent.”
His hand dived into his own pocket and then held out a crumpled telegram. I took it and read this message.
“Request permission to be visited by my own doctor. Hobhouse.”
“Do you mean to say you never sent that off yourself?” exclaimed Sir Francis.
“Never!”
“Then who the—!” My uncle’s expression completed the sentence.
Jack Whiteclett was looking uncommonly grave.
“This is a somewhat serious matter, Roger,” he said quietly. “Didn’t you write this either?”
He handed me a half sheet of paper on which was written in pencil these words.
“Go to Doctor’s. If no further message there go on to Scollays’ immediately.”
It was printed in capital letters so as to give no clue to the handwriting.
“When did you get that?” I cried.
“It was handed to me as we landed. The messenger went off again at once, but I assumed of course it was from you.”
“Roger!” thundered my uncle. “Who have you taken into your confidence?”
His eye turned manacingly on the doctor and I hastened to intervene.
“Dr. Rendall—Sir Francis Merton,” I introduced. “But it certainly wasn’t Dr. Rendall who sent these messages. He has only just learned the facts.”
My uncle bowed very stiffly to the doctor and turned on me again.
“And how many more people have ‘learned the facts’—the facts, I may remind you, which it was so vital they should not learn?”
I bared my metaphorical breast, and with as close an imitation of a clear-conscienced young man revealing the harmless necessary truth as I could achieve without rehearsal, I told him,
“I have only informed one person, and she is thoroughly trustworthy.”
“She!” said my uncle, not very loudly but extremely unpleasantly.
“She is Miss Rendall,” I added.
My revelations to the doctor not having reached this stage when we were interrupted, I think I can honestly say that no utterance of mine ever produced a more telling effect on these men simultaneously.
“Jean!” exclaimed the doctor.
“Oh, is that her name?” said my uncle as soon as he could trust himself to speak.
My cousin alone came straight to the point.
“Then she has sent me this wire and this message?”
“She must have,” I agreed.
“In that case we had better push on for the Scollays at once and see what she means.”
“You don’t think it’s a trap?” asked my uncle.
Jack Whiteclett smiled slightly. The idea of the Navy pausing to weigh the risk appeared to amuse him.
“We must take our chance,” he said briefly. “We’ve both got our shooting irons.”
“And so have I,” I added, “and certainly I am going to the Scollays. You can trust Miss Rendall!”
“You can that!” said the doctor heartily. “And if you don’t mind I’ll come with you.”
I saw doubt in my uncle’s eye and put in quickly.
“Certainly, doctor! We may all be needed. Come on!”
It was quite dark, and mortal cold; the road was frozen hard and the nor’east wind swept over it without a break from wall or hedgerow. We all four trotted for a little to get up our circulation and then settled down to a fast five-mile-an-hour walk. About half the distance had been covered when I first heard a little sound ahead.
“What’s that!” I exclaimed, and we stood still and listened.
“Somebody running!” said my cousin.
“Towards us?” asked Sir Francis.
“Yes.”
Plainer and plainer sounded the pattering steps on the frozen road, and as they drew nearer I thought I could tell that they were light steps—a woman’s or a boy’s, they seemed.
“Let’s drop into the ditch and see who it is,” whispered Jack.
We broke, two of us to either side of the road, and I found myself with my uncle stooping in one ditch, with Jack and the doctor across the road in the other. Thus bent down, one could see objects against the sky more distinctly and in a moment I spied the runner dimly, pattering down the middle of the road straight for us. And then, in a few seconds, this runner gradually took shape and my eyes at last could see the swing of a skirt and thought they could even recognise the slim figure. I jumped up.
“Wait!” muttered my uncle.
“It’s all right! We mustn’t frighten her,” I said.
I came out into the middle of the road and saw the other three rising at the sides. The runner was barely twenty yards away by now and I heard her gasp as she stopped abruptly.
“Miss Rendall?” I said.
The next moment she had rushed up to me, her eyes sparkling, her voice coming in pants.
“Mr. Merton!” she panted and then her eyes fell on the others. “They’ve come then—I’m so glad!—forgive me for wiring—but—look!”
She handed me something small and long-shaped. It was a spectacle case.
“Take them out!” she said.
We were all four gathered round her now and I heard my uncle say,
“Where’s that torch of yours, Jack?”
Then the flash of my cousin’s electric torch fell on the spectacles and my heart leapt.
“The tinted spectacles!” I cried.
“Where did you find them?” demanded my uncle and cousin simultaneously, and I could tell from their voices that all doubts had vanished, and that, like me, they were burning now only with the excitement of the chase.
“At the Scollays’!” she said, still panting. “But there’s no time to lose—you’ll see everything if we only hurry—he may be back if we don’t!”
Sir Francis (of course) pocketed the spectacle case, and the whole five of us set out at the double, Jean trotting in front between Jack and me, and Sir Francis and the doctor clattering behind. My cousin and I each tried a question, but we saw that Jean’s breath would be better saved for whatever was ahead, and so our voices fell silent and presently as we left the high road our feet fell almost silent too. We only dropped to a walk when the farm buildings loomed up close ahead, and then for a moment Jean stopped us and listened intently.
“They
