"Runs like a watch, don't it?" was his admiring cry.

"And almost as quietly, so you heard what I said."

"Oh, I hear lots, but I reckon it a good plan to keep my mouth shut,"

grinned the other.

"Exactly what you have failed to do," thought Medenham, though he nodded pleasantly, and, with a "So long!" pa.s.sed out of the yard.

Smith went to the exit and looked after him. The man's face wore a good-humored sneer. It was as though he said:

"You wait a bit, my dandy shuffer--you ain't through with his Countship yet--not by any manner o' means."

And Medenham did wait, till nearly seven o'clock. He saw Cynthia and her companions come out of Gough's Cave and enter c.o.x's. These fairy grottoes of nature's own contriving were well worthy of close inspection, he knew. Nowhere else in the world can stalact.i.tes that droop from the roof, stalagmites that spring from the floor, be seen in such perfection of form and tint. But he fretted and fumed because Cynthia was immured too long in their ice-cold recesses, and when, at last, she reappeared from the second cavern and halted near a stall to purchase some curios, impatience mastered him, and he brought the car slowly on until she turned and looked at him.

He raised his cap.

"The gorge is the finest thing in Cheddar, Miss Vanrenen," he said.

"You ought to see it while the light is strong."

"We are going now," she answered coldly. "Monsieur Marigny will take me to Bristol, and you will follow with Mrs. Devar."

He did not flinch from her steadfast gaze, though those blue eyes of hers seemed definitely to forbid any expression of opinion. Yet there was a challenge in them, too, and he accepted it meekly.

"I was hoping that I might have the pleasure of driving you this evening," he said. "The run through the pa.s.s is very interesting, and I know every inch of it."

He fancied that she was conscious of some mistake, and eager to atone if in the wrong.

She hesitated, yielded almost, but Mrs. Devar broke in angrily:

"We have decided differently, Fitzroy. I have some few postcards to dispatch, and Count Marigny has kindly promised to run slowly up the hill until we overtake him."

"Yes, you ought to have waited in the yard of the inn for orders,"

said the ever-smiling Marigny. "My car can hardly pa.s.s yours in this narrow road. Back a bit to one side, there's a good fellow, and, when we have gone, pull up to the door. Come, Miss Vanrenen. I am fierce to show you the paces of a Du Vallon."

The concluding sentences were in French, but Count Edouard spoke idiomatic English fluently and with a rather fascinating accent.

Cynthia, slightly ruffled by her own singular lack of purpose, made no further demur. The three walked off down the hill, and Medenham could only obey in a chill rage that, were Marigny able to gauge its intensity, might have given him "furiously to think."

In a few minutes the Du Vallon scurried by. Smith was driving, and there was a curious smirk on his red face as he glanced at Medenham.

Cynthia sat in the tonneau with the Frenchman, who drew her attention to the limestone cliffs in such wise that she did not even see the Mercury as she pa.s.sed.

Medenham muttered something under his breath, and reversed slowly back to the inn. He consulted his watch.

"I'll give the postcard writer ten minutes--then I shall jar her nerves badly," he promised himself.

Those minutes were slow-footed, but at last he closed the watch with a snap. He called to a waitress visible at the end of a long pa.s.sage.

The girl happened to be his friend of tea-time.

"Would you like to earn another half crown?" he asked.

She had wit enough to grasp essentials, and it was abundantly clear that this man was not her lawful quarry.

"Yes--sir," she said.

"Take it, then, and tell the elderly lady belonging to my party--she is somewhere inside--that Fitzroy says he cannot wait any longer. Use those exact words--and be quick!"

The girl vanished. An irate yet dignified Mrs. Devar came out.

"Do I understand----" she began wrathfully.

"I hope so, madam. Unless you get in at once I intend going to Bristol, or elsewhere, without you."

"Or elsewhere?" she gasped, though some of her high color fled under his cold glance.

"Precisely. I do not intend to abandon Miss Vanrenen."

"How dare you speak to me in this manner, you vulgar person?"

For answer Medenham set the engine going.

"I said 'At once,'" he replied, and looked Mrs. Devar squarely in the eyes.

She had her fair share of that wisdom of the serpent which is indispensable to evildoers, and had learnt early in life that whereas many men say they will do that which they really will not do if put to the test, other men, rare but dominant, can be trusted to make good their words no matter what the cost. So she accepted the unavoidable; quivering with indignation, she entered the car.

"Drive me to the post-office," she said, with as much of acid repose as she could muster to her aid.

Medenham seemed to be suddenly afflicted with deafness. After negotiating a line of vehicles, the Mercury leaped past the caves of Gough and c.o.x as though the drip of lime-laden water within those amazing depths were reeling off centuries in a frenzy of haste instead of measuring time so slowly that no appreciable change has been noted in the tiniest stalact.i.te during fifty years. Mrs. Devar then grew genuinely alarmed, since even a designing woman may be a timid one.

She bore with the pace until the car seemed to be on the verge of rushing full tilt against a jutting rock. She could endure the strain no longer, but stood up and screamed.

Medenham slackened speed. When the curving road opened sufficiently to show a clear furlong ahead, he turned and spoke to the limp, shrieking creature clinging to the back of his seat.

"You are not in the slightest danger," he a.s.sured her, "but if you wish it I will drop you here. The village is barely half a mile away.

Otherwise, should you decide to remain, you must put up with a rapid speed."

"But why, why?" she almost wailed. "Have you gone mad, to drive like that?"

"Again I pledge my word that there is no risk. I mean to overtake Miss Vanrenen before the light fails--that is all."

"Your conduct is positively outrageous," she gasped.

"Please yourself, madam. Do you go, or stay?"

She collapsed into the comfortable upholstery with a gesture of impotent despair. Medenham was sure she would not dare to leave him.

What wretched project she and Marigny had concocted he knew not, but its successful outcome evidently depended on Mrs. Devar's safe arrival in Bristol. Moreover, it was a paramount condition that he should be delayed at Cheddar, and his chief interest lay in defeating that part of the programme. Without another word, he released the brakes, and the car sped onward.

Now they were plunging into a magnificent defile shadowed by sheer cliffs that on the eastern side rose to a height of five hundred feet.

Fluttering rock pigeons circled far up in the azure riband that spanned the opposing precipices. From many a towering pinnacle, carved by the ages into fantastic imageries of a castle, a pulpit, a lion, or a lance, came the loud, clear calling of innumerable jack-daws. It was dark and gloomy, most terrifying to Mrs. Devar, down there on the twining road where the car boomed ever on like some relentless monster rushing from its lair. But the Cheddar gorge, though majestic and awe-inspiring, is not of great extent.

Soon the valley widened, the road took longer sweeps to round each frowning b.u.t.tress, and at last emerged, with a quality of inanimate breathlessness, on to the bleak and desolate tableland of the Mendips.

At this point, had Cynthia been there, Medenham would have stopped for a while, so that she might admire the far-flung panorama of the "island valley of Avallon" that stretched below the ravine. Out of the green pastures in the middle distance rose the ruined towers of Glas...o...b..ry. The purple and gold of Sedgemoor, relieved by the soft outlines of the Polden hills, the grim summits of Taunton Dean and the Blackdown range, the wooded Quantocks dipping to the Severn, and the giant ma.s.s of Exmoor bounding the far horizon,--these great splashes of color, softened and blended by belts of farmland and the blue smoke of cl.u.s.tering hamlets, formed a picture that not even Britain's storehouse of natural beauty can match too often to sate the eyes of those who love a charming landscape.