To some temperaments, Nature has no terrors. Barbara, to whose imagination an empty house at dusk had suggested all kinds of unimaginable fears, was not in the least frightened by the fog.

She only hoped devoutly that a motor-car or a trap would not come along behind and run her down for she was obliged to keep to the road; the hard surface beneath her feet was her only guide.

She smiled over her predicament as she made her way along. She frequently found herself going off the road, more than once into patches of water, with the result that in a few minutes her feet were sopping. Still she forged ahead, with many vain halts to reconnoitre while the fog, instead of lifting, seemed to thicken with every step she took.

By this time she knew she was completely lost. Coming from the station there had been, she remembered, a cross-roads with a sign-board set up on a gra.s.s patch, about a quarter of a mile from the Mill House. She expected every minute to come upon this fork; again and again she swerved out to the left from her line of march groping for the sign-post with her hands but she never encountered it.

Few sounds came to break in upon the oppressive silence of the mist. Once or twice Barbara heard a train roaring along in the distance and, at one of her halts, her ear caught the high rising note of a motor engine a long way off. Except for these occasional reminders of the proximity of human beings, she felt she must be on a desert island instead of less than two score miles from London.

Her wrist watch showed her that she had walked for an hour when she heard a dog barking somewhere on the left of the road.

Presently, she saw a blurred patch of radiance apparently on the ground in front of her. So deceptive are lights seen through a fog that she was quite taken aback suddenly to come upon a long low house with a great beam of light streaming out of the door.

The house was approached by a little bridge across a broad ditch.

By the bridge stood a tall, ma.s.sive post upon which a sign squeaked softly as it swayed to and fro. The inn was built round three sides of a square, the left-hand side being the house itself, the centre, the kitchen, and the right-hand side a tumble-down stable and some sheds.

The welcome blaze of light coming from the open door was very welcome to Barbara after her, long journey through the mist. She dragged her wet and weary feet across the little bridge and went up to the inn-door.

She stood for a moment at the entrance dazzled by the effect of the light on her eyes, which were smarting with the fog. She found herself looking into a long, narrow, taproom, smelling of stale beer and tobacco fumes, and lit by oil lamps suspended in wire frames from the raftered ceiling. The windows were curtained in cheerful red rep and the place was pleasantly warmed by a stove in one corner. By the stove was a small door apparently leading into the bar, for beside it was a window through which Barbara caught a glimpse of beer-engines and rows of bottles.

Opposite the doorway in which she stood was another door leading probably to the back of the house. Down the centre of the room ran a long table.

The tap-room was empty when Barbara entered but as she sat down at the table, the door opposite opened, and a short, foreign-looking woman came out. She stepped dead on seeing the girl: Her face seemed familiar to Barbara.

"Good evening" said the latter, "I've lost my way in the fog and I'm very wet. Do you think I could have my shoes and stockings dried and get some tea? I..."

"A moment! I go to tell Meester Ra.s.s," said the woman with a very marked foreign accent and in a frightened kind of voice and slipped out by the way she came.

"Where have I met that woman before?" Barbara asked herself, as she crossed to tile stove to get warm. The woman's face seemed to be connected in her mind with something unpleasant, something she wanted to forget. Then a light dawned on her. Why, it was...

A shrill cry broke in upon her meditations, a harsh scream of rage. Barbara turned quickly and saw Nur-el-Din standing in the centre of the room. She was transfigured with pa.s.sion. Her whole body quivered, her nostrils were dilated, her eyes flashed fire, and she pointed an accusing finger at Barbara.

"Ah! miserable!" she cried in a voice strangled with rage, "ah!

miserable! Te voile enrol."

A cold chill struck at Barbara's heart. Wherever she went, the hideous spectre of the tragedy of her father seemed to follow her. And now Nur-el-Din had come to upbraid her with losing the treasure she had entrusted to her.

"Nur-el-Din," the girl faltered in a voice broken with tears.

"Where is it I Where is the silver box I gave into your charge?

Answer me. Mais reponds, donc, canaille!"

The dancer stamped furiously with her foot and advanced menacingly on Barbara.

An undersized; yellow-faced man came quickly out of the small door leading from the bar and stood an instant, a helpless witness of the scene, as men are when women quarrel.

Nur-el-Din rapped out an order to him in a tongue which was unknown to Barbara. It sounded something like Russian. The man turned and locked the door of the bar, then stepped swiftly across the room and bolted the outer door.

Barbara recognized the threat that the action implied and it served to steady her nerves. She shrank back no longer but drew herself up and waited calmly for the dancer to reach her.

"The box you gave me," said Barbara very quietly, "was stolen from me by the person who... who murdered my father!"

Nur-el-Din burst into a peal of malicious laughter.

"And you?" she cried, "you are 'ere to sell it back to me, hein, or to get your blood money from your accomplice? Which is it?"

On this Barbara's self-control abandoned her.

"Oh, how dare you! How dare you!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears, "when that wretched box you made me take was the means of my losing the dearest friend I ever had!"

Nur-el-Din thrust her face, distorted with pa.s.sion, into Barbara's. She spoke in rapid French, in a low, menacing voice.

"Do you think this play-acting will deceive me? Do you think I don't know the value of the treasure I was fool enough to entrust to your safe keeping? Grand Dieu! I must have been mad not to have remembered that no woman could resist the price that they were willing to pay for it! And to think what I have risked for it! Is all my sacrifice to have been in vain?"

Her voice rose to a note of pleading and the tears started from her eyes. Her mood changed. She began to wheedle.

"Come, ma pet.i.te, you will help me recover my little box, n'est-ce pas? You will find me generous. And I am rich, I have great savings. I can..."

Barbara put up her hands and pushed the dancer away from her.

"After what you have said to me to-night," she said, "I wouldn't give you back your box even if I had it."

She turned to the man.

"Will you tell me the way to the nearest station" she went on, "and kindly open that door!"

The man looked interrogatively at Nur-el-Din who spoke a few words rapidly in the language she had used before. Then she cried to Barbara:

"You stay here until you tell me what you have done with the box!"

Barbara had turned to the dancer when the latter spoke so that she did not notice that the man had moved stealthily towards her.

Before she could struggle or cry out, a hand as big as a spade was clapped over her mouth, she was seized in an iron grip and half-dragged, half-carried out of the taproom through the small door opposite the front entrance.

The door slammed behind them and Barbara found herself in darkness. She was pushed round a corner and down a flight of stairs into some kind of cellar which smelt of damp straw. Here the grip on her mouth was released for a second but before she could utter more than a m.u.f.fled cry the man thrust a handkerchief into her mouth and effectually gagged her. Then he tied her hands and feet together with some narrow ropes that cut her wrists horribly. He seemed to be able to see in the dark for, though the place was black as pitch, he worked swiftly and skillfully.

Barbara felt herself lifted and deposited on a bundle of straw.

In a little she heard the man's heavy foot-step on the stair, there was a crash as of a trap-door falling to, the noise of a bolt. Then Barbara fainted.

CHAPTER XV. MR. BELLWARD IS CALLED TO THE TELEPHONE

A knocking at the door of the library aroused Desmond from his cogitations. He hastened to replace the volumes of Shakespeare on their shelf and restore all to its former appearance. Then he went to the door and opened it. Old Martha stood in the hall.

"If you please, sir," she wheezed, "the doctor's come!"

"Oh," said Desmond, rather puzzled, "what doctor?"

"It's not Dr. Haines from the village, Mr. Bellward, sir," said the housekeeper, "It's a genel'man from Lunnon!"

Then Desmond remembered Crook's promise to look him up and guessed it must be he. He bade Martha show the doctor in and bring tea for two.

Desmond's surmise was right. The old woman ushered in Crook, looking the very pattern of medical respectability, with Harley Street written all over him from the crown of his glossy top-hat to the neat brown spats on his feet. In his hand he carried a small black bag.