"I do," Enid said, drily. "I am also thinking of Reginald. If our dear Reginald escapes from the fostering care of the dogs we shall be ruined.

That man's hearing is wonderful. He will come creeping down here on those large flat feet of his, and that cunning brain will take in everything like a flash. Good dog!"

A hound in the distance growled, and then another howled mournfully. It was the plaint of the beast who has found his quarry, impatient for the gaoler to arrive. So long as that continued Henson was safe. Any attempt to escape, and he would be torn to pieces. Just at the present moment Enid almost hoped that the attempt would be made. It certainly was all right for the present, but then Williams might happen along on his way to the stables at any moment.

The two men were coming nearer. They both paused as the dogs gave tongue.

Through the thick belt of trees lights gleamed from one or two windows of the house. Steel pulled up and shuddered slightly in spite of himself.

"Crimson blinds," he said. "Crimson blinds all through this business.

They are beginning to get on my nerves. What about those dogs, Bell?"

"Dogs or no dogs, I am not going back now," Bell muttered. "It's perfectly useless to come here in the daytime; therefore we must fall back upon a little amateur burglary. There's a girl yonder who might have a.s.sisted me at one time, but--"

Enid slipped into the road. The night was pa.s.sably light and her beautiful features were fairly clear to the startled men in the road.

"The girl is here," she said. "What do you want?"

Bell and his companion cried out simultaneously: Bell because he was so suddenly face to face with one who was very dear to him, David because it seemed to him that he recognised the voice from the darkness, the voice of his great adventure. And there was another surprise as he saw Ruth Gates side by side with the owner of that wonderful voice.

"Enid!" Bell cried, hoa.r.s.ely. "I did not expect--"

"To confront me like this," the girl said, coldly. "That I quite understand. What I don't understand is why you intrude your hated presence here."

Bell shook his handsome head mournfully. He looked strangely downcast and dejected, and none the less, perhaps, because a fall in crossing the down had severely wrenched his ankle. But for a belated cab on the Rottingdean road he would not have been here now.

"As hard and cruel as ever," he said. "Not one word to me, not one word in my defence. And all the time I am the victim of a vile conspiracy--"

"Conspiracy! Do you call vulgar theft a conspiracy?"

"It was nothing else," David put in, eagerly. "A most extraordinary conspiracy. The kind of thing that you would not have deemed possible out of a book."

"And who might this gentleman be?" Enid asked, haughtily.

"A thousand pardons for my want of ceremony," David said. "If I had not been under the impression that we had met before I should never have presumed--"

"Oh, a truce to this," Bell cried. "We are wasting time. The hour is not far distant, Enid, when you will ask my pardon. Meanwhile I am going up to the house, and you are going to take me there. Come what way, I don't sleep to-night until I have speech with your aunt."

David had drawn a little aside. By a kind of instinct Ruth Gates followed him. A shaft of grey light glinted upon her cycle in the gra.s.s by the roadside. Enid and Bell were talking in vehement whispers--they seemed to be absolutely unconscious of anybody else but themselves.

David could see the anger and scorn on the pale, high-bred face; he could see Bell gradually expanding as he brought all his strength and firm power of will to bear.

"What will be the upshot of it?" Ruth asked, timidly.

"Bell will conquer," David replied. "He always does, you know."

"I am afraid you don't take my meaning, Mr. Steel."

David looked down into the sweet, troubled face of his companion, and thence away to the vivid crimson patches beyond the dark belt of foliage.

Ever and anon the intense stillness of the night was broken by the long-drawn howl of one of the hounds. David remembered it for years afterwards; it formed the most realistic chapter of one of his most popular novels.

"Heaven only knows," he said. "I have been dragged into this business, but what it means I know no more than a child. I am mixed up in it, and Bell is mixed up in it, and so are you. Why we shall perhaps know some day."

"You are not angry with me?"

"Why, no. Only you might have had a little more confidence in me."

"Mr. Steel, we dared not. We wanted your advice, and nothing more. Even now I am afraid I am saying too much. There is a withering blight over yonder house that is beyond mere words. And twice gallant gentlemen have come forward to our a.s.sistance. Both of them are dead. And if we had dragged you, a total stranger, into the arena, we should morally have murdered you."

"Am I not within the charmed circle now?" David smiled.

"Not of our free will," Ruth said, eagerly. "You came into the tangle with Hatherly Bell. Thank Heaven you have an ally like that. And yet I am filled with shame--"

"My dear young lady, what have you to be ashamed of?"

Ruth covered her face with her hands for a moment and David saw a tear or two trickle through the slim fingers. He took the hands in his, gently, tenderly, and glanced into the fine, grey eyes. Never had he been moved to a woman like this before.

"But what will you think of me?" Ruth whispered. "You have been so good and kind and I am so foolish. What can you think of a girl who is all this way from home at midnight? It is so--so unmaidenly."

"It might be in some girls, but not in you," David said, boldly. "One has only to look in your face and see that only the good and the pure dwell there. But you were not afraid?"

"Horribly afraid. The very shadows startled me. But when I discovered your errand to-night I was bound to come. My loyalty to Enid demanded it, and I had not one single person in the world whom I could trust."

"If you had only come to me, Miss Ruth--"

"I know, I know now. Oh, it is a blessed thing for a lonely girl to have one good man that she can rely upon. And you have been so very good, and we have treated you very, very badly."

But David would not hear anything of the kind. The whole adventure was strange to a degree, but it seemed to matter nothing so long as he had Ruth for company. Still, the girl must be got home. She could not be allowed to remain here, nor must she be permitted to return to Brighton alone. Bell strode up at the same moment.

"Miss Henson has been so good as to listen to my arguments," he said. "I am going into the house. Don't worry about me, but send Miss Gates home in the cab. I shall manage somehow."

David turned eagerly to Ruth.

"That will be best," he said. "We can put your machine on the cab, and I'll accompany you part of the way home. Our cabman will think that you came from the house. I shan't be long, Bell."

Ruth a.s.sented gratefully. As David put her in the cab Bell whispered to him to return as soon as possible, but the girl heard nothing of this.

"How kind--how kind you are," she murmured.

"Perhaps some day you will be kind to me," David said, and Ruth blushed in the darkness.

CHAPTER XIV

BEHIND THE BLIND

There was a long pause till the sound of the horse's hoofs died away.

Bell was waiting for his companion to speak. Her head was partly turned from him, so that he could only watch the dainty beauty of her profile.