The House of the Arrow

by A. E. W. Mason

The road curled like a paper ribbon round the shoulder of a hill and dropped into a shallow valley. To the left a little below the level of the road, a stream ran swiftly through a narrow meadow of lush green grass. Beyond the meadow the wall of the valley rose rough with outcroppings of rock, and with every tuft of its herbage already brown from the sun. On the right the northern wall rose almost from the road's edge. The valley was long and curved slowly, and half-way along to the point where it disappeared a secondary road, the sort of road which is indicated in the motorist's hand-books by a dotted line, branched off to the left, crossed the stream by a stone bridge and vanished in a cleft of the southern wall. Beyond this branching road grew trees. The stream disappeared under them as though it ran into a cavern; the slopes on either side were hidden behind trees—trees so thick that here at this end the valley looked bare in the strong sunlight, but low trees, as if they had determined to harmonise with their environment. Indeed, the whole valley had a sort of doll's-house effect—it was so shallow and narrow and stunted. It tried to be a valley and succeeded in being a depression.

When the little two-seater car swooped round the shoulder of the hill and descended, the white ribbon of road was empty but for one tiny speck at the far end, behind which a stream of dust spurted and spread like smoke from the funnel of an engine.

"That motor dust is going to smother us when we pass," said Jim.

"We shall do as much for him," said Betty, looking over her shoulder from the steering wheel. "No, worse!" Behind the car the dust was a screen. "But I don't mind, do you, Jim?" she asked with a laugh, in which for the first time, with a heart of thankfulness, Jim heard a note of gaiety. "To be free of that town if only for an hour! Oh!" and Betty opened her lungs to the sunlight and the air. "This is my first hour of liberty for a week!"

Frobisher was glad, too, to be out upon the slopes of the Côte-d'Or. The city of Dijon was ringing that morning with the murder of Jean Cladel; you could not pass down a street but you heard his name mentioned and some sarcasms about the police. He wished to forget that nightmare of a visit to the street of Gambetta and the dreadful twisted figure on the floor of the back room.

"You'll be leaving it for good very soon, Betty," he said significantly.

Betty made a little grimace at him, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.

"Jim!" she said, and the colour rose into her face, and the car swerved across the road. "You mustn't speak like that to the girl at the wheel," she said with a laugh as she switched the car back into its course, "or I shall run down the motor-cyclist and that young lady in the side-car."

"The young lady," said Jim, "happens to be a port-manteau!"

The motor-cyclist, indeed, was slowing down as he came nearer to the branching road, like a tourist unacquainted with the country, and when he actually reached it he stopped altogether and dismounted. Betty brought her car to a standstill beside him, and glanced at the clock and the speedometer in front of her.