The Head Girl at the Gables

by Angela Brazil

It was a comparatively short journey to St. Cyr, and on arrival there they went straight to the police station. They were shown by a constable into a private office, where they were shortly joined by a detective. He questioned Lorraine carefully as to the various occasions on which she had seen the suspected foreigner.

"A man answering exactly to that description has been staying at a boarding-house in Spring Terrace," he commented. "We happen to know that he was out all last night, and returned on a motor bicycle at eight o'clock this morning. These facts would fit in with the supposition that he was at Giant's Tor Point at dawn. What we want you to do is to watch the house, and identify him if he comes out. Now of course you understand that it wouldn't do for a young lady and a detective to sit on the doorstep waiting for him. At the first sight of us he'd escape by the back way. We want to catch him off his guard. My idea is this. Have you any notion of gardening?"

"A little," said Lorraine, surprised.

"You could rake about, at any rate, and pull up a few weeds? Well, there's a small public park right in front of the house in Spring Terrace. If you don't mind putting on a land worker's costume that I've borrowed for you, we'll employ you for the day on a job of gardening in the park. You can keep one eye on the weeds, and the other on the front door of 27 Spring Terrace. I shall be near you, bedding out fuchsias. You agree to take on the job? Then may I ask you to step into this other room and put on your land costume? There's no time to be lost. We don't want to miss the fellow. I've a man selling newspapers and watching the house, but he's no use as a witness."

This was indeed an excitement. Lorraine felt thrills as she hurried into the corduroys, leggings, and smock that had been placed ready for her. They were an indifferent fit, but in the circumstances that did not matter. The hat she thought decidedly becoming. On her return to the office she found that Detective Scott had also accomplished a quick change. He was now arrayed in a shabby suit of clothes, and carried a parcel of bedding-out plants.

He smiled satisfaction at her get-up, and handed her a rake and a basket.

"Good luck to you!" said Uncle Barton. "I shall be somewhere about in the park, not far from you; but I'd better not show up too much. These fellows soon get their suspicions aroused if they see people hanging round."

It was certainly a new experience for Lorraine to walk through the streets of St. Cyr in smock and corduroys, but the townspeople were so well used to land workers that nobody took any particular notice of her. The park was close at hand, and here the detective, setting down his parcel of fuchsias, showed her a patch of border next to the railings, and instructed her to weed and rake it.

"No. 27 is the house with the green blinds and the plant in the window," he whispered. "I've seen Jones—the man who's selling newspapers—and he says nobody has come out from there yet answering to the description of the fellow we want."

With that he left her, and, turning his back, began operations on a round bed already fairly full of lobelias and geraniums. Lorraine, with all her attention concentrated on the door of No. 27, worked abstractedly. She thought afterwards that, if any of the ratepayers of St. Cyr had taken the trouble to watch her gardening operations, they would have decided that girls on the land were certainly not worth their salt. She raked, and weeded, and picked up a few dead twigs, and scraped some moss off the path with a trowel, turning her head every other moment to peep through the railings. Once the door of No. 27 opened, and she held her breath, but it was only a lady who came out with a little child. Was this mysterious foreigner really in the house? He might have escaped by a back way, or have gone off in some disguise, in which case all her waiting would be in vain. Hour after hour passed by. The night at the cove and the agitation of the early morning had made her very tired, but she stuck grimly to her job. She was hungry, too, for it was nearly three o'clock, and she had eaten nothing since breakfast. The detective, who had been pottering about the flower-beds, sauntered carelessly up to her as if to direct her work.