She felt quite sure that Doss Umpey knew nothing concerning the buried treasure, or he would most certainly have dug it up and disposed of it. Her thoughts went back to the story told by Mrs. Nichols, on the previous evening, of the stolen things hidden by the man Logan, which no one had been able to find, and she was wondering if this might not have been the very hoard, when the sounder bell aroused her, and she had to take down this message—
“Look out for stout, elderly man, dressed as miner, but has been gentleman, talks with lisp, heavily marked smallpox, may be accompanied by young man, his son, also gentleman, tall, fair, good-looking, and an old man, grey-haired, bent, but very active. The party are to be watched, and their movements reported to the nearest police centre.”
Perhaps, if she had not heard the story told by Mrs. Nichols so recently, and had not seen the newspaper paragraph just before taking down the long telegraphic message, Nell would not have been able to understand the whole situation so completely; even now there were blanks that her imagination could not fill, but in the main the matter shaped itself somehow after this fashion.
Brunsen, the elder, who had written the threatening letter to Doss Umpey, which she had found at the Lone House, must have somehow come to poverty or had to go into hiding. Perhaps this find at the Lone House had had something to do with his downfall; or it might have been, in betraying his old confederate to the police he had been implicated himself, and so had to fly. With him would go his son, who was the child of whom Mrs. Nichols had spoken.
Nell shivered as she thought of him. It was so dreadful that a pleasant and courteous gentleman like the stranger who had come exhausted to the Lone House, should be mixed up in trouble of this kind. Sometimes she thought there must be a mistake somewhere, in the identity of that exhausted stranger, and yet he fitted in to the story so completely that there seemed no possibility of his being other than the son of R. D. Brunsen.
The third man mentioned in the telegraphic message was, without doubt, Doss Umpey himself, although why he should be on friendly terms with a man who had systematically blackmailed him was a mystery that Nell’s imagination could not fathom.
A great shrinking and fear came upon her, as she thought of the old man coming into the neighbourhood and discovering where she was living. He had deserted her, going off and leaving her destitute to get on as best she could. But if he came back into her life now, it would be to drag her down to his own level again, from the little height of respectability to which she had so laboriously climbed.
What should she do? What could she do?
For a brief space, wild visions came to her of throwing up her work and going off somewhere out of reach of any chance encounter with Doss Umpey.
Then wiser thoughts prevailed. To begin with, she was in honour bound to remain at her post for Gertrude’s sake; while to turn coward and run away from duty could bring nothing but shame and trouble to her.