Now there was a definite pause. He knew Stannard had detected something odd in his tone, and that Stannard was examining the 'phone curiously.
"Shall I — ah — make excuses to our hostess and young host?"
"No. They'll have learned about it when you arrive."
"Shall I make excuses to Ruth?" This was said very casually.
"No." Martin clipped off the monosyllable.
"Ah. It should be very interesting to visit Fleet House," mused Stannard, "especially as I once had some slight acquaintance with its late owner. Just as you like, my dear fellow. Good-bye."
Martin replaced the telephone. He looked round his sitting room, on whose walls much of his own work hung framed amid his collection of rapiers. It had occurred to him that afternoon to ring Ruth Caliice and ask her what the devil Ruth had meant by her secrecy about Jenny. But Ruth was a good fellow; Ruth must have had some real reason; he put the thought aside.
That was how, next morning, a grey bus with dropsical wheels rattled him up in Rundown crossroads at half-past eleven. Not far ahead he could see the Dragon's Rest with its three tail and broad gables in a straight line, set up on a little rise on the east side of the road.
The Dragon's Rest was a beamed house of great age. Behind it lay rolling fields, the glitter of a stream, and the largish oak wood he later idenfified as Black Hanger. Not a blade of grass stirred, nothing stirred, in that hollow of silence and heat
Mr. Puckston, the landlord, took him up to a first-floor bedroom facing west Then Martin's first move was to clatter downstairs again to the telephone at the back of the saloon bar, and get in touch with Fleet House. He was answered by an informal and chatty maid,