Rocketing the car along a tricky road, he remembered H. M.'s heavy inscrutable face and heavy voice. He had said there was no cause for alarm. He had chuckled a little, for some obscure reason, over the attempt on Marcia Tait. Bennett did not understand, but he supposed H. M. knew..
Marcia Tait would be asleep now. Crazy idea, waking the place up by arriving at this hour. He hoped somebody was already astir. If he could only get that damned candy-box out of his mind; even the ribbon on a shirtfront, last night, reminded him of the chocolate box ribbons and the obese charmer simpering on the cover… Ahead of him now a white signboard rose out of the grayness, bristling with arms. He slewed the car round in a spurting of snow, and backed again. This was the road he wanted, to the left. It was only a narrow lane, gloomy and heavily timbered on either side. The motor ground harshly as he shifted into low.
It was broad daylight when he came in sight of the White Priory. Lying some distance back from the road, it was enclosed by a stone wall patched in snow and pierced by two iron-railed gates. The nearer gate was open. Firs and ever-greens stood spiky black against the white lawns, and made a twilight about the house. He saw heavy gables and a cluster of thin chimneys built up against low gray clouds behind; it was long and low, built like the head of the letter T with the short wings towards the road; and it might once have been painted with a dingy whitewash. Bow-windows looked out dully. Nothing stirred there.
Bennett climbed out on numb feet, and fumbled at the nearer gate to push it wide open. The thumping of the motor disturbed a querulous bird. From the gate, a gravel drive curved up some distance to what seemed a modern portecochere on the left-hand side. On either side of the drive oaks and maples had grown so thickly in interlocked branches that only a little snow could get through, and glimmered in a dark tunnel. It was then — he remembered later — that the real uneasiness touched him. He drove up through it, and stopped under the porte-cochere. Near him, a rug over its hood, was parked a Vauxhall sedan he remembered as John Bohun's.
That was when he heard the dog howling.
In utter silence, the unexpectedness of the sound made him go hot with something like fear. It was deep and hoarse, but it trembled up to end thinly. Then it had a quiver that was horribly like a human gulp. Bennett climbed down, peering round in the gloom. On his right was the-covered porch, with a big side door in the heavy-timbered house, and steps ascending to a balcony halfway up. Ahead and beyond, the driveway — here snow-crusted like the lawns — divided into three branches. One ran round the back of the house, a second down over a dim slope where he could see faintly an avenue of evergreens, and a third curved out to the left towards the low roofs of what seemed to be stables. It was from this direction..
Again the dog's howl rose, with a note that was like anguish.
"Down!" came a voice from far away. "Down! Tempest! Good dog! Down!"
The next sound Bennett heard he thought for a moment might be the dog again. But it was human. It was a cry such as he had never heard, coming faintly from over the slope of the lawn towards the rear.
In his half-drugged stage he had a feeling of almost physical sickness. But he ran to the end of the porte-cochere and peered out. He could see the stables now. In a cobbled courtyard before them he saw the figure of a man, in a groom's brown gaiters and corduroy coat, who was gripping the bridles of two frightened saddle-horses and soothing them as they began to clatter on the cobbles. The groom's voice, the same voice that had spoken to the dog, rose above the snorting and champing: