Some Persons Unknown

by E. W. Hornung

I looked at my watch. We were still on the right side of noon. Going indoors for my hat, I craved permission to run to my rooms and change into flannels before lunch; and Deedes himself could not have hit upon a craftier pretext. It exempted me from escort, and thus cleared my path to the church, whither I proceeded without delay. The pew was easily found; I profaned a fat hymn-book with the square note, and crept out like the stealthy creature I was become. The church had been empty when I entered it. Coming out, however, I met a man in the porch. He was a huge, sandy-bearded, rolling walker, wearing a suit of blue serge and a straw-hat. As we passed, I saw his eye upon me; a moment later, this caused me to return upon my tracks, in order to see he did not meddle with Deedes's note. I was too late; I caught him sidling awkwardly from the pew, with the little square missive held quite openly between his fingers; and I awaited him in the porch with sensations upon which I need not dwell, beyond confessing that he appeared to me to grow six inches with every rolling stride.

"Pardon me, sir," said I, "but you've taken something that wasn't intended for you."

"How do you know that?" said he.

"It was intended for a young lady."

The big man looked down upon me through narrow eyes.

"Exactly," said he. "I am her father."

And that was all; he passed in front of me without a threatening or an insolent word, merely pocketing the note as he slouched down the churchyard path. But I, as I followed, took offence from every cubit of his stature; and could have hurled myself upon him (so depraved was I already) had I been more than half his size.

Heaven knows how I behaved at lunch! Instead of Deedes and the sergeant, the big man in the church was on my nerves. What would he do? Read the letter, of course; yet he had not even opened it, to my certain knowledge, when I lost sight of him. Would he know whom the letter was from? If so (and know he must), my illicit dealings with the wanted man would be equally plain to him; and how would this stranger deal with me? Who was he at all? and did he know in the least who I was, or where to lay hands on me? Should I meet him at the courts? I began to tell myself I did not care either way; that it must all come to light sooner or later now, so the sooner the better. But the man never came to the courts. As the afternoon wore on without sight or sign of him, a little confidence returned; the evening was at hand, and with it my own atonement as well as that of Deedes; and there was comfort in the thought that at the worst my false position would come to an end within the same twenty-four hours which had witnessed its assumption.

But the interim was itself charged with dramatic interests for me personally. In the first place there was the three-cornered note. Impelled by that strongest of all motives, curiosity, and thus undeterred by the fiasco of the first note, I put the second where I had been told to put it, and that before I had been five minutes on the ground. Then I played a couple of setts; but my play was even worse than usual; for I had one eye all the time upon the gate, and it would follow each new arrival to the pavilion, and seek a blush on each fair face as it emerged. I saw nothing then to arouse my suspicions. Yet when I went for my coat, in less than an hour, the three-cornered note was gone.

Suspicious as I was, and, for the time being, every inch of me a spy, I could fasten my suspicion upon no one person. Every girl on the ground, so far as I could hear, was talking of Deedes with the shocked fascination of inquisitive innocence: it might have been any one of them. All looked at me as though they knew me for the red-handed accomplice that I was; and those to whom I was introduced tortured me unremittingly with their questions. Never I am sure was a man more visibly embarrassed; yet who upon that ground could plumb the actual depth of my discomfort? Only one young lady refrained from adding to it, and this was Miss Enid I'Anson herself. The name of Deedes never passed between us. I fancied her relief as great as mine.