Apparently, Roberta was still there and would remain, as nothing yet had happened. Possibly the contents of the box were such that she could not proceed to the business of her visit without it. Andy watched, not without apprehension, as the porter dumped the box onto the luggage van. Nothing eventuated; and, as the stubby train was starting, he got into the nearest passenger compartment.
Two American girls shared the seats with him—one was the girl who, for a moment, he had believed might be Roberta when he saw her on the platform. But these were not of the caste of mind to be among Roberta’s associates. An adventure was up for discussion between them; it was nothing more violent or destructive in character than a project to purchase certain extra items of dress at the price of returning to America second class or, perhaps, steerage. The girl, something like Roberta, and about her age of twenty-four, urged this. Andy groped absently on the seat beside him for his magazine. He had dropped it on the other train; so he contented himself, as he sat back, with rehearsing its most encouraging paragraphs.
The shadows of the long English twilight rose from the hills; the smoke of the evening fires lifted lazily from the chimney pots of a little town as the train stopped at Stoketon. Andy, stepping out at the station, stood staring about a moment, looking, listening, as if expectant. An old castle showed on a hill; in another quarter, a church from which chimes sounded softly. He looked from one of these to the other, and then glanced toward a third prominent structure, the nature of which he could not determine. He seemed expecting some sudden change in one of them. The moving off of the train recalled him. The girls who had shared the compartment with him had alighted there, too, and were instructing the porters where to take their luggage. The men moved off, leaving Roberta’s black, week-end box on the platform alone.
Andy sat down and watched it; but concern over it had ceased. It was left on the platform, unclaimed and uncalled for, when the last porter lit the lamps and placed them on the switches and in the signal positions. Evidently the stubby train was to return that night; but not soon. The last porter closed the station and started away.
“Which are the inns to which ladies might go alone?” Andy asked the man. “Not very timid ladies,” he particularized.
The first three hostelries suggested gave Andy only blanks; but at the fourth, which he reached when at last the twilight had gone into the soft autumn night, he studied the register of guests with greater care. Roberta’s name did not appear; but another name was written by a hand which, though disguised, could have been hers. He sent up his card to Miss Constance Everett in room eighteen. She was stopping there, it appeared, with an English aunt, and she had gone to her room early with the aunt who had a headache.
Andy looked about as he waited. The place was perfect for the planning of catastrophe—an ancient inn with dim, paneled walls, ceiling beamed and smoked by sweet wood fires, a sleepy, unsuspicious guest house, offering always its old flagon of cherry cordial to greet each visitor, and holding other traditions unchanged to charm old ladies traveling.
Miss Everett did not respond to the knock on her door; her aunt also seemed asleep. Did the gentleman, who undoubtedly was a close friend, if not a connection, wish Miss Everett awakened?
“Please,” Andy requested; but before the servant left the hall, he recalled caution. “No, do not disturb her; let no one disturb her. Give me a room, please.”
As he followed his guide, he noted carefully the position of room eighteen. He went down again, and, denying his need for supper, stepped out to smoke in the garden.