And he noticed that, as he said this, the girl’s bright color left her cheeks.
“Why don’t you push on to-night, then?” she said, brusquely, advancing a step into the room and fixing her eyes earnestly upon him. “The weather may be worse to-morrow, and if you are afraid of a little wind, you should have gone by rail, and not by road.”
The young man rose politely, and looked at her curiously as she spoke. But before he had had time to utter a word in answer, her uncle dismissed her from the room with a by no means gentle reminder that it was no business of hers.
The visitor, in spite of the importance of his commission, seemed to be in no great hurry to push on with his journey; for on the following day, as the wind was still cold, and the sky still gloomy, he remained at the Blue Lion.
George Claris had a shrewd suspicion that it was the blue eyes of his pretty niece which made the stranger so dilatory, and he took care that the girl should be invisible throughout the whole of the day. As he had expected, the young man grew evidently uneasy, and presently found occasion to ask if the young lady had left the house.
“No,” answered George, shortly, “she’s in the house right enough, but you won’t see no more of her. My niece is a lady, sir, for all she is my niece, and she don’t ’ave nothin’ to do with my business.”
The young man, rather to the landlord’s surprise, appeared entirely satisfied with this explanation.
Indeed, he had every reason to be so, for he was a friend of Otto Conybeare’s, whom that young gentleman had sent down to do a little amateur detective work in the supposed interest of Clifford King, but without, of course, informing Clifford of his benevolent intention.
The young man had been much disappointed that the first night of his stay under the roof of the Blue Lion had passed off uneventfully. The second, however, fully made up for this lack of excitement. So fearful was he of missing a possible visitor by oversleeping himself, that he never closed his eyes at all; and he was rewarded for his vigilance when, between two and three o’clock, he heard a slight noise at his door, and a moment later saw dimly that there was a figure moving in his room.
He held his breath while the intruder went softly toward the head of the bed, making no noise, feeling about, stooping, searching. At last, when the figure, which could now be discerned as that of a woman, reached his clothes, and began hunting in them, the amateur detective, allowing his excitement to get the better of him, sat up in bed, making, in doing so, just enough noise to arouse the attention of the watchful thief. The next moment she had darted across the room, and out at the door. But the young man, being prepared for such a contingency as this, sprang out of bed half-dressed, and dashed out on to the landing in pursuit. The woman had got the start of him, and was by this time halfway up the attic staircase. He followed, saw her open the door of the room on the right and close it. He heard the key turn in the lock. Without a second’s hesitation, he flung himself with all his strength against the door. It shook, it creaked; another such blow and the rickety old frame-work would give way. Just as he hurled all his weight against the door for the second time, however, he heard the unmistakable sound of the throwing open of the window of the room.