Mr. Mallory contrived to keep the curb on himself. He was very angry, but he wanted to know what was coming. Evidently this fatuous busybody had not yet sprung the full force of the tremendous battery with which he believed himself armed.
"There is no need for any mystery," Mr. Mallory replied suavely. "Enid and Reggie Beauchamp are engaged to be married. I am aware that they were together that evening, and with my entire sanction—if that is what you are driving at."
Mr. Lazarus shook his head, as one who is misjudged. "Really, no," came his protesting croak. "I should be the last to impute that kind of secrecy to Miss Mallory. On the contrary, I am sure that she would be quite open about anything of that sort. Nor would it be my business if she wasn't."
"Well, look here, Lowch. What the devil is it that she hasn't been open about that is your business?" exclaimed Enid's father, losing patience at last. "You have got something up your sleeve, I can see. Would it not be better to pull it down and have done with it? But I warn you first that you must be careful how you handle my daughter's good name."
The chronic scowl that made little children run when the local kill-joy approached lifted at the prospect of striking a blow beneath the belt. Lowch even smiled in sickly fashion as he struck it.
"I was on the golf links this afternoon," he began his indictment, "and I happened to see Miss Enid leave at the end of her round, as I thought, for home. Instead of accompanying her friends, however, she parted from them outside the pavilion, and went away alone in the opposite direction. In fact, entirely in the interests of justice, I watched her——"
"Where from?" came the knife-like interruption.
"From behind a gorse-bush," was the unblushing rejoinder. "She went into Mr. Travers Nugent's garden door, which, as you know, abuts on the moor. In a little while she was followed by a disreputable-looking man, who also disappeared into Nugent's garden. He, too, had been taking advantage of a convenient gorse-bush. The deduction is obvious. Nugent and his friend Chermside are deeply implicated in the murder which I am officially investigating, and—er—it looks very much as if Miss Enid, innocently perhaps, is mixed up in it too."
Mr. Mallory's clean-shaven, ascetic face had gone as white as snow. The absence from dinner took on a new complexion by the light of this misbegotten information that she had ventured into the danger zone, and had been shadowed into it by one of its dangerous master's creatures. But the old man's sudden pallor was due as much to the contemptuous rage that overmastered him as to fear for his only child.
"You amazing idiot!" he cried. "Why couldn't you have told me the bare fact of my daughter having been to The Hut at first, without your string of silly insinuations? The delay may mean—but there, words are wasted on such as you——"