So at first tentatively, and then more surely, the gate was pushed wider still, and the trim figure in the short skirt stood with bated breath in the quiet garden. The coy retreat of Mr. Travers Nugent was beautifully kept. Tall trees and winding shrubberies afforded a grateful shade, and the well-shaven turf of the lawn was dotted with beds ablaze with brilliant summer flowers. In the bright yellow of the gravel walks never a weed showed. But it was past six, and the gardener who had wrought all this perfection was not there to make trouble for Enid on the threshold of her adventure.
Still without any definite plan except to "find out things," Miss Enid softly shut the gate and advanced a few steps towards the house, taking care to tread on the grass and not on the crunchy gravel. After all was said and done she could trump up an excuse if she was discovered. Mr. Nugent had always treated her with semi-paternal playfulness, and he was, ostensibly at any rate, on amicable terms with her father.
On the left the garden was bounded by a high brick wall covered with ripening peaches; on the right lay a thick belt of shrubbery, extending up to the house. Enid chose the latter as affording the best shelter from any one standing at the windows, and, darting into the friendly cover, she commenced her stealthy approach. With any luck, she told herself, Mr. Nugent might be in his library interviewing one or other of the people whom her father deemed his accomplices, and she might pick up some useful crumbs of information to take home.
She had traversed half the length of the shrubbery in safety when her heart was set thumping by a sound behind her. It was the click of the latch of the gate through which she had so recently entered the garden. Glancing over her shoulder she caught, through the foliage, a glimpse of a man who to her dismay was making straight for the shrubbery, taking a diagonal course across the lawn which would bring him to the very spot she had reached. Acting, as was her habit, on impulse, she did a thing the folly of which she only recognized when it was too late to remedy it. Just ahead of her, almost hidden in a tangle of thicket, was a small, one-storied structure built of stone—a sort of grotto or summer-house. Its walls were covered with green mould, never a ray of sun reaching them, and it looked damp, disused and forgotten. The doorway stood open, and Enid darted through, finding herself almost in darkness, for the place was only furnished with a small circular window, nearly obscured by ivy and high up in the wall.
It would serve well enough as a refuge if the man had not seen the fluttering of her white skirt amid the leafy screen. He would pass on his way to the house and all would be well. But if he had seen her, and was of an inquisitive turn of mind, her retreat would be cut off, for there were no signs of an exit at the rear. It was sure to be some one belonging to the house, or at any rate a privileged person, for the gate was a private one, intended only for the use of the master of The Hut. Would the man pass by, or would he come in and tax her with unwarrantable trespass? Her hasty glance had not told her whether he had a right to do so, as it had not enabled her to recognize him.
But a moment later she did, when the doorway darkened and on the threshold there stood the individual whom she had dubbed "The Bootlace Man"—the seeming pedlar who had sneaked in and out of the side entrance at her father's house two days before, and who in other garb had called out of the train to draw the attention of Montague Maynard's picnic party to "the face in the pool."
He blinked in his efforts to pierce the gloom of the dim interior, and then with a muttered oath produced a box of wax matches and struck a light. As the tiny flame flared up and showed him the pale but defiant face of the girl, he gave a little cackling laugh and puffed out his bloated cheeks in evil triumph.
"Golly, but this is a bit of all right!" his alcoholic exclamation smote Enid's ears and nose. "The governor will chalk this up to my score like the generous patron he is. Now you stay there, Missy, and meditate on the sin of curiosity till—well, till some one comes and lets you out."
With which he stepped back and slammed the door in the girl's face. A moment later the grating of the key in the lock told her that she was a prisoner.