Yet, from the very outset, that search was the most perfunctory and futile affair. The members of the party, two of whom stayed behind, exhibited a marked inclination not to separate. Outside, in the security of the moonlight and each other’s society, they had suffered mystification, wonder, perhaps an occasional thrill of apprehension, but not that peculiar quality of fear that lay in wait for them the moment they entered the gloom of the plantation.
2
Even Greatorex felt that influence. He had followed his host, in advance of the other three, but lost sight of him directly as he entered the cover of the trees. He started violently when a twig brushed his face, and then, with a just perceptible note of alarm in his voice, called out:
“Hallo, Harrison! You there? It’s so infernally dark!”
Harrison answered him with a remarkable promptitude.
“Hallo, G.!” he said. “That you? I’m close here! I’ll wait for you.”
They were as a matter of fact separated only by the spread of a single yew.
“Don’t see that we stand much chance of catching the lady in a place like this, Harrison,” Greatorex remarked when they had joined company. “You might hide a platoon under these trees in this light, what?”
“Only a narrow belt of it,” Harrison replied. “We’ll be through on to the shore of the lake in ten yards. We can see her then for half a mile if she’s come out.”