“That she may have been prepared? I do,” Harrison said emphatically. “She’d made an assignation and come ready to pass herself off as someone else if she were caught—which she very nearly was. Showed herself in the first instance in order to attract Fell’s attention, and unfortunately for her brought the whole party out.”
“Oh! no, no, Harrison. No, I don’t think so,” Greatorex said. “You’ve got that blessed apparition or whatever it was on your nerves. But, honestly, that explanation won’t do. Why, the girl was half-unconscious when I found ’em.”
“Put on,” Harrison interpolated.
“Impossible,” Greatorex replied. “When we got her out into the open, she was still as white as a sheet.”
“Effect of moonlight,” commented Harrison.
“No.” Greatorex’s tone had a quality of great assurance. “No, she was recovering from a faint all right. There can be no question of that. Besides, what could be the point of all that make-believe after she was found?”
“Well, she may have fainted after she’d fooled us,” Harrison suggested. “Overwrought, you know.”
They had been making their way steadily back to the house as they talked, but Greatorex stopped now in the middle of the meadow, and took Harrison by the lapel of his dinner-jacket.
“Bad line, my friend,” he said gravely. “Take my advice and don’t attempt it before Vernon. I’m advising you for your good.”
“Well, then, who the devil was it?” Harrison snapped impatiently.