"Right!" said Jamieson. "Doesn't that house look creepy, through the trees, with the moonlight on it? I thought this would be a fine place to come and tell ghost stories."
This time there was no mistake about Holmes's angry exclamation.
"Look here, what do you think you're doing? What right have you to bring this crowd in here, Jamieson?"
Charlie looked at him in surprise—a surprise that Bessie knew instinctively was assumed.
"Oh, strictly speaking, I suppose we're trespassing," he said. "But this has always been common property—for years, at least. The owners don't pay any attention to the place. They won't mind our coming here, even if they find out."
"Well, I object—"
But Holmes stifled the remark before anyone save Bessie and Jamieson heard it. And Bessie began to understand, and to thrill with a new, scarcely formed idea. She began to have a glimmering of Jamieson's plan, and she saw how cleverly Holmes had been induced to walk into the trap that had been set for him. No matter how much he knew about this mysterious place, and how unwilling he might be to let them explore it, whatever his reason, he could not protest now without revealing plainly that he had been lying before. And, moreover, he could not be at all sure that it was not pure accident that had led Jamieson to select it as their destination.
Holmes was between two fires. If he let the ride go on, he faced discovery of something he was trying to keep secret; if he tried to stop it short, or to divert it to some other spot, he was sure to arouse suspicions that, by the merest luck, as he supposed, his treatment of Bessie and Dolly had not aroused. So he did what most people would do in the same circumstances; he kept still, and trusted to his luck to carry him through.
"Oh, I see," he said, finally. "You're going to stop in the grounds and have a picnic, or something like that, eh? That's fine—that will be great sport."
"That's what I thought," said Charlie Jamieson, innocently, but Bessie was sure that he had winked at her.