"That'll be the end o' them the night," said Dougal, as he helped Heritage to pull up the ladder and stow it away. "We've got the place to oursels, now. Forward, men, forward." He tried the handle of the house door and led the way in.
A narrow paved passage took them into what had once been the garden room, where the lady of the house had arranged her flowers, and the tennis racquets and croquet mallets had been kept. It was very dusty and on the cobwebbed walls still hung a few soiled garden overalls. A door beyond opened into a huge murky hall, murky, for the windows were shuttered, and the only light came through things like port-holes far up in the wall. Dougal, who seemed to know his way about, halted them. "Stop here till I scout a bit. The women bide in a wee room through that muckle door." Bare feet stole across the oak flooring, there was the sound of a door swinging on its hinges, and then silence and darkness. Dickson put out a hand for companionship and clutched Heritage's; to his surprise it was cold and all a-tremble. They listened for voices, and thought they could detect a far-away sob.
It was some minutes before Dougal returned. "A bonny kettle o' fish," he whispered. "They're both greetin'. We're just in time. Come on, the pair o' ye."
Through a green baize door they entered a passage which led to the kitchen regions, and turned in at the first door on their right. From its situation Dickson calculated that the room lay on the seaward side of the House next to the verandah. The light was bad, for the two windows were partially shuttered, but it had plainly been a smoking-room, for there were pipe-racks by the hearth, and on the walls a number of old school and college photographs, a couple of oars with emblazoned names, and a variety of stags' and roebucks' heads. There was no fire in the grate, but a small oil-stove burned inside the fender. In a stiff-backed chair sat an elderly woman, who seemed to feel the cold, for she was muffled to the neck in a fur coat. Beside her, so that the late afternoon light caught her face and head, stood a girl.
Dickson's first impression was of a tall child. The pose, startled and wild and yet curiously stiff and self-conscious, was that of a child striving to remember a forgotten lesson. One hand clutched a handkerchief, the other was closing and unclosing on a knob of the chair back. She was staring at Dougal, who stood like a gnome in the centre of the floor. "Here's the gentlemen I was tellin' ye about," was his introduction, but her eyes did not move.
Then Heritage stepped forward. "We have met before, Mademoiselle," he said. "Do you remember Easter in 1918—in the house in the Trinitá dei Monte?"
The girl looked at him.
"I do not remember," she said slowly.
"But I was the English officer who had the apartments on the floor below you. I saw you every morning. You spoke to me sometimes."
"You are a soldier?" she asked, with a new note in her voice.