“Do you think any one in Ashlingsea could identify it as yours?” he asked. “Have you had it any length of time?”
“It was not mine,” she declared. “I did not lose a comb.”
“Not yours?” he exclaimed in astonishment.
“I am trying to think to whom it belonged,” she said meditatively. “As far as I know, lady visitors at Cliff Farm were few. And yet it could not be Mrs. Bond—the woman who went there to tidy up the place once a week—you say it was gold mounted?”
“Rather an expensive looking comb, I thought,” said the young man.
“Yes; it looks as if there was a woman in the case.”
The arrival of the waitress with the tea-things brought about a lengthy pause in the conversation.
To Marsland it looked as if there must be two women in the case if the comb did not belong to Miss Maynard. But he was not altogether satisfied with her statement that it was not hers. It is difficult for a young man of impressionable age to regard a good-looking girl as untruthful, but Marsland recalled other things which indicated that she was not averse to seeking refuge in false statements. He remembered her greeting when he had knocked at the farm-house on the night of the storm. “Where have you been?” was the question she put to him, and then she had added, “I have been wondering what could have happened to you.”
They were not questions which might reasonably be directed to a chance visitor on such a night, and he remembered that there had been a note of impatience in her voice. This impatience harmonized with the start of surprise which she gave when he spoke to her. Obviously she had been expecting some one and had mistaken his knock for the arrival of the man for whom she had been waiting. And yet her subsequent story to Marsland in explanation of her presence at the farm was that she had been overtaken by the storm and had sought shelter there. She had made no reference to the man whom she had expected to see when she opened the door in response to Marsland’s knock. When directly questioned on the matter she had declared that it was Frank Lumsden she had expected to see.
“Whom do the police suspect?” she asked, after the waitress had departed.