She left him hurriedly and sped with inimitable grace of motion across the lawn toward the house, and, while he looked after her, with the rapt vision of a man who has communed with a spirit, the two listeners crept to the little gate, slipped out when a laughing couple turned their heads, and walked back to the hotel.
The lady said never a word. Mr. Pugh was full of chat and merriment, but no syllable fell from her tight-pressed lips.
The next day the lady was reported to have a headache—at any rate she kept to her room, and saw no one save the "boots" of the establishment, with whom during the afternoon she had a lengthy interview upstairs. At about seven in the evening she was writing these words:
Miss Marsh:—Are you aware that the "Mr. Glyn" whom you know here is no other than Mr. Rupert Osborne, who is in everyone's mouth in connection with the Feldisham Mansions Murder? You may take this as a positive fact from
"One Who Knows."
She wrote it in a handwriting that was very different from her own, inclosed and directed it, and then, about half-past seven, sent for "boots" again.
Her instructions were quite explicit:
"Wait in the paved rose garden at the Abbey, the square sunken place with a sun-dial in the center," she said. "It is on the south terrace, and the lady I have described will surely come. The moment she appears hand the note to her, and be off—above all else, answer no questions."
So the youth, with a sovereign in his pocket, hurried away to do Hylda Prout's will—or was it Furneaux's? Who might tell?