"Whew! I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said this stranger, as Cleek flashed on his lamp and sent its rays travelling up the man's slim figure from top to toe. "Who the—why the—what the——?"
"Awfully sorry, I'm sure," responded Cleek, with a light laugh, in his best blithering-idiot manner, "but I happened to be strollin' up in this direction to pay a call upon Miss Maud Duggan, and fell into you. So beastly dark in these parts, doncherknow. After London, a chap is likely to lose his bearin's. Exceedin'ly sorry and all that."
The man stopped suddenly and, bending forward, peered up under Cleek's tweed cap into the face beneath it. Cleek saw him as a slim, handsome fellow of the leisure classes, lithe of limb and athletic of body, and in that small ray of torch-light, augmented by the moon's pale gleams, liked the look of him, though he was startled by the meeting—that was obvious—and a little shaken as well.
"Eh? What's that? Miss Duggan, did you say? Then what's your name, may I ask? You're a stranger to these parts, I suppose?"
"Yes. Up for the salmon-fishin', doncherknow. Strollin' back to the Castle, are you? We'll go together. My name's Deland—Arthur Deland. Am I permitted to know yours?"
"Certainly. But I'm not—going to the Castle to-night. I've—I've just—come from there, you see, and was on my way home again when we cannoned into each other. My name's Macdonald, Angus Fletcher Macdonald. I'm a—particular friend of Miss Duggan's.... But time's getting along, and I've a good distance to go. So I'll be off, if you don't mind. Good-night."
"Good-night."
Cleek nodded to him in the half dark, then as the man swung away from him down the wide drive, turned in his tracks and watched him till the moon, hiding under a cloud, hid him, too.
"Macdonald, eh? The unfortunate lover whom the father will not countenance. H'm. Wonder what he was doing here at this time of night? Rather nervous, I should say, at our encounter. And why the dickens—if anything's happened—didn't he know something about it? It's a good twenty minutes since she signalled to me, and if he's just come from the house——"
Of a sudden he stopped short and sucked in his breath as a new thought penetrated itself into that perfectly pigeon-holed and regulated mentality of his. "Gad! surely he hasn't—— Well! I ought to have detained him and brought him back on some pretext—if anything really has happened to cause her to want me at this hour of the night.... Well, I'll nip along and find out. And if anything's really wrong, I shan't forget that gentleman in a hurry."