Thoughts of home, and a tub, and clean clothes, pleased him, and he resolutely began the descent. The only way he could free himself from suspicion was by finding Arabella. And how could he find Arabella when he was likely at any moment to be run down by a country constable with a shotgun? And as for meeting Arabella at four o’clock, he realized now that he had stupidly allowed the girl to slip away from him without designating a meeting place.
So far as he knew, he was the only person who had seen Arabella since her escape from Miss Collingwood’s schooner. It might be well for him to volunteer to the Bannings such information as he had; but the more he thought of this the less it appealed to him. It would be difficult to give a plausible account of his meeting with Arabella at the tea house; and, moreover, he shrank from a betrayal of the light-hearted follower of the silver trumpet. As a gentleman he could give no version of the affair that would not place all the blame on himself; and this involved serious risks.
He approached his house from the rear, keeping as far as possible from the road, lingered at the barn, dodged from it to the garage, and crept furtively into his study by a side door as the clock struck two.
He had seen none of his employees on the farm and the house was ominously still. He rang the bell and in a moment the scared face of Beeching was thrust in.
“Beg pardon; are you home, sir?” asked the servant with a frightened gulp.
“Of course I’m home!” said Farrington with all the dignity his scratched face and torn clothes would permit.
“I missed you, sir,” said the man gravely. “I thought maybe you was off looking for Arabella.”
The book Farrington had been nervously fingering fell with a bang.
“What—what the devil do you know about Arabella?”
“She’s lost, sir. The kennel master and the chauffeur is off looking for her. It’s a most singular case.”