CHAPTER XXXIII
DAMNING EVIDENCE
The morning after Colonel Lane arrived so unexpectedly at Hawk’s Nest, he made a false move.
Determined to put a stop to the visits of Miss Phyllis to the bungalow at Gissing, he got up early and took the young lady’s cycle home, and locking it in a shed, removed the key. His own cycle was also kept in the shed, and so were the carpentering tools with which he occasionally amused himself. But there was no reason for anyone except himself and Phyllis ever to go there.
It was before breakfast that Colonel Lane locked up the cycle. He saw Mrs. Ransom, who was much amazed, not to say a little frightened, to see him at that hour. She was a quiet, reserved woman, with a good housekeeping faculty—and no other. She was singularly lacking in feminine curiosity, too, so when Colonel Lane told her that if Miss Phyllis asked for the key of the shed she was to say he had it, she did not even ask herself why the place was to be locked in the daytime.
The Colonel said he was going to breakfast at Hawk’s Nest and then would be home. Miss Phyllis would be home in the afternoon.
As soon as breakfast was over (it was at a later hour now, as Uncle Robert no longer went for his morning swim), Colonel Lane went home and Phyllis did her packing.
After luncheon Phyllis said good-bye and went to get her cycle, when she was told by the gardener that her father had taken it home before breakfast.
Phyllis bit her lip with vexation. She had fully meant to cycle over to see Philip before going home, and she knew quite well that her father had done this thing to prevent any chance of such a proceeding. If she went home her father would keep her there.
She made up her mind to outwit him.
Taking a tram, she went down to the Memorial, and thence on foot to a shop where she knew she could hire a cycle.