“Are you quite sure of that?” I asked.
“Oh, there is no doubt at all,” she replied. “The man at the repair shop showed it to me. It wasn’t merely cut in one place. A length of it had been cut right out. And I can tell within a few minutes when it was done, for I had been riding the machine in the morning and I know the brake was all right then. But I left it for a few minutes outside the gate while I went into the house to change my shoes, and when I came out, I started on my adventurous journey. In those few minutes some one must have come along and just snipped the wire through in two places and taken away the piece.”
“Scoundrel!” muttered Miss Boler; and I agreed with her most cordially.
“It was an infamous thing to do,” I exclaimed, “and the act of an abject fool. I suppose you have no idea or suspicion as to who the idiot might be?”
“Not the slightest,” Miss D’Arblay replied. “I can’t even guess at the kind of person who would do such a thing. Boys are sometimes very mischievous, but this is hardly like a boy’s mischief.”
“No,” I agreed, “it is more like the mischief of a mentally defective adult; the sort of half-baked larrykin who sets fire to a rick if he gets the chance.”
Miss Boler sniffed. “Looks to me more like deliberate malice,” said she.
“Mischievous acts usually do,” I rejoined; “but yet they are mostly the outcome of stupidity that is indifferent to consequences.”
“And it is of no use arguing about it,” said Miss D’Arblay, “because we don’t know who did it or why he did it, and we have no means of finding out. But I shall have two brakes in future, and I shall test them both every time I take the machine out.”
“I hope you will,” said Miss Boler; and this closed the topic so far as conversation went, though I suspect that, in the interval of silence that followed, we all continued to pursue it in our thoughts. And to all of us, doubtless, the mention of Church-yard Bottom Wood had awakened memories of that fatal morning when the pool gave up its dead. No reference to the tragedy had yet been made, but it was inevitable that the thoughts which were at the back of all our minds should sooner or later come to the surface. They were, in fact, brought there by me, though unintentionally; for, as I sat at the table, my eyes had strayed more than once to a bust—or rather a head, for there were no shoulders—which occupied the centre of the mantelpiece. It was apparently of lead, and was a portrait, and a very good one, of Miss D’Arblay’s father. At the first glance I had recognized the face which I had first seen through the water of the pool. Miss D’Arblay, who was sitting facing it, caught my glance, and said: “You are looking at that head of my dear father. I suppose you recognized it?”