"The chestnuts apply to myself and not to the vegetation. I am an old woman with an incurable habit of repeating the same anecdotes over and over again."
To this sanctuary of mid-Victorian calm Isabel Irish came in the late afternoon of the day following Anthony's departure into the unknown. To wait in London for three weeks without word or message was more than she could tolerate. Accordingly she sent a wire to Mrs. Barraclough and followed close upon its heels. Of the presence of Mr. Harrison Smith in the next compartment of the corridor carriage, she, of course, knew nothing, and this circumstance provided that enthusiastic investigator with every opportunity of studying her without attracting attention to himself.
On the pretext of smoking a pipe he lounged up and down the corridor, every now and then glancing at Isabel, who sat alone with compressed lips and chin sunk on her chest. He concluded from her attitude and expression that she must have heard of Barraclough's capture but later on another impression superseded the first, for every now and then a light of excitement and enthusiasm would leap into her eyes as though in imagination she were following her lover along the ways of desperate adventure. Harrison Smith shook his head.
"Don't know what to make of it," he muttered. "Certain sure they've got the man yet—I don't know——"
Once he saw her do a very odd thing but foolishly enough paid little heed to it. A sudden blank look came into the girl's face—the kind of look people wear who have suddenly forgotten an important matter or discovered a loss. Her lips moved rapidly and her brow creased under an intensity of thought. She turned and breathed on the window glass and with quick movements of her forefinger wrote upon it half a dozen figures and characters. But before he had properly noted what they were the moisture evaporated and the glass was clear again. It did not occur to Harrison Smith to worry over his failure to read what she had written, since he regarded the action as symptomatic of mere nervousness, but he noted with surprise that after this little episode the girl seemed to relax and her face assumed lines almost of contentment. After all, no one could blame him for failing to realise the true significance of that hurried, transient scrawl. One does not expect to find the map reference of probably the greatest source of wealth the world has ever known scribbled across the window pane of a South Western Railway carriage by the fat little forefinger of a girl scarcely out of her teens. Such an eventuality never even crossed the mind of Harrison Smith. Nevertheless the girl puzzled him more than he cared to confess.
To reach Digby Halt necessitated a change. Harrison Smith took good care to make his descent from the train as far as possible from Isabel's carriage. He watched her enter the governess cart and drive away before attempting to leave the station. Prior to this it struck him that he might have difficulty in obtaining lodgings in the neighbourhood without bag or baggage and this being probable he had resorted to the unpleasant expedient of stealing a suit case. Its owner, a clergyman, was at the time enjoying a cup of tea in the dining section—the risk therefore was small. The suit case bore no initials and might have belonged to anybody. Harrison Smith showed as little as possible of his face as he passed through the wicket gate. He turned in the opposite direction to the one taken by the governess cart, waited till he was out of sight and climbed through a gap in the hedge. Ten minutes later, dressed as a clergyman and looking very good indeed, he marched down the road in the direction of the village.
CHAPTER 15.
TEA AND TEARS.
It was Flora who drove the round, short legged pony, who drew the dog cart, and because Flora had driven a high power car in France during the war and had earned a reputation as a merchant of speed she looked, as she was given to look on these occasions, a shade sorry for herself.
Also, because she had an admiration for Anthony that was little removed from adoration she did not attend greatly to the business in hand, but instead engaged in a critical survey of the girl he was to marry. She decided that Isabel was very pretty but a shade too serious. She wondered if her nerves were any good. She wished she had been allowed to fetch her in the motor as there were one or two sharp corners on the way home which, taken fast, provided a good test of a passenger's courage. Perhaps it was as well that permission had been denied, she reflected, since had Isabel screamed or turned even the least bit pink she, Flora, would certainly have hit her with a spanner.