The Riddle of the Night

by Thomas W. Hanshew

"Are you sure?" he whispered, laying a tense hand upon Dollops's arm. "Don't jump to a conclusion without positive evidence. Are you sure?"

"Rath-er! Of course it's too dark to see her face, gov'ner; but when she come to the gate the first time—she's been several, sir—it was a deal lighter on account of the moon not bein' hid so much with them blessed clouds, sir; and I could see then that she was wot you might call a high-stepper—summink classy and up in the nines, gov'ner, and had a way with her that you don't pick up if you aren't born to it. She couldn't have been putting it on for effect, 'cause she didn't know there was anybody there to see. Gone she is now, sir; slipped off over the Common, and I lost sight of her among all them furze bushes, but she'll come back, never fear. She's went away like that two or three times before, but always come back and tried the door, and jist struck her hands together and rocked back and forwards like she was half beside herself when she found it locked and nobody there to meet her."

"And you didn't succeed in seeing her face at all?"

"No, sir. It never was light enough for me to do that. But even if it had been, it wouldn't 'a' been no use, sir. She had summick that looked like a white lace scarf wrapped all round her head and over her face. But I was near enough to make out as she smelt summink beautiful of voylits, and had on one of them shiny, silky-lookin' kind of mackintoshes and a dress of pink silk."

A black mackintosh and a dress of pink silk! Not a black cloak lined with ermine! Not a dress of pink gauze! Of course Dollops was right in his statement that it was not Margot; that fact alone proved it. So there was a second woman who prowled about Wuthering Grange and endeavoured to see somebody in secret, was there? Whom? Harry Raynor or Lord St. Ulmer?

Clearly the one in the pink gauze—Margot beyond all possible question—came to see Raynor, for Hamer had identified her as the woman he had seen in that young man's company that day at Kingston. Who, then, was this other woman in pink? And whom did she come to see? What was her mission, her place in this elusive puzzle?

Come to think of it, he had been a fool to imagine when Dollops first spoke of her that it could possibly be Margot. The pink dress itself ought to have told him that. For although young Raynor had said that the lady he knew as Mademoiselle Mignon de Varville nearly always dressed in pink, Margot was no such fool as to prowl round this place to-night in the identical frock she had worn at the time of the tragedy, and from which that tiny scrap had been torn by the nail head in the floor of Gleer Cottage.

True, nobody but Narkom and Ailsa and he himself knew, as yet, of the finding of that betraying scrap, but—— Ah, well, you couldn't catch Margot napping! She might not know when, how, nor where that scrap had been torn off, but her shrewd eyes would detect the missing bit in the skirt: she would be on to it like a cat on a mouse. He knew her methods, knew her miscroscopic carefulness and attention to detail. What, then, was this other woman's place in the puzzle? What was she after? Whom had she come to see? He'd make it his business to find that out, and in short order, too.

These things had travelled through Cleek's thoughts rapidly. It was scarcely more than a moment after Dollops had last spoken when he addressed the boy again.

"I've got something important on hand for you, as I told you, my lad," he said in a cautious whisper. "But, first, tell me: where is this other door in the wall of which you speak, the one where the Pink Woman goes?"