"Jist about thirty feet farther up, gov'ner; there where them mulberry trees is so blessed thick. You don't notice the place till you come smack on to it, on account of furze bushes and ivy along the foot of the wall. You can creep up till you're almost on it, though, without a body seein' of you, 'specially if you go before the party comes back."
"Right you are," said Cleek in reply. "I'll act on that tip, my lad. Now, then, listen here. There's a ruin in the grounds of this place, and that ruin I particularly wish to have closely watched to-night. For one thing, the man who murdered the Common keeper made his way to that place and buried his victim's clothing there; and for another—oh, well, never mind. That will keep for later. Miss Lorne"—he turned to Ailsa, who all along had remained silent and closely huddled back in the shadow of the wall-angle and the trees—"Miss Lorne, we shall have to defer our stroll on the Common until later, I'm afraid. I shall have to look into the matter of this mysterious woman in pink before we can give any further thought to Lady Clavering and her possible anxiety over her stepson. In the meantime, will you, as silently and as expeditiously as you can, steal back through the grounds and show Dollops the way to the ruin? Afterward, you and I can meet again here. And you, Dollops, listen closely to what I say. The chances are that some one, either man or woman, will secretly visit that ruin to-night. Keep yourself well hidden and your eyes wide open. If a woman comes, slip away from the place as quietly as you can, come round to the shrubbery near the front entrance to the house, and hoot like an owl three times in succession; then lie low until I come out and join you. But if, on the other hand, it should be a man who puts in an appearance—here, lay hold of this pair of handcuffs—look sharp! At all costs, at any hazard, get those things on him and then blow your police whistle as a signal to me. I'll be with you like a shot. Now, then, cut along with you. Show him the way, Miss Lorne, and be as quiet as you can in your movements, both of you."
"Mice'll be fools to us, sir," whispered Dollops.
Cleek waited a minute to let them get well on their way, then stooped in the darkness, crept to the wall door, opened it cautiously, and went down on all-fours upon the strip of grass and the row of furze bushes that flanked that wall upon the outer side and made a narrow black alley between it and the crowded mulberry trees.
The moon had ridden farther than ever into the depths of the thick, slow-moving clouds, and the darkness was almost opaque. To the left the great Common stretched out, a thing of gloom and shadows, blotted here and there with deeper black where the furze clumps were thickest or the full-leaved tree reached up above the skyline. On the right, the blank wall rose, flat, smooth as your hand, so tall it shut out even the lights in the windows of the Grange; and between these lay Mulberry Lane, a black funnel leading on to deeper darkness and the shapelessness of crowded trees.
In the shadows of that narrow alley made by the wall and the furze bushes Cleek crouched a moment and listened before he ventured to move another inch. Not a sound, not the merest ghost of a sound. If the woman were in the immediate neighbourhood, she was keeping extremely quiet; therefore it behoved him to progress with infinite caution. Inch by inch, on hands and knees, he moved up that narrow alley, stopping every now and then to prick up his ears and listen breathlessly. But upon every occasion he found the stillness yet unbroken and no sign or sound of breathing life anywhere about him.
Two minutes passed—three—five—half a dozen, and still all was as it had been in the beginning. By this time this slow, cautious creeping had carried him over two thirds of the distance, and he was now within ten or eleven feet of the hidden gate; and still no sound or sign of the woman's return. Indeed, no sound of any sort until, with one hand outstretched and one knee lifted to edge forward yet a trifle more, he paused abruptly, sucked in his breath, and huddled softly down, becoming but a mere dark heap on the damp, dark grass.
A sound had come at last! The unmistakable sound of some one moving cautiously through close-pressing branches and crowded leaves.
It was so faint a thing that ears less keen than his might not have detected it. Yet, at the first rustle of the first stirred leaf he caught the hiss of it and knew it was not the woman that made it; for the prickly foliage of furze makes no rustling sound when a passing body brushes it, and there was nothing upon the outer side of the wall but furze that was low enough to be brushed in passing.
Clearly, then, the sound was from the other side of the wall, from within the grounds of the Grange! Some one was coming to keep the tryst—some one who, evidently, had been delayed past an agreed time, otherwise the woman would not have made all those anxious pilgrimages to the door and been so upset when she found it still locked and nobody there to meet her.