Now, the fact is that she struck me in a heap last evening by coming straight up to me and asking to read this diary. How she ever came to hear of it I can’t imagine, and she was obdurate to my demands for enlightenment. Only she told me very seriously that since no one else seemed certain to grapple successfully with the many problems in the Vale, she was going a step beyond “thinking” and would take an active course.
“Somehow I’m sure I’ll be the best detective of the lot,” she said. “I have kept my mind unprejudiced, you see. And really, Mr. Bannerlee, I’m positive you have several facts locked away in your book that I never knew.”
The end was that she marched away with the book, I may say entirely against my sense of discretion, while I shuddered at the thought of her perusing some of the personal comments I had included.
And now she was bound for the hills!
I looked through the window, and saw the landscape grey. A bank of fog stood motionless about the base of Whimble.
“This is scarcely the day for it, is it? It’s easy to be lost up there in the mist.”
She turned from the drear panorama and looked at me kindly. “I can tell from your voice that you’re very much concerned about me, but really you shouldn’t be. I’ve had harder climbs than this heaps of times, and you can depend on me to be back early this afternoon. You may begin to worry about two o’clock if I don’t appear then”—her chin tilted with determination—“with what I want.”
I returned her kind look. “Really, Miss Lebetwood, I hope my, er, jottings haven’t set you on some false lead.”
“There’s a lot more in your journal than jottings,” she said, with serious lines of thought about the eyes. She gave me a glancing look. “I see you are sceptical.”
“It’s hardly fair,” I laughed, “that because you’ve turned detective in earnest, you should try to mystify me like the other sleuths.”