“Who are you calling, Dad?”
“Oh, nobody, dear,” was his reply. “I—I didn’t know you were there. I thought you were with Mr Kemball in the garden.”
The incident held me speechless for a few minutes, for I had suddenly recollected that after I had encountered Shaw at Titmarsh, on the occasion of the discovery of poor Guy, I had heard an exactly similar whistle. It was a peculiar note which, once heard, was not quickly forgotten.
We met Shaw outside on the lawn a few minutes later, when Asta exclaimed—
“Why have you got into the habit of whistling so horribly, Dad? One could understand it if we had dogs. But to whistle to nothing seems so idiotic.”
“All, so it is, dear,” he replied, laughing. “But I was not whistling to nothing. I was trying to call Muir, the gardener, from the window. I could see him at work over by the croquet lawn, but the old fellow gets very deaf nowadays.”
Such was Shaw’s explanation. It was surely not an unusual circumstance, yet it was full of meaning when regarded in the light of what afterwards transpired.
As I walked with him, and he discussed our projected trip over those fine level roads of France, I could not help wondering why he had uttered that peculiar call on that well-remembered morning at Titmarsh Court.
A fortnight later, in the crimson of the glorious afterglow, we swung down the hill into the quaint old-world village of Arnay-le-Duc, in the Côte d’Or, a quiet, lethargic place built around its great old château, now, alas! in ruins since the Huguenots gained their victory there under Coligny in 1570. Scarcely had we entered the silent village street, the echoes of which were awakened by our siren, when we pulled up before the long, low-built Hôtel de la Poste, a building painted grey, with jalousies of the same colour, and high sloping roof of slate, like many of those ancient hostelries one finds on the great highways of France—the posting houses of the days of Louis Quatorze, which nowadays bear the golden double A of the Automobile Association.
We were quite a merry trio, for since leaving England Asta had become almost her old self. The complete change of surroundings had wrought in her a wonderful improvement, and she looked sweet and dainty in her pale mauve motor-bonnet and silk dust-coat. Shaw wore dark spectacles, pleading that the whiteness of the roads pained his eyes. But I had shrewd suspicion that they were worn for disguise, for, curiously enough, of an evening he never removed them.