“Apparently so.”
I reflected. Mrs Olliffe now knew that I had borne a message to Shaw from the dead man who had destroyed a fortune. Did she fear its results, and was she, for that reason, holding out to Shaw the olive branch of peace?
I suggested that to Asta, and she was inclined to agree with me.
“We must do what we can to break off your father’s friendship with this woman,” I declared. “It is distinctly dangerous for him.”
“Yes, Mr Kemball,” she cried. “I only wish we could! I only wish—”
Her sentence was interrupted by a sound which startled both of us. We listened, looking into each other’s serious face without uttering a word. The sound emanated from the next room—Shaw’s bedroom—the door of which was closed.
It was that low, peculiar whistle which I had first heard on the morning I had visited Titmarsh after poor Guy’s mysterious death, and had heard on a second occasion when visiting at Lydford.
“There’s Dad again?” she cried, in a strained voice. “He evidently doesn’t know we are still up.” The whistle was again repeated—a low, long-drawn, peculiar sound, in a high shrill note.
It was not the unconscious whistle of a man thinking, but a sound full of meaning—a distinct call, which even as we listened in silence was repeated a third time.