Afterwards Roddy glanced at the old grandfather clock with its brass face which stood in the corner, rose, and after dressing, shouted a merry “good-bye” to the rector, and left the house to dine with the great financier, with whose daughter he was so deeply in love.
Their secret they withheld from Mr Sandys. Theirs was a fierce, all-absorbing passion, a mutual affection that was intense. They loved each other fondly and, Mr Sandys being so often in London, they saw each other nearly every day. Indeed, for hours on end Elma would sit in the wireless-room and assist her lover in those delicate and patient experiments which he had been daily making. Roddy, in the weeks that had passed, had regained his normal condition, though sometimes, at odd moments, he still experienced curious lapses of memory.
Old Mr Homfray had not been very well of late. His heart was naturally weak, and the doctor had for several years warned him against any undue excitement or hurrying when walking uphill. Once while conducting morning service, he was seized by faintness and was prevented from preaching his sermon. The narrow, gossiping world of Little Farncombe declared that their rector needed a change, and Mr Homfray had promised his churchwardens that he would take one as soon as he could get someone to lock after the parish in his absence.
On the previous day he had received a letter from Gray’s solicitors informing him that the mortgaged property at Totnes had been sold, and enclosing the paltry sum of fourteen pounds twelve shillings as the balance due to him. This fad had irritated him and caused him the greatest indignation. Gordon Gray had defied him and had foreclosed the mortgage after all! He had, however, made no mention of it to Roddy. The matter was his secret—and his alone, for it so closely concerned that closed chapter of his earlier days.
To Roddy his own strange experience following the tragic discovery in Welling Wood was still a mystery. Only a few days before he had, out of sheer curiosity, taken train to Welwyn and walked out to Willowden. But the house was closed and the garden neglected, and on inquiry in the neighbourhood he had learnt that the people from London had taken the place furnished, and that their lease being up they had left. Where they had gone nobody knew.
To Park Lane Mr Rex Rutherford—as Gordon Gray called himself—had accompanied his friend Porter, alias Harrison, on two occasions, and had endeavoured to make himself extremely affable to Elma, by whose extraordinary beauty he had become greatly attracted. The girl, however, instinctively disliked him. Why, she could not herself tell. He was elegantly-dressed, and his manners were those of a gentleman, yet he had an oleaginous air about him which annoyed her on both occasions. Once she had been compelled to dance with him, and he had been full of empty compliments. But on subsequent occasions when he requested “the pleasure” she managed to excuse herself.
Indeed, she went so far as to suggest to her father that he should not invite Mr Rutherford again. Mr Sandys was rather surprised, but said nothing, and obeyed his daughter’s wish.
Roddy had left the Rectory about an hour and the dusk was gathering into night, when a closed car with strong headlights, coming from the direction of London and driven by a middle-aged man, drew up outside the village, and from it there alighted a short, stout man wearing a green velour Homburg hat.
“I won’t be long,” he remarked to the driver, and at once set out on foot in the direction of the Rectory.
Old Norton Homfray was in his study looking up a text in his big well-worn “Cruden,” when he heard a ring, and knowing Mrs Bentley to be upstairs—and that if downstairs she would never hear it—he went to the door and threw it open, expecting his visitor to be one of his parishioners.