“Do take care! There’s more in this than either of us suspect. That woman Crisp! Beware of her. You will see her in due course at your hotel. Be careful. Good-bye—and good luck!”
The train moved out around the bend. The young fellow in his wet, muddy overalls stood for a moment gazing at the rear van. Should he watch for the departure of the woman? No. She might see him. Better that he should remain in apparent ignorance. So he went out, remounted his cycle, and headed away back over Putney Bridge and through crooked Kingston, Cobham, and down the steep hill in Guildford towards home.
Freda! That name was burned into his brain like the brand of a red-hot iron. Freda—the woman who had held him beneath her strange, inexplicable spell during his bondage at the remote old country house near Welwyn.
But why? Why should his father have warned him against her? His father, a most honest, upright, pious man to whom he had always looked for leadership—the road-builder to the perfect life, as he had always regarded him. No man in the world is perfect, but Norton Homfray had, to say the least, tried to live up to the standard laid down by the Holy Writ.
Had he had faults in his past life, his son wondered? Every man has faults. Were those faults being concealed by his father—the “pater” upon whom he doted and to whom when away he wrote so regularly, with all his most intimate news, though mails might leave very intermittently, as they do from the back of beyond, where prospectors carry on their work with hammer and microscope.
Then, as he rode along in the grey, damp winter morning, he reflected.
The whole situation was most puzzling. He loved Elma with a fierce all-consuming affection. She was his only beacon in his eager, strenuous life.
A week went by. He anxiously awaited news from Andrew Barclay, but the latter sent no word. He was, without doubt, negotiating with the Moorish Minister of the Interior, who was at that moment visiting France, and who was his personal friend.
But Roddy could not rid himself of the recollection of that strange conversation by radio-telephone—the request that Freda should go south. He had taken another journey out to Welwyn in order to ascertain if the woman was still at Willowden, but had found the house still closed and apparently without a caretaker. Had he been able to get a view of the back of the premises he would, no doubt, have noticed the well-constructed wireless aerial, but it was completely hidden from the road, and as during his enforced sojourn in the place he had never seen it, he remained in ignorance of its existence.
At Farncombe Towers Mr Sandys, when he returned home, had expressed himself highly delighted with the wireless set which the rector’s son had installed, and on two successive evenings sat with Elma intensely interested in listening to broadcasted concerts and news.