Canadian fiction -- 20th century; Detective and mystery stories
Pendleton had gone back to bed. Pen got two lamps and flitted into the
rear extension. Her father, accustomed to her peregrinations over the
house at all hours, paid no attention, even if he heard. The two
servants' rooms were not used, but each contained various articles of
furniture. Pen lit her lamps and placed them far enough back from the
windows so that the lamps themselves could not have been seen by
anybody who might chance to look up from the yard below. Anyone who
was not familiar with the house would naturally suppose that the two
lighted windows were in the same room.
Pen calculated. "I told him to pack up his things and hide them before
starting. That will take him say half an hour. It will take him
twenty minutes to cross the fields. He can't get here in much less
than an hour. I'll start in half an hour."
Returning to her own room, she dropped to her knees at one of the front
windows, and peered over the sill. She strained her eyes to watch that
part of the grounds that was within range. But the very mysteriousness
of moonlight balked her. The moon was in the South throwing long
shadows directly athwart the lawn. The trees and shrubs of the
overgrown place offered scores of hiding-places. More than once she
thought she saw dark spots that did not belong there, and shadows
seemed to move. She could not be sure. For that matter she knew that
men could come along the beach below and scramble up the honeysuckle
vines. In this way they could surround the house without crossing the
open space in front. She was morally certain the detectives had
returned, but she could not spot them.
At the end of half an hour she dressed herself in her black dress and
put on stout shoes. With a wildly beating heart she stole down stairs,
and let herself softly out on the porch, leaving the door open. Here,
for the benefit of anybody who might be watching her, she gave an
imitation of one terrified and undecided; walking unevenly up and down,
coming to the edge and peering out, running back in the house in a
sudden panic, timorously venturing forth again. Finally she took to
the shrubbery.
She ran to the gates, scuttling like a rabbit from clump to clump, her
head continually over her shoulder. She wished to be followed, but she
must not of course appear to wish to be followed. She wished to find
out too, if she were followed, but she must at all costs keep her
pursuers from guessing that she was on to them. It was very
complicated.
At the gates she hesitated, turning her head this way and that. The
question was which way should she lead them. Eventually she meant to
take them to the little temple above the pond, but in the meantime she
had half an hour to kill. From one of the ground floor windows of the
cottage a beam of light was streaming out. Crouching over she ran
across the intervening grass and peered over the sill. Surely if
anybody were watching her this would seem like a natural act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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