Chapter Seven. The Girl Named Edna

“Hush!” cried Elma. “Say nothing at present.” And next instant the old rector re-entered with a glass of water which his son drank with avidity.

Then he sat staring straight into the fire without uttering a word.

“Is your head better?” asked the girl a moment later; and she slipped the photograph back into her bag.

“Yes, just a little better. But it still aches horribly,” Roddy replied. “I’m anxious to get to that spot in the wood.”

“To-morrow,” his father promised. “It’s already dark now. And to-morrow you will be much better.”

“And I’ll come with you,” Miss Sandys volunteered. “The whole affair is certainly most mysterious.”

“Yes. Neither Denton nor the doctor at Pangbourne can make out the nature of the drug that was given to me. It seems to have upset the balance of my brain altogether. But I recollect that house—the man and the woman and—and how she compelled me to do her bidding to—”

“To what?” asked the girl.

The young mining engineer drew a long breath and shook his head despairingly.

“I hardly know. Things seem to be going round. When I try to recall it I become bewildered.”

“Then don’t try to remember,” urged his father in a sympathetic voice. “Remain quiet, my boy, and you will be better to-morrow.”

The young fellow looked straight at the sweet-faced girl standing beside his chair. He longed to ask her how she became possessed of that photograph—to ask the dead girl’s name. But she had imposed silence upon him.

“We will go together to the spot to-morrow, Miss Sandys,” he said. “People think I’m telling a fairy story about the girl. But I assure you I’m not. I held her in my arms and stroked her hair from her face. I remember every incident of that tragic discovery.”

“Very well,” said the girl. “I’ll be here at ten o’clock, and we will go together. Now remain quiet and rest,” she urged with an air of solicitude. “Don’t worry about anything—about anything whatever,” she added with emphasis. “We shall clear up this mystery and bring your enemies to book without a doubt.”

And with that Roddy Homfray had to be satisfied, for a few moments later she buttoned up her warm fur coat and left, while old Mrs Bentley went upstairs and prepared his bed.

His friend Denton called again after he had retired, and found him much better.

“You’re pulling round all right, Roddy,” he laughed. “You’ll be your old self again in a day or two. But what really happened to you seems a complete enigma. You evidently fell into very bad hands for they gave you a number of injections—as your arm shows. But what they administered I can’t make out. They evidently gave you something which acted on your brain and muddled it, while at the same time you were capable of physical action, walking, and perhaps talking quite rationally.”

Then Roddy told his chum the doctor of the weird but misty recollections which from time to time arose within him of having been compelled to act as the handsome woman had directed. Exactly what he did he could not recall—except that he felt certain that while beneath the woman’s influence he had committed some great and terrible crime.

“Bah! my dear Roddy?” laughed Denton as he sat beside the other’s bed. “Your nerves are all wrong and awry. After those mysterious doses you’ve had no wonder you’re upset, and your imagination has grown so vivid.”

“I tell you it isn’t imagination!” cried Roddy in quick protest. “I know that the whole thing sounds utterly improbable, but—well, perhaps to-morrow—perhaps to-morrow I can give you some proof.”

“Of what!”

“Of the identity of the girl I found dying in Welling Wood.”

Hubert Denton smiled incredulously, and patting his friend upon the shoulder, said:

“All right, my dear fellow. Go to sleep. A good rest will do you a lot of good. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The doctor left and Roddy Homfray, tired and exhausted after an exciting day, dropped off to sleep—a sleep full of strange, fantastic dreams in which the sweet calm face of Elma Sandys appeared ever and anon.

Next morning at about nine o’clock, when Roddy awakened to find the weather bright and crisp, he called his father, and said:

“I don’t want Inspector Freeman to know about what I’ve told you—about the girl in Welling Wood.”

“Certainly not,” replied the quiet old rector reassuringly. “That is your own affair. They found nothing when they searched the wood for you.”

“Perhaps they didn’t look in the right spot,” remarked his son. “Elma will be here at ten, and we’ll go together—alone—you don’t mind, father?”

“Not in the least, my boy,” laughed the old man. “Miss Sandys seems deeply distressed concerning you.”

“Does she?” asked Roddy, with wide-open eyes. “Do you really think she is? Or is it the mystery of the affair which appeals to her. Mystery always appeals to women in a greater sense than to men. Every mystery case in the newspapers is read by ten women to one man, they say.”

“Perhaps. But I think Miss Sandys evinces a real interest in you, Roddy, because you are ill and the victim of mysterious circumstances,” he said.

Over the old man’s mind rested the shadow of that unscrupulous pair, Gray and the woman Crisp. Had they done some of their devil’s work upon his beloved son? He had forgiven them their threats and their intentions, but he remained calm to wait, to investigate, and to point the finger of denunciation against them if their villainy were proved.

At ten o’clock Elma Sandys arrived upon her motorcycle, which she constantly used for short distances when alone. Though in the garage her father had two big cars, and she had her own smart little two-seater in which she frequently ran up to London and back, yet she enjoyed her cycle, which she used with a fearlessness begotten of her practice during the war when she had acted as a driver in the Air Force at Oxford—one of the youngest who had taken service, be it said.

As soon as she arrived she helped Roddy into his coat, and both went down the Rectory garden, climbed the fence, walked across the paddock, and at last entered the wood with its brown frosted bracken and thick evergreen undergrowth. Through the half-bare branches, for the weather had been mild, the blue sky shone, though the wintry sun was not yet up, and as Roddy led the way carefully towards the footpath, he warned his pretty companion to have a care as there were a number of highly dangerous but concealed holes from which gravel had been dug fifty years or so ago, the gulfs being now covered with the undergrowth.

Scarcely had he spoken ere she stumbled and narrowly escaped being precipitated into a hole in which water showed deep below through the tangled briars.

Soon they reached the footpath along which he had gone in the darkness on that fatal Sunday night. He paused to take his bearings. He recognised the thick, stout trunk of a high Scotch fir, the only one in the wood. His flash-lamp had shone upon it, he remembered, just at the moment when he had heard the woman’s cries.

He halted, reflected for a few moments, and then struck out into the undergrowth, confident that he was upon the spot where the unknown girl had sunk dying into his arms. Elma, who watched, followed him. He scarcely spoke, so fully absorbed was he in his quest.

At last he crossed some dead and broken bracken, and said:

“Here! This is where I found her!”

His pretty companion halted at his side and gazed about her. There was nothing save a tangle of undergrowth and dead ferns. Above were high bare oaks swaying slowly in the wintry wind.

“Well,” said Elma at last. “There’s nothing here, is there?”

He turned and looked her straight in the face, his expression very serious.

“No. There is nothing, I admit. Nothing! And yet a great secret lies here. Here, this spot, remote from anywhere, was the scene of a mysterious tragedy. You hold one clue, Elma—and I the other.” And again he looked straight into her eyes, while standing on that very spot where the fair-haired girl had breathed her last in his arms, and then, after a few seconds’ silence, he went on: “Elma! I—I call you by your Christian name because I feel that you have my future at heart, and—and I, on my part—I love you! May I call you by your Christian name?”

She returned his look very gravely. Her fine eyes met his, but he never wavered. Since that first day when Tweedles, her little black Pomeranian, had snapped at him she had been ever in his thoughts. He could not disguise the fact. Yet, after all, it was a very foolish dream, he had told himself dozens of times. He was poor—very poor—a mere adventurer on life’s troublous waters—while she was the daughter of a millionaire with, perhaps, a peeress’ career before her.

“Roddy,” at last she spoke, “I call you that! I think of you as Roddy,” she said slowly, looking straight into his eyes. “But in this matter we are very serious—both of us—eh?”

“Certainly we are, Elma,” he replied, taking her hand passionately.

She withdrew it at once, saying:

“You have brought me here for a purpose—to find traces of—of the girl who died at this spot. Where are the traces?”

“Well, the bracken is trodden down, as you see,” he replied.

“But surely that is no evidence of what you allege?”

“No, Elma. But that photograph which you showed me last night is a picture of her.”

The girl smiled mysteriously.

“You say so. How am I to know? They say that you are unfortunately suffering from delusions. In that case sight of any photograph would possibly strike a false chord in your memory.”

“False chord!” he cried. “Do you doubt this morning that I am in my sane senses? Do you doubt that which I have just said, Elma—do you doubt that I love you?”

The girl’s cheeks flushed instantly at his words. Next second they were pale again.

“No,” she said. “Please don’t let us talk of love, Mr Homfray.”

“Roddy—call me that.”

“Well—yes, Roddy, if you like.”

“I do like. You told me that you thought of me as Roddy. Can you never love me?” he implored.

The girl held her breath. Her heart was beating quickly and her eyes were turned away. She let him take her gloved hand and raise it fervently to his lips. Then, without answering his question, she turned her splendid eyes to his and he saw in them a strange, mysterious expression such as he had never noticed in the eyes of any woman before.

He thought it was a look of sympathy and trust, but a moment later it seemed as though she doubted him—she was half afraid of him.

“Elma!” he cried, still holding her hand. “Tell me—tell me that you care for me a little—just a little!” And he gazed imploringly into her pale face.

“A little!” she echoed softly. “Perhaps—well, perhaps I do, Roddy. But—but do not let us speak of it now—not until you are better.”

“Ah! You do love me a little,” he cried with delight, again raising her hand to his lips. “Perhaps you think I’ve not recovered from that infernal drug which my unknown enemies gave me. But I declare that to-day I am in my full senses—all except my memory—which is still curiously at fault.”

“Let us agree to be very good friends, Roddy,” the girl said, pressing his hand. “I confess that I like you very much,” she admitted, “but love is quite another matter. We have not known each other very long, remember.”

“Sufficiently long for me to know that I love you truly, and most dearly, Elma,” the young man declared with keen enthusiasm.

Then the girl sighed, withdrew her hand, and begged of him to drop the subject.

“I have told you that I care for you just a little, Roddy,” she said. “For the present let that suffice.”

She was obdurate, refusing to discuss the matter further. Instead, she began to question him closely concerning the events of that fatal night.

Again he repeated them, just as they have been recorded in the foregoing pages.

“Then it is evident that you were watched,” she remarked. “Whoever was responsible for the crime attacked you by some secret means. Then both of you were taken away.”

“By whom? To where? That’s the mystery!” Roddy echoed blankly.

“A mystery which must be fathomed. And I will help you,” she said quietly.

“You know the identity of the poor girl,” he said. “How did you come by her photograph?” he asked, a question he had been dying to put to her ever since the previous evening.

She was silent.

“You know more of the affair than you have admitted, Elma,” he suggested in a low voice, his eyes still fixed upon her pale countenance. “Is my surmise correct?”

“It is,” she replied in a strange half-whisper. “I have no actual knowledge,” she hastened to add. “But I have certain grim and terrible surmises.”

“You were anxious that my father should not see that photograph last night. Why?”

“Well—well, because I did not wish to—I didn’t wish him to think that I was unduly exciting you by showing you the portrait,” she faltered.

He looked at her, struck by her curious evasiveness.

“And was there no other reason, Elma?” asked the young man in deep earnestness.

Again she hesitated.

“Yes. There was another reason,” she replied. “One that I regret I cannot at present tell you.”

“You refuse to satisfy my curiosity—eh?”

“I am compelled to refuse,” she replied in a low voice.

“Why?”

“Because, as yet, I have only suspicions and surmises. When I have proved even one of them then I shall not hesitate to tell you the truth, Roddy—a bitter and terrible truth though it may be.”

“Really you are most mysterious!” her companion said, his face darkening.

“I know I am,” she answered with a queer hollow laugh.

“But at least you can tell me the dead girl’s name?”

“I only know her Christian name. It is Edna.”

“You knew her personally?”

“Well—yes. I have met her.”

“In what circumstances?”

“Curious ones. Very curious ones,” the girl replied. “If my surmises are correct, Roddy, we are face to face with one of the strangest problems of crime that has ever arisen in our modern world,” she added. “But until I am able to substantiate certain facts I can tell you nothing—nothing, much as I desire to in order to place you upon your guard.”

“What, am I still in peril?”

“Yes, I believe you are—in very great peril. So beware of yet another trap which may be cunningly laid for you by those who may pose as your friends.”

And the girl, taking her companion’s hand, gripped it between hers, and looking into his face, added:

“Roddy, trust me. Don’t ask me for facts which I cannot give. There are reasons—very strong reasons—that compel me for the moment to remain silent. So trust me?”