Читать книгу A Shadowed Love - Fred M. White - Страница 17

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Dick was disposed to make fun of the mystery as he and Molly walked back to Shepherd's Spring, after seeing Mr. Martlett and Greigstein together. The strong, clear air had got into his veins; the knowledge that all this wide, silent beauty was his to share thrilled him. After the weary struggle and the sordid horror of Pant-street, Stanmere was delicious.

Molly and Dick loitered along till the grey shadows began to creep over the moor, and and the tangled woods faded to a dark mass. The cottage door was open, and the lamplight streamed hospitably out.

"I am really hungry," Dick cried; "a real healthy hunger; not the dreadful feeling we had in Pant-street. New bread and butter and fresh eggs and tea. Nothing like Arcadia! But that tobacco does not smell Arcadia at all."

The air of the house was heavy with cigarette smoke. Greigstein was seated in the in the dining room. He was looking wistfully at the table.

"My young friends, I am delighted," he he cried. "Positively it is useless for you to try and get rid of me. The loneliness of Pant-street is appalling. I could not resist the temptation to run down here."

Dick looked at Molly and smiled. In the light of recent discoveries they could not take much of a compliment to themselves. And Greigstein looked different—more spruce and far better groomed than usual. Nobody but a West-End tailor could have made the clothes that he was wearing. He did not look in the least like the little German schoolmaster with the taste for butterflies.

"I have been been on the hunt, of course," he said, "but with poor results. An intelligent labourer tells me there are wondrous winged things of amazing beauty in the bogs over behind the Warren. But as nobody dare venture there, the information is all the more disappointing. I ask for a guide, and and behold! there is none. The last was a boy who used to live here. I demand his name; and do you suppose they told me his name was? Why, Master Dick Stevenson."

"Behold the man!" Dick laughed. "Come and have some tea."

Greigstein ate sparingly. He was full of the moorland and its mysterious paths and deep morasses. Would Dick take him there and teach him the paths? He was wildly enthusiastic, but there was something in his eyes that told of a strange earnestness in the matter. Strange that nearly everybody who came along wanted to know something about that mysterious moorland. Was there some treasure hidden there or some crime beyond solution?

"Oh, we shall see," Dick said. "I'm bored over the moor. My employer is always talking about it, and so is Mr. Martlett. Do you know him?

"The name seems familiar," Greigstein said, coolly, as he cracked an egg. "Solicitor to the Stanmere estates, I fancy."

Greigstein's expression was bland and childlike, his glasses twinkled benevolently. He changed the conversation in his light and airy way. He was going to stay till the last train. He had no intention of going away empty handed. If his good friends could give him some supper he would go out afterwards moth-hunting. There was no reason why they should not all go out moth-hunting.

The moon was a thin crescent in the sky, a long bank of mist lay like a blanket over the Stanmere Woods. They came presently to the avenue leading up to the house with the great forest trees hanging over to the right, past the lake, sleeping now like a great mirror in the dim light.

Greigstein had abandoned himself entirely to the work of the moment. He was no longer a mysterious German with a fancy for hiding himself in a dingy London purlieu, but an enthusiast. He took from his pocket a bottle containing a slimy-looking liquid.

"Treacle," he explained. "We smear the trees thus and thus. Nothing draws the moths like that. And presently we shall come back again and collect our prey. I will show you something then!"

They had grown more silent now, Dick had caught the spirit of the sport. Greigstein produced a lantern from his pocket.

"I'll push back the slide of this presently," he said. "Then you will see a pretty sight. But here is somebody coming, and we are on private property. I have no wish to be expelled by a zealous menial. We will obliterate ourselves."

The strange figure came swaggering along up the avenue. He paused for a moment before the tree against which the little party were pressing, and lighted a cigarette. The match illuminated his features with a dull red glow. An almost inarticulate cry came from Molly as the stranger passed.

"Why did you pinch me like that?" she asked.

"It was that man's face," Greigstein whispered, hoarsely. "Did you see his features? Of all the cruel nighthawks on the wing now there is none more false or cruel than he."

Molly shuddered. There was something ominous in Greigstein's words. She and Dick had both seen that face in the red halo of the vesta. A handsome, cruel, shifty face, a face not to be forgotten.

"It was far better if they had trusted me," Greigstein whispered. Obviously, he was talking to himself, he had entirely forgotten his companions. "Headstrong and rash I may be, but I could have saved this. He was going to the house."

"A friend of one of the servants, perhaps," Molly suggested.

"Friend to nobody but himself," Greigstein cried, coming to himself with a start. "He is going to the house. He must not go to the house."

Greigstein darted away and was lost in the darkness. Molly crept near to Dick, as if fearful of something evil.

"I shall know that face again," Dick muttered. "I shall never forget it any more."