"I suppose it was only cats all the time," he observed, with apparent unconcern."But at first I made sure there were burglars in the house.""And I suppose," suggested Deede Dawson."You think one burglar's enough in a household.""I don't mean to have any one else mucking around," growled Dunn in answer.
"Very admirable sentiments," said Deede Dawson and asked several more questions that showed he still entertained some suspicion of Dunn, and was not altogether satisfied that his appearance in the garden was quite innocent, or that the noise heard there was due, solely to cats.
Dunn answered as best he could, and Deede Dawson listened and smiled, and smiled again, and watched him from eyes that did not smile at all.
"Oh, well," Deede Dawson said at last, with a yawn."Anyhow, it's all right now.You had better get along back to bed, and I'll lock up." He accompanied Dunn into the hall and watched him ascend the stairs, and as Dunn went slowly up them he felt by no means sure that soon a bullet would not come questing after him, searching for heart or brain.
For he was sure that Deede Dawson still suspected him, and he knew Deede Dawson to be very sudden and swift in action.But nothing happened, he reached the broad, first landing in safety, and he was about to go on up to his attic when he beard a door at the end of the passage open and saw Ella appear in her dressing-gown.
"What is the matter ?" she asked, in a low voice.
"It's all right," he answered."There was a noise in the garden, and I came down to see what it was, but it's only cats.""Oh, is that all?" she said distrustfully.
"Yes," he answered, in a lower voice still, he said:
"Will you tell me something? Do you know any one who talks in a very peculiar shrill high voice?"She did not answer, and, after a moment's hesitation, went back into her room and closed the door behind her.
He went on up to his attic with the feeling that she could have answered if she had wished to, and lay down in a troubled and dispirited mood.
For he was sure now that Ella mistrusted him and would give him no assistance, and that weighed upon him greatly, as did also his conviction that what it behoved him above all else to know - the identity of the man who, in this affair, stood behind Deede Dawson and made use of his fierce and fatal energies - he had had it in his power to discover and had failed to make use of the opportunity.
"I would rather know that," he said to himself, "than save a dozen Clives ten times over." Though again it occurred to him that on this point Clive might hold another opinion."If he hadn't made such a blundering row I might have got to know who Deede Dawson's visitor was.I must try to get a word with Clive tomorrow by hook or crook, though I daresay Deede Dawson will be very much on the lookout."However, next morning Deede Dawson not only made no reference to the events of the night, but had out the car and went off immediately after breakfast without saying when he would be back.
As soon after his departure as possible, Dunn also set out and took his way through the woods towards Ramsdon Place on the look-out for an opportunity to speak to Clive unobserved.
He thought it most likely that Clive would be drawn towards the vicinity of Bittermeads by the double fascination of curiosity and fear, and he supposed that if he waited and watched in the woods he would be sure presently to see him.
But though he remained for long hidden at a spot whence he could command the road to Bittermeads from Ramsdon Place, he saw nothing at all of Clive, and the sunny lazy morning was well advanced when he was startled by the sound of a gun shot some distance away.
"A keeper shooting rabbits, I suppose," he thought, looking round just in time to see Ella running through the wood from the direction whence the sound of the shot had seemed to come, and then vanish again with a quick look behind her into the heart of a close-growing spinney.
