ELLEN started awake in a panic, aware that something had terrified her. A moment later she knew what it was, even before she had identified the hissing noise outside as torrential rain. The early morning twilight was torn up by a blinding glare and a crack of thunder which sent her scurrying down under the bedclothes with her hands over her ears. She hated thunder.
When the reverberations had died down, and there was only the drumming of rain, she peered timidly over the blankets towards Dick’s bed, wondering if she would have time, before the next peal, to jump out and climb in beside him and hide her face on his shoulder. That was what she always did when it thundered in the night. Any remembrance of estrangement between them was driven clean away by panic.
But Dick’s bed was empty and smooth. He had not slept in it. Her heart began to beat very fast. He had fallen into the lake and was drowned. He had taken a moonlight swim and had been seized with cramp. He was not there because he was dead.
She would not have immediately concluded this if she had not been so frightened at the thunder. For the moment she was quite unable to reason. She was beside herself. Jumping out of bed she threw on a dressing-gown and flew up to the room above, where Kerran and Guy were sleeping.
“Kerran! Kerran!” she cried, hammering on the door. “Are you there? Are you awake? Do come out … it’s Ellen … just a minute … Kerran!”
A tousled Kerran appeared.
“Oh, Kerran! I’m so frightened. Dick’s never been to bed. He’s never come in. I’m afraid something must have happened to him.”
“Dick? What … where …”
“He’s never been to bed. I woke up just now and he wasn’t there. I can’t think…. Oh!”
She hid her eyes from another flash, and Kerran, who knew how she hated thunder, put an arm round her to soothe her.
“Come in for a minute, while I put on a dressing-gown. Guy won’t mind.”
He drew her into the room and made her sit on his bed while he hurriedly put on a mackintosh and a pair of waders. Guy, just awake, rubbed his eyes in astonishment.
“He wasn’t there when I went to bed,” narrated Ellen. “Or when I went to sleep. The thunder woke me up. Oh, Kerran! He’s dead.”
“When did you last …”
“Oh, I can’t think. I can’t remember. Not since after supper when you and Barny were playing. I was so sleepy. Oh, but Maude saw him in the garden after that! She saw him outside the window with Madame Koebel.”
“Did she?” exclaimed both men. And Kerran added:
“But was Elissa Koebel over here last night?”
“I didn’t see her. Maude saw her. She saw them looking in through the window. Weren’t you there when she … oh no, it was when we were going to bed. So Dick must have been in the garden then.”
There was a short pause while both men dismissed an instant suspicion. It was not possible.
“Perhaps he decided to sleep out,” suggested Guy. “It was so hot.”
“But he’d have come in when it began to rain.”
“Perhaps he’s been locked out.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ellen hopefully.
“It’s very likely,” agreed Kerran. “Just wait, Ellen, while I go and see.”
Guy, who had put on a dressing gown, came down with her to the door of the tower, and they both stood watching while Kerran ran through the sheets of rain towards the gate-house. The thunder was growing fainter, and the flashes less blinding. The rain poured steadily down in the struggling light of early morning.
Kerran reappeared in a moment and shouted across the court that the gates were open. They had, in fact, never been locked since the night of Guy and Dick’s arrival. Then he vanished again, and Ellen thought she had better put on a few clothes. She went up to her room and had just huddled a coat and skirt over her nightdress when Kerran came knocking at her door.
“I ran down to the boats. To see if he’d gone over to the mainland. But they’re all three in the boat-house.”
“So that he must be on the island. Or … or …”
“My dear Ellen … don’t meet trouble half way.”
He had just said the same thing to Guy, who, on hearing that no boat had been taken, had insisted upon raising an alarm.
Ellen’s flurried mind darted hither and thither. It seized on a new idea.
“Or he could have gone in Madame Koebel’s boat. She must have come in a boat and gone in a boat, as she didn’t come in. Perhaps …”
There was another knock at the door. This time it was Maude, who had been roused by Kerran’s shout in the courtyard, and who had seen, from her window, his hurried visit to the boat-house.
“Excuse me, but what’s up? Is anything the …” She had seen Dick’s empty bed as soon as she got into the room, and her eyes snapped. “Oh! what’s happened to Dick?”
“That’s just what we don’t know,” said Kerran. “He seems to have vanished last night.”
“Sleeping out, probably,” said Maude with great presence of mind. “I don’t wonder. Barny wanted to. It was so hot.”
“But in this rain … surely …”
“It came on so suddenly. If he was some way away, on the beaches at the other side, he may have crawled into shelter under a boulder or something. I expect we shall have him back in a minute or two.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Ellen, doubtfully.
“My dear, what else could have happened? You go back to bed and I’ll fetch you a nice cup of tea. You look perfectly blue.”
Maude hurried Kerran out on to the stairs and as soon as they had got out of earshot she said:
“Whatever’s to be done?”
“I expect you’re right. I expect he is sheltering …”
“You don’t think I really thought that? It’s as plain as a pikestaff what’s happened. He’s gone off with that woman. I knew he would.”
“Oh, no, no,” cried Kerran, who had thought so himself when Ellen made her suggestion about Elissa’s boat, and had quickly tried to unthink it.
“Of course he has. I saw them in the garden myself last night, peeping in through the window. And I thought to myself we were in for a scene, because, you know, Louise said she wasn’t to come to the island any more, and said it on Dick’s account. I just took no notice. When we went to bed I asked Ellen if she’d seen them, and she said she hadn’t. I wondered what they could be up to, for they hadn’t come in.”
“Ellen herself suggested that he might have gone off in Elissa’s boat.”
“Oh, did she? Then she must have put two and two together. How many people know?”
“Guy and I and you. That’s all.”
“Then we’d better hold our tongues till we see what happens. He may come back, any minute. I don’t suppose he meant to be caught out like this. They thought nobody could see them. He’ll come back with some story of having slept out, you see…. Let’s find Mr. Fletcher …”
They had got to the door of the tower again and now they saw Louise and Gordon and Guy, all huddled up in nightclothes and mackintoshes, struggling through the rain towards them. For Guy, who really believed that Dick must be drowned, had gone to rouse his hosts.
“Well, then—the fat’s in the fire,” whispered Maude.
The panic spread. They were all arguing and exclaiming at once when Ellen came running once more down the stairs.
“It’s all right,” she said breathlessly. “It’s quite all right. I can’t think how I can have been so stupid. His haversack’s gone. He’s taken his things. I know what he’s done. It’s all right. He’s gone for a walking tour in the Ardfillan mountains!”
How she could have been so stupid she did not know. For she had promised to stand the racket and to smooth it over if he disappeared all of a sudden. And what she had done was to make his odd behaviour seem more odd than ever. But she had not expected that he would go so soon, and the thunder, waking her up like that, had put yesterday’s conversation out of her head.
Now they were staring at her in the most unbelieving way.
“To the Ardfillan mountains?”
“Did he say he was going?” asked Maude.
“No—I mean, yes. I mean, he said he was going some time. He said so yesterday. I’m sure that’s what he’s done, now I see that he’s taken his haversack. I’m so sorry, so very sorry, to have made all this fuss.”
“But the boats …” began Gordon.
“Somebody must have given him a lift.”
She was making a mess of it.
She was not smoothing it over at all. Just when things were so very nearly going right she had almost given him away. She wondered how much Kerran had guessed at what was in her mind, when she came rushing up to him that morning. She must try and put a better face on it.
“He … he often goes off like this without warning,” she asserted.
Which was not true. He had never done such a thing in his life before, and they knew it. Her voice had an overemphasis which sounded false even in her own ears, and she realised that, if she was really going to lie, she might just as well say that he had mentioned the plan; so she added:
“As a matter of fact, I think he must have told me, only I didn’t understand …”
But it was no good. She was a poor prevaricator. The more she asserted that everything was all right, the more likely they were to suspect that she was hiding something. She had better leave it alone.
“Anyhow,” she added, “I’m not going to worry about him any more. I’m only so sorry to have been so stupid.”
“But,” said Gordon, “who could have given him a lift, at that time of night?”
Ellen looked even more flurried. She did not know how matters stood between Louise and Gordon about Elissa, or if Gordon knew of Elissa’s visit the night before. She turned helplessly to Maude, who interposed:
“There were fishermen going down the lake very late last night. I heard them. Really quite a lot of little boats go past … Do go up to bed, Ellen, and let me make you some tea.”
Ellen was only too thankful to go. As soon as she had disappeared up the stairs Louise exclaimed:
“What on earth are we to make of all this? Do you believe what she says? Any of you? She seemed to be making the whole thing up as she went along, first of all saying he hadn’t mentioned it and then saying that he had. She never could tell a lie. But what is she hiding?”
“I think,” said Kerran hastily, “that’s her business. She’s evidently not worrying about his personal safety, and we shall know in a day or two what’s happened to him. The best we can do is to accept her story.”
“Most certainly,” said Maude. “There’s the servants and children to think of. We must put as good a face on it as we can, for as long as we can.”
“Don’t talk as if he’d eloped or done something disgraceful,” began Louise irritably.
But the expression on the faces of Kerran and Maude brought her up short. She gasped and turned very pale.
“You don’t think …”
“I’m afraid it’s so,” whispered Maude. “She was over here, over on the island last night. I saw them together in the garden. Ellen knows.”
Kerran interposed:
“Don’t you think the less said the better. He may come back at any moment, and it’s no business of ours what explanation he makes to Ellen. It’s not five o’clock now! He may come back.”
“But he won’t come back,” said Maude. “He’s taken his haversack. The whole thing was intended.”
Gordon chimed in plaintively:
“But I don’t understand! What are you talking about? Who was here last night? What does Ellen know?”
Louise turned on him with the triumph of one who is at last proved to have been in the right.
“Your friend,” she said bitterly. “Your friend Elissa Koebel.”