The Truants Part 31

Warrisden examined the post-mark. The letter came from Ain-Sefra.

Warrisden went on with his examination without a word. But his heart quickened. He wondered whether he had found the clue. Ain-Sefra in Algeria. Warrisden had never heard of the place before. It might be a health resort, a wintering place. But this was the month of August.

There would be no visitors at this time to a health resort in Algeria.

He handed the letters back to Princkley.

"I cannot tell whether they are important or not," he said. "I knew Chase very slightly. His relations must be informed. I suppose Mrs.

Wither knows where they live."

He took his departure as soon as the doctor had returned with the police, and drove back to his rooms. A search through the Encyclopaedia told him nothing of Ain-Sefra; but, on the other hand, he could not look at the article on Algeria without the Foreign Legion leaping to his eyes at once--so great and magnificent a part it played in the modern history of that colony. The Foreign Legion! Warrisden jumped to the conviction that there was the secret of Tony Stretton's disappearance. Every reason he could imagine came to his aid. Let a man wish to disappear, as, from whatsoever reason, Tony Stretton did, where else could he so completely bury himself and yet live?

Hardships? Dangers? Yes. But Tony Stretton had braved hardships and dangers in the North Sea, and had made light of them. A detachment of the Foreign Legion might well be stationed at this oasis of Ain-Sefra, of which his Encyclopaedia knew nothing. He had no doubt there was a trooper there, serving under some false name, who would start if the name of "Stretton" were suddenly shouted to him behind his back.

Warrisden wrote no word of his conjecture to Pamela; he wished to raise no hopes which he could not fulfil. Convinced as he was, he wished for certain proof. But in fulfilment of his promise he wrote to Pamela that night. Just a few lines--nothing more, as she had asked.

But in those few lines he wrote that he would like her to procure for him a sc.r.a.p of Tony Stretton's handwriting. Could she do it? In a week the sc.r.a.p of handwriting arrived. Warrisden, looking at it, knew that the same hand had addressed the envelope at Ain-Sefra to Mr. Chase.

Warrisden was ready now, if the summons to service should come once more from Pamela.

CHAPTER XXI

CALLON REDIVIVUS

All through that autumn Pamela watched for Tony's return, and watched in vain. Winter came, and with the winter a letter from Mr. Mudge.

Lionel Callon had booked his pa.s.sage home on a steamer which sailed on Christmas Eve from the port of Valparaiso. Pamela received the news one morning of December. She hunted that day with the Quorn, and for once her thoughts were set on other matters than this immediate business. The long gra.s.s meadows slipped away under her horse's feet the while she pondered how once more the danger of Callon's presence was to be averted. At times she hoped it would not need averting.

Callon had been eighteen months away, and Millie was quick to forget.

But she was no less quick to respond to a show of affection. Let Callon lay siege again persistently, and the danger at once was close.

Besides, there were the letters. That he should have continued to write during the months of his absence was a sign that he had not forgone his plan of conquest.

Pamela returned home with a scheme floating in her mind. Some words which her mother had spoken at the breakfast-table had recurred to her, and at tea Pamela revived the subject.

"Did you say that you would not go to Roquebrune this winter, mother?"

she asked.

"Yes," Mrs. Mardale replied; "I have been for so many winters now. I shall stay in England, for a change. We can let the Villa Pontignard, no doubt."

"Oh, there is no hurry," said Pamela. She added, "I shall be going to London to-morrow, but I shall be back in the evening."

She thought over her plan that evening. Its execution would cost her something, she realised. For many years she had not been out of England during the winter. She must leave her horses behind, and that was no small sacrifice for Pamela. She had one horse in particular, a big Irish horse, which had carried her in the days when her troubles were at their worst. He would follow her about the paddock or the yard nuzzling against her arm; a horse of blood and courage, yet gentle with her, thoughtful and kind for her as only a horse amongst the animals can be. She must leave him. On the other hand, her thoughts of late had been turning to Roquebrune for a particular reason. She had a feeling that she would rather like to tread again those hill-paths, to see once more those capes and headlands of which every one was a landmark of past pain--just as an experiment. She travelled to London the next day and drove from St. Pancras into Regent's Park.

Millie Stretton had taken a house on the west side of the park. It looked east across the water and through the glades of trees, and in front of it were the open s.p.a.ces of which Tony and she had dreamed; and the sunlight streamed through the windows and lay in golden splashes on the floors when there was sunlight in London anywhere at all. When she looked from her window on the first morning, she could not but remember the plans which Tony and she had debated long ago.

They had been so certain of realising them. Well, they were realised now, for her, at all events. There was the sunlight piercing through every cranny; there were the wide expanses of green, and trees. Only the windows looked on Regent's Park, and on no wide prairie; and of the two who, with so much enthusiasm, had marked out their imaginary site and built their house, there was only one to enjoy the fulfilment. Millie Stretton thought of Tony that morning, but with an effort. What Pamela had foreseen had come to pa.s.s. He had grown elusive to her thoughts, she could hardly visualise his person to herself; he was almost unreal. Had he walked in at that moment he would have been irksome to her as a stranger.

It was, however, Pamela Mardale who walked in. She was shown over the house, and until that ceremony was over she did not broach the reason for her visit. Then, however, Millie said with delight--

"It is what I have always wanted--sunlight."

"I came to suggest more sunlight," said Pamela. "There is our villa at Roquebrune in the south of France. It will be empty this winter. And I thought that perhaps you and I might go out there together as soon as Christmas is past."

Millie was standing at the window with her back to Pamela. She turned round quickly.

"But you hate the place," she said.

Pamela answered with sincerity--

"None the less I want to go this winter. I want to go very much. I won't tell you why. But I do want to go. And I should like you to come with me."

Pamela was anxious to discover whether that villa and its grounds, and the view from its windows, had still the power to revive the grief with which they had been so completely a.s.sociated in her mind.

Hitherto she had shrunk from the very idea of ever revisiting Roquebrune; of late, however, since Warrisden, in a word, had occupied so large a place in her thoughts, she had wished to put herself to the test, to understand whether her distress was really and truly dead, or whether it merely slumbered and could wake again. It was necessary, for Warrisden's sake as much as her own, that she should come to a true knowledge. And nowhere else could she so certainly acquire it. If the sight of Roquebrune, the familiar look of the villa's rooms, the familiar paths whereon she had carried so overcharged a heart, had no longer power to hurt and pain her, then she would be sure that she could start her life afresh. It was only fair--so she phrased it in her thoughts--that she should make the experiment.

Millie turned back to the window.

"I do not think that I shall leave London this winter," she said. "You see, I have only just got into the house."

"It might spare you some annoyance," Pamela suggested.

"I don't understand," said Millie.

"The annoyance of having to explain Tony's absence. He will very likely have returned by the spring."

Millie shrugged her shoulders.

"I have borne that annoyance for two years," she replied. "I do not think I shall go away this winter."

Was Millie thinking of Callon's return? Pamela wondered. Was it on his account that she decided to remain? Pamela could not ask the question. Her plan had come to naught, and she returned that afternoon to Leicestershire.

Christmas pa.s.sed, and half-way through the month of January Callon called, on a dark afternoon, at Millie Stretton's house. Millie was alone; she was indeed expecting him. When Callon entered the room he found her standing with her back to the window, her face to the door, and so she stood, without speaking, for a few moments.

"You have been a long time away," she said, and she looked at him with curiosity, but with yet more anxiety to mark any changes which had come in his face.

"Yes," said he, "a long time."

Millie rang the bell and ordered tea to be brought.

"You have not changed," said she.

"Nor you."

Millie had spoken with a noticeable distance in her manner; and she had not given him her hand. With her back towards the light she had allowed very little of her expression to be visible to her visitor.

When tea was brought in, however, she sat between the fireplace and the window, and the light fell upon her. Callon sat opposite to her.

"At last I know that I am at home again," he said, with a smile. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice, although there was no third person in the room. He knew the value of such tricks. "I have looked forward during these eighteen months so very much to seeing you again."

Millie's face coloured, but it was with anger rather than pleasure.

There was a hard look upon her face; her eyes blamed him.

"Yet you went away without a word to me," she said. "You did not come to see me before you went, you never hinted you were going."