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As to the behaviour of chauffeurs in private life, Bobby was singularly ill-informed, but he imagined that a certain haughtiness would not come amiss. He tried to feel himself a superior being and to act accordingly. The admiring attitude of various young women employed in the Anglers' Arms had a distinctly encouraging effect and he soon found that Frankie and her accident had provided the principal topic of conversation in Staverley ever since it had happened. Bobby unbent towards the landlord, a stout, genial person of the name of Thomas Askew, and permitted information to leak from him.
'Young Reeves, he was there and saw it happen,' declared Mr Askew.
Bobby blessed the natural mendacity of the young. The famous accident was now vouched for by an eye witness.
'Thought his last moment had come, he did,' went on Mr Askew. 'Straight for him down the hill it come - and then took the wall instead. A wonder the young lady wasn't killed.' 'Her ladyship takes some killing,' said Bobby.
'Had many accidents, has she?' 'She's been lucky,' said Bobby. 'But I assure you, Mr Askew, that when her ladyship's taken over the wheel from me as she sometimes does - well, I've made sure my last hour has come.' Several persons present shook their heads wisely and said they didn't wonder and it's just what they would have thought.
'Very nice little place you have here, Mr Askew,' said Bobby kindly and condescendingly. 'Very nice and snug.' Mr Askew expressed gratification.
'Merroway Court the only big place in the neighbourhood?' 'Well, there's the Grange, Mr Hawkins. Not that you'd call that a place exactly. There's no family living there. No, it had been empty for years until this American doctor took it.' 'An American doctor?' 'That's it - Nicholson his name is. And if you ask me, Mr Hawkins, there are some very queer goings on there.' The barmaid at this point remarked that Dr Nicholson gave her the shivers, he did.
'Goings on, Mr Askew?' said Bobby. 'Now, what do you mean by goings on?' Mr Askew shook his head darkly.
'There's those there that don't want to be there. Put away by their relations. I assure you, Mr Hawkins, the meanings and the shrieks and the groans that go on there you wouldn't believe.' 'Why don't the police interfere?' 'Oh, well, you see, it's supposed to be all right. Nerve cases, and such like. Loonies that aren't so very bad. The gentleman's a doctor and it's all right, so to speak -' Here the landlord buried his face in a pint pot and emerged again to shake his head in a very doubtful fashion.
'Ah!' said Bobby in a dark and meaning way. 'If we knew everything that went on in these places...' And he, too, applied himself to a pewter pot.
The barmaid chimed in eagerly.
'That's what I say, Mr Hawkins. What goes on there? Why, one night a poor young creature escaped - in her nightgown she was - and the doctor and a couple of nurses out looking for her.
"Oh! don't let them take me back!" That's what she was crying out. Pitiful it was. And about her being rich really and her relations having her put away. But they took her back, they did, and the doctor he explained that she'd got a persecution mania - that's what he called it. Kind of thinking everyone was against her. But I've often wondered - yes, I have. I've often wondered...' 'Ah!' said Mr Askew. 'It's easy enough to say ' Somebody present said that there was no knowing what went on in places. And somebody else said that.was right.
Finally the meeting broke up and Bobby announced his intention of going for a stroll before turning in.
The Grange was, he knew, on the other side of the village from Merroway Court, so he turned his footsteps in that direction. What he had heard that evening seemed to him worthy of attention. A lot of it could, of course, be discounted.
Villages are usually prejudiced against newcomers, and still more so if the newcomer is of a different nationality. If Nicholson ran a place for curing drug takers, in all probability there would be strange sounds issuing from it - groans and even shrieks might be heard without any sinister reason for them, but all the same, the story of the escaping girl struck Bobby unpleasantly.
Supposing the Grange were really a place where people were kept against their will? A certain amount of genuine cases might be taken as camouflage.
At this point in his meditations Bobby arrived at a high wall with an entrance of wrought-iron gates. He stepped up to the gates and tried one gently. It was locked. Well, after all, why not?
And yet somehow, the touch of that locked gate gave him a faintly sinister feeling. The place was like a prison.
He moved a little farther along the road measuring the wall with his eye. Would it be possible to climb over? The wall was smooth and high and presented no accommodating crannies.
He shook his head. Suddenly he came upon a little door.
Without much real hope he tried it. To his surprise it yielded.
It was not locked.
'Bit of an oversight here,' thought Bobby with a grin.
He slipped through, closing the door softly behind him.
He found himself on a path leading through a shrubbery. He followed the path which twisted a good deal - in fact, it reminded Bobby of the one in Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Suddenly, without any warning, the path gave a sharp turn and emerged into an open space close to the house. It was a moonlit night and the space was clearly lit. Bobby had stepped full into the moonlight before he could stop himself.
At the same moment a woman's figure came round the corner of the house. She was treading very softly, glancing from side to side with - or so it seemed to the watching Bobby - the nervous alertness of a hunted animal. Suddenly she stopped dead and stood, swaying as though she would fall.
Bobby rushed forward and caught her. Her lips were white and it seemed to him that never had he seen such an awful fear on any human countenance.
'It's all right,' he said reassuringly in a very low voice. 'It's quite all right.' The girl, for she was little more, moaned faintly, her eyelids half closed.
'I'm so frightened,' she murmured. 'I'm so terribly frightened.' 'What's the matter?' said Bobby.
The girl only shook her head and repeated faintly: 'I'm so frightened. I'm so horribly frightened.' Suddenly some sound seemed to come to her ears. She sprang upright, away from Bobby. Then she turned to him.
'Go away,' she said. 'Go away at once.' 'I want to help you,' said Bobby.
'Do you?' She looked at him for a minute or two, a strange searching and moving glance. It was as though she explored his soul.
Then she shook her head.
'No one can help me.' 'I can,' said Bobby. 'I'd do anything. Tell me what it is that frightens you so.' She shook her head.
'Not now. Oh! quick - they're coming! You can't help me unless you go now. At once - at once.' Bobby yielded to her urgency.
With a whispered: 'I'm at the Anglers' Arms,' he plunged back along the path. The last he saw of her was an urgent gesture bidding him hurry.
Suddenly he heard footsteps on the path in front of him.
Someone was coming along the path from the little door.
Bobby plunged abruptly into the bushes at the side of the path.
He had not been mistaken. A man was coming along the path. He passed close to Bobby but it was too dark for the young man to see his face.
When he had passed, Bobby resumed his retreat. He felt that he could do nothing more that night.
Anyway, his head was in a whirl.
For he had recognized the girl - recognized her beyond any possible doubt.
She was the original of the photograph which had so mysteriously disappeared.
CHAPTER 16 Bobby Becomes a Solicitor
'Mr Hawkins?' 'Yes,' said Bobby, his voice slightly muffled owing to a large mouthful of bacon and eggs.
'You're wanted on the telephone.' Bobby took a hasty gulp of coffee, wiped his mouth and rose.
The telephone was in a small dark passage. He took up the receiver..
