Margaret was saved the necessity of an answer, for at that moment Edward, who was knocking the b.a.l.l.s about on the croquet lawn, shouted to her to come and have a game; and thankfully enough Margaret fled through the open window.

"Her manners are rather casual to you, aren't they, mother?" said Hilary, flinging herself down in the easiest chair in the room, and taking up the local paper, which had been brought in by Martin a few minutes before.

"Oh, my dear, I don't mind," said Mrs. Danvers; "I am really getting quite fond of her. She left in a hurry that way just now, I expect, because she didn't like your little sneering speech at her. You know you have rather a sharp, unkind way with you sometimes, Hilary. Why don't you get on better with her?"

"Because I don't like her," Hilary said curtly.

"But, my dear, why not?"

"Because I don't. I heard you persuading her to go to Los Angelos just now," she added. "Did she say she would go?"

"No; I can't get her to say she would like to go, nor yet to say she won't go," said Mrs. Danvers. "Now I should have thought it was a chance she would have jumped at. But no; girls are so queer and independent nowadays, there is no accounting for them."

"It is very ungrateful of her when you have been good enough to bother about it," said Hilary, who, though she was delighted to hear that so far the post in her sister's household was unfilled, for she cherished dreams of going out to California with Mrs. Lascelles herself, would not let slip the opportunity of running Margaret down to any one who would listen. "Did she say why she wouldn't go?"

"Well, she did and she didn't," returned Mrs. Danvers, actually laying down her knitting for a moment as a recollection of the embarra.s.sment Margaret had shown returned to her. "As far as I can gather, it is because she would not be allowed to do so by somebody or other, but who that somebody was she did not clearly explain to me."

By a few dexterous questions Hilary got her mother to repeat the gist of the conversation that had just taken place between herself and the holiday governess, and when she had finished there was a queer little gleam in Hilary's eyes that Margaret would not have liked to have seen.

"She would not be allowed to go, and when asked why not, had said that she would be prevented." Hilary turned these phrases over in her mind, and as soon as she could do so unperceived, wrote them down in a little note-book that she carried in her pocket.

For though she had now given up the practice she had originally started of plying Margaret with embarra.s.sing questions, and letting it be plainly seen that none of the embarra.s.sment Margaret showed at them was lost upon her, the watch she kept on her every look and action, though secret, was none the less vigilant. Perhaps even more so than it had been at the beginning of Margaret's stay, for Hilary was so fascinated by her new occupation of amateur detective that almost every word Margaret uttered, even down to a request that the salt might be pa.s.sed to her at table, was entered in that little note-book. She blamed herself bitterly, she told Joan, for having undoubtedly put Margaret on her guard to start with; it was a false step, she said with a frown, that it might take her weeks and months to retrieve. "But she will be gone by that time," said Joan, "so it won't be much use retrieving it then."

Hilary retorted that she had been speaking in a general sense, and then changed the subject quickly lest Joan should discover how little sense of any sort the answer contained.

Undoubtedly the relief that Margaret experienced when Hilary ceased to cross-examine her at meal-times had much to do with her ceasing to dislike her life at The Cedars as vehemently as she had done at first, and so cautious was Hilary not to let Margaret suspect the close observation under which she still kept her, that Margaret had almost come to believe that she must have been mistaken in ever supposing that Hilary knew she had something to hide.

Could Margaret have had a glimpse at the pages of that note-book, however, she would have been quickly undeceived on that point. One entry alone, which had been made only a few days before, would have filled her with dismay. It occupied several pages and was headed, "The Clue of the Handkerchief."

The incident to which this sensational headline referred had taken place the previous Sunday afternoon, when most of the members of the family had been sitting in deck-chairs, or lying on rugs, under the shade of the big cedars on the lawn which gave the house its name. Some of the party were reading, others were frankly sleeping, when the quiet that reigned had been disturbed by Nancy, who came running over the gra.s.s waving a handkerchief over her head. "Who's the owner of this pretty thing, this pretty thing, this pretty thing?" she sang, to the tune of "Here we go round the mulberry bush." Geoffrey, who had been sound asleep, woke, and groaned aloud.

"Oh, go away, Nancy," he said; "can't you see that we are all reading?"

"I can't say I can," she retorted, glancing laughingly at his book, which lay face downwards on the gra.s.s beside him. "And I want to discover the owner of this handkerchief with the initials 'M. A.' on it."

"I am," said Margaret, as, without pausing to reflect, she stretched out her hand for it.

"Oh, Miss Carson, Miss Carson," said Nancy, dangling her prize in the air before dropping it on to Margaret's lap; "whose handkerchief have you been stealing? 'M. A.' are not your initials."

Too late Margaret realised her mistake, and as she had done on the day when she had failed to answer to her a.s.sumed name, she sent a quick, apprehensive glance round the circle of faces to see if any one had noticed her error. It appeared no one had, not even Hilary, on whose face Margaret's uneasy glance rested last and longest. But Hilary's eyes were fixed steadily on the pages of her book, and with a sigh of relief Margaret slipped the handkerchief into her pocket. Little did she think that when a quarter of an hour later Hilary rose and strolled slowly away, it was to seek a retired corner, and under that startling headline to make an extensive entry in the note-book.

But though it gave Hilary sincere satisfaction to be able to note that Miss Carson laid claim to a handkerchief that was obviously not hers, she was not able to deduce much from the discovery. However, she felt convinced that she was laying the train to find out a great deal later on, and as soon as she had collected a sufficient number of suspicious facts, they would surely explain themselves.

When, as it often did, Margaret's conscience grappled very strenuously with her, and told her that however much she might try to gloss over the truth, she was behaving very badly to three people--to her grandfather, to Mrs. Murray, and to Mrs. Danvers--poor Margaret would urge in her own extenuation that though she had entered into the scheme entirely for her own amus.e.m.e.nt she was now carrying it on solely to please Eleanor, and that, wrong as it was, no doubt, to go on with it, it would have been both cowardly and unkind of her to have thrown it up and by so doing deprive Eleanor not only of the singing lessons by which she set such store, and for which alone she had consented to the exchange, but a home for the summer holidays.

"Her honour rooted in dishonour stood.

And faith unfaithful kept her falsely true."

Those lines sprang unawares to Margaret's mind one day when she was rather sadly reviewing the position in which she had placed herself, and they appeared to her to fit the situation so exactly that they were frequently in her thoughts, and Hilary, to her intense gratification, heard her murmur them to herself one day when she thought herself alone.

The quotation was one copied into the note book under the heading, "A Guilty Conscience Speaks."

"Is there anything interesting in the _Gazette_?" asked Mrs. Danvers, as Hilary idly opened the sheets of the local paper and spread them out on her knee.

Hilary happened to be in one of her most irritable humours that morning; even the faithful Joan found no pleasure in her society and had gone off to bathe with Nancy and Maud. She said it was the heat that made her feel slack and tired, and her mother said anxiously that she was afraid she did too much, whereat Hilary laughed sardonically, for no one knew better than she that she did nothing at all from morning to night. Why, even Nancy, who at least ate chocolates whenever she could get them, and read novels a.s.siduously all day long and in bed too, might with justice be said to lead a busier life than she did. But, though Hilary often felt vaguely dissatisfied at the way in which she dawdled through the days, she had not strength of mind to bestir herself to pa.s.s them otherwise.

After all, what was there for her to do? she asked herself irritably.

She was supposed to have finished her education, and though she was dimly aware that she was shamefully ignorant, there seemed no especial object in her getting out her lesson-books and poring over them by herself.

But it was not the thought of her neglected opportunities that was making her so peevish this morning. She was cross because she could make nothing out of the number of suspicious facts that she had collected about Margaret. Of what use was it to have a note-book crammed full of well-grounded evidence that Miss Carson was an impostor of some sort if she could not gather from all the ma.s.s of material she had collected in what way she was imposing on them. It was enough, she thought, to make any one cross. And unless she could discover something definite against Miss Carson, Joanna would take her out to Los Angelos with her. But that, Hilary told herself with a little spasm of inward anger, should never come to pa.s.s.

"Hullo, Hilary! got the _Gazette_?" said Jack who, followed by Noel, and indeed the two boys were never very far apart, strolled through the window at that moment. "After you with it, I say."

"I have only just begun it myself," said Hilary, coolly tightening her hold upon it, "so I am afraid you will have to wait."

"Well, it didn't look to us from the garden as though you were reading it at all," grumbled Jack, "so you might just as well hand it over to us.

We want to take it into the garden and see if there is anything in it about----"

"About the cricket at the Park," put in Noel quickly.

"Well, you needn't have snapped me up so quickly," grumbled Jack to his brother, but in so low a tone that neither Mrs. Danvers nor Hilary heard what he said.

"Well, if there is anything about the cricket I haven't come to it yet,"

said Hilary, beginning to enjoy the possession of the paper now that it was desired by some one else. "There is a lot about a big fancy fair that Sir Richard and Lady Strangways are going to have at Wrexley, and about the Regatta, and the dividends that the pier expects to get this half-year from the roller skating, and the new play at the theatre, and the usual lists of people staying at the hotels and boarding-houses. Who on earth ever reads them through, I wonder? But oh, I say!" she exclaimed suddenly, as turning over a page her eyes lighted on a column, half of which was taken up with big headlines that occupied the middle of the sheet. "I say, what do you think! There has been another burglary. That makes the third within the last three weeks. Colonel Baker's house was broken into last night, and all his silver plate was stolen, beside a most valuable old bronze Etruscan vase, two cases of family miniatures, and a collection of gold and silver coins. It----"

She was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Jack. "You don't mean to say that that is in the paper already!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Why, did you know about it before, then?" said Hilary, eyeing her two brothers in surprise. "When did you hear about it? Have you seen Tommy this morning?"

"No, we have not seen Tommy to-day, and how could we have heard about it?" said Noel promptly. "What Jack meant to say was, has there really been another burglary already?"

Seabourne had certainly been unfortunate in the matter of burglaries of late. There had been three within as many weeks. One had taken place at Walker's, the princ.i.p.al jewellers in the High Street; another at the Grand Hotel, where a popular London dancer, Cora Anatolia by name, had been robbed of all her jewellery; and now this one of which Hilary had just read, when Colonel Baker's house, Chesham Lodge, had been broken into. And in each case the thieves had got clear away.

Naturally enough the police considered that all these burglaries had been perpetrated by the same gang; but in that they were wrong, for Master Tommy Baker, aided by his two chums, Noel and Jack Danvers, had committed the burglary at Colonel Baker's house the preceding evening as a practical joke.

It was perhaps one of the most unpremeditated burglaries that had ever taken place. He and the two young Danvers had spent the previous evening at the theatre, and as their road home lay in the same direction the two latter had accompanied Tommy as far as his gate. There Jack had remembered that Tommy had promised to lend him a book, and the two boys walked up the short drive with him intending to wait at the door while Tommy went in to get the book. As they turned the corner of the drive the light from the open study window streamed out on to the gravel, and they caught sight of Colonel Baker reclining sound asleep in an armchair. The hall door was likewise wide open.

"I say," Jack had exclaimed, "your house would be an easy one to burgle, wouldn't it? Half a dozen burglars could sneak right in under your father's very nose and go off with anything they fancied."

"Well, let's burgle it!" Tommy exclaimed light-heartedly. "It would be a ripping good joke. Fancy father's face in the morning." And thereupon Jack and Noel entering gleefully into the scheme, the three boys had crept silently into the house, gone as silently under Tommy's guidance from room to room, s.n.a.t.c.hing up as they went the most valuable things on which they could lay hands.

It really was all done literally on the spur of the moment, and scarcely five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins, securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel still slept peacefully.

"Now to hide it," said Tommy, "we'll bury it in a corner of your garden."

Shaking with laughter, and wildly elated at the success of their mad prank, they very nearly ran, as they were leaving Chesham Lodge, straight into the arms of a policeman, who, with slow and solemn tread, was pacing down the road. That narrow shave calmed them somewhat, and probably there was not one of them who did not feel at that moment that they were actual burglars. At any rate, their progress from Chesham Lodge was attended with the utmost caution and with a show of mystery that must infallibly have aroused deep suspicion had they met any one.

"Why go to the f.a.g of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying them might damage the miniatures. Let's shove them into a drawer in your room.

Better go on first, Jack, and see if the coast is clear."

It was then about a quarter past ten, and most of the Danvers family were still in the billiard-room. Mrs. Danvers and Margaret, however, were in the drawing-room, and Edward had just gone up to bed.