"Very well, but you have no need to keep that knowledge from me. What is going on?" asked John.
"I don't know." She clasped and unclasped her hands. "That is what alarms me—not, I give you my word, Coate's encroaching fancies! He and Henry are here for some purpose, and I cannot discover what it may be. It's nothing good! Henry is afraid of something, and Coate is afraid of what Henry may divulge when he's in his cups. He watches him like a cat, and once I heard him threaten to break his neck if he didn't keep his mouth shut."
"Did he, by Jove! Can you discover nothing from your cousin?"
"No. When he is sober, it would be useless to question him, and when he's foxed, Coate takes good care not to let him out of his sight. He becomes a trifle fuddled nearly every night, but he doesn't say anything to the purpose."
"Am I to understand by that that you are present at these—er—carouses?" demanded John.
"Of course I am not! It is what Huby tells me. He is very old, and he pretends to be deaf, for he was quite sure Coate could be up to no good, as soon as he laid eyes on him. Only he cannot conceive, any more than I can, what it could be that should bring him to the Peak district, or why he should ally himself with such a poor creature as Henry."
"I haven't met Henry, but I apprehend you don't think it possible that he might have hired Coate for some nefarious purpose? The fellow sounds to me very like a paid bravo."
She considered this for a moment, but gave a decided negative. "For Coate is the master, not Henry. Besides, what use could he find for a bravo here?"
"Well, if your Cousin Henry is indeed the snirp you think him, I can only suppose that he is useful to Coate for some reason as yet hidden from us. Perhaps he is in possession of some vital secret necessary to the success of Coate's plans."
She looked at him sceptically. "You don't believe that!"
"I don't know. There must be some reason for such an ill-assorted alliance!"
"I think you must be quizzing me! Such a notion is fantastic!"
"Very likely, but I might say the same of your apprehensions. Oh, no! don't eat me! I haven't said it, and I swear I don't think it!"
She cast him a fulminating look. "Perhaps, sir, you believe me to be suffering from the merest irritation of the nerves?"
"Not a bit of it! I believe you to be a woman of admirable common sense, and I place the utmost reliance on what you tell me. If you were the most vapourish female imaginable, I must still lend an attentive ear to your story: do not let us forget that a gatekeeper, stationed almost at your door, has disappeared under circumstances which one can only call mysterious! That is quite as fantastic as anything you have told me, you know!"
Slightly mollified, she said: "It seems absurd, but do you suppose Brean's disappearance may be connected in some way with whatever it is those two are plotting?"
"Certainly I do—though in what way I must own I have not the smallest conjecture! However, it will not do to be applying the principles of common sense to a situation which we clearly perceive to be something quite out of the ordinary, so do not tell me, ma'am, that it is fantastic to suppose that your cousin and his friend can have anything to do with a gatekeeper!"
She smiled, but absently, saying, after a moment: "I thought I was indulging my fancy only, but—the thing is, Captain Staple, that I am persuaded my cousin is suspicious of you! I don't know who told him that there was a new gatekeeper at the Crowford pike, but he knows it, and has been asking me who you are, and what has become of Brean."
"Well, that does not encourage us to think that Brean is working with him," John admitted. "On the other hand, he might be cutting a sham—making it appear, you see, as though he knew nothing of Brean. Or even being afraid of what Brean may be doing."
"No, I don't think it is that," she replied, knitting her brows. "Coate seems not to care about it. He came into the room when Henry was questioning me, and all he said was that he had fancied you were not the man who had opened to him before, but for his part he had paid very little heed to you."
"Well, before he is much older he will be paying a great deal of heed to me," observed John. "However, you were very right not to tell him so! He is too set in his ways, and a surprise will be good for him. For anything we know, of course, he and Brean may have decided to tip Cousin Henry the double. Or—— But the possibilities stretch into infinity!"
"Are you funning again?" she demanded. "I collect that you think it all incredible!"
"Not a bit of it! You will allow, however, that in this prosaic age it is certainly unusual to find oneself suddenly in the middle of what promises to be an excellent adventure! I have spent the better part of my life looking for adventure, so you may judge of my delight. The only thing is, I wonder if I was wise to turn myself into a gatekeeper? I can't but see that it is bound to restrict my movements."
"I must say, I can't conceive what should have induced you to do anything so whimsical!" she said frankly.
"Oh, it wasn't whimsical!" he replied. "After I had seen you, I had to provide myself with an excuse for remaining at Crowford, and there it was, ready to my hand!"
She gave a gasp. "C-Captain Staple!"
"On the other hand," he went on, apparently deaf to this interruption, "I could scarcely hope to escape remark, were I to revert to my proper person, and that might put our fine gentlemen on their guard. No: setting the hare's head against the goose-giblets, things are best as they are—for the present."
"Yes," she agreed uncertainly, stealing a sidelong look at him.
He urged the cob to a trot again. "What I must first discover is the precise nature of Coate's business here. To tell you the truth, I can't think what the devil it can be! If this were Lincolnshire, or Sussex, I should be much inclined to suspect the pair of them of being engaged in some extensive smuggling, and of using your house as their headquarters; but this is Derbyshire, and sixty or seventy miles from the coast, I daresay, so that won't answer."
"And hiding kegs of brandy in the cellars?" she asked, laughing. "Or perhaps storing them in one of our limestone caverns——"
"A very good notion," he approved. "But my imagination boggles at the vision of a train of pack-ponies being led coolly to and fro, and exciting no more interest than if they were accommodation coaches!" They had come within sight of Crowford village, and he gave back the reins and the whip into her hands, saying: "And we shall excite less interest, perhaps, if you drive, and I sit with my arms folded, groom-fashion.''
In the event, this precaution was superfluous, since the only two persons to be seen on the village street were a short-sighted old dame, and Mr. Sopworthy, who was standing outside the Blue Boar, but seemed to recall something needing his attention, and had disappeared into the house by the time the gig drew abreast of it. Miss Stornaway was still wondering why he had not waited to exchange a greeting with her when she drew up before the toll-gate.
The Captain alighted; the merchandise was unloaded, and his debts faithfully discharged. Joseph Lydd reported that only strangers had passed the gate during his absence, and got up beside his mistress. The Captain went to hold open the gate, and Miss Stornaway drove slowly forward. Clear of the gate, she pulled up again, for he had released it, and stepped into the road, holding up his hand to her. Hesitating, she transferred the whip to her left hand, and put the right into his. His fingers closed over it strongly, and he held it so for a moment while her eyes searched his face, half in enquiry, half in shy doubt. There was a little smile in his. "I meant what I said to you," he told her.
Then he kissed her hand, and let it go, and with considerably heightened colour she drove on.
CHAPTER VI.
MR. LYDD, observing these proceedings out of the tail of his eye, preserved silence and a wooden countenance for perhaps two minutes.
Then, as the gig, rounding a bend, passed the entrance to a rough lane, leading up to the moors, he gave a discreet cough, and said: "Fine young fellow, our new gatekeeper, miss. I disremember when I've seen a chap with a better pair of shoulders on him. Quite the gentleman, too—even if he is Ned Brean's cousin."
"You know very well that he is not, Joseph," said Miss Stornaway calmly. "He is a Captain of Dragoon Guards—or he was, until he sold out."
"A Captain, is he?" said Joseph, interested. "Well, it don't surprise me, not a bit. He told me himself he was a military man, miss, and that didn't surprise me neither, him having the look of it. In fact, I suspicioned he might be an officer, on account of the way he's got with him, which makes one think he's used to giving his orders, and having 'em obeyed—and no argle-bargle, what's more!"
"When did he tell you he was a military man?" demanded Nell.
Under the accusing glance thrown at him, Mr. Lydd became a little disconcerted. He besought his young mistress to keep her eyes on the road.
"Joseph, when has Captain Staple had the opportunity to tell you anything about himself, and why did he?"
"To think," marvelled Mr. Lydd, "that I should have gone and forgotten to mention it to you, missie! I'm getting old, that's what it is, and things slip me memory, unaccountable-like."
"If you have been at the toll-house, prying into Captain Staple's business——"
"No, no!" said Joseph feebly. "Jest dropped in to blow a cloud, being as I was on me way to the Blue Boar! Yesterday evening, it was, and very nice and affable the Captain was. We got talking, and one thing leading to another he jest happened to mention that he was a military man."
"You went there on purpose!" said Nell hotly. "Because he—because you thought—I wish to heaven you and Rose would remember that I am not a child!"
"No, Miss Nell, but you're a young lady, and seeing as Sir Peter can't look after you no more, like you ought to be—and Rose being an anxious sort of a female," he added basely, "it seems like it's me duty to keep me eye on things, as you might say!"
"I know you only do it out of kindness," said Nell, "but I assure you it is unnecessary! You have no need to be anxious about me!"
"Jest what I says to Rose, missie! Them was me very words! 'We got no need to be anxious about Miss Nell,' I tells her. 'Not now, we haven't.' That, out of course, was after I come home from the toll-house."
Miss Stornaway, fully and indignantly conscious of the unwisdom of attempting to bring to a sense of his presumption a servitor who had held her on the back of her first pony, extricated her from difficulties in an apple-tree, and, upon more than one occasion, rescued her from the consequences of her youthful misdeeds, accomplished the rest of the short journey in dignified silence.
Kellands Manor was an old and a rambling house, standing at no great distance from the pike road, which, in fact, ran through the Squire's land. Its pleasure gardens, though well laid-out, were neglected, the shrubbery being overgrown, the flower-beds allowed to run riot, and the wilderness to encroach year by year on lawns once shaven and weedless.
Miss Stornaway, unlike the one remaining gardener, looked upon this decay with indifference. Behind a crumbling stone wall an extensive vegetable plot was in good order; new trees had been planted in the orchard; and the home farm was thriving.
Miss Stornaway, walking up from the stables with her rather mannish stride, the tail of her worn riding-dress looped over her arm, entered the house through a side-door, and made her way down a flagged corridor to the main hall. From this an oaken staircase rose in two graceful branches to the galleried floor above. She was about to mount it when a door on one side of the hall opened, and her cousin came out of the library. "Oh, there you are, cousin!" he said, in the peevish tone which was habitual with him. "I have been in these past twenty minutes, and desirous of having a word with you."
She paused, a hand on the baluster-rail, and one booted foot already on the first step of the stairway. "Indeed!" she said, looking down at him from her superior height, her brows lifting a little.
His was not an impressive figure, and he was never so conscious of this as when he stood in his magnificent cousin's presence. He had neither height nor presence, and a strong inclination towards dandyism served only to accentuate the shortcomings of his person. Skin-tight pantaloons of an elegant shade of yellow did not set off to advantage a pair of thin legs, nor could all the exertions of his tailor disguise the fact that his narrow shoulders drooped, and that he was developing a slight paunch. His countenance was tolerably good-looking, but spoilt by a sickly complexion and the unmistakable marks of self-indulgence; and his rather bloodshot eyes seemed at all times incapable of maintaining a steady regard. He sported several fobs and seals, wore exaggeratedly high points to his collars, and fidgeted incessantly with snuff-box, quizzing-glass, and handkerchief.
"I'm sure I don't know where you can have been," he complained. "And Huby and that woman of yours quite unable to tell me! I must say, I don't consider it at all the thing."
"Perhaps they thought my whereabouts no concern of yours," suggested Nell. "I have been transacting some business in Tideswell. What is it that you wish to say to me?"
Instead of answering, he embarked on a rambling censure of her independent manners. "I can tell you this, cousin, you present a very odd appearance, jauntering all over the country as you do. I wonder that my grandfather should suffer it, though I suppose the old gentleman is in such queer stirrups he don't realise what a figure you make of yourself. Nat was saying to me only this morning——"