There was no sound, not even the distant sound of feet on gravel. In a moment she saw him. He was walking across the grass, and soon after disappeared. There came to her the drone of a motor that died away to nothing.

    She staggered to her bed and sat down.

    At that moment Arthur Wilmot was torturing himself with speculations. What would she think of him? He might have spared himself that sleepless night. She had forgotten that Arthur Wilmot existed.

 

 

CHAPTER 5

 

 

    Waiting on the station platform, Scottie had grown suddenly communicative, even rhetorical.

    "You think that you're tolerably well acquainted with all the dirt of life, Macleod; because you know the hot spots in town, the Chink pipe cellars, and the silk curtains and divan emporiums, that you know it all. I admit you're not so hell-sure as some of those misapplications they call detectives, and your doctoring has taken you down to the lining of things, but you don't know it all."

    "I don't," confessed Andy.

    "That is where some of you people go wrong—not you, I admit, but some of you coppers. It isn't the dive and the thieves' kitchen, or the place where the scum and scrapings are found—little hooks who reckon they're Rothschildren when they touch a fiver—it isn't these that are the bad places." He looked round. The county policeman who was escorting him to town was not listening. "If you want to find tabulated hell, go to Beverley Green!"

    Andy eyed him keenly and felt an inexplicable thrill run down his spine.

    "What do you mean? Did you hear anything?"

    Scottie conveyed a negative with a curl of his lips. "No, nothing; but I smelt it. I'm sensitive to—what'n hell's the word? Atmosphere, that's it. You'll snigger at that, but it was a fortune to me in what I might term my unregenerate days. I'll let you snigger now, but you won't laugh when you see the size and appearance of my alibi. In those days that sort of creepy feeling has saved me many a long stretch of wasted time. I've been in a prison when they brought in a man to be hanged. Nobody knew he was there; he was transferred the day before his execution, because the flooring of the death house caught fire. Fact! And I knew he was in the prison, knew the hour he came in. That is how I feel about Beverley Green. There is something—evil about it. Queer word for me to use, Macleod, eh? They touch your elbow as you walk—ghosts! Laugh! But I tell you there's a bunch of 'em. That's how I've named it the Valley of Ghosts! Now I'll tell you something that would look bad against me if you put it in the charge. But I trust you, Macleod, because you're different to the general run of bulls; you're a gentleman. I carried a gun. Always had one in my kit, but never carried one in my jeans before. I did. I had it on me when you pinched me. I chucked it away as we drove into Beverley. I won't tell you where, for you didn't see me do it.'

    "When you pretended to yawn as we were coming round the bend into the town," said Andy. "But we won't mention that, and I'll countermand the order I gave to search the ditches.