Chapter VI

With the last days of January a week of wild rough weather set in, the wind, accompanied with alternating showers of sleet and drenching rain, blowing in great gusts over the exposed uplands. The storm kept people to their houses, and the few outdoor winter occupations in that remote agricultural region were at a standstill. There were days when even Mrs. Spedding did not come to the house. Now and then a lonely horse and cart, with the driver huddled up, and heading into the blast, might be seen crossing the common among a sea of tossing gorse bushes. But scarcely another sign of life showed for several days.

Inside the house the storm, and the increased sense of isolation it brought, had the effect of making the man and woman draw somehow nearer to each other. Thrown together they had been by a strange stroke of Fate, but with fear overshadowing them and mutual distrust between them, there had been so far little scope for understanding. Now, however, when Kinloch felt he had the secret sewn on to his coat, his half-felt antagonism died away, and the girl, no doubt feeling the change, without knowing its real cause, responded to that change in him. Kinloch, in fact, had come to regard her as much more the victim of the man whose identity she was struggling to hide than he was himself.

One night while brushing out her hair--she had probably come to see there was nothing in letting down her hair before a blind man--she said to him suddenly:

"Didn't they give you a disability pension?"

Kinloch, who had been listening to the long soft swish of the brush and trying to judge of the length of her hair from the length of the stroke, was taken aback.

"Oh, yes," he said, "but I commuted for a lump sum."

Her insistence amused him. But the brushing stopped even before his own short laugh.

"You squandered it, I suppose. Is that why you laugh?"

"No; it was your inquisitive questions. So like a careful, old-fashioned wife, before the days of shingling, cross-examining a husband."

He heard the brush get to work again, but more slowly, as if she were looking at him thoughtfully through the strands of her hair.

"Look here," he said defensively, "I didn't 'blow' the money--not in the usual sense anyway. It went into tea shares, Kalindar, a company a friend told me of. Ninepence each they were then, and I believe there are thousands registered in my name, all quite unsaleable. They mostly belonged to the friend who advised me to buy and who swore they were bound to rise."

After this outburst he was surprised to find himself so anxious she should not think ill of him.

But although she was always ready and even eager to talk about his past and his future, he did notice that the moment he turned the talk to her own past and her own future she became dumb at once. He could see she dreaded all questions. He was certain, too, it was to head him off herself and keep his mind occupied that she not only read aloud to him but set him on to study the Braille system of reading for the blind. But he had quite enough of the embossed letters, sitting on his bed fingering away at them in silence during the three hours Mrs. Spedding was at work about the house. Then the Braille book saved him from infinite boredom; so that, presently becoming keen about it, he made rapid progress. In the evenings she would listen to his stumbling efforts to read her some passage. It was exactly like some child learning to read. The same halts, hesitations, long pauses and false starts. But having at last attained the end he would seem still more like the small boy in his deep sigh of satisfaction, and his face lit up by sense of triumph. Then she in her turn would pat him on the back and he would glow with pride. Thus insensibly, but very effectively, her mental ascendancy over him grew. She was the school-mistress, he the scholar.

But the man in him reawakened sharply one night. They were seated before the fire, the lamp unlit, the big book with its embossed characters on a small table between them. He had, with the usual stammering and straining, and puckering of the facial muscles, just got through his day's task, and was about to sit back when he felt her hand take hold of his. That had happened before when she wished to test his progress by putting his hand on some unfamiliar new page in the Braille book. But this time he felt the touch had in it a different quality, and as he heard her turn the pages he found himself detaining her hand, and somehow thrilling and responding to her touch. For a second this lasted. He felt the soft warmth of the hand. Then hastily she put his own fingers in contact with the page.

"Read me that," she ordered.

But her voice had a break in it and was not at all like that of a governess. And as he bent to read he felt her breath like a caress on his cheek, while a strand of her loosened hair touched his face.

He jumped up. Was she trying to dominate him, to capture and subdue him? To put him in her pocket and make him safe? A suspicion of this flashed to his mind.

"What is it?" she asked, with an appearance of astonishment.

"Not any more to-night. You're--you're pushing me too hard, you know."

"Sorry. Shall I read to you, then?"

"Yes, it's your turn."

She got up, and while lighting the lamp asked:

"What shall I read to-night?"

"'Travels with a Donkey,'" he said, promptly now conscious of the ascendancy she had won, and of how near he had come to making a fool of himself.

"But we have no Stevensons," she said.

"Then for a change let's have the newspaper."

Not for an instant did he believe she would read him anything of the sort. She had never even admitted that she saw a newspaper. So he was correspondingly surprised to hear her presently unfold a paper. But he was amazed when he heard the first words. He had supposed she would choose some innocent political leading article, or something about the present condition of the Iron Industry, or the prospects of the Boot and Shoe Trade. A leader it was, but not one on politics, and she began in a voice not quite in perfect control:

"THE EALING MYSTERY

"That section of the public which has begun to fear that the
present day police methods in the detection of crime are too
stereotyped will have had their fears confirmed by almost
everything that has happened in connection with this case. While
ourselves not entirely in sympathy with the blame now being so
freely showered on New Scotland Yard, we are bound to admit frankly
that it is very disquieting to remember that already two weeks have
elapsed since the date of the tragedy without an arrest having been
effected. We stress this fact not to disparage the Yard, whose
methods are admirable in some respects, but as palpable evidence
of the fact that the new type of criminal who has arisen in our
midst calls not only for new methods but for a new type of officer.
Unfortunately there seems little chance that we shall see this
new type yet. The authorities still adhere to the rule that all
detective officers must first serve as ordinary police constables.
The absurdity of this rule is manifest when we remember that the
ordinary policeman is selected more for his muscular than for his
intellectual endowments."

This was the first time he had heard a word from the outside world about the crime. And it made him realize the thing in a new way. He felt somehow solemnized. When the reading stopped he said nothing for a moment.

"Why did you read me that?" he asked quietly.

"Because you wanted me to."

"No! You knew I've wanted news all along, and you wouldn't say a word. Why do you read this to me now?"

He heard her folding up the paper before she replied.

"To reassure you," she said. "Nothing is known. You'll soon be able to go your way and I mine, safe."

Safe! The word took his ear.

"So," he said, "up till now you have hidden what you read because the news was not good?"

"Partly," she admitted.

"You read things in the paper that made you feel we were not safe?"

"Oh, yes."

Again he felt awed. He could now visualize the forces of the law and all the wide-flung resources of the press combining to hunt them down.

"Well, m'lady," he said finally, "if you keep the newspapers from me after this I'll know what to think."

She came over and sat down. He heard her take up the paper and stir the fire in an abstracted way, as if thinking of something else.

Perhaps they might have parted and gone their different ways after that night but for the gale that began in the early hours of the morning. Probably she had to wait for instructions from the man for whom she was presumably acting. Kinloch certainly meant to go. But the wild weather came and it lasted eight days. Eight days and never an hour in all their number in which Kinloch did not remember the small hand he had held for a moment nor feel the place where her hair had touched his face burn like fire. But he was on his guard once more against her. Knowing from that newspaper how soon they could now part, she had attempted those blandishments to capture him, to make him safe, to ensure his silence, if any doubt about that remained. Perhaps she had even been acting on instructions in what she did--caressing him by order! Under his breath Kinloch swore.

On the fourth day of the storm he said to her:

"You have read me nothing more from the newspaper."

"I haven't seen it. I've to go to"--she checked herself--"a long way to get it." Then she added, "To-morrow I must see one, whatever the weather."

Next day he was waiting for her when she returned.

"Well?" he said.

"There's nothing, not a word of any kind in it."

His ear detected uneasiness in her voice that made him sure she was lying.

"No news is good news. Why are you frightened?" he asked contemptuously.

He expected a denial to his question.

"You--you still feel sure you can't be traced?" she said hesitatingly.

"Quite," he replied, wondering what this meant.

"You think you can't be connected with--with what happened?"

"Don't see how. I left only a walking-stick in that room."

"A walking-stick can be traced to its owner."

"Not this one," Kinloch asserted. "Men who live where I lived don't have their names and addresses engraved on their walking-sticks."

"But the policeman who stopped you that night, he would know you again?"

"Perhaps. But I'm not going to let him see me."

"He couldn't fail to see you were blind."

"It's what he did fail to see. Otherwise he would hardly arrest a blind man for loitering with intent. And you must remember that for the short distance we had to walk he held my arm, leading me. I didn't tell him I was blind; I kept that fact in reserve till we should reach the police station. I owed him one, you see, for he was rather a nasty brute."

"But surely there's some one who will miss you?" she persisted.

Kinloch laughed grimly.

"Not a soul. Not one will have raised a clamour, unless it's Beaumont, the begging-letter chap who lent me the fare to Ealing that night, but he'll say nothing about my disappearance."

"Why not?"

"Why, don't you see, he'll take it that I didn't return so as to escape repaying him. I'm sorry for that: his estimate of human nature is low enough already. Now," he added, "will you tell me the meaning of all this. You have read something in the paper, haven't you?"

"No, there's nothing in the paper about the case; but there's something in it about you."

"About me?" he cried incredulously.

"Listen. It's from the 'Agony' column:

"Alexander David Kinloch, last seen at Ealing on the night of
Monday, 15th of January. Will any person in a position to supply
information as to his present whereabouts kindly communicate with
Messrs. Selwyn & Smith, Devon Chambers, Chancery Lane. Liberal
reward."

He was utterly amazed and bewildered.

"Somebody seems to want you for something," she said doubtfully.

The remark brought a smile in the midst of his perplexity.

"It isn't Beaumont anyhow--he'd have cut his losses long ago."

"The police?" She breathed the question.

"Might be. Read it again."

While she read he noted the peculiar form in which the notice was put. It did not, as was usual in such advertisements, invite Alexander David Kinloch himself to reply. Why not? They either knew that he could not or would not. Then another peculiarity caught his attention: "Last seen in Ealing." Last seen by _whom_? he asked himself. The more he thought of it the less he liked it. Even if the thing did not come from the police it would certainly attract their attention. For the night of Monday, 15th January, on which Alexander David Kinloch was last seen in Ealing, was also the night of the Ealing murder. And that coincidence was certainly one into which they would enquire.

"It looks," he said to her finally, "as if they were after me."

There was no fear in his words. He was simply surprised. He could not imagine how it had been done: how they had managed to connect him with the case.

They were both silent for a time.

"We must stay on," she said. "No one can know where you are."

He then remembered a saying of Beaumont's. There had been a discussion in their doss on the best way to avoid the police. The subject always led to lively and animated arguments there. It was Beaumont's contention, he remembered, that the police owe more to the stupidity of the men wanted than to their own cleverness. "Lie low!" That was Beaumont's advice. "It may take some nerve but it's the correct game. Once they get you on the run that's telling who done it, and then you're as good as lost."

"Yes," he said to her, "it seems best to lie low here for a bit." He listened to the wind raging outside. "If this isn't a safe place there isn't any."

And up to the last day of the storm they lived in peace, seeing no more newspapers. Then the thunder-clap fell. And from a quarter both had overlooked. Mrs. Spedding had just left, and the girl was in her room getting ready to dash away for the latest newspaper. Kinloch was about to emerge from his own room when he heard quick, determined steps coming down the passage. A peremptory knock sounded on the door opposite. Then he heard Mrs. Spedding's voice.

"Miss Stella!"

"Yes?"

"I got a question to ask you. This can't go on no longer. I can't keep it back no more, I can't, I can't!"

The old woman's voice was charged with high excitement, and this time the reply, if there was any, he did not overhear. But he heard the question easily. It came with a rush, loudly, uncontrollably:

"_Be there a man in this house?_"