The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4608]
"You see," she said sadly, "you do not even pretend to trust me. I don't know why you should. Why are you here? Why are you disguised with all that growth of hair? There is something you are preparing, planning. I know it. I feel it. What is it?"
"I told you once before," he answered, "that the end of this will be Deede Dawson's death or mine. That's what I'm preparing."
"He is very cunning, very clever," she said. "Do you think he suspects you?"
"He suspects every one always," answered Dunn. "I've been trying to get proof to act on. I haven't succeeded. Not yet. Nothing definite. If I can't, I shall act without. That's all."
"If I told him even half of what you just said," she said, looking at him. "What would happen?"
"You see, I trust you," he answered bitterly.
She shook her head, but her eyes were soft and tender as she said:
"It wasn't trust in me made you say all that, it was because you didn't care what happened after."
"No," he said. "But when I see you, I forget everything. Do you love me?"
"Why, I've never even seen you yet," she exclaimed with something like a smile. "I only know you as two eyes over a tangle of hair that I don't believe you ever either brush or comb. Do you know, sometimes I am curious."
He took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the bench under a tree near by. All his doubts and fears and suspicions he set far from him, and remembered nothing save that she was the woman for whom yearned all the depths of his soul as by pre-ordained decree. And she, too, forgot all else save that she had met her man--her man, to her strange, aloof, mysterious, but dominating all her life as though by primal necessity.
When they parted, it was with an agreement to meet again that evening, and in the twilight they spent a halcyon hour together, saying little, feeling much.
It was only when at last she had left him that he remembered all that had passed, that had happened, that he knew, suspected, dreaded, all that he planned and intended and would be soon called upon to put into action.
"She's made me mad," he said to himself, and for a long time he sat there in the darkness, in the stillness of the evening, motionless as the tree in whose shade he sat, plunged in the most profound and strange reverie, from which presently his quick ear, alert and keen even when his mind was deep in thought, caught the light and careful sound of an approaching footstep.
In a moment he was up and gliding through the darkness to meet who was coming, and almost at once a voice hailed him cautiously.
"There you are, Dunn," Deede Dawson said. "I've been looking for you everywhere. Tomorrow or next day we shall be able to strike; everything is ready at last, and I'll tell you now exactly what we are going to do."
"That's good news," said Dunn softly.
"Come this way," Deede Dawson said, and led Dunn through the darkness to the gate that admitted to the Bittermeads grounds from the high road.
Here he paused, and stood for a long time in silence, leaning on the gate and looking out across the road to the common beyond. Close beside him stood Dunn, controlling his impatience as best he could, and wondering if at last the secret springs of all these happenings was to be laid bare to him.
But Deede Dawson seemed in no hurry to begin. For a long time he remained in the same attitude, silent and sombre in the darkness, and when at last he spoke it was to utter a remark that quite took Dunn by surprise.
"What a lovely night," he said in low and pensive tones, very unlike those he generally used. "I remember when I was a boy--that's a long time ago."
Dunn was too surprised by this sudden and very unexpected lapse into sentiment to answer. Deede Dawson went on as if thinking to himself:
"A long time--I've done a lot--seen a lot since then--too much, perhaps--I remember mother told me