The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [5260]
So thinking. I walked on in the direction of the Tudor garden. The place was bathed in a sort of purple half-light, lending it a fairy air of unreality, as though banished sun and rising moon yet disputed for mastery over earth. This idea set me thinking of Colin Camber, of Osiris, whom he had described as a black god, and of Isis, whose silver disk now held undisputed sovereignty of the evening sky.
Resentment of the treatment which I had received at the Guest House still burned hotly within me, but the mystery of it all had taken the keen edge off my wrath, and I think a sort of melancholy was the keynote of my reflections as, descending the steps to the sunken garden, I saw Val Beverley, in a delicate blue gown, coming toward me. She was the spirit of my dreams, and the embodiment of my mood. When she lowered her eyes at my approach, I knew by virtue of a sort of inspiration that she had been avoiding me.
"Miss Beverley," I said, "I have been looking for you all the afternoon."
"Have you? I have been in my room writing letters."
I paced slowly along beside her.
"I wish you would be very frank with me," I said.
She glanced up swiftly, and as swiftly lowered her lashes again.
"Do you think I am not frank?"
"I do think so. I understand why."
"Do you really understand?"
"I think I do. Your woman's intuition has told you that there is something wrong."
"In what way?"
"You are afraid of your thoughts. You can see that Madame de Staemer and Colonel Menendez are deliberately concealing something from Paul Harley, and you don't know where your duty lies. Am I right?"
She met my glance for a moment in a startled way, then: "Yes," she said, softly; "you are quite right. How have you guessed?"
"I have tried very hard to understand you," I replied, "and so perhaps up to a point I have succeeded."
"Oh, Mr. Knox." She suddenly laid her hand upon my arm. "I am oppressed with such a dreadful foreboding, yet I don't know how to explain it to you."
"I understand. I, too, have felt it."
"You have?" She paused, and looked at me eagerly. "Then it is not just morbid imagination on my part. If only I knew what to do, what to believe. Really, I am bewildered. I have just left Madame de Staemer--"
"Yes?" I said, for she had paused in evident doubt.
"Well, she has utterly broken down."
"Broken down?"
"She came to my room and sobbed hysterically for nearly an hour this afternoon."
"But what was the cause of her grief?"
"I simply cannot understand."
"Is it possible that Colonel Menendez is dangerously ill?"
"It may be so, Mr. Knox, but in that event why have they not sent for a physician?"
"True," I murmured; "and no one has been sent for?"
"No one."
"Have you seen Colonel Menendez?"
"Not since lunch-time."
"Have you ever known him to suffer in this way before?"
"Never. It is utterly unaccountable. Certainly during the last few months he has given up riding practically altogether, and in other ways has changed his former habits, but I have never known him to exhibit traces of any real illness."
"Has any medical man attended him?"
"Not that I know of. Oh, there is something uncanny about it all. Whatever should I do if you were not here?"
She had spoken on impulse, and seeing her swift embarrassment:
"Miss Beverley," I said, "I am delighted to know that my company cheers you."
Truth to tell my heart was beating rapidly, and, so selfish is the nature of man, I was more glad to learn that my company was acceptable to Val Beverley than I should have been to have had the riddle of Cray's Folly laid bare before me.
Those sweetly indiscreet words, however, had raised a momentary barrier between us, and we walked on silently to the house, and entered the brightly lighted hall.
The silver peal of a Chinese tubular gong rang out just when we reached the veranda, and as Val Beverley and I walked