Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/169

Rh again, stopping in the middle of the black patch to talk. Beale saw one pointing to the ruin and the other shook his head and they both returned to the shed and the door closed behind them.

"There's somebody coming down the main drive," whispered Homo.

They were now near the house and from where they lay had a clear view of fifty yards of the drive.

"It's a brother brush!" said Homo, in a chuckling whisper.

"A what?" asked Beale.

"A parson."

"A parson?"

He focused bis glasses. Some one in clerical attire accompanied by the man whom Beale recognized as the guard of the gate, was walking quickly down the drive. There was no time to be lost. But now for the first time doubts assailed him. His great scheme seemed more fantastic and its difficulties more real. What could be easier than to spring out and intercept the clergyman, but would that save the girl? What force did the house hold? He had to deal with men who would stop short at nothing to achieve their purpose and in particular one man who had not hesitated at murder.

He felt his heart thumping, not at the thought of danger, though danger he knew was all round, but from sheer panic that he himself was about to play an unworthy part. Whatever fears or doubts he may have had suddenly full away from him and he rose to his knees, for not twenty yards away at a window, her hands grasping the bars, her apathetic eyes looking listlessly toward where he crouched, was Oliva Cresswell.

Regardless of danger, he broke cover and ran toward her.

"Miss Cresswell," he called.

She looked at him across the concrete well without astonishment and without interest.

"It is you," she said, with extraordinary calm.

He stood on the brink of the well hesitating. It was too far to leap and he remembered that behind the lilac