The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 10

“Go ahead, then,” said Deede Dawson, and the great car with its terrible burden shot away into the night.

For a moment or two Deede Dawson stood looking after it, and then he turned and walked slowly towards the house, and mechanically Dunn followed, the sole thought in his mind, the one idea of which he was conscious, that of Ella driving away into the darkness with the dead body of his murdered friend in the car behind her.

Did she—know? he asked himself. Or was she ignorant of what it was she had with her?

It seemed to him that that question, hammering itself so awfully upon his mind and clamouring for an answer, must soon send him mad.

And still before him floated perpetually a picture of long, dark, lonely roads, of a rushing motor-car driven by a lovely girl, of the awful thing hidden in the car behind her. Dully he recognized that the opportunity for which he had watched and waited so patiently had come and gone a dozen times, for Deede Dawson had now quite relaxed his former wary care.

It was as though he supposed all danger over, as though in the reaction after an enormous strain he could think of nothing but the immediate relief. He hardly gave a single glance at Dunn, whose faintest movement before had never escaped him. He had even put his pistol back in his pocket, and at almost any moment Dunn, with his unusual strength and agility, could have seized and mastered him.

But for such an enterprise Dunn had no longer any spirit, for all his mind was taken up by that one picture so clear in his thoughts of Ella in her great car driving the dead man through the night. “She must know,” he said to himself. “She must, or she would never have gone off like that at that time—she can't know, it's impossible, or she would never have dared.”

And again it seemed to him that this doubt was driving him mad.

Deede Dawson entered the house and got a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda-water and mixed himself a drink. For the first time since Ella's departure he seemed to remember Dunn's presence.

“Oh, there you are,” he said.

Dunn did not answer. He stood moodily on the threshold, wondering why he did not rush upon the other, and with his knee upon his chest, his hands about his throat, force him to answer the question that was still whispering, shouting, screaming itself into his ears:

“Does she know what it is she drives with her on that big car through the black and lonely night?”

“Like a drink?” asked Deede Dawson.

Dunn shook his head, and it came to him that he did not attack Deede Dawson and force the truth from him because he dared not, because he was afraid, because he feared what the answer might be.

“There's a tool-shed at the bottom of the garden,” Deede Dawson said to him. “You can sleep there, tonight. You'll find some sacks you can make a bed of.”

Without a word in reply Dunn turned and stumbled away. He felt very tired—physically exhausted—and the idea of a bed, even of sacks in an outhouse, became all at once extraordinarily attractive.

He found the place without difficulty, and, making a pile of the sacks, flung himself down on them and was asleep almost at once. But almost as promptly he awoke again, for he had dreamed of Ella driving her car through the night towards some strange peril from which in his dream he was trying frantically and ineffectively to save her when he awoke.

So it was all through the night.

His utter and complete exhaustion compelled him to sleep, and every time some fresh, fantastic dream in which Ella and the huge motor-car and the dreadful burden she had with her always figured, awoke him with a fresh start.

But towards morning he fell into a heavy sleep from which presently he awoke to find it broad daylight and Deede Dawson standing on the threshold of the shed with his perpetually smiling lips and his cold, unsmiling eyes.

“Well, my man; had a good sleep?” he said.

“I was tired,” Dunn answered.

“Yes, we had a busy night,” agreed Deede Dawson. “I slept well, too. I've been wondering what to do with you. Of course, I ought to hand you over to the police, and it's rather a risk taking on a man of your character, but I've decided to give you a chance. Probably you'll misuse it. But I'll give you an opportunity as gardener and chauffeur here. You can drive a car, you say?”

Dunn nodded.

“That's all right,” said Deede Dawson.

“You shall have your board and lodging, and I'll get you some decent clothes instead of those rags; and if you prove satisfactory and make yourself useful you'll find I can pay well. There will be plenty of chances for you to make a little money—if you know how to take them.”

“When it's money,” growled Dunn, “you give me the chance, and see.”

“I think,” added Deede Dawson, “I think it might improve your looks if you shaved.”

Dunn passed his hand over the tangle of hair that hid his features so effectually.

“What for?” he asked.

“Oh, well: please yourself,” answered Deede Dawson; “I don't know that it matters, and perhaps you have reasons of your own for preferring a beard. Come on up to the house now and I'll tell Mrs. Dawson to give you some breakfast. And you might as well have a wash, too, perhaps—unless you object to that as well as to shaving.”

Dunn rose without answering, made his toilet by shaking off some of the dust that clung to him, and followed his new employer out of the tool-house into the open air.

It was a fresh and lovely morning, and coming towards them down one of the garden paths was Ella, looking as fresh and lovely as the morning in a dainty cotton frock with lace at her throat and wrists.

That she could possibly have spent the night tearing across country in a powerful car conveying a dead man to an unknown destination, appeared to Dunn a clean impossibility, and for a moment he almost supposed he had been mistaken in thinking he recognized her voice.

But he knew he had not, that he had made no mistake, that it had indeed been Ella he had seen dash away into the darkness on her strange and terrible errand.

“Oh, my daughter,” said Deede Dawson carelessly, noticing Dunn's surprise. “Oh, yes, she's back—you didn't expect to see her this morning. Well, Ella, Dunn's surprised to see you back so soon, aren't you, Dunn?”

Dunn did not answer, for a kind of vertigo of horror had come upon him, and for a moment all things revolved about him in a whirling circle wherein the one fixed point was Ella's gentle lovely face that sometimes, he thought, had a small round hole with blue edges in the very centre of the forehead, above the nose.

It was her voice, clear and a little loud, that called him back to himself.

“He's not well,” she was saying. “He's going to faint.”

“I'm all right,” he muttered. “It was nothing, nothing, it's only that I've had nothing to eat for so long.”

“Oh, poor man!” exclaimed Ella.

“Come up to the house,” Deede Dawson said.

“Breakfast's ready,” Ella said. “Mother told me to find you.”

“Has the woman come yet?” Deede Dawson asked. “If she has, you might tell her to give Dunn some breakfast. I've just been telling him I'm willing to give him another chance and to take him on as gardener and chauffeur, so you can keep an eye on him and see if he works well.”

Ella was silent for a moment, but her expression was grave and a little puzzled as though she did not quite understand this and wondered what it meant, and when she looked up at her stepfather, Dunn was certain there was both distrust and suspicion in her manner.

“I suppose,” she said then, “last night seemed to you a good recommendation?” As she spoke she glanced at her wrists where the bruises still showed, and Deede Dawson's smile broadened.

“One should always be ready to give another chance to a poor fellow who's down,” he said. “He may run straight now he's got an opportunity. I told him he had better shave, but he seems to think a beard suits him best. What do you say?”

“Breakfast's waiting,” Ella answered, turning away without taking any notice of the question.

“I'll go in then,” said Deede Dawson. “You might show Dunn the way to the kitchen—his name's Robert Dunn, by the way—and tell Mrs. Barker to give him something to eat.”

“I should think he could find his way there himself,” Ella remarked.

But though she made this protest, she obeyed at once, for though she used a considerable liberty of speech to her stepfather, it was none the less evident that she was very much afraid of him and would not be very likely to disobey him or oppose him directly.

“This way,” she said to Dunn, and walked on along a path that led to the back of the house. Once she stopped and looked back. She smiled slightly and disdainfully as she did so, and Dunn saw that she was looking at a clump of small bushes near where they had been standing.

He guessed at once that she believed Deede Dawson to be behind those bushes watching them, and when she glanced at him he understood that she wished him to know it also.

He said nothing, though a faint movement visible in the bushes convinced him that her suspicions, if, indeed, she had them, were well-founded, and they walked on in silence, Ella a little ahead, and Dunn a step or two behind.

The garden was a large one, and had at one time been well cultivated, but now it was neglected and overgrown. It struck Dunn that if he was to be the gardener here he would certainly not find himself short of work, and Ella, without looking round, said to him over her shoulder:

“Do you know anything about gardening?”

“A little, miss,” he answered.

“You needn't call me 'miss,'” she observed. “When a man has tied a girl to a chair I think he may regard himself as on terms of some familiarity with her.”

“What must I call you?” he asked, and his words bore to himself a double meaning, for, indeed, what name was it by which he ought to call her?

But she seemed to notice nothing as she answered “My name is Cayley—Ella Cayley. You can call me Miss Cayley. Do you know anything of motoring?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Though I never cared much for motoring at night.”

She gave him a quick glance, but said no more, and they came almost immediately to the back door.

Ella opened it and entered, nodding to him to follow, and crossing a narrow, stone-floored passage, she entered the kitchen where a tall gaunt elderly woman in a black bonnet and a course apron was at work.

“This is Dunn, Mrs. Barker,” she called, raising her voice. “He is the new gardener. Will you give him some breakfast, please?” She added to Dunn:

“When you've finished, you can go to the garage and wash the car, and when you speak to Mrs. Barker you must shout. She is quite deaf, that is why my stepfather engaged her, because he was sorry for her and wanted to give her a chance, you