"If you will turn to the left on leaving your front gate," the voice resumed, "and follow the road, a messenger will meet you and take you to the lady.""But..." Desmond began.
"Will you come at once? And alone?" the nasal voice broke in sharply.
Desmond took a moment's thought. To go was to disobey orders; not to go was to risk losing a second chance of meeting Nur-el-Din.
To telephone to 700 Stanning for assistance would bring a hornets' nest about his ears; yet he might only see the dancer if he went alone. He lost no time in ****** up his mind. The Chief must allow him latitude for meeting emergencies of this kind. He would go.
"I will come at once," said Desmond.
"Good," said the voice and the communication ceased.
Somewhere aloft there sits a sweet little cherub whose especial job is to look after the headstrong. It was doubtless this emissary of providence that leant down from his celestial seat and whispered in Desmond's ear that it would be delightful to walk out across the fen on this sunny afternoon. Desmond was in the act of debating whether he would not take the motor-bike, but the cherub's winning way clinched it and he plumped for walking.
In the hall he met the housekeeper who told him she wanted to go into Stanning to do some shopping that afternoon. Desmond told her that he himself was going out and would not be back for tea.
Then, picking a stout blackthorn out of the hallstand, he strode down the drive and out into the road.
It was still beautifully fine, but already the golden sunshine was waning and there were little wisps and curls of mist stealing low along the fields. Desmond turned to the left, on leaving the Mill House, as he was bid and saw the road running like a khaki ribbon before him into the misty distance.
Swinging his stick, he strode on rapidly. The road was neglected, broken and flinty and very soft. After he had gone about a mile it narrowed to pursue its way between two broad ditches lined with pollard willows and brimful of brown peaty water. By this time he judged, from his recollection of the map, that he must be on Morstead Fen. An interminable waste of sodden, emerald green fields, intersected by ditches, stretched away on either hand.
He had walked for half an hour when he made out in the distance a clump of trees standing apart and seemingly in the middle of the fields. Then in the foreground he descried a gate. A figure was standing by it.
As he approached the gate he saw it was a small boy. On remarking the stranger, the urchin opened the gate and without looking to right or left led off down the road towards the clump of trees:
Desmond followed at his leisure.
As they neared the trees, the low red roof of a house detached itself. By this time the sun was sinking in a smear of red across a delicately tinted sky. Its dying rays held some glittering object high up on the side of the house.
At first Desmond thought it was a window, but presently the light went out, kindled again and once more vanished. It was too small for a window, Desmond decided, and then, turning the matter over in his mind, as observant people are accustomed to do even with trifles, he suddenly realized that the light he had seen was the reflection of the sun on a telescope or glasses.
They were now within a few hundred yards of the house. The road had made a right angle turn to the left, but the diminutive guide had quitted it and struck out along a very muddy cart track.
Shading his eyes, Desmond gazed at the house and presently got a glimpse of a figure at a window surveying the road through a pair of field glasses. Even as he looked, the figure bobbed down and did not reappear.
"They want to be sure I'm alone," thought Desmond, and congratulated himself on having had the strength of mind to break his orders.
The cart-track led up to a little bridge over a ditch. By the bridge stood a tall pole, on the top of which was a blue and gold painted sign-board inscribed, "The Dyke Inn by J. Rass." The urchin led him across the bridge and up to the door of the inn.
An undersized, yellow-faced man, wearing neither collar nor tie, came to the door as they approached. Although of short stature, he was immensely broad with singularly long arms. Altogether he had something of the figure of a gorilla, Desmond thought on looking at him.
The man put a finger up and touched his forelock.
"Madame Le Bon is upstairs waiting for you!" he said in a nasal voice which Desmond recognized as that he had heard on the telephone. "Please to follow me!"He led the way across a long low tap-room through a door and past the open trap-door of a cellar to a staircase. On the first landing, lit by a window looking out on a dreary expanse of fen, he halted Desmond.
"That's her room," he said, pointing to a door opposite the head of the staircase, half a dozen steps up, and so saying, the yellow-faced man walked quickly downstairs and left him. Desmond heard his feet echo on the staircase and the door of the tap-room slam.
He hesitated a moment. What if this were a trap? Suppose Mortimer, growing suspicious, had made use of Nur-el-Din to lure him to an ambush in this lonely place? Why the devil hadn't he brought a revolver with him?
Then Desmond's Irish blood came to his rescue. He gave his head a little shake, took a firm hold of his stick which was a stoutish sort of cudgel and striding boldly up to the door indicated, tapped.
"Entrez!" said a pretty voice that made Desmond's heart flutter.