Five bells rang clear from the yacht, overmastering the thirty-six variations.

Audrey thought: 

“So he’d never agree, wouldn’t he, Madame Piriac!”

CHAPTER XXXVII

AFLOAT

That night, which was an unusually dark night for the time of year, Audrey left the yacht, alone, to fetch Jane Foley.  She had made a provisional plan with Jane and Aguilar, and the arrangement with Mr. Gilman had been of the simplest, necessitating nothing save a brief order from the owner to the woman whom Audrey could always amuse Mr. Gilman by calling the “parlourmaid,” but who was more commonly known as the stewardess.  This young married creature had prepared a cabin.  For the rest little had been said.  The understanding between Mr. Gilman and Audrey was that Mrs. Moncreiff should continue to exist, and that not a word as to the arrival of Jane Foley should escape either of them until the deed was accomplished.  It is true that Madame Piriac knew of the probable imminence of the affair, but Madame Piriac was discretion elegantly attired, and from the moment they had left Flank Hall together she had been wise enough not even to mention Jane Foley to Audrey.  Madame Piriac appreciated the value of ignorance in a questionable crisis.  Mr. Gilman had been less guarded.  Indeed he had shown a tendency to discuss the coming adventure with Audrey in remote corners—­a tendency which had to be discouraged because it gave to both of them a too obvious air of being tremendous conspirators, Also Audrey had had to dissuade him from accompanying her to the Hall.  He had rather conventional ideas about women being abroad alone after dark, and he abandoned them with difficulty even now.

As there were no street lamps alight in summer in the village of Moze, Audrey had no fear of being recognised; moreover, recognition by her former fellow-citizens could now have no sinister importance; she did not much care who recognised her.  The principal gates of Flank Hall were slightly ajar, as arranged with Aguilar, and she passed with a suddenly aroused heart up the drive towards the front entrance of the house.  In spite of herself she could not get rid of an absurd fear that either Mr. Hurley or Inspector Keeble or both would jump out of the dark bushes and slip handcuffs upon her wrists.  And the baffling invisibility of the sky further affected her nerves.  There ought to have been a lamp in the front hall, but no ray showed through the eighteenth century fanlight over the door.  She rang the bell cautiously.  She heard the distant ting.  Aguilar, according to the plan, ought to have opened; but he did not open; nobody opened.  She was instantly sure that she knew what had happened.  Mr. Hurley had been to Frinton and ascertained that the Spatt story as to the tank-room was an invention, and had returned with a search warrant and some tools.  But in another ten seconds she was equally sure that nothing of the sort could have happened, for it was an axiom with her that Aguilar’s masterly lying, based on masterly listening at an attic door, had convinced Mr. Hurley of the truth of the story about the tank-room.