“Will you tell me something?  Do you know any one who talks in a very peculiar shrill high voice?”

She did not answer, and, after a moment’s hesitation, went back into her room and closed the door behind her.

He went on up to his attic with the feeling that she could have answered if she had wished to, and lay down in a troubled and dispirited mood.

For he was sure now that Ella mistrusted him and would give him no assistance, and that weighed upon him greatly, as did also his conviction that what it behoved him above all else to know—­the identity of the man who, in this affair, stood behind Deede Dawson and made use of his fierce and fatal energies—­he had had it in his power to discover and had failed to make use of the opportunity.

“I would rather know that,” he said to himself, “than save a dozen Clives ten times over.”  Though again it occurred to him that on this point Clive might hold another opinion.  “If he hadn’t made such a blundering row I might have got to know who Deede Dawson’s visitor was.  I must try to get a word with Clive tomorrow by hook or crook, though I daresay Deede Dawson will be very much on the lookout.”

However, next morning Deede Dawson not only made no reference to the events of the night, but had out the car and went off immediately after breakfast without saying when he would be back.

As soon after his departure as possible, Dunn also set out and took his way through the woods towards Ramsdon Place on the look-out for an opportunity to speak to Clive unobserved.

He thought it most likely that Clive would be drawn towards the vicinity of Bittermeads by the double fascination of curiosity and fear, and he supposed that if he waited and watched in the woods he would be sure presently to see him.

But though he remained for long hidden at a spot whence he could command the road to Bittermeads from Ramsdon Place, he saw nothing at all of Clive, and the sunny lazy morning was well advanced when he was startled by the sound of a gun shot some distance away.

“A keeper shooting rabbits, I suppose,” he thought, looking round just in time to see Ella running through the wood from the direction whence the sound of the shot had seemed to come, and then vanish again with a quick look behind her into the heart of a close-growing spinney.

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE WOOD

There had been an air of haste, almost of furtiveness, about this swift appearance and more swift vanishing of Ella, that made Dunn ask himself uneasily what errand she could have been on.

He hesitated for a moment, half expecting to see her return again, or that there would be some other development, but he heard and saw nothing.

He caught no further glimpse of Ella, whom the green depths of the spinney hid well; and he heard no more shots.