“There’s things more dangerous,” Dunn remarked.

“Oh, quite true,” answered Deede Dawson.  “Well, did you enjoy your visit to Wreste Abbey?”

“No,” answered Dunn roughly.  “I didn’t see Rupert Dunsmore, and it wouldn’t have been any good if I had with all those people about.”

“You’re too impatient,” Deede Dawson smiled.  “I’m getting everything ready; you can’t properly expect to win a game in a dozen moves.  You must develop your pieces properly and have all ready before you start your attack.  As soon as I’m ready—­why, I’ll act—­and you’ll have to do the rest.”

“I see,” said Dunn thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XXI

DOUBTS AND FEARS

In point of fact Dunn had not been asleep when Deede Dawson came listening at his door.  Of late he had slept little and that little had been much disturbed by evil, haunting dreams in which perpetually he saw his dead friend, Charley Wright, and dead John Clive always together, while behind them floated the pale and lovely face of Ella, at whom the two dead men looked and whispered to each other.

In the day such thoughts troubled him less, for when he was under the influence of Ella’s gentle presence, and when he could watch her clear and candid eyes, he found all doubt and suspicion melting away like snow beneath warm sunshine.

But in the silence of the night they returned, returned very dreadfully, so dreadfully that often as he lay awake in the darkness beads of sweat stood upon his forehead and he would drive his great hands one against the other in his passionate effort to still the thoughts that tormented him.  Then, in the morning again, the sound of Ella’s voice, the merest glimpse of her grave and gracious personality, would bring back once more his instinctive belief in her.

The morning after Deede Dawson had paid his visit to the attic there was news, however, that disturbed him greatly, for Mrs. Barker, the charwoman who came each morning to Bittermeads, told them that two men in the village—­notorious poachers—­had been arrested by the police on a charge of being concerned in Mr. Clive’s death.

The news was a great shock to Dunn, for, knowing as he thought he did, that the police were working on an entirely wrong idea, he had not supposed they would ever find themselves able to make any arrest.  As a matter of fact, these arrests they had made were the result of desperation on the part of the police, who unable to discover anything and entirely absorbed by their preconceived idea that the crime was the work of poachers, had arrested men they knew were poachers in the vague hope of somehow discovering something or of somehow getting hold of some useful clue.

But that Dunn did not know, and feared unlucky chance or undesigned coincidence must have appeared to suggest the guilt of the men and that they were really in actual danger of trial and conviction.  He had, too, received that morning, through the secret means of communication he kept open with an agent in London, conclusive proof that at the moment of Clive’s death Deede Dawson was in town on business that seemed obscure enough, but none the less in town, and therefore undoubtedly innocent of the actual perpetration of the murder.