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I say, what's all this about your house?" "What about my house?" "Funking, and all that. Sheen, you know. Stanning has just been telling me." "Then he saw him, too!" exclaimed Linton, involuntarily. "Oh, it's true, then? Did he really cut off like that? Stanning said he did, but I wouldn't believe him at first. You aren't going? Good night." So the thing was out.
It struck him that some small upheaval of Sheen's study furniture, coupled with the burning of one or two books, might check to some extent that student's work for the Gotford. And if Sheen could be stopped working for the Gotford, he, Stanning, would romp home. In the matter of brilliance there was no comparison between them. It was Sheen's painful habit of work which made him dangerous.
With the black night above them with the fierce wind howling around them, sweeping across a broad expanse of hidden country, blowing as if it had arisen simultaneously from every point of the compass, and making those wanderers the focus of its ferocity the two women walked through the darkness down the hill upon which Mount Stanning stood, along a mile and a half of flat road, and then up another hill, on the western side of which Audley Court lay in that sheltered valley, which seemed to shut in the old house from all the clamor and hubbub of the everyday world.
"I never thought of Aldershot for you before. It's a jolly good idea. I believe you'd have a chance. And it's all right about Stanning. He's not going down. Haven't you heard?" "I don't hear anything. Why isn't he going down?" "He's knocked up one of his wrists. So he says." "How do you mean so he says?" asked Sheen. "I believe he funks it." "Why? What makes you think that?" "Oh, I don't know.
He strolled into the senior day-room after breakfast. "Any one seen the Sporter this morning?" he inquired. No one had seen it. "The thing hasn't come," said some one. "Good!" said Linton to himself. At this point Stanning strolled into the room. "I'm a witness," he said, in answer to Linton's look of inquiry. "We're doing this thing in style.
"There's a chap breaking out. I saw him shinning down a rope. Let's wait, and see who it is." A moment later somebody ran softly through the gateway and disappeared down the road that led to the town. "Who was it?" said Trevor. "I couldn't see." "I spotted him all right. It was that chap who was marking me today, Stanning. Wonder what he's after. Perhaps he's gone to tar the statue, like O'Hara.
So I sneaked round to the front of the house, got the engine of the car going and started off down the drive. "I had the very devil of a job to get to Stanning. Ever since you've been down here, the Chief has had special men on duty day and night at the police-station there.
"I was going to," said Linton, "but thanks all the same. Come along, Sheen." "Shut that door, Linton," said Stanning from his seat on the table. "All right, Stanning," said Linton. "Anything to oblige. Shall I bring up a chair for you to rest your feet on?" "Forge ahead, Clayton," said Stanning to the president. The president opened the court-martial in unofficial phraseology.
It must be his business to make an opportunity to slip away on the motor-bike to Stanning. Could he leave the meeting for 25 minutes without arousing suspicions? He doubted it; but it must be. There was no other way. And then with a shock that made him cold with fear he remembered Mortimer's motor-car.
The big words sounded strange from my lady's rosy lips; but her newly-adopted wisdom had a certain quaint prettiness about it, which charmed and bewildered her husband. "But you must not go to Mount Stanning, my dear darling," she said, tenderly. "Remember that you are under strict orders to stay in doors until the weather is milder, and the sun shines upon this cruel ice-bound country."
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