He found no difficulty in Hampton about being directed to the Pomeroy place. Everybody in Hampton knew the place, and the instructions he received as to how to go about finding it were explicit, to say nothing of being verbose.
He sent his car forward along the path indicated; it was a narrow path, and ordinarily a car would have trouble there, but Val’s was not that kind of a car. He smiled at the platitude—“you can drive it in places where you could never get in with a big car”—and drove merrily on his way. Nobody had told him that Jessica was down here—but if she was not down here then where was she? He hardly gave that end of it a thought, because all his theory and all his wishes proved conclusively to him that she was here. Wasn’t that glorious sunlight? And the blue haze that surrounded the tops of those distant hills—something splendid about that, wasn’t there? And the woods, and the chattering squirrels, and the leaves beginning to turn such gorgeous colors! Why, of course Jessica was down here.
He thought, idly, about the hidden—or lost—Pomeroy money; but money in itself could not mean much to this modem Crœsus, so the matter was not prominent at the moment in his mind. It gave place quickly to the peculiar glint of the sunlight that he had noticed deep in the coils of Jessica’s hair. He liked that; there was nothing of the brazen chemistry about it that he always noticed in openly blonde hair, even though it was natural blonde; it was like the souls of some women—you had to dig rather deep before you got to it, but what a reward if you were lucky!
He rather liked that idea, not knowing that some of it was by Swinburne out of Browning. And then there was that tiny light in her eyes, away inside, deep, like a hidden pool in a cave where a level ray of the sunset just manages to touch it once, for an instant. Then it is gone—but you remember it for a long time. He believed he had seen the light like that in her eyes once; and he liked to pretend to himself that Teck had never seen it. Which probably, was true.
They saw the car from a distance as he maneuvered it around the many curves before he could draw up near them. But he caught a glimpse of a neat, trim little figure, and one or two flying wisps of hair; it was all he needed to establish her identity. Funny, wasn’t it, that he should know that nobody but Jessica could wear a dress like that—that nobody but Jessica, could have it blown by the wind in just that manner. He wondered whether she could recognize him at that distance—at any distance, no matter how great; he would have been surprised indeed to know that she could.
His car came to a grinding halt at the side of the house, where Jessica stood, waving her hand at him cordially.
“You would think that one could have seclusion, buried deep in Virginia⸺” she began, giving him her hand.
“Not so long as men aren’t like underground fishes, blind,” he smiled. “You can hide your light deep in the woods if you like, Miss Pomeroy, but I’ll make a beaten path to your door.”
Val jumped out of the car and walked with her around to the front entrance of the house.
“It’s just lunch time,” she announced. “You’ll stay, of course.”
Would he stay? He had to smile as he nodded to indicate his complaisance.
Lunch was gay. With the advent of Val the girl was able to cast off the blue restraint that had been on her spirit for the last two days, like a filmy pall that hampered without binding. Teck’s influence on her, she noticed, was at its lowest ebb when this new, strangely interesting man was there. They talked of many things; of a Turner sunset in the museum, Gauguin, Arnold Daly in “Candida,” they discovered a mutual love for big league baseball and for a rattling good detective story, with many murders and the mystery kept up to the last page, automobiles, Chaliapin—and thus by devious and round-about stages they came down to themselves and their business here, and Teck.
“Who told you I was down here?” she asked.
“Why, nobody—I just guessed it. About the money, I suppose,” he ventured. She nodded a little, gravely.
“I met Teck on the train, coming down,” he announced casually, attempting a nonchalance about this man’s name and presence that he by no means felt.
He could see the alarm flash into her eyes. In an instant her gay exterior was stripped from her like the mask it was; weighing heavily on her, always, was the menace of Teck; she forgot it sometimes, for a brief moment, but it came back at a word, a glance, a thought, more somber and more sinister than before.
“Then he’ll be here⸺”
“Any minute, I suppose,” replied Val. “I say, let’s go for a walk—you could show me the grounds, you know. I’ll look them over and tell you where the money is,” he promised.
“That’ll be good,” she said soberly, rising.
She showed him the racetrack, the south end of which was less than fifty yards from the house. They walked around it in silence for some time, admiring the dogwood with its splendor of foliage and fruit, seeing ever the far off hills in front of them, feeling the slight breeze on their faces, and knowing that they two were together and that it was the springtime of life though the year was at the fall.
They said little for a long time, yet they felt close to each other, drawn by an indefinable yet irresistible bond, a community of interests and tastes, perhaps, that neither could put into words—unnecessary as words were. When they did talk it was of trivialities, of light, immaterial things, of the blue sea at Capri or a sunset across Coronado Bay, when you take the ferry from San Diego, of Madame Butterfly and of Elinor Glyn, of adolescence and of age, of the fact that the motion pictures, which could have been an art, had become nothing but an industry, a business for business men, of a prelude of Rachmaninoff’s—not the prelude, but another which both were familiar with and which both decided was the better . . . of sealing wax . . . of cabbages . . . of what young people talk when they foregather and their blood runs warm and strong. . . .
The sun was going down rapidly when they suddenly discovered that they had been walking for several hours; that day was almost over. At this time they were near the bare old Pomeroy house.
“That’s the old house—where nobody lives, isn’t it?” asked Val.
She nodded. “They say it’s haunted,” she said.
“That’s fine,” he replied. Why not a haunted house, along with all the other paraphernalia of mystery—the investiture of romance. “That’s bully,” he said again. They regarded it closely from where they stood, and in the dying light they could very easily have brought themselves to the persuasion that beings not of this earth walked the place. Why not?
It was gaunt and bare, with a lone stone chimney that stood up against the dying light like a great skinny finger; there was not a whole pane of glass in the windows—the storms had done their work well; all about it was an air of loneliness, of an aloofness from the world, of a thing which was different, of something that was a connecting link between the past and the present and yet not of either; there was about the house an aura of supernatural things, of knowledge of the shapes that go by night. It was just a tumble down old house that was dying from lack of attention and repair, yet it seemed more than that to the young couple as they stood there in the waning light and regarded it closely.
“You couldn’t get a negro to go as close as this to the place for all the money in the world,” she said.
“I guess many white men wouldn’t care to be hanging around it very much, either,” he added. “Especially at night. I don’t know what it is, there’s something about the old place . . . I know it’s foolish, of course, but . . .”
She nodded in understanding. “I know. That’s just the way I feel. Let’s go back—Elizabeth’ll think something’s happened to me.” They turned towards the little house.
They were silent for a while after that, each busy with thoughts that found no outward expression. It was Val that broke the silence at last.
“If I were old Peter Pomeroy,” he said slowly, “and I had a lot of money to hide—now, where would I put it?” he asked himself, though he was speaking aloud.
She looked at him in comprehension. “Perhaps,” she said, “in the old house⸺”
He assented. “That’s just it. It seems to me that I’d put it in a place where nobody was likely to go near it. That’s the old house, of course. No chance of anyone going near it there—to find the money by accident. Anybody who finds it there will have gone there purposely—and, of course, only you and Teck are supposed to know anything about it. I rather think we’d better explore the old place.”
“To-morrow,” she replied. “I’ll be glad to have you come along with me⸺”
“To-morrow Teck will be there,” he said, and she stared at him peculiarly.
“Teck?”
“Teck,” he repeated. He can reason these things out as easily as we can—and I don’t believe he’s going to waste any time. He’s got somebody with him—a member of his gang, I think—I noticed them together on the boat from Cape Charles; you can rest assured that he’ll be there to-morrow, unless he has better information where the money is; and I don’t think he has, though he has the books. . . .” this last was an afterthought. Val was beginning to be sure that the secret of the hiding place lay in the books.
“We’ll go with him, if he goes,” announced Jessica.
“Maybe,” assented Val doubtfully. They walked in silence for a moment or two then, turning this phase of it over in their minds. If Teck was to be there to-morrow—and that seemed probable⸺
“Why not go to-night?” asked Val suddenly, carrying out this reasoning.
“To-night—to that house?” she asked slowly. Then, “Why not? We can forestall him that way⸺”
“All right, it’s a go,” said Val. “I’m going back to the hotel to see my man—I’ll bring him back with me—I’ll get out about eight-thirty. Is that all right?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’ll be fine.”
They were almost at the house now.
“Well, so long for now,” said Val, running for his car. He waved his hand at her.
“So long,” she waved back at him. He started the car and was off.
Before jerking out of sight around a curve he looked back once. At the front door stood Jessica, gazing after him—next to her stood the giant, nonchalant, careless figure of Ignace Teck.