Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ agitated face, that some hint of the circumstances must have reached her, and he deliberated as to whether it might not now be more expedient to speak out.

      Hilda’s eyes were fixed upon his wavering face, as if they would wring the secret from him.

      “Where is Nurse Marston?” she reiterated. “Where did she go when she left the Manor? ‘‘

      “I do not know,’’ Sir Arthur said slowly at last. “I wish I did,’’ he added.

      Hilda pushed back the heavy mass of hair from her white forehead.

      “What do you mean?” she asked, bewildered. “Do you know why she left?”

      “What has made you ask me?” he inquired.

      The girl’s face was noticeably paler, her blue eyes looked strained and terrified.

      “When I was lying only partially conscious, I caught words and phrases which, disconnected as they were, made me fancy later on when I was better, and could put things together, that there was something strange—some story about her. Then yesterday Minnie was helping me to dress—Mavis is so kind, she always sends her—and I asked how it was that Nurse Marston went away so suddenly. She turned absolutely ashen white as soon as I mentioned the name and began to tremble all over. Then when I persisted she burst into tears and I could extract nothing from her.’’

      “Minnie’s behaviour has been to me one of the queerest things about the whole affair,’’ Sir Arthur acknowledged. “I cannot for the life of me see how it concerns her. Yet she goes about looking like a ghost and seems to be terrified at the mention of Nurse Marston’s name.’’

      “You have not answered my question—what has become of Nurse Marston?” Hilda reminded him. “You must tell me all, please, Sir Arthur.”

      “All is not much,” the young man responded. “When Nurse Marston left your room on the night of the 6th of last month it was ostensibly to go to an interview with my mother in the small library.”

      “Well?” Hilda said breathlessly, a queer look coming over her face.

      Sir Arthur rose.

      “You are faint,” he said concernedly. “You must have some wine or something. I will ring—”

      Hilda put out her hands and stopped him.

      “No, no,” she whispered fearfully. “It is not that; don’t you see that it is the dread of what I am going to hear? Tell me the worst, please, Sir Arthur, at once. Nothing could be more terrible than some of the fancies I have had. Did she die?”

      “Die? No,” the young man said reassuringly. “Nurse Marston is alive and well, I firmly believe, Miss Hilda. The only thing is that she did not keep an appointment she had made with my mother that night, and we none of us can make out where she did go. In fact I suppose for some reasons of her own she disappeared.”

      “She disappeared!” Hilda breathed slowly, her very lips looking stiff and white. “Do you mean that she was not in the house—that you could not find her?”

      “We could not find her in the house or out of it,” Sir Arthur assented. “From that day, try as we will, we have not been able to discover any tidings of her whereabouts. It is one of the strangest affairs I have ever heard of.”

      A tinge of colour was stealing back to Hilda’s pale face.

      “She must have had some reason for going, Sir Arthur.”

      “As I said just now,” he acquiesced, “but the difficulty is to find out where she did go. She disappeared, and there is the minor puzzle of how she went. Jenkins declares that the doors and windows were all locked and fastened and that it was impossible she should have gone out at them.”

      Hilda’s returning colour paled again.

      “You do not mean that she is still in the house, alive or—dead?” she said as she shivered. “Oh, Sir Arthur—”

      “No, no,” Arthur said reassuringly. “That has been ascertained beyond all doubt. The police have searched every nook and cranny—even your room when you were out of it,” he said. “No. She got out of the house somehow. Either Jenkins overlooked some door or window or some one in the house knows why she went and secured the door after her. One curious feature of the affair is that she apparently took nothing with her but the clothes she stood up in. Nothing that she was known to have with her was missing, and two of the servants spoke to her as she went down and testify that she was not carrying anything. Still, she might have had any amount of things outside.”

      “It is absolutely unaccountable—I never heard anything like it!” Hilda said breathlessly. “Then she really disappeared when she left my room that night?”

      “Yes—up till now,” Sir Arthur said unwillingly. He was beginning to fear the result of the girl’s excessive agitation. “I think we may hear from her any day. To me it seems evident that she went away of her own free will. I feel sure no harm has happened to her.”

      Hilda made no reply, but lay gazing apparently at the fire, her large blue eyes looking bigger than ever by contrast with the unnatural pallor of her face.

      Arthur turned to his Elaine again; there was much that could be done without actually posing Hilda, and he went on with it, casting a glance at the girl’s averted profile every now and then. Presently he saw that great tears were rolling slowly down her face and that she was trembling from head to foot. He threw down his brushes impetuously and crossed over to her.

      “Will you not tell me what is troubling you? It may be that in some way I could help you.”

      Hilda shook her head as she pulled out her handkerchief.

      “You are very kind—you are all of you kindness itself to me; but it seems that no one can help me—no one can clear up the mystery overhanging my life. You can have no idea what it feels like to be a mere waif—without a home, without friends or a name even. Ah, when shall I remember?” She covered her face with her hands.

      Arthur ventured to touch them softly; the sight of the girl’s distress almost unmanned him.

      “Do not,” he besought her eagerly, “please do not! How can you say you have no friends when you are with us—that you are alone in the world when you know that it is the greatest joy to have you here?”

      “Ah, no! I was ungrateful!” Hilda said with a pathetic little attempt at a smile as she dried her eyes. “I ought to have remembered what you have all done for me. You must forgive me; but this disappearance of the nurse is so strange that it seems all a part of the misfortune that pursues me. Do you believe in fate, Sir Arthur?”

      “I can’t say I do,” Sir Arthur said in some embarrassment. He had all the ordinary young Englishman’s distaste for metaphysics, and, greatly as he sympathized with Hilda, he would have infinitely preferred to keep the conversation on less abstract lines.

      “I do most thoroughly. I believe in a fate—a power that may neither be evaded nor defied,” Hilda went on to his complete discomfort; “and I feel sure that this—this woman’s disappearance is all part of the mystery that overhangs me.”

      “Come, come, Miss Hilda, now you are СКАЧАТЬ