The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(196)

                Loveday watched him out of sight down the slope of the hill, then, instead of following him as she had said she would “at a leisurely pace,” she turned her steps in the opposite direction along the village street.

                It was an altogether ideal country village. Neatly-dressed chubby-faced children, now on their way to the schools, dropped quaint little curtsies, or tugged at curly locks as Loveday passed; every cottage looked the picture of cleanliness and trimness, and although so late in the year, the gardens were full of late flowering chrysanthemums and early flowering Christmas roses.

                At the end of the village, Loveday came suddenly into view of a large, handsome, red-brick mansion. It presented a wide frontage to the road, from which it lay back amid extensive pleasure grounds. On the right hand, and a little in the rear of the house, stood what seemed to be large and commodious stables, and immediately adjoining these stables was a low-built, red-brick shed, that had evidently been recently erected.



                             That low-build, red-brick shed excited Loveday’s curiosity.

                “Is this house called North Cape?” she asked of a man, who chanced at that moment to be passing with a pickaxe and shovel.

                The man answered in the affirmative, and Loveday then asked another question: could he tell her what was that small shed so close to the house—it looked like a glorified cowhouse—now what could be its use?

                The man’s face lighted up as if it were a subject on which he liked to be questioned. He explained that that small shed was the engine-house where the electricity that lighted North Cape was made and stored. Then he dwelt with pride upon the fact, as if he held a personal interest in it, that North Cape was the only house, far or near, that was thus lighted.

                “I suppose the wires are carried underground to the house,” said Loveday, looking in vain for signs of them anywhere.

                The man was delighted to go into details on the matter. He had helped to lay those wires, he said: they were two in number, one for supply and one for return, and were laid three feet below ground, in boxes filled with pitch. These wires were switched on to jars in the engine-house, where the electricity was stored, and, after passing underground, entered the family mansion under its flooring at its western end.

                Loveday listened attentively to these details, and then took a minute and leisurely survey of the house and its surroundings. This done, she retraced her steps through the village, pausing, however, at the “Postal and Telegraph Office” to dispatch a telegram to Inspector Gunning.

                It was one to send the Inspector to his cipher-book. It ran as follows:

                “Rely solely on chemist and coal-merchant throughout the day.—L. B.”

                After this, she quickened her pace, and in something over three-quarters of an hour was back again at her hotel.

                There she found more of life stirring than when she had quitted it in the early morning. There was to be a meeting of the “Surrey Stags,” about a couple of miles off, and a good many hunting men were hanging about the entrance to the house, discussing the chances of sport after last night’s frost. Loveday made her way through the throng in leisurely fashion, and not a man but what had keen scrutiny from her sharp eyes. No, there was no cause for suspicion there: they were evidently one and all just what they seemed to be—loud-voiced, hard-riding men, bent on a day’s sport; but—and here Loveday’s eyes traveled beyond the hotel court-yard to the other side of the road—who was that man with a bill-hook hacking at the hedge there—a thin-featured, round-shouldered old fellow, with a bent-about hat? It might be as well not to take it too rashly for granted that her spies had withdrawn, and had left her free to do her work in her own fashion.