Free Fear by Night by Patricia Wentworth Page B

line.
    â€œWhat is it, Mary? What’s frightening you? Won’t you tell me?” She put her arm about the thin shoulders and felt how tense they were. “Poor Mary! Do tell me.”
    The lips were very near to her ear. Again with a grinding difficulty words came from them.
    â€œKeep frae the water or it’ll get ye.” And with that she twisted away and went out into the yard to the cow-shed.
    It was next day that Charles Anstruther came to the shore of the loch and looked across at the island. There didn’t seem to be any way of getting to it. He supposed that there must be some way, since the smoke of a chimney was rising from among the trees and he could see what was obviously a boat-house. He stood there and hallooed, but no one answered him and no one came. It began to look as if visitors were neither expected nor desired, and his suspicions of Mr. James Halliday took a new lease of life. It was a preposterous thing to immure Ann on an inaccessible island. The whole thing was preposterous. He felt a damned fool, standing here hallooing at a piece of perfectly unresponsive scenery. The place was as lonely as if it was back in the twelfth century. At the edge of the loch there was a stone cottage with its roof fallen in and foxgloves growing by the empty hearth, and that and the thread of smoke on the island were the only signs that any human being inhabited, or ever had inhabited, this loneliness.
    He stood there wondering what he should do next. He certainly hadn’t come here just to go away again. It was a long way from London to Loch Dhu. He had reached Oban to find the Emma moored there. It seemed quite easy and practicable to row out to her and ask for Miss Vernon’s address.
    There was a skipper and a boy on board. Not a sociable person the skipper. A few terse words of one syllable appeared to exhaust his conversation. All the same he managed to convey quite clearly that he hadn’t got any address, and that he wouldn’t give it if he had. It wasn’t his business to give addresses; it was his business to wait for Mr. Halliday’s orders and to stay where he was till he got them. At this point he walked away and leaned on the rail with his back to Charles.
    Charles was aware of the grinning boy. He took out a cigarette and lit it, and at the same time allowed the crisp corner of a bank-note to appear. The boy’s grin became fixed. His eyes goggled. Charles unfolded the note, refolded it, put it away, and caught the goggling eye. It seemed to him that it held a hopeful, lingering look. He addressed the skipper’s back.
    â€œIf Mr. Halliday should send you an address, my name is Anstruther and I am at the Marine Hotel.”
    There was no response. Charles had not in fact expected one. He returned to the shore.
    The qúestion was, did the boy know the address, and would he be able to communicate with Charles if he did? His eye had certainly glistened at the sight of the fiver. Well, no address, no fiver.
    Twenty-four hours passed, and it looked as if there was going to be no boy. The front at Oban affords a very beautiful prospect, but prospects were not being of any use to Charles. He walked up and down the long paved stretch and counted the hotels, and wondered why one of the houses had a roof like a bishop’s mitre. These are occupations which pall. There were, besides, shop-windows full of strings of pink, and blue, and white, and purple stones. There was a beautiful Ionic cross of smoky cairngorm. Behind the surface attention that he gave to these things was a growing anxiety about Ann.
    He was looking at the cross, when he was aware of a dark blue shoulder almost touching his own. He moved a little. The shoulder moved too. A quick glance of annoyance showed him the slightly ferrety features of the Emma ’s boy. They wore a half embarrassed, half familiar grin. The pale blue eyes fixed themselves on Charles’ face. Then, with an awkward thrust