your own business," and he walked slowly to the hall door.
I waited until he had left the house, and then I entered the drawing-room.
"I've seen your uncle," I said, "and I don't think he's nearly so ill as he imagines. And Brike made no attempt to remain in the room. I think you're wrong about Brike. How long are you going to stay here?"
"I don't know," she replied. "As long as my uncle wishes, I suppose. I did not wish to come, but my aunt insisted. She is my father's sister, and I live with her. You see, we are very poor, and uncle said something about leaving me all his property."
"Yes, yes, but your aunt ought to have come with you. I've heard there are no women servants in the house—no servants at all but this fellow Brike. And he seems inclined to dislike you. Well, what I really wished to say, Miss Pinson, was that I am always at your service, if you want me. Anyone in the village will bring a message to me."
"It is very, very kind of you," she said, with a smile, "but I can look after myself. It's my uncle I'm worried about. You must send in a doctor."
"Your uncle won't see him. He's one of the 'Peculiar People'—a little sect that is pretty strong about here. It's a matter of religion with him. And I really don't think his life is in any danger. Good-night, Miss Pinson."
We shook hands, and then I said: "Look here, I don't suppose you'll want my help, but that's no reason why we should not meet again? You'll find it very dull here, but you'll go for walks, I expect, and—and, well, I expect I shall meet you in the village somewhere. I am often about in the morning."
She smiled, and I was content to carry away the memory of that smile with me, without any further words. I left the house, and found Brike talking with the chauffeur. There had evidently been no attempt on his part to overhear our conversation.
During the short drive back to the house, I thought a good deal of Audrey Pinson and very little of Jacob Arum. And I felt that I had made rather an absurd exhibition of myself—that I must have appeared to her as rather a stammering, awkward fellow; and I had tried to make a kind of appointment with her.
But I consoled myself with the thought that it was my duty to see her again very soon, and find out just what was going on at Brent Lodge. In spite of all the evidence in, Brike's favor, I mistrusted the man.
I FOUND the Professor and the young doctor playing billiards when I returned to the house, but they put their cues against the wall when I entered the room.
I told them of my "adventure"—that is Saltby's word, not mine—and answered such questions as they cared to ask me. Saltby seemed to be more interested in Audrey Pinson than anything else. He was indignant that any young girl should be forced to stay in a place like that in order to get money from a dying man.
"You may depend upon it," he said, "that her aunt is a pretty rotten sort of woman."
Turton, on the other hand, was very interested in Brike. He was even annoyed that I had not asked him into the library to have a talk with Brike.
"Of course, I have seen him in the village," he said, "but only twice. That's a very remarkable man, Hart, and perhaps a very dangerous man."
Neither of them seemed to take much interest in Jacob Arum, and I think they regarded him as a mere crank—a fellow soured by physical defects, and unwilling to get out of a groove of self-pity and melancholy.
"And, of course," said Saltby, "if he is one of the 'Peculiar People,' he'll just die without calling me in, and very likely Brike and the girl will be punished for his folly."
My guests did not leave me until nearly midnight. And I must confess that I was not sorry to be alone. I sat by the fire in the library—a fire that had sunk to a mere glow of red embers. My strange impression of William Brike as he had entered that room came back to me.
I wondered if there was anything in Turton's rather far-fetched idea that this misshapen fellow was not quite as other men—that he had powers not given to ordinary human beings.
Well, of course, Turton's head was full of that kind of thing. He had marked down the wife of an old man who worked on my estate, and had labeled her as a witch. And she had confessed to a mild kind of witchcraft—the making of love-potions.
But Brike was a very different proposition. If Brike had any superhuman powers, I felt sure that they would be employed solely in the working of evil.
CHAPTER FOUR
A WEEK passed before I met Audrey Pinson in the village, and she told me that she was glad we had met, and that if she hadn't just happened to come across me, she had intended to come up to my house.
Her face was pale, and I could see that she was thoroughly upset.
"I have only seen my uncle once again," she said, "and then only for a few minutes. He was very strange in his manner. He—I don't think he's quite right in his head, Mr. Hart."
"He was all right when I saw him," I replied.
"Well, I am going home tomorrow," she said. "I can't stand the place any longer. My uncle has got it into his head that he is dying, but that God will not allow him to die. And that horrible Brike talks in the same fashion. "Yesterday he made me pray with him—fall on my knees and pray that some miracle might be performed. I—I felt it was all so blasphemous. There are no miracles in these days, and if my uncle is really so ill he ought to have a doctor."
I suggested that perhaps Brike was going to pose as a worker of miracles, and was preparing the stage for an exhibition of his powers.
"I've known a charlatan of a doctor to do something of the same sort," I continued. "He told his patient that he had consumption, but that it might be possible to effect a cure. Well, of course, the wonderful cure was effected, because the patient never had anything the matter with him. Perhaps Brike is at some game like that."
Audrey Pinson laughed, and then her face grew very grave.
"Brike seems in earnest," she said. "I can only think that he is mad, and that my uncle is mad. Oh, there is Brike now!"
I looked down the long, wide street, which runs along the edge of the creek, and saw Arum's servant with a big basket on his arm. And, at that same moment, Professor Turton came out of the cottage close by, and raised his hat.
"That's a very old friend of mine," I said to Miss Pinson. "We'll go and look him up. Then we shall escape from Brike."
And the professor, as though he had heard what I was saying, came quickly toward me. I introduced him to Miss Pinson, and he said:
"I believe it's going to rain hard in a minute. You'd better take shelter."
And when we were inside his cottage, he laughed.
"Shelter from the enemy, eh?" he chuckled.
Audrey Pinson frowned and glanced at me with reproach in her eyes, as though she fancied that I had been gossiping about her affairs.
