"John Clive - what on earth - !" Dunn muttered, his bewilderment increasing, and the next moment he understood and had some difficulty in preventing himself from bursting out laughing as there reached him the unmistakable sound of a kiss lightly blown through the air.
Clive was sending a kiss through the night towards Ella's room and his nocturnal visit was nothing more than the whim of a love-sick youth.
With Dunn, his first amusement gave way almost at once to an extreme annoyance.
For, in the first place, these proceedings seemed to him exceedingly impertinent, for what possible right did Clive imagine he had to come playing the fool like this, sighing in the dark and blowing kisses like a baby to its mammy?
And secondly, unless he were greatly mistaken, John Clive might just as sensibly and safely have dropped overboard from a ship in mid-Atlantic for a swim as come to indulge his sentimentalities in the Bittermeads garden at night.
"You silly ass!" he said in a voice that was very low, but very distinct and very full of an extreme disgust and anger.
Clive fairly leaped in the air with his surprise, and turned and made a sudden dash at the spot whence Dunn's voice had come, but where Dunn no longer was.
"What the blazes -?" he began, spluttering in ineffectual rage.
"You - you -!"
"You silly ass!" Dunn repeated, no less emphatically than before.
Clive made another rush that a somewhat prickly bush very effectually stopped.
"You - who are you - where - what - how dare you?" he gasped as he picked himself up and tried to disentangle himself from the prickles.
"Don't make such a row," said Dunn from a new direction."Do you want to raise the whole neighbourhood? Haven't you played the fool enough? If you want to commit suicide, why can't you cut your throat quietly and decently at home, instead of coming alone to the garden at Bittermeads at night?"There was a note of sombre and intense conviction in his voice that penetrated even the excited mind of the raging Clive.
"What do you mean?" he asked, and then:
"Who are you?"
"Never mind who I am," answered Dunn."And I mean just what I say.
You might as well commit suicide out of hand as come fooling about here alone at night.""You're crazy, you're talking rubbish!" Clive exclaimed.
"I'm neither crazy nor talking rubbish," answered Dunn."But if you persist in making such a row I shall take myself off and leave you to see the thing through by yourself and get yourself knocked on the head any way you like best.""Oh, I'm beginning to understand," said Clive."I suppose you're one of my poaching friends - are you? Look here, if you know who it was who attacked me the other night you can earn fifty pounds any time you like.""Your poaching friends, as you call them," answered Dunn, " are most likely only anxious to keep out of your way.This has nothing to do with them.""Well, come nearer and let me see you," Clive said."You needn't be afraid.You can't expect me to take any notice of some one Ican't see, talking rubbish in the dark."
"I don't much care whether you take any notice or not," answered Dunn."You can go your own silly way if you like, it's nothing to me.I've warned you, and if you care to listen I'll make my warning a little clearer.And one thing I will tell you - one man already has left this house hidden in a packing-case with a bullet through his brain, and I will ask you a question: 'How did your father die?'""He was killed in a motor-car accident," answered Clive hesitatingly, as though not certain whether to continue this strange and puzzling conversation or break it off.
