Rachel wondered whether she did. The words seemed to float round in her mind without meaning very much. She said vaguely,

“My father was sorry about the quarrel. He found oil after they broke the partnership. He wanted your father to have his share. It doesn’t matter now, does it? I’ll tell you some time.”

He said, “No, it doesn’t matter. But there are other things that matter very much. Look here, could we pull up and talk, becuase there’s plenty to talk about.”

It came to Rachel then with an absolute shock that she had forgotten Caroline. But she remembered her now. Caroline, and her fear for Caroline-they both came back to her together. She said only just above her breath,

“No, no, we mustn’t stop. I must find Caroline. I don’t know what is happening, and I’m-frightened-”

He put his hand down over hers again, but this time the clasp was gentle as well as strong.

“Don’t be frightened, honey-it’ll be all right.”

“It’s like a bad dream.”

“Well, you’re going to wake right up. Like to tell me about it?”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Perhaps I know some already. The little woman in brown, that Miss Silver-what is she, a detective?-she told me some.”

He felt her start.

“But-but when-you’ve never met-”

He laughed.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You went up to put on your hat, your cousin went after you, and she came down.”

Rachel stared at him.

“But there wasn’t time.”

“You can say a lot in five minutes if you don’t waste time handing bouquets. She got off the mark quicker than anyone I’ve ever known, and first I reckoned she was crazy, and then I reckoned she wasn’t. She’s got a way of looking at you that makes you take notice of what she says, and the first thing she said to me gave me one of the worst jolts I’ve ever had. She said you didn’t fall over that cliff last night. She said you were pushed. What have you got to say about that?”

She drew a long sighing breath.

“It’s true.”

“Any guess who did it?”

The color rushed into her cheeks. She dragged her hand away and leaned back into the corner of the car.

“That’s the horrible part of it-it might be anyone. It’s been like that every time, only of course some of the things were just Louisa trying to frighten me.”

“Rachel-what are you saying?” He brought the car to a standstill and turned to face her. “We’ve got to have this out. What is all this? You know, I can’t drive a car and listen to this sort of thing. You’ve got to tell me.”

Rachel told him with simplicity and relief.

The money. That was the first thing-the burden of the money-the responsibility which she was not allowed to pass on or to share.

The family-always there. “And it’s nice to have a family, but they oughtn’t to be always there. One ought to have a life of one’s own. I didn’t see that in time, but I see it now. You can’t live all those other people’s lives, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve drained myself, but I’ve never satisfied them. I don’t mean just the money, but because of the money they’ve looked to me, depended on me. They’ve expected more and more. It’s all been wrong, and it’s kept on getting worse-like something out of focus. And then this last week it’s been a nightmare. When I couldn’t bear it any longer I went to see Miss Silver. She helped someone I know, so I went to her. She came down here yesterday evening, and she found out right away that Louisa had been playing tricks on me. She really is clever, you know.”

“Why was Louisa playing tricks, and what sort of tricks did she play?”

He saw her color fade and her eyes darken. Her voice went to an uneven whisper.

“She wanted to make believe that someone was- attempting my life.”

“And how did she do that?”

“A slippery step-my curtains on fire-chocolates doctored with ammoniated quinine-snakes in my bed-”

“What?”

“Two of Mr. Tollage’s adders. Noisy killed them. But Louie didn’t mean to hurt me-she only wanted to make me believe that someone else was trying to hurt me. Gale, she swears that there was another slippery step before she polished hers, and that one of the chocolates had been tampered with before she touched them. She swears someone was really trying to kill me. And, Gale, she was right. It wasn’t Louie who pushed me over the cliff.”

She saw his face hard with anger.

“How do you know that? She was there, wasn’t she- came along with the lantern just as soon as I’d pulled you up.”

She shook her head.

“She loves me. It couldn’t be Louie any more than it could be you.”

He nodded slowly.

“Yes-I was there too-wasn’t I? Sure it couldn’t have been me?”

Their eyes met. Time stayed. Then she said,

“You see. That’s all I’ve got-the people I love. That’s something secure. When that is shaken I can’t bear it. Outside that it’s all suspicion-no one trusting anyone else-Louie trying to make me believe it was Caroline, or Richard, or both of them-Cosmo trying to make me believe it was you-and I, God forgive me, only too ready to believe it might be Maurice or Ernest, because, you see, I don’t love them.”

He put the Wadlows aside with an odd sweeping gesture.

“So Cosmo thinks it was me. I’d like you to tell me why.”

He caught the flicker of a smile.

“Revenge of course-because of your father and my father-the real full-dress, old-fashioned feud-”

She had the feeling of having stepped over the edge of an unseen drop. She got a quite unmistakable jolt. It stopped her. She saw his face harden. There was as sudden an effect of change as if she had looked from him to his presentment cut in stone. The light was bad. It might have been an illusion, for before she could draw a breath it was gone and he was saying.

“So I pushed you over. But why did I pull you up again?”

She said rather breathlessly, “Because you saw Louisa’s lantern of course. Or you might have had a brain-storm and then felt sorry about it.”

“I see-”

He looked up and down the road. Three young men on bicycles flitted noiselessly by, bodies stooped, heads down, hands gripping. Gloom swallowed them.

Gale Brandon said roughly.

“That’s enough about that. I haven’t kissed you yet.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Rachel drew away at last. She had not known that she could feel like this-to be two people and yet one, to have a double strength and a double joy, to be the giver of joy and the giver of love to someone whose only thought was to give and give again. A line of Browning’s came to her and stayed: “Men have died, trying to find this place which we have found.” She felt the triumph of that, and its disregard of death.

She wrenched herself as from a dream, putting him away with her two hands.

“Gale, we must go on-we must.”

He said reflectively, “I don’t know what you want to go on for, honey.”

She shook his arm.

“I’ve got to find Caroline.”

“And you don’t know where she is, so how are you going to find her? See here, if she left while you were at lunch, that would be somewhere before two o’clock.”

“We went down to lunch at a quarter past one. Her tray went up about five minutes after that. She wasn’t undressed- she could have got away easily by half past one. She had had a note telling her to go. It said, ‘Better get away while we’re all at lunch-you’ll get a good start,’ and something about Miss Silver being a detective. And then, ‘They’ll make you speak if you don’t get away. We can talk things over and decide what had better be done.’ And a bit half torn off, with, ‘I’ll make an excuse and-’ I thought it meant I’ll make an excuse and come after you.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Miss Silver found the bits all torn up. Some of the pieces were missing, Richard’s name was on one piece- just the name by itself. That doesn’t mean he wrote it. It was typed-on his machine. But that doesn’t mean he wrote it. We don’t know who wrote it, and we don’t know who she’s gone to meet, because just those bits were destroyed. I suppose she took care about that.”