LITMIR.BIZ

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tell me, Mr Homfray, what was she like? Who could she be to be in Welling Wood at that hour?”

      “Ah! I don’t know,” was the young fellow’s half-dazed reply. “I only know what happened to me, how I dashed away to reach home and raise the alarm, and suddenly saw what appeared to be a ball of fire before me. Then I knew no more till I found myself in hospital at Pangbourne. A man, they say, found me lying near the towing-path by the Thames. I was in the long grass – left there to die, Doctor Maynard believes.”

      “But you must have been in somebody’s hands for days,” his father remarked.

      “Yes,” said the young man, “I know. Though I can recollect nothing at all – distinctly. Some incidents seem to be coming back to me. I have just a faint idea of two persons – a man and a woman. They were well-dressed and lived in a big old house. And – and they made me do something. Ah! I – I can’t recall it, only – only I know that the suggestion horrified me!” And he gave vent to a strange cry and his eyes glared with terror at the recollection. “Ah! the – the brutes – they forced me to – to do something – to – ”

      “To do what?” asked the girl, taking his hand softly and looking into his pale, drawn face.

      “It is all a strange misty kind of recollection,” he declared, staring stonily in front of him. “I can see them – yes! I can see both of them – the woman – she – yes! – she held my hand while – she guided my hand when I did it!”

      “Did what?” asked Elma in a slow, calm voice, as though trying to soothe him.

      “I – I – I can’t recollect! Only – only he died!”

      “Died! Who died?” gasped the old rector, who at the mention of the man and the woman at once wondered again whether Gordon Gray and Freda Crisp were in any way implicated. “You surely did not commit – murder!”

      The young man seated in his chair sat for a few seconds, silent and staring.

      “Murder! I – yes, I saw him! I would recognise him. Murder, perhaps – oh, perhaps I – I killed him! That woman made me do it!”

      The rector and the pretty daughter of Purcell Sandys exchanged glances. Roddy was no doubt still under the influence of some terrible, baneful drug. Was his mind wandering, or was there some grain of truth in those misty, horrifying recollections?

      “I’m thirsty,” he said a moment later; “very thirsty.”

      His father went out at once to obtain a glass of water, whereupon Elma, advancing closely to the young man, drew from her little bag a photograph.

      “Hush! Mr Homfray! Don’t say a word. But look at this! Do you recognise it?” she whispered in breathless anxiety.

      He glanced at it as she held it before his bewildered eyes.

      “Why – yes!” he gasped, staring at her in blank amazement. “That’s – that’s the girl I found in Welling Wood!”

      Chapter Seven

      The Girl Named Edna

      “Hush!” cried Elma. “Say nothing at present.” And next instant the old rector re-entered with a glass of water which his son drank with avidity.

      Then he sat staring straight into the fire without uttering a word.

      “Is your head better?” asked the girl a moment later; and she slipped the photograph back into her bag.

      “Yes, just a little better. But it still aches horribly,” Roddy replied. “I’m anxious to get to that spot in the wood.”

      “To-morrow,” his father promised. “It’s already dark now. And to-morrow you will be much better.”

      “And I’ll come with you,” Miss Sandys volunteered. “The whole affair is certainly most mysterious.”

      “Yes. Neither Denton nor the doctor at Pangbourne can make out the nature of the drug that was given to me. It seems to have upset the balance of my brain altogether. But I recollect that house – the man and the woman and – and how she compelled me to do her bidding to – ”

      “To what?” asked the girl.

      The young mining engineer drew a long breath and shook his head despairingly.

      “I hardly know. Things seem to be going round. When I try to recall it I become bewildered.”

      “Then don’t try to remember,” urged his father in a sympathetic voice. “Remain quiet, my boy, and you will be better to-morrow.”

      The young fellow looked straight at the sweet-faced girl standing beside his chair. He longed to ask her how she became possessed of that photograph – to ask the dead girl’s name. But she had imposed silence upon him.

      “We will go together to the spot to-morrow, Miss Sandys,” he said. “People think I’m telling a fairy story about the girl. But I assure you I’m not. I held her in my arms and stroked her hair from her face. I remember every incident of that tragic discovery.”

      “Very well,” said the girl. “I’ll be here at ten o’clock, and we will go together. Now remain quiet and rest,” she urged with an air of solicitude. “Don’t worry about anything – about anything whatever,” she added with emphasis. “We shall clear up this mystery and bring your enemies to book without a doubt.”

      And with that Roddy Homfray had to be satisfied, for a few moments later she buttoned up her warm fur coat and left, while old Mrs Bentley went upstairs and prepared his bed.

      His friend Denton called again after he had retired, and found him much better.

      “You’re pulling round all right, Roddy,” he laughed. “You’ll be your old self again in a day or two. But what really happened to you seems a complete enigma. You evidently fell into very bad hands for they gave you a number of injections – as your arm shows. But what they administered I can’t make out. They evidently gave you something which acted on your brain and muddled it, while at the same time you were capable of physical action, walking, and perhaps talking quite rationally.”

      Then Roddy told his chum the doctor of the weird but misty recollections which from time to time arose within him of having been compelled to act as the handsome woman had directed. Exactly what he did he could not recall – except that he felt certain that while beneath the woman’s influence he had committed some great and terrible crime.

      “Bah! my dear Roddy?” laughed Denton as he sat beside the other’s bed. “Your nerves are all wrong and awry. After those mysterious doses you’ve had no wonder you’re upset, and your imagination has grown so vivid.”

      “I tell you it isn’t imagination!” cried Roddy in quick protest. “I know that the whole thing sounds utterly improbable, but – well, perhaps to-morrow – perhaps to-morrow I can give you some proof.”

      “Of what!”

      “Of the identity of the girl I found dying in Welling Wood.”

      Hubert Denton smiled incredulously, and patting his friend upon the shoulder, said:

      “All right, my dear fellow. Go to sleep. A good rest will do you a lot of good. I’ll see you in the morning.”

      The doctor left and Roddy Homfray, tired and exhausted after an exciting day, dropped off to sleep – a sleep full of strange, fantastic dreams in which the sweet calm face of Elma Sandys appeared ever and anon.

      Next morning at about nine o’clock, when Roddy awakened to find the weather bright and crisp, he called his father, and said:

      “I don’t want Inspector Freeman to know about what I’ve told you – about the girl in Welling Wood.”

      “Certainly not,” replied the quiet old rector reassuringly. “That is your own affair. They found nothing when they searched the wood for you.”

      “Perhaps they didn’t look in the right spot,” remarked his son. “Elma will be here at ten, and we’ll go

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