always--so bad. Sometimes he's more
gentle than at others. You'd have thought then that he was just a baby,
living there for love of the wind and the trees and the birds. If he
comes to--"

Her voice broke. Dominey's reply was swift and not unkind. He pointed to
the window above.

"If Lady Dominey recovers, you and your son are forgiven. If she never
recovers, I wish you both the blackest corner of hell."

The car drove off. Doctor Harrison met Dominey on the threshold as he
turned towards the house.

"Her ladyship is unconscious now," he announced. "Perhaps that is a good
sign. I never liked that unnatural calm. She'll be unconscious, I think,
for a great many hours. For God's sake, come and get a whisky and soda
and give me one!"

The early morning sunshine lay upon the park when the two men at last
separated. They stood for a moment looking out. From the Black Wood came
the whirr of a saw. The little troop of men had left their tents. The
crash of a fallen tree heralded their morning's work.

"You are still going on with that?" the doctor asked.

"To the very last stump of a tree, to the last bush, to the last cluster
of weeds," Dominey replied, with a sudden passion in his tone. "I will
have that place razed to the bare level of the earth, and I will have
its poisonous swamps sucked dry. I have hated that foul spot," he went
on, "ever since I realised what suffering it meant to her. My reign here
may not be long, Doctor--I have my own tragedy to deal with--but those
who come after me will never feel the blight of that accursed place."

The doctor grunted. His inner thoughts he kept to himself.

"Maybe you're right," he conceded.

CHAPTER XXIX

The heat of a sulphurous afternoon--a curious parallel in its presage
of coming storm to the fast-approaching crisis in Dominey's own
affairs--had driven Dominey from his study on to the terrace. In a chair
by his side lounged Eddy Pelham, immaculate in a suit of white flannels.
It was the fifth day since the mystery of the Black Wood had been
solved.

"Ripping, old chap, of you to have me down here," the young man remarked
amiably, his hand stretching out to a tumbler which stood by his side.
"The country, when you can get ice, is a paradise in this weather,
especially when London's so full of ghastly rumours and all that sort of
thing. What's the latest news of her ladyship?"

"Still unconscious," Dominey replied. "The doctors, however, seem
perfect