The Valley of Ghosts by Edgar Wallace

Andy spent two unprofitable days at Beverley Green--unprofitable because the person he had come to meet had studiously avoided him. Once he saw a girl walking on the other side of the green. She was accompanied by two dogs, which ran erratically before and behind, and occasionally around her, and, quickening his steps, found that it was a Miss Sheppard, a girl to whom he had been introduced on the links.

He dined the first night with Mr Merrivan and Sheppard, the architect, a man of such elusive personality that thereafter Andrew could never form a mental picture of him. Mr Merrivan was a bachelor, he told them; not an incorrigible one by any means. He was open to conviction, and, if he dare talk about himself, though he was sure nobody was particularly interested, he had been convinced.