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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75273 ***


Death in the Dusk

by Virgil Markham

Jacobsen Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright 1928 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.



CONTENTS

         Prefatory Words
         Persons in this Chronicle
      I. The Obtrusion of Parson Lolly
     II. The Bull
    III. The House
     IV. The Bidding Feast
      V. Kingmaker
     VI. Strain
    VII. Court of Inquiry
   VIII. Wager of Battel
     IX. The Bone
      X. The Laugh
     XI. Superintendent Salt
    XII. Noah’s Flood
   XIII. The Weapon
    XIV. The Fiendish Cat of the Sisters Delambre
     XV. The Rainbow
    XVI. Parchment—and Paper
   XVII. Lancelot’s Ultimatum
  XVIII. Grisly Planting
    XIX. The Deathless Arm
     XX. The Recrudescence of Parson Lolly
    XXI. The Midnight Expedition
   XXII. The Beginning of the End: Parabola
  XXIII. Miss Lebetwood and a Campstool
   XXIV. Bannerlee’s Secret
    XXV. The Flight of Parson Lolly
   XXVI. Blood on the Portrait
  XXVII. The Purr of the Cat!
 XXVIII. The Crash
   XXIX. Rescue
         The Communication of April 17, 1926



PREFATORY WORDS

The journal of Alfred Bannerlee, of Balzing (Kent), is at last to be
published practically in full, and without the alteration of any name.
I say “at last,” but I suppose there are some who would leap with joy
if the closely-written pages of the Oxford antiquarian and athlete
were utilized, like Carlyle’s first “French Revolution,” for building
a cheery fire. Lord Ludlow certainly is one.

It seems incredible, but Mr. Bannerlee has requested Ludlow to write
an introduction to the book. Perhaps Mr. Bannerlee was pulling the
baronial leg. Of all the party of poor half-maddened people who
emerged from Aidenn Vale after the powerful doings recorded in this
Journal, I can imagine none less likely to perform this service for
the diarist who clung faithfully to the task of recording terrors in
the midst of terror and didn’t hesitate to display the baronial
character at its craftiest. Small wonder, I should think, that on the
eve of publication of what he himself admits is “an unbelievable and
utterly veracious narrative” Lord Ludlow sails for unknown seas, and
makes no secret of the fact that England’s loss is permanent.

Now, since his Lordship promises never to come back, I don’t see any
reason why I shouldn’t publish his recent letter to me, and thereby,
perhaps, satisfy Mr. Bannerlee.

                “Brillig, Ambleside, Westmorland,
                December 27, 1927.

  My dear Markham:

  One can scarcely conjecture what maggot of audacity was in the brain
  of Alfred Bannerlee, Esq., when he forwarded me his diary with the
  request that I write a foreword to accompany it ‘to give the stamp
  of reality.’ When you perceive the light in which I am placed in
  this unbelievable and utterly veracious narrative, you will not need
  to reflect in order to understand why I decline to have anything to
  do with the document. In accordance with Mr. Bannerlee’s wish, I am
  sending the diary to you, ‘an obscure but ambitious author,’ and I
  do not suppose that you will object to having your name upon the
  title-page. The whole arrangement impresses me as asinine, but,
  after all, the manuscript is Mr. Bannerlee’s and he should be
  allowed full scope to play the fool with it.

  In fairness to the author, however, I must abate the indictment. I
  do no more than allude to what seem to me distinct virtues in this
  account. They will appeal to others likewise, if they are virtues.
  In the first place, there is nothing of that grisly, putrid stuff
  going nowadays under the name of modern psychology, although a
  pedlar of this ‘science’ could have found no end of matter for his
  hole and corner methods. Second point: I am not a devotee of the
  enormous literature dealing with the hounding and capture of
  wrongdoers. But I will venture a pronouncement in my egregious
  innocence, to wit, that not in any half-dozen combined of these
  would-be ‘shockers’ published in a lifetime will be found as many
  trials and alarums and as much genuine mystification as make up this
  compendium of the bedevilment of Parson Lolly, the mad behaviour of
  the milkman, the invisible omnipresence of Sir Brooke Mortimer,
  the enigma of the mystic bone, the Legend of Sir Pharamond’s
  imperishable arm, and the machinations of the ultimate contriver, I
  will not call him ‘fiend,’ working through and behind all.

  And here it is my wish to express my wholehearted esteem for (then)
  Miss Paula Lebetwood. I dislike the whole species of American girls,
  but intelligence compels exceptions to every rule. Some of us judged
  her harshly, no doubt, but she took the road leading to success, and
  if she seemed cold-hearted, she chose wisely. Had she been a weaker
  woman, snuffling and inept, the narrative would not now be on the
  verge of publication. In spite of this, wherever she is, I wish her
  well.

  I myself shall not remain in England to witness the effervescence of
  the multitude over this narrative. Democratic outbursts rather gall
  me. On the eve of the publication of the Journal, my yacht, with me
  on board, sails for waters unknown. I seek as far as I may a
  shoreless cruise. I am old, and mankind is not my hobby. Perhaps I
  shall linger in the beauty of the Mediterranean where there are two
  skies, perhaps drift endlessly in the steady strength of the Trades,
  perhaps dare the dark Antarctic seas—or find beyond the sunset. One
  thing stands sure; it is unthinkable that I shall ever set foot in
  Britain again. So here I take farewell of those who with me shared
  the dread, wonder and aftermath of _Death in the Dusk_. (By the way,
  I don’t like that title of Bannerlee’s.)

  Pray accept my congratulations on your recent appointment, and
  believe me your sincere friend, and

                Faithfully yours,
                            Ludlow.”

It is well, I believe, to point out that the minds of all those
present at Highglen House among the sorcerous hills of Wales during
the early autumn of 1925, the mind which directed the writing of this
Journal was, save perhaps one, the best fitted for presenting the
closest account possible to the truth. The one other mind which could
possibly equal this record in truthfulness would be that which
actually contrived the series of demoniacal events in the Vale of
Aidenn Water. The queer, tense, potentially tragic, and ultimately
fatal situation discovered by Mr. Bannerlee after his serio-comic
descent from the Forest through the fog contained so many
cross-currents and tangled nets of misunderstanding, prejudice and
enmity that no other could have pretended to the shadow of fairness in
his (or her) statement of the case. For the sake of truth, then
(though God knows what disadvantages offset that!), it was well that
Mr. Bannerlee was plunged into the seething midst of the Bidding
Feast.

I shall not dilate upon the morbid eagerness with which the public
will seize upon this Journal. This is no hackneyed chronicle of raw
head and bloody bones. The consternation caused by the events in
Aidenn Vale, constituting, upon their emergence after the flood, a
problem of what may genuinely be called universal interest, will never
be forgotten by those old enough to realize their dreadfulness. The
nine days’ terror became a nine days’ wonder, and without hyperbole it
may be said that the fate of one nation hung upon the Radnorshire
riddles. The public has never been informed of all there was to be
told, nor, as sporadic (and totally erroneous) statements and versions
in the press signify, has the public lost its interest. Here, for the
first time, is offered for general perusal this unbelievable and
utterly veracious document. Need I comment further?

This is not, of course, the original form of Mr. Bannerlee’s diary.
What he wrote until the turmoil of events forced him to stay
his hand on the evening of the 9th of October was necessarily
briefer, more compact, and—to a reader not in touch with the
circumstances—unintelligible. His recasting of the manuscript, which
involved its enlargement to thrice its original length is, it seems to
me, one of the most notable of his feats. Hard it must have been for
him to alter this account from the sketch-book manner of an ordinary
diary, to give the convincing gloss of rumination and reflection, to
reveal precise details of fact, the links of cogitation, and the
phases of feeling which poured in upon him. I think, too, that he has
well preserved the sense of imminence, the uncertainty as to the
morrow, which was, I am told, present in the original version. If
portions of the work seem lacking in spontaneity, let me remind the
reader that it was impossible for Mr. Bannerlee to limit himself to a
mere polychronicon of episodes, frilled with running comment on
persons, and edged with a neat pattern of emotions. Clearness demanded
he should sometimes _elucidate_ and the white heat of events must have
time to cool before they can be handled analytically.

Only last month I myself visited New Aidenn again. A word of
self-introduction to Superintendent Salt made that rather wonderful
policeman my good friend at once, and he personally conducted me
through the Vale where death and terror had danced. It is all as
Bannerlee describes it; even the atmosphere of mystery has not
departed, and while Salt and I came down by Aidenn Water through the
dusk, I was glad to have him there, glad and nevertheless uneasy. The
villagers and the folk of the countryside know well that Parson Lolly
is not dead yet, though his age is nearer five hundred than four
hundred years, and often they see his black cloak whisk through some
twilight copse, or see him far off above the hills, poised against the
sunset.

Some day I shall write my own book about Salt: that other mystery of
East Wales, the frightful affair of the Straight Road. But enough.

                Virgil Markham

St. John’s Wood,
London, February 26, 1928.



          DEATH IN THE DUSK

  Being Alfred Bannerlee’s own revision
  and enlargement of his journal notes
  from the evening of October 2, 1925,
  to the breaking off, October 9. Together
  with the conclusion of the narrative
  later supplied by him, and the
  communication of April 17, 1926.



            To
       Paula Andrews
    in loving memory of
      Paula Lebetwood
          and to
     Mrs. Robert Cullen
  in grateful memory of Lib



PERSONS IN THIS CHRONICLE

  The Narrator
    Alfred Bannerlee of Balzing in Kent,
    athlete and antiquarian

  Host and Hostess of the Bidding Feast
    The Honourable Crofts Pendleton
    Mrs. (Alberta) Pendleton

  The Betrothed
    Sean Cosgrove
    Paula Lebetwood

  Guests
    Herbert Pinckney, Baron Ludlow and Ditherington
    Ted Belvoir
    Mrs. (Marvel) Belvoir
    Gilbert Maryvale, Esq.
    Mr. Charlton Oxford
    Mrs. Eve Bartholomew
    Miss Millicent Mertoun
    Dr. Stephen Aire
    Lib Dale
    Bob Cullen

  Servants
    Blenkinson, patriarch
    Soames, footman
    Hughes, gamekeeper
    Finlay, head gardener
    Wheeler, chauffeur and handy man
    Morgan, handy man
    Tenney, handy man
    Toby, boy
    Rosa Clay, cook
    Ruth Clay, housekeeper
    Ardelia Lacy, lady’s maid
    Jael, parlourmaid
    Harmony, housemaid
    Em, kitchenmaid

  Nebulous or Mysterious Persons
    The gorilla man
    The menagerie keeper
    Sir Brooke Mortimer
    The sisters Delambre
    The red-bearded runner
    The youth in the library
    The man in the tower

  Officials
    Superintendent Salt
    Dr. Niblett, Coroner
    “Scotland Yard”

  Super-Sleuth
    Harry Heatheringham

  Arch-Lord of Disorder
    PARSON LOLLY



CHAPTER I

The Obtrusion of Parson Lolly

                Highglen House, Aidenn Vale, Radnorshire,
                October 3, 1925. 12.30 A.M.

Heaven smile on us if it can! Heaven watch and ward us. This is a
wedding party!

Crofts Pendleton has just brought me the fresh candles and this
writing-book. He wished me God-speed in my endeavours and good-night.

“Good-night!” It sounded like a travesty, or a challenge.

Surely I am the sane one here if anyone is. Yet I cannot name the
curse that lies on my spirit and keeps in my eyes the vision of the
two faces, the golden hair above the black! Never-to-be-forgotten
moment! But I shall not let it unnerve me now, as it seemed to then.

The worst of it is that I am confined in a musty chamber (among
store-rooms!) on the second floor where the web-scribbled ceiling
slants down with the roof and the eaves murmur uncannily just above my
window—a room to make flesh thrill and creep. It looks like a chamber
where murderers may have lurked in bygone days. The narrow, deep-set
window, the old twisty candle-brackets high on the stone wall, the
joined chest with never a nail to fasten its boards, the severely
plain four-square bedstead—they all remind me that I am in a building
centuries old where any or every fiendish deed may have been
performed. I wish that this storey, like the rest of the house, were
equipped with a good up-to-date electric service. The blinking light
of candles is not very comfortable in the gloom.

Nearly a page written, yet nothing pertinent said. This isn’t economy
in words. But now I’ll banish megrims, cease rambling, and come to the
situation.

I have been in Highglen House for a scant six hours. Events have been
moving with intermittent swiftness ever since I came, and they had not
been precisely quiet before my arrival. To-night, though it takes
until dawn, I shall describe as far as I can the happenings of the
last day unless I drift off to sleep in the process. But no, even with
doors locked, sleep is not likely to trouble anyone much to-night, not
after the alarm all of us—I don’t except myself in this case—have just
had.

Moreover, until the nowhere-to-be-found Sir Brooke puts in an
appearance, or some word is heard from him, there will be little rest
for me, with Eve Bartholomew knocking at the door every fifteen
minutes, with, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bannerlee; are you still up? It’s
_so_ silly of me, of course—Sir Brooke can take care of himself as
well as any of us—better, I’m sure, than most—and yet I’m not so
sure—but it’s really odd, isn’t it? Now I know it’s silly of me—but
I’ve just had another idea. Don’t you think it’s possible that Sir
Brooke took the wrong train? Of course I don’t know whether you can do
that in Shrewsbury in the afternoon—but perhaps he got on the wrong
platform, or something—he never was an expert on getting about, poor
dear—and then he may have gone to sleep and not noticed where he was
going. He has a way of doing that in trains—I know him so well, you
see. Perhaps he didn’t learn until he got off at some scrubby little
place where there’s no telegraph. And then, of course, that explains
why there’s been no message from him.”

I have learned a good deal about Sir Brooke’s character since Mrs. B.
began her raids with a Macbethean knocking and a stage whisper. His
chief trait seems to be utter fickleness of memory, his next that
something, or lack of something, which makes able-bodied women like
Mrs. B. call men “dear” with “poor” prefixed. He is near-sighted,
liable to vertigo philanthropic, and a nuisance.

I said Macbethean knocking—I suppose that proves I’m a little
highly-strung myself. Certainly she caused a warm, douche-like
sensation to pass clear over my scalp to the nape of my neck. We have
had an evening which would make the staidest—

I have a severe mind to draw a line through these pages and begin
anew. This isn’t what I intended at all. My candles are bearded now,
and I haven’t scratched my subject. I repent and reform this very
instant. I am going to try to put down things in order, as they have
unfolded themselves in the course of one of the most amazing days I,
or any human being, ever lived through.

Yet first (before taking my way back to the hilltop where I wandered
this afternoon, never having so much as heard of Highglen House!)
while the spirit is urgent and the clutch of sense is keen, I’ll
transcribe the maddening events of the half-hour just past. Before I
forget—but shall I ever forget?

There they were in the Hall of the Moth, civilizees of assorted
temperaments, ignoring their alarms, submerging their differences, and
levelling their intellects in the fascination of a card game. How
“instructive and amusing” had been my introduction by Pendleton to
each of them in this very Hall scarcely more than an hour before! Save
for Alberta, that luscious wife of his, I had never laid eyes on one
of them previous to this evening.

Straight on my entering the Hall, Pendleton had cavalierly handed me
around from person to person.

First he revealed me to his wife, who set down her cards and rose with
one of the gladdest smiles I have ever seen. She was tall and
gracious. Her face, surrounded by its lustre of close-clipped, wavy
hair, was a joy to look at, being both pearly-clear and firm, like an
exquisite lily-petal of classic marble.

“Alfred! We hear that you have been raiding Aidenn Forest.”

“Please!” I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it anything so forcible as—”

But already Pendleton had presented me to Mrs. Belvoir. I withdrew my
hand from its clasp of Alberta’s and took the cold fingers of the
colourless man’s wife. What thoughts lay behind those brooding lids
and that close-lipped mouth? Her face had a wavering indistinctness,
like a face seen under flowing water.

“How do you do?” she said in that rich voice, gave me one full look
with eyes cold and pale as sapphires, and blinked languidly, as if the
discussion were closed.

Pendleton did not let me linger in perplexity. He gave me up to
Belvoir, who shook hands with a faint smile, saying, “Mr. Bannerlee
and I spelled our names to each other in the hall a little while ago.”

Next was Lord Ludlow. “I’ve seen him,” remarked his Lordship, gazing
at me with a little asperity, crinkling the skin over the high-pitched
bridge of his nose, and sat down, for he was wishful of continuing the
game, or of giving the impression that such was his desire.

I was whisked to the second table and made acquainted with the sole
woman there. Eve Bartholomew (God give her peace!) grasped my hand for
a tug or two, exclaiming hurriedly, “Oh, how do you do?” And she
added, with ill-feigned casualness, “They say you’ve been out on the
hills to-day. You’re sure you haven’t seen Sir Brooke?”

“Quite sure, Mrs. Bartholomew.”

“Or hear of anyone who might be him—he?”

“No.”

Next I was set face-to-face with her partner, the red-faced young man,
who I was not surprised to learn was Sean Cosgrove. His head was
large, his features large, too, without being lubberly. The ruddiness
of his complexion was accentuated by his very black and shining hair,
short and thick. There was something grim and settled in the line of
his jaw, and his blazing black eyes bore out the character of
determination. He shook hands unsmiling, gravely.

“My congratulations,” I offered.

He gave a short bow, looking at the floor. Then, “I have heard of
you,” he said, with not a trace of Irish lilt or accent in his speech.

“Is it possible?”

“You are a searcher for the buried lore of antiquity. Is not that so?”
he asked with a certain lofty seriousness.

“I have done a little research among the British saints, but I hardly
expected my labours—”

“They honour you,” asserted Cosgrove, but my smile of deprecation and
anything further he was about to say were cut off by Pendleton, who
relentlessly kept me on the go, and I faced the next guest.

Two men had been partners at this table; I now found myself staring at
a waxed moustache, and a very elegantly tapered and needle-pointed
specimen of craftsmanship it was. The rest of his face was nothing
remarkable, only a little swarthy-purplish with brandy, and a trifle
stary-eyed. I was not prepossessed with this gentleman, judging him to
be the sort who shows his cleverness to an assorted public in quips to
barmaids and dance-hall musicians. His name, “Mr. Charlton Oxford,”
struck me as strainedly aristocratic, though no fault of his.

“Chawmed.”

“Aesthete,” flashed through my brain, but a query-note raised itself
after the word. “Just plain fool,” I concluded.

“You _are_ being bandied about, aren’t you?”

I was surprised by the fluence and ease of his voice, and his
lightening smile, the big darkish man’s who had been dealing the cards
so ritualistically a few minutes before. He lifted his weight as if it
were that of a bubble, and I saw that indeed he was big, bearing his
torso on stanchion-legs. His mass must have been twice mine.

“Gilbert Maryvale, our complete man of business—iron-castings,” said
Pendleton, with evident gladness that his tale was over.

I saw a quick brightness come and go in Gilbert Maryvale’s eyes at
that description, as if the eyeball had darted out a little from its
station under thatch-brows.

“The winner of the Newman Prize for Lucid Prose, I think, in—let me
see—Nineteen-nineteen? May I congratulate you, Mr. Bannerlee, although
the time is past? I have read your ‘Poets of Enervation’ with
delight.”

“No, Mr. Maryvale, that was not my essay.”

“Surely I haven’t mistaken the name?”

“You have mistaken only the man. ‘Poets of Enervation’ was the
overflow of my cousin Norval’s pen. We were in the University
together. I made a bid for the Newman myself, but was buried. Norval
and I are often mistaken for each other, even in our literary
occupations.”

“No doubt you ran him close,” observed the big man twinkingly.

“I’m afraid not. And now, as Mr. Cosgrove has said, I am devoted to
dustier things, and the prose I give my time to is far from lucid.”

“But you wring lucidity out of it.”

Maryvale resumed his seat, picked up his hand, as did the rest, for in
spite of much invitation I insisted on remaining aloof from the game.
Broad capable cheek-bones, sudden forceful chin he had, but I had an
awareness there was much more than capability and force in this
“complete man of business.” That allusion to the Prize Essay for Lucid
Prose was a poser. Was there another trafficker in iron-castings in
the United Kingdom who had read “Poets of Enervation”?—or one who
would speak of it kindly if he had?

Well, all this was past, half-forgotten in ensuing talk. But now, at
one minute to midnight, a new presence was in the Hall, threatening
the mirth of the Feast! Anger!

For Lord Ludlow and Sean Cosgrove were having a beautiful row.

The Irishman’s gaze was hard and heavy, and seemed to bore into his
antagonist. His face, I noticed, was still suffusing with blood. No
one else ventured to intervene as madly as I had just done, and the
silence when the two men ceased parleying was like the yawn of ocean
after a gigantic wave.

Cosgrove’s bitterness seemed to be growing steadily, like the awful
momentum of a railway train, and I had no doubt that the time was not
many seconds away when he would arise and beard his foe with menacing
hands. Lord Ludlow’s acerbity was like the nervous, sputtering
viciousness of a dynamo. From his eyes seemed to come green electric
sparks, while he shifted his ire from me toward Cosgrove again.

“As for you, sir—”

“I accuse you—”

Hark!

The great Hall of the Moth where we stood was gripped in a new hush,
for the clock in the corner was speaking. I had regarded it curiously
in the evening, a fine old carcase with hood, waist, and base
enveloped in spider’s web marqueterie which obliterated the graining
of the wood. The brass dial was finely engraved, and Cupid’s head
appeared four times delicately chiselled in the spandrils.

Now its chime gave the burden it has tolled for two hundred years, and
midnight was ringing sternly through the House from the Hall of the
Moth. It is a strange clock, devised by some brooding or twisted or
philosophic mind long ago: it strikes, they say, only at midnight,
proclaiming the death and the birth of a day. The tones, vigorous and
vibrant, were mellow with centuries, and their song was poignant.

Like some greybeard councillor’s, the old clock’s voice appeared to
abash the hasty peer and the slowly enraged Irishman. They stared at
each other in grimness for an interim of seconds before his Lordship
shrugged his shoulders, cackled “Humph!” loudly, and turned to the
disrupted card-table. Cosgrove’s clenched hands came down in his lap
relaxed, and he, too, turned back to his table, moving his lips
without utterance.

But the game did not go on. It could hardly have pursued its placid
course again after this very distressing interruption of our peace,
even if the crying sound had not begun from somewhere outside the
Hall.

A low, tremulous, wheedling cry, strangled sometimes into a moan—it
froze every face and turned every eye to stone.

“What’s that?” gulped Eve Bartholomew. . . .

“_Where_ is it?” asked Belvoir, and one could tell that the “stick of
dynamite” had not much breath to spare.

But no one seemed to have the breath or the brain to answer him. My
own belief for a moment was that it proceeded from a plane above our
heads, instead of from somewhere in the long portrait-lined passage
outside the Hall of the Moth. This seemed to be Pendleton’s notion,
too, for with a tense “upstairs!” our host moved to the nearest door
to the corridor. But Alberta Pendleton, dismayed (like all of us, no
doubt) by the thought of the hovering menace that had shadowed
Highglen House, hurried across to her husband and clung to him,
positively clung to him, as I have seen actresses do in plays.

“No, Crofts dear—no, no! Wait—let someone go with you!”

“It’s up there,” declared Pendleton with steel-trap enunciation. “The
damned thing’s come again—up there.”

“That’s why you mustn’t go.”

“It’s up there,” he said doggedly, and tugged to loose himself. But
she took step for step with him, finally turning in his path with her
back against the door.

“We’ll all go,” said Maryvale.

“All the men,” said Cosgrove. “The women lock the doors behind us.”

“Ring for the servants,” said someone shakenly, I think Charlton
Oxford.

“Listen! . . . It’s not there any more. . . . It’s stopped.” We
listened with Mrs. Bartholomew; beyond our taut breathings and the
tick-tack-tock of the carcase in the corner—nothing.

“Ring for the servants, I tell you!”

“Listen! It’s out there.”

“Out there!”

“On the lawn.”

Unmistakably now the low wordless cry came through the half-opened
french window leading to the broad lawns beyond the entrance drive.
Pendleton was across the room in a trice, heedless of Alberta’s
protest; so were Maryvale and Cosgrove and I; so were all of us. We
followed our host through the window-entrance. Out to the darkness we
went from the bright-lit hall in a little throng, and when we were
outside, hearing the lonesome, half-whining cry no more, we recoiled
and huddled a little, like scared titmice.

Hardly a quarter of a minute—prolonged by our bewilderment and
dread—could have gone by, and we stood irresolute upon the fringe of
the lawn, when the cry came toward us again, and now it was followed
by a woman’s voice, different from the cry:

“Oh, come here, come here! I couldn’t call you and leave her alone.”

At the sound of that voice Cosgrove stamped like a raving beast.
“Paula,” he bellowed, and plunged across the obscurity of the lawn.

Following among those whose urgence was less than his, my eyes, which
deviated from straight ahead, caught sight of a spine-stirring thing.
It was motion, but of what? A darker mass on the dark sward. Size,
shape, untellable—but moving, moving to the right, now seeming to
crawl, now leaping—only an amorphous blob of black—moving, and
swiftly, toward the north, moving stilly, with only a small rustling
sound at whiles.

“Look there!” I exclaimed to someone who was near me, catching his
arm. (It was Oxford.)

“Hey! What!”

“That—going off there—a black thing.”

“I don’t see it.” Nor did he want to, I judged.

I guided his arm, extending it in the proper line. “Sight by that.”

But I could not make him see it. He and I then diverged from the
others, not much to his liking, and while we hastened after the
nameless thing, I bethought me that I had changed my electric torch to
these clothes. I hauled it from a side pocket, darted a cone of yellow
ahead of us, cast an elliptic figure of yellow on the grass, but found
no trace of the thing.

Oxford, however, saw an object ahead which made him give a yell. He
stopped petrified, and I followed his look far before us. What we both
then saw was too distant to be the thing I had observed nearby, unless
it were indeed a fiend possessed of superhuman powers. He was crossing
a patch of ground a hundred yards away where the moon streamed down
unscathed by clouds; save for the quick, brief clearing, indeed, we
should not have caught sight of him. Like the hopping, gliding thing
on the lawn, he was black, or robed in black. Contrary to report,
however, if this were Parson Lolly, his figure appeared not to be tall
but distinctly short and squatty. Just then the fringe of a cloud
partly obfuscated the moon, but still that space was clearer than all
around it. While the figure glided toward the trees, it seemed to
heave its shoulders and grow a foot, two feet, taller! Again it
writhed itself into greater height, its long cloak billowing, and
again! Just before gaining the covert of branches, it turned toward us
a moment, twice the height of a man. And its head, if head it had, was
only a pointed thing with unguessable features in the cavern of its
hood. The moon was absolutely overcast when the figure, again wheeling
about, went beneath the trees.

“Do we go after it?” I asked sardonically.

“We—we do not.”

“Righto.”

I heard a gurgle from Oxford’s lips and guessed that his heart must be
rotating in his throat. His shoulder to my touch was quivering, and
while we went to rejoin the rest he staggered as if in drink, although
certainly sober. But his nerves aren’t the best, I shouldn’t wonder,
for there must be regular occasions when he quaffs and quaffs again.

They were a chastened, vaguely murmurous company we discovered almost
beneath the arch of the ancient gate-house with its ivy swarming up
and up, now standing lone, its walls on either side all shorn away.
Only a spurt or two of a match they had to see by, until I came with
my torch and they made way for me. The light on the weather-beaten
stone was like the circle of an old medallion or mellowed painting:
two women, one pallid and lifeless, the other, seated on the grass,
supporting the lovely, unconscious head on her knees.

I supposed instantly that this was the young English-woman, Millicent
Mertoun, who lay wan—the most beautiful creature, I believe, I have
ever seen. Fine breeding, fine spirit were in her stricken face. Cold
loveliness, indeed, with the life gone out of it; eyes set widely
apart, closed beneath straight black eyebrows which were now lifted
apeak with the intensity of strain that showed in the fine lines
across her forehead and the slight drawing-back of her short upper
lip, disclosing her large, evenly graduated teeth. The lashes that
rested upon her cheeks were remarkably long, deep black, and it was
their fragile, almost imperceptible stirring alone that betokened a
possible reawakening to life. Her chin was softly rounded, and in the
disorder of her abundant black hair a delicate ear was exposed. The
suspension of life had withdrawn the blood from the full-contoured
lips, left the cheeks pallid, but while I gazed at the face and the
aristocratic little neck, twined about so by the tumbling length of
masses of black hair, I had a whisper of what beauty the face might
have when expression was restored to it, and the eyes, of unguessable
depth and sweetness, were open.

Of the other woman’s head I caught only the partly averted profile,
while she bent over Miss Mertoun, with one hand clasping together at
the throat the unconscious girl’s loose gown, apparently a garment of
negligée. She, of course, must be the American girl, for it was at the
sound of her voice that Sean Cosgrove had torn across the lawn. There
was dignity, I thought, in her head with its straitly fastened
golden-brown hair, and a lovely tenderness in the solicitude of her
pose.

She was in the midst of speech, relating the adventure which had
brought her and her companion to that plight. She did not look up or
turn her head when the light from my hand broke over her, and all the
while she spoke her watchful gaze was for the features of the girl
whose senses were benumbed. American speech it was, yet the words came
from her lips with a chiselled precision, the tone tending toward
viola depth.

“—blinding, yes, not blinding alone, but maddening. I got her into
looser clothing—she wouldn’t go to bed. She gave no sign of fainting,
but the pain drove her into delirium more than once, and I almost sent
for someone else to help me with her. Then the pain went down, and
suddenly she went to sleep.”

Someone, I think Cosgrove, took a step nearer. “No, keep away, please.
Don’t try to move her yet.”

“But, Paula, how did you ever come—?”

The American girl precluded the end of Alberta Pendleton’s question.
“Of course I am coming to that. She went sound asleep, and I thought
it better not to undress her; so I let her lie on the bed, and I
curled up in the chair by the window. Millicent’s wretched evening had
left me tired out, too, and I don’t remember anything more until when
I woke up to find her awake again and wandering about. There was
enough light from the globe by the mirror to see that she was terribly
distressed, but it was not with pain this time. She was suffering from
some—”

Paula Lebetwood hesitated for a moment, then recommenced. “I think she
was walking in her sleep.”

A note of surprise and pity came from all our mouths.

“Were her eyes open?” asked Mrs. Belvoir.

“Yes, with the darkest vagueness in them.”

“Didn’t she recognize you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“You see, it all happened so quickly. Only a couple of seconds after I
had roused myself the clock in the Hall of the Moth commenced ringing
midnight. Millicent stopped for a moment and put her hand to her
heart, a queer thing, I thought. ‘It’s his music,’ she said, and made
for the door.”

Renewed exclamations of surprise attested our close-held interest.

“She ran down the hall—”

“But, Paula, did you let her—?”

“She was too strong for me, or perhaps too quick. She twisted away
from me when I tried to prevent her from leaving the room. She almost
flew down the hall; I was afraid she would throw herself down the
stairs, and I caught up with her just in time. We came down—”

“Did she make any sound?” burst in Pendleton.

“Yes, a wailing sound—if there were any words, I couldn’t distinguish
them. Didn’t you hear her? Oh, I was wishing you would. I didn’t dare
to cry out, you know, since she was in that dangerous state.”

“We heard, dear,” said Alberta Pendleton. “But the sound kept
changing, and we were undecided.”

“She had a definite intention to go out, and out of the front entrance
we went whether I would or not. And then, then, while we were far away
on the lawn, we saw the—the—I can’t name it.”

“What was it like?” asked Pendleton, and I recall that all of us
closed in a little further to hear.

“The head, I suppose you’d call it. It was—awful.”

“What—where?”

“Didn’t any of you see it?” she asked in much surprise, yet not for a
second lifting her intent look from Millicent Mertoun’s face. “It was
just after that I noticed that foul reek of blood.”

“Blood!” That was Eve Bartholomew’s cry.

“Oh, haven’t you noticed that either? The smell was so bad, I feared
it would have some ghastly effect on Millicent. I hoped she wouldn’t
notice it, in her condition. And then—we were beyond the gate-house,
coming back toward the mansion, when we saw—the head.”

“Where, for God’s sake?”

“About a hundred feet away from us. I heard something stirring first,
something scuttling, you might say. Then we saw it. Ugh! . . .
Straight out of hell, surely. . . .”

Pendleton’s excitement was getting too much for him, and he broke
through courtesy. “Why do you keep boggling it? Where was it? What did
it do?”

“Crofts!” reprimanded Alberta.

Still with averted face, Paula Lebetwood tried to satisfy our fuming
host. “Where? I don’t know exactly where. Near the gate-house here, I
suppose. It seemed thirty or forty yards away. It was enormous, about
six feet high—oh, fully that. It hung in the air—there wasn’t any body
beneath. And it didn’t do anything, just remained there long enough to
be seen, half a second, perhaps, and disappeared with a sort of sigh.
I thought I heard a sigh. It—well, it simply went out. . . . It was
hideous.”

“What did it look like, dear?” asked Alberta, more to anticipate her
bluff husband than to satisfy curiosity, for her question was
tremulous.

“Hideous—a great round head with red goggle eyes and a hole for a nose
and broken teeth all grinning. It looked alive and staring—worse than
any mask I’ve ever seen—an indecent thing. . . . Oh, don’t think that
it was hallucination—poor Millicent saw it too, though it came and
went like the winking of an eye. It seemed to strike to her heart—and
to mine, for that matter—and she could manage to walk only a few steps
more—on my arm—through the archway before she weakened and collapsed,
and I saw you all there outside the french window, and called.”

She turned her head full toward us for the first time since Oxford and
I had come from our private chase. Such was my position when she
lifted her bent head that I, and only I, saw, on the yellow-lit ground
revealed beyond, a small placard with uncouth letters thereon, large
enough to be read in spite of their unshapeliness:

   P A R S O N  L O L L Y  S e N d s  R E G a R D s  L o o K  O U T
                    F O R  P A R S O N  L O L L Y

A storm sprang in my mind, such a whirlwind of spirit as I believe I
have never before experienced, when behind the quick, expectant face
of this American girl, one so tender to her stricken friend, one so
fearless, I saw that obscene sign. She was at first dazzled by the
light in my hand, and her dark blue eyes show wonderfully bright and
wild. Her gold hair then had a fine-spun beauty. And beside the old
gate-tower lay the sneering message of one who affronted both manhood
and womanhood. Anger at the marauder who made beauty his victim, shame
for being duped, fear of being duped again, a craving to bring the
rascal down—these and I know that not what other unleashed gales met
in the cross-roads of my mind. The winds rose to raving, towered into
hurricanes. My soul was dizzy, staggering. I was not rational at that
moment—then the gales went down. I bit my lip hard, stepped around the
two women there, picked up the sign (which had been printed with a
smudgy pencil on a stiff folio sheet) and showed it to the rest.

“Parson Lolly!” exclaimed more than one.

Then Oxford, perhaps intending to be jocose, said,

“‘Beware of Parson Lolly.’ Beggar’s a bit late, it seems to me.”

“At least,” said Crofts Pendleton thickly “it proves he’s human—the
devil!”

“_In some ways human_, perhaps,” amended Maryvale.

“What else, then?”

“Less than human. Consider the birds of the air, my friends. They are,
I suppose, less than human—yet—they—can—fly!”

I gave a stout shrug to rid myself of the disquiet compelled by such a
suggestion.

Anxiety over Miss Mertoun’s exposure to the midnight air prompted
Alberta Pendleton, not for the first time, to urge taking her inside
the Hall. But Miss Lebetwood shook her head in a determined manner,
and with a gesture showed that she believed it was too far to carry
her to the mansion.

“It’s very mild out here now,” she declared. “I know sleep-walking
people. If she were to wake up while she’s being taken, it might have
some long-lasting ill effect. Alberta, please don’t ask again. I want
her to be in my arms when she opens her eyes. You good people don’t
need to stay. I—and Sean—can wait here with her alone.”

But none of us would go. Then while we waited to see a greater sign of
life than the restlessness of those long black lashes on the pallid
cheek, down from the dark north came that ragged, hungry voice I had
heard while alone earlier in the night, a cry that tore at our nerves
and congealed our blood to ice-drops in our veins. A carnal, raving
cry, thinning to a shriek that pierced the ear, swelling to a howl
that loosened the knees.

Of that dire, abysmal wail of mad desire, an overtone must have found
a counterpart in Cosgrove’s spirit. Out of the past of his kind, that
had seen things more clearly in the dusk than in the plain light of
day, that had loved cries of battle and death more than joyful cries,
some strain may have wrung the man’s soul. Terribly to all of us, he
raised his voice in answer to the inhuman call; I, at least, had no
sense of body or of time and place while he burst into a black rain of
words, a torrent of rancour, and defiance against the fiend of the
pit, whose incarnate self he seemed to hear in the voice of the beast.

But a low call from Paula Lebetwood reduced him to a stunning silence.
“I think she’s coming to.”

The unconscious girl’s fingers fluttered briefly; her lips stirred;
her whole body stirred a little. She turned once, twice, restlessly,
and sank, with a little sigh, comfortably and trustingly into the
American girl’s embrace. The trace of a sneer had vanished from her
face, and her breast moved with her breathing.

“She’s sleeping now,” said Alberta Pendleton, and stooped beside the
pair on the grass.

Miss Lebetwood whispered, “Dearest, do you hear me? Do you know me?
It’s Paula. . . . Dearest, do you hear me?” She stroked the pale
forehead free of its last furrow.

“Yes,” came like a shadow of a word from the sleeping girl.

“Dearest, Paula wants you to come with her.” Still she spoke,
soothing, caressing, in the effort to woo her to awaken peacefully.
And the eyes of Millicent Mertoun opened, revealing themselves to be
of a deep blackness that rivalled her errant hair, opened to see only
the smile of love on the face of the American girl bending over her;
and the English girl smiled too.

“Your headache is all gone, isn’t it, dearest?”

“Yes . . . but where . . . is this?”

“Don’t be frightened, dear. It’s the lawn by the gate-house. Now we’re
going inside.”

“But how? . . . I don’t understand . . . these people.”

Miss Lebetwood kissed her cheek, leaned her forehead against it.
“Never mind, dearest. Everyone is a friend, you know. Can you walk?
Here, now.”

The English girl was sitting up; she rubbed her eyes, and sent short,
bewildered looks this way and that, far from comprehending her
situation. Too many of the party were trying to explain everything to
her, and she was beginning to look desperate and unhappy.

“Never mind the silly people,” said Miss Lebetwood sensibly.
“See—we’re just a few steps away from the house—where we’ve been
before, you know. Now we must go in. Sean, help me.”

The Irishman and the women at last began to support the strengthless
girl into the Hall. It must have been a full quarter of an hour since
we had poured out from that vaulted chamber into the enigmatic night
and had heard the call from the gate-house. Now the servants were
roused, summoned by someone, and lanterns were rushing across the lawn
in our direction. I had commenced to go with the party about Miss
Mertoun, desirous of casting a light before their feet. But Pendleton
called me back somewhat peremptorily.

“Bright enough from the Hall for ’em not to stumble by.” Alone in the
great mansion the Hall of the Moth sparkled forth, but the glare from
its massive chandelier was a sure guiding light. “We need you here,”
added our host; “there’s a good deal more of this needs looking at.”

At a phrase from him the lanterns began to swing hither and thither
about the lawn, and we men of the party passed across the drawbridge
under the resounding gate-house arch.

“Is this usually lowered?” I asked.

“Usually. Can be raised for the sport of it. It’s part of the main
drive, you see. It must have been hereabout that they smelt—”

He had no need to say more.

“Great God, what an unholy stench!”

“It _is_ blood!”

“Bottles of it.”

Crofts Pendleton’s voice shook. “I hope—it’s not—anything serious.”

Just then nothing could have struck us as amusing. Lord Ludlow
interjected, “Remember, sir, that there is a missing man—”

“Oh, Lord, look there! My boot!”

Belvoir lifted a foot for inspection, while I turned the eye of the
torch upon it. The leather was stained with a fluid dark and thick.

“My God!” observed Pendleton.

“It’s jolly well begun to clot.”

“Look out, you chaps, you’ll mire yourselves.”

“Show us the place, Bannerlee.”

My torch exposed a patch of darkened grass only a foot or so each way.
There was nothing else about nearby.

Pendleton, half aghast, kneeled on the edge of the patch and studied
it.

“A lot of blood’s been spilled here. It must have soaked down, a
goodish bit of it, but there’s quite a pool about the grass roots.
This spot will have to be guarded to-night. Pity we’ve tramped about.”

A thick voice lifted in excitement from the north of us.

“Oh, Mister Crofts, sir, do come here.”

“What is it, Tenney? Let it stay, whatever it is.”

“Small fear I’ll touch it, sir. It’s one of them old fightin’ irons.”

“A weapon, by heaven!” exclaimed Lord Ludlow.

“Has it blood on it?”

“All sticky dried, sir.”

We were beside the quaking man-servant in a jiffy or two, staring
curiously where lay a small battle-axe, with an inconsiderable curve
of blade. It was a weapon of uncommon slightness. Both metal and wood
were dark with the same viscous fluid, the handle being quite
slobbered with it.

“From the armoury!” cried our host. “The foul devil’s actually been
inside the house! Don’t touch it!”

“That weapon was on the wall at a quarter before eight,” said Lord
Ludlow. (Ah, I knew why he could say that!) “I was passing through to
the library for my glasses.” (There, to be sure, the old rascal
prevaricated.)

“You don’t say!”

“This looks like a serious crime,” remarked his Lordship.

“Serious crime!” Pendleton snorted. “Ludlow, you surprise me. I
thought it was child’s play.”

“I think that by a serious crime our noble friend means a particular
crime—don’t you, Ludlow? Isn’t it the customary euphemism?” asked
Belvoir.

“I mean murder, sir.”

“Should have said so in the first place,” growled Pendleton, and
added, “No need to say it at all.”

“It’s jolly irregular, though,” declared Oxford. “All that blood in
one spot, and this gory thing over here.”

“This was not done according to rule,” rejoined his Lordship.

“It was not carried out as planned,” declared Cosgrove, who had come
out from the mansion again.

“And one, er, detail only needs to be filled in.” That was Belvoir
from somewhere in the darkness behind us. “The, er, _corpus delicti_.”

“Gad, yes—scatter, now—search—all the way to Aidenn Water.”

The cluster of lanterns spread into kaleidoscopic figures again,
although the men seemed none too happy to leave the protection of one
another. But they did not discover any further traces of the marauder
or a vestige of a victim who might have furnished all that blood. My
own light picked up the last find of the night, a round, battered
object on the grass even further north than the blood-stained axe.

“A hat!”

“Can it be Sir Brooke’s?”

Pendleton leaped ahead of us and snatched it from the ground, held it
from him contemptuously.

“I doubt it.”

“I can tell you certainly that it is not Sir Brooke’s!”

One man, at least, jumped at the sound of a female voice among us.
There was Eve Bartholomew, standing tall and tragic, clinging, I
thought, to the last pinch of nerve she possessed.

“I couldn’t help being interested, you know,” she remarked
ingenuously, and gave a little high-keyed laugh. “I just came from the
Hall. But I can assure you that Sir Brooke has nothing to do with this
affair. He would be mad to take any part in it. He would be mad to
wear that rag of a disreputable hat.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bartholomew,” I agreed, “he would. I was about to say,
before you identified the hat as not Sir Brooke’s, that it belongs to
me. I wore it down the slopes of Aidenn Vale.”

“You did!”

“Yes—none too new when I set forth with it this morning, it has
suffered a lifetime’s wear and tear with me to-day. That is the
history of the hat.”

“But where did you see it last?” demanded Pendleton.

“I left it hanging in the entrance-hall. And I saw it on the rack as
you and I came down the stairs before we went in to the Bidding
Feast.”

“By gad, I remember it too,” he assented. “Then if—”

But he never finished that sentence, whose protases and apodoses might
have filled an hour. Quick with surmise, we turned back to the house.

Millicent Mertoun and her retinue had by this time gone upstairs, but
the Hall of the Moth was full of the women-servants of the house,
arrayed in white as if risen from their graves in winding sheets. A
small boy in a nightgown, scared half to death, was blubbering
soulfully, as were some of the women. Blenkinson, the butler, the only
man of them who had not got into clothes and gone forth, was quieting
everyone with loud sibilance.

Pendleton confronted them somewhat nervously.

“There’s been too much racket about nothing,” he asserted. “Miss
Mertoun walked a little in her sleep. That’s really all that’s
happened. You’re all very silly, you see, to take on so. Now get to
bed.”

But when they had departed he turned upon Eve Bartholomew with a face
full of bale. “I can tell you one thing about Sir Brooke. If he
doesn’t show up to-morrow and clear things up a bit, he’ll find no
Bidding Feast when he gets here. I’ll invite ’em to clear out. I’m not
going to have my guests hounded and threatened.”

Mrs. Bartholomew gasped. “Why, you can’t say that Sir Brooke has
anything—”

“I don’t know,” scowled Pendleton, “but I want him—here!”

We are truly blissful marriage celebrators.

. . . . A thought had been germinating in my mind ever since the
moment of my near-madness on the lawn, when the iniquity of Parson
Lolly had so taken hold of me. When we were alone:

“Crofts, I want to prove I’m not crazy. Show me where you want me to
sleep, and give me a book to write in. And keep it quiet, for heaven’s
sake.”

“A book to write in?”

“I have many words within me craving to be penned. Give me a book to
write in, and show me my room.”

Well, this is the room, and these some of the words.

Now to tell of the many things that happened to me to-day before these
many things.



CHAPTER II

The Bull

                Yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon.

About this time I was sitting on a damp sharp stone, looking about me
and seeing nothing. I had walked for a long while and gotten nowhere.
For there was persistent mist still in the uplands, and I had strayed
into the thick of it and was hopelessly befogged, hungry, and a trifle
anxious about the probable duration of my helplessness.

My thoughts just then were largely retrospect. I had set out
from—well, I have forgotten the spelling of the place, but it’s no
matter.¹ The names in Wales have fascinating orthography and, to one
not adept, rather unobvious pronunciations. I had set out from this
place which must be anonymous in order to search for something that
had not been seen for several centuries, the private oratory or shrine
or cell of St. Tarw, a rather unbelievable name, or, in the American
idiom, a bully one, whichever way you look at it, for a Welsh saint.
It’s one that anybody can say without arduous practice. The saint
himself was a rather incredible individual. It happens that I know
something of saints, they being a particular hobby of mine, and yet I
was uncertain at that moment whether St. Tarw was a man or was a
whisper on the faëry breeze of legend. But as it happened, in the
course of researches in London, I found hints that, man or whisper, he
had left or there had been left for him in what to-day is Radnorshire,
a monument of stone in which he did his devotions, or had been
believed to do them.

     ¹ Actually Llanbadarnfynydd, nine miles away, where I had put up
     before. My landlord had given me a lift half-way down in his
     Morris. (Author’s note.)

It was in the Book of Sylvan Armitage that I ran across the clue. The
Book is a chronicle of the diversions of a sixteenth-century
gentleman, and mine is a genuine first printing of 1598. It contains
an allusion which I am confident refers to a performance of the
“Merchant of Venice” at Blackfriars, which allusion would stagger the
erudite who prate glibly of the “order of Shakespeare’s plays,” if
they gave it a thought. But much more interesting to me is the
reference to the devotional seat of St. Tarw.

Sylvan Armitage, progressing through Wales in 1594, visited the house
of an Englishman residing in that lately war-distraught country. On
one of their “long gaddynges and peregrinations afoot,” for riding was
not feasible among these broken mountains, they came upon a humble
structure of “hewn stones, much dishevelled and marvellously coated by
moss,” says Sylvan Armitage. He adds that the “cella” had been built
under a bank, and that this very fact was then threatening its
existence. Small chance of success then for me.

So yesterday while I sat on my ungrateful seat with the mist wreathing
about me, I half-abandoned the search before it had properly begun.
For the dozenth time I took out the letter I had received the day
before from my dear old friends, Jack and Mary Bonnet of Bristol.
Their barque, recently returned from Australia, will leave the
dry-dock in a day or so and take the sea again from Bristol next
Monday. Would I join them in a “terror and pleasure” trip somewhere
around Africa or the Scandinavian coast? Of course, I reflected, it
would take me fully a week to wind up my affairs in preparation for
such an ocean journey. I must drop the saint business. I looked at the
fog, felt sick of saints, and almost decided I would go.

I had let down my burden, a soldier’s knapsack and a fairly
well-loaded one, to the grass beside my feet. I decided to eat my
luncheon. I tucked the Bonnet letter away and took out my
beef-sandwiches, milk in a thermos-flask, and walnut meats, a
substantial meal in small compass. My long morning’s tramp on the
uplands had made me very hungry. It was not only the tramp, but the
slipping and falling and crawling, for the yellow grass was long and
trodden flat by cattle, making the side slopes very toilsome, and, in
the mist, risky, for you sometimes did not know whether you might fall
ten feet or a thousand.

I had been exploring Aidenn Forest, but I had early left the lowland
area of trees. The uplands, miles of broad-topped hills in a range of
horseshoe shape, were given over largely to cattle-grazing. There were
long pastures of rolling and heaving slopes, like the gently-breathing
ocean of midsummer. My meal over, I unfolded my contour-map of the
Geographical Institute and pondered over it, trying by recollection
and inference to determine just where I was. But I had not the
remotest clue to slope or distance. I might have been at one extreme
of the horseshoe or the other, or any spot betwixt. It was two
o’clock.

Neither my literary nor my philosophic studies, which are supposed to
chasten the mind to resignation, comforted my thoughts in the least,
but suddenly I was aware of a change in the atmosphere. The mist
seemed suffused with silver, then with gold. Soon the phantoms of fog
had retracted far on either side in lofty, shifting, sun-rayed banks,
and the air became clear about me. But I remained in doubt about my
position.

For the mist had cleared only to the shoulders of the hills, and left
the rolling heights a-sparkle like early morning; but the valleys and
the great outer hills of Wales, girding Aidenn Forest, were blind to
me. From the declining sun I could tell which way was west, but
knowledge of that direction alone was no use. Was I on the western
curve of the horseshoe or the opposite? Nor did it help to recall that
my ascent of Aidenn Forest had been the north, where the two curves
meet, the open part of the horseshoe being to the south. I was as
confused as ever.

At least I could walk freely, keep to the smooth uplands without peril
of falling down some gap or gully. I strode on in the grandeur of the
sun, the mighty halo of mist extending a mile all around, a more
gorgeous glory than bully St. Tarw or any other of the blessed men of
earth ever wore. The towering wall of mist was warm with the light
that occasionally melted through and dazzled the ragged hill-slope
underneath; the cloud-caps wreathed and spired like golden smoke, and
I went on proudly and merrily in my enormous prison. I felt like a
god, exultant. I reached out my hands and lifted my face to the
heavens. My loneliness apotheosized me. I laughed. I shouted,
_ebriatus_. Never before have I experienced that sense of space and
power, that vigour beyond muscle and sense, that reckless rapture!

Nearly an hour passed. Grasshoppers leapt to either side of my path
with little soft comings to earth; the sound was like the first drops
of rain. Black-game and grouse twice or thrice scampered and scudded
from my feet, and suddenly out of the fog which had closed in on my
left swept a great bevy of unknown birds with a thunder of wings. I
judged then that I was not far from the brink of a steep pitch on the
edge of the uplands. The mist which had glorified me was beginning to
hem me more straitly and I bore away to the right, being wary of
pitfalls.

Gradually, while I moved up and down the placid slopes and crossed
wide expanses wherein I was an ephemeral topic for cows and shambling
tattered ponies, an inexpressible sense told me precisely where I was
on the lofty horseshoe of Aidenn Forest. Fragmentary half-submerged
memories of my contour-map, of the dip of the slopes where I trod, of
instructions proffered me by scraggy, wry-spoken yokels (with obligato
of a pig screaming at a gate), of the arc described by the sun, of the
bated breath of the breeze—all these united to fix my certainty. My
feet just at that moment were ascending on the flattened grass of a
small summit; Mynydd Tarw I knew it was, whose highest spot was
considerably above two thousand feet. Mynydd Tarw, on the verge of the
horseshoe’s eastern bend, was where I had concluded the oratory of St.
Tarw was most likely to be found.

I explored the hill and all about, but unfortunately it was creased
and gorged by channels, tiny valleys. Trees and rank underbrush grew
in these troughs, increasing in thickness down the declivity, and the
banners of mist were tangled in the trees. The trunks were clammy, the
fallen leaves dank, the earth too soft for good footing. My shoes sank
over the ankles in leaves and loam. Bereft of my halo, I had little
joy. And after an hour of climbing up and down, groping and grasping,
of peering for traces of foundered or buried walls, I realized, with a
shock that sickened me, that I was out of my reckoning in the lower
fog again, and that I could not trace my way back. I could not even
tell in which direction Mynydd Tarw lay.

I was almost frantic. It was now past mid-afternoon, less than two
hours before sunset, and had I known the bee-line to my hostel in the
difficultly-pronounced village, I could not have reached it before
darkness had long covered Wales.

The valleys, immersed in mist below me, were a wilderness, and broad
of expanse; once on the uplands again, however, I believed I could
find Mynydd Tarw, and thence strike on the true way home. As for
exploring the Vale of Aidenn Water itself, I had no reason to believe
that man had ever built a habitation there. To regain the uplands was
my anxious wish; but not even this was an easy feat. I was weary
already, from physical exertion and strain of mind, but it should have
been easy to keep my course upward, however slow my progress. Yet the
yellow grass and the heather was flat and long, and whether still dry
or drenched with fog, slippery and maddening to ascend upon. Moreover,
I would find myself in channels torn and scarred by water, now
streamless in summer season, but choked with thorny creepers and thick
spear-like stalks in malign barriers.

But I persevered, although I found the mist had grown thicker above as
day declined. Presently I recognized the sweet smell of new-cut hay in
fields above me, and soon afterward kneeing myself to the sharp edge
of a parapet of rock, I rejoiced to see the smoky round of the sun.
There was a line of wild apple-trees along the rim of the uplands at
this point. The crooked branches and straggling shoots of them made
them all like black hats of witches wreathed with tattered ribbons,
save for the one directly before me, through whose limbs
half-despoiled of leaves the sun sent a wicked leering shine that made
me singularly uneasy.

I had come into a region thickly populated with cattle. There were a
score on the hillock to my right, and when I had gone thence over a
bristling wire fence I found a hundred more filling the twilight plain
with their shadows. There was not a sound from the widespread throng,
but I had a feeling that each dispassionate bovine head was turned
toward me, and I advanced with something of the shyness of a child
crossing a drawing-room where he feels every eye cold and critical. A
little the uncanny sense gripped me that I had happened upon some land
undiscovered by Gulliver, where cows were people, and very superior
people. There had been so few of them visible all day, now so many; I
could not rid myself of the notion that I was an intruder. (Just then
the reasonable explanation did not occur to me that atmospheric
conditions had much to do with the migrations of the beasts from place
to place on the horseshoe.)

Across an unkempt stone wall which I whipped up laggard muscles to
leap—I was going rapidly—sweet-fleshed sheep, of orthodox tan, the
cross of Welsh mountain breed with black-faced “Shrops,” were nudging
one another in an anxious mass. I looked toward the sinking sun and
discerned a black rift perhaps a mile distant: the Vale of Aidenn
Water, with the prominences of the western arm of the horseshoe, Great
Rhos, Esgair Nantau, and Vron Hill, nosing up to the sky even another
mile beyond.

Then down on me came dark ruin with a rush.

I was aware appallingly of some vaster shadow blotting out the
gorgeous disc which lay on the western hills, a shadow blatant,
militant, perilous. A sting of fear in my breast goaded me to instant
flight; I was plunging away all in an instant, every part of me in
panic, without realization of what it was from which I fled.

Ten seconds of rushing flight, a frantic glance behind me, and my
returning faculties told me what that fell form was, horned and pawed,
with cavorting death-like head and eyes evilly a-gleam, the shape
rampaging, the feet tremendous on the shaken ground. I knew too well
those signs of the Hereford breed, the twining horns and the white
face so startlingly suggestive of the skull beneath. It was a bull,
the hugest bull on earth, insane with murderous passion.

Terror winged me in that course for life. Once I stumbled and rolled
down a slope littered with small stones, but my speed was scarcely
lessened. I must have regained my feet, for I drove myself through a
patch of merciless nettles and awful thorns, yet was hardly sensible
of being torn and stabbed. Not until long afterward did I feel the
heavy bruise, like the mark of an iron palm, which my hard and firmly
fastened pack had printed between my shoulder-blades, saving me a
worse blow. Now my due training for the mile at the University, not so
very long ago, and the desire for strict regimen then instilled in me,
and my frequent jaunts on foot through broad countrysides, were in
good stead. In the beginning of this breathless chase, I had had a
wide margin of advantage, and now I was all but holding my own, when
ahead of me I saw deliverance. For I had turned westward in flight
across the leveller hilltop, and the brink of the Vale of Aidenn
Water, with its slope looking a precipice all around and its hollow
now a mammoth bowl of impenetrable fog, was less than a furlong away
ahead.

Risk had to be taken to make safety sure. I chanced another ugly fall
by a quick twist of my neck. I led by twenty yards. Gradually,
therefore, I diminished my pace so that at the verge of the cliff only
ten feet might separate us—and just before I would have leaped out
into the turbid air, I used every remaining particle of strength in a
sidewise lunge downward to the grass, letting the bull flash with
unconquerable momentum over the edge.

But I myself was a vessel of momentum and could not by any frantic
clutching and clawing soever keep myself from sliding over the brink
and slipping from an abrupt decline to a sharper one, whence with
horrified mind I felt myself go over the verge of nothingness! While I
fell backward with eyes staring to the lurid sky, I saw the hulk of
the bull shoot out from the summit of the cliff. Never have I seen a
thing as black as the mass of the beast, with limbs winnowing in the
air and head and vast nose outstretched. The black body would have
crushed me to pulp had I not flung myself aside a moment before. I
know that I must have been still in the air when the bull struck a
thrust-out ledge far below the cliff—I had caught just an instant’s
glare of one eye, demoniac and hopeless—then the animal went bellowing
and thumping down through the fog into unseen depths until one final
crash and cry ended sound in ghastly silence.



CHAPTER III

The House

I don’t suppose I was in the air a second, but there was time enough
for me to rue my neglect of Jack Bonnet’s invitation. Why hadn’t I
turned round and gone away from the Forest and let the oratory go
hang?

I was aware soon afterward that I was still alive in a queer place
under the shelter of the hilltop, a place all caved-in earth and
half-buried squarish rock, like heavy tombstones thickly lichened, and
resting, some of them, one upon the other. I was on my back with my
head on a pillow of fungi; beneath the pillow, however, was a
sufficiently flinty foundation. For a long time I remained supine, and
listened with interest while my heart gradually resumed a normal rate.
The upper tangle of the fog was just beyond and below me; yet when I
looked at the dark brink above, I realized that never, never could I
climb back at the spot where I had fallen. But I felt a great
gladness.

I explored the place little more than was necessary to get my
bearings. So upon regaining enough strength I commenced to creep along
the face of the cliff, now and then dipping into the region of the
mist and losing sight of the sky, which was growing desolate of light.
At length I found a slope where the grass was short and turf firm, a
sward. I went now at a pace between a walk and a run and congratulated
myself on making headway, though the brow of the ravine was forbidding
above me still. Then the bank became startlingly overgrown with trees,
and the drizzle was thicker among them.

I slowed to a snail’s pace, and that was well for me. All too soon my
foot gave way on the left-hand edge of a mass of undergrowth quite
impenetrable to sight. I struggled to take hold of something, did, in
fact, grasp stems that yielded instantly to my weight, for they were
frail and grew on a perpendicular face of earth. Once more I had the
exquisitely dreadful sensation of falling whither I could not tell. My
body ripped down through a mesh and tangle of shrubs that availed
almost nothing to stay my descent. I accelerated.

Then my ribs struck a goodly branch with a knock that did indeed break
my fall, but before I could twine an arm about this saviour, I had
jounced to a lower branch, thence to the ground, this time with only a
moderate jar.

I was on a narrow rocky path with the densely overgrown hill on one
hand and the mist of the Vale—yawning space—on the other. I thought
for a flash that I had invaded the home-ledge of some unrecorded ape
or gorilla. For a creature cried out in my very face, a man coming up,
as it were, out of the living rock of the path before me. He was
fustian-clad, heavy-set, dark-featured, scowling frightfully, and my
impression was that he was almost spent of breath. His mouth gaped in
a rictus of strain and fear.

“Mawkerdjey—immilath acowal!” So they sounded, the words he spat in my
face, the shout he shouted uninterpretable by my English ears in that
cranny of Wales. But meaningless as was the shout to me, it remained
clear in my auditive memory, as a scene sometimes is keenly limned in
one’s inattentive sight. And I was sure it was not Welsh. Nor was this
because Radnorshire is a backsliding county where the ancient language
has yielded to the new. The shape and stress of the cry were unlike
what speech I have heard in the remoter areas where Welsh is still
spoken.

In an instant the fellow had scuffled past me and was ascending in the
fog, while yet I leaned on my hand with buzzing senses and jerky mind.
I staggered to my feet and looked upward along the path. At the head
of the rise a glimmer of sea-green sunset-light lingered, and the
broad bulk of the man staggered against that semi-darkness, a
diminishing silhouette. At length I saw him reach the top of the rise,
throw up his hands in a sort of gesture of weary achievement, and
disappear to the uplands beyond.

Excitedly, and full of profitless conjecture as to what might be his
business upon the rolling solitudes of Aidenn Forest, I turned on my
way down the zigzag path, being resolved to explore the Vale for
shelter since now it was hopeless to make my way over the fells and
crags to my Welsh tavern lodging that night. The outcry of the
ape-like man was still distinct in my ears, an undecipherable shout,
one, I knew, strange even in this region of strange tongues.

I had paused, arrested by a sound the like of which I have never
known, a roaring sound, not the boom of cannon or the rage of water or
the thunder of avalanche, all of which I have heard. It came from
below and far away, a gentle roar; I thought it might be some
superhuman voice. As a fact, while I listened, I became convinced that
it was a voice of great power with something unique and quite baffling
in its quality, one full capable of terrifying a man of unsteady
nerves. Yet I was sure that in a different context I would recognize
that quality as a natural thing. The muffled echoes of the voice
rocked around the Vale; words I am sure there were, the same phrase or
sentence repeated many times, but the utmost strain of ear and
faculties did not enable me to distinguish the meaning of a syllable.
Then the distant shout and its reflections ceased, and I heard only
the still grasses. I went on, full of living fancies.

A new sound greeted me out of the darkness, the rippling song of a
nightingale on my right beyond the brink. The trees in the depths of
Aidenn Vale, then, must be near below. And presently finding almost
level ground, I heard the chuckle of water, and discerned a lofty fall
of dulled silver, indeed passed it so close that the rising spray
touched my cheek. Thus I had found Aidenn Water, not far from its
springs on the shoulder of Black Mixen at the upper end of the
horseshoe.

Straining my sight in the clogged air, I could trace the black thread
of the watercourse on my right hand. Beside it I trod, to the broken
descant of amorous birds. And while I went the way of the stream south
among the wilding trees, the dark mist paled. I raised my eyes; great
Whimble hill loomed before me, and over its stern summit crept a
chipped and gibbous moon, softly lustering. While the moon went up the
sky, I trolled on southward in air grey and spectral under the
frowning summits of Aidenn Vale.

The pathway left the stream for a gentle rise through the trees. Still
I could hear Aidenn Water clamour down the Vale while it skipped
along. Soon I emerged from the thick of the wood into an open space,
the level summit of a vast mound, and with a certain freshening of
surprise found myself approaching a lonely wall built by human
strength.

A wall—no more—ruinous and desolate, toppled in many places from its
original height.

Passing closer, I discovered the confounded and scattered remnant of
other wasted walls, strewn like bones in the brightening glamour of
the moon. And midway among them stood one tree of mighty stature,
doubtless rendered even more towering by the witchery of mist and
moonlight.

Sometimes acoustic conditions prevent one from hearing what goes on
just round the corner only a few feet away. So, then, my path led me
toward the south-west end of the ruin, and precisely at the standing
angle of the stone I ran into another man. I did literally run into
him, for he was soft and spongy, and my first feeling was that I had
encountered a hot-water bottle strolling as leisurely as if on the
Mall.

We recoiled from a position cheek by jowl. A light flashed in my eyes,
and at the same instant I directed the glare of my pocket-torch, which
I still possessed, into his eyes. Our speeches, too, crossed each
other.

“Pardon! I didn’t hear you, sir!”

“What are you doing here?”

It was not the greeting I had expected; in fact, I felt it quite
discourteous. Moreover, he kept the spot-light of his dark-lantern
playing on my features for some time, and his piercing eyes studied me
critically. In return I gave his exterior a good scrutiny.

My light revealed a tall figure, appearing excessively, grotesquely
tall because it was wearing a very high, narrow top-hat, almost a
steeple-hat. The man was large and round as well as long. His face
compared with the rest of his body was relatively narrow; I saw
glittering eyes and a long, straight nose, eyebrows black like coals,
and a mantling, pointed beard, also very thick and fiercely black.
What gave me the creeps was that this beard did not grow quite
straight, but was tilted a little to the left.

His clothing, I saw in this long dissection, was that of an elderly
man, a black double-breasted frock-coat, not cutaway, and black
trousers which descended to elastic-sided boots. And under the arm
toward which the beard slanted was lodged an old, bulgy umbrella with
a large metal handle. He quickly shifted this article into his right
hand, grasping it toward the point so that it might be a weapon of
considerable moment, his left hand holding the dark-lantern.

He was the first to break the silence. Smiling, he replaced the
umbrella under his arm.

“Ah, pardon me, please. I see that you are on my side.” His voice, now
I noticed it, was rather deep, and yet rather young for one of his
solemn appearance.

“I’m sure I’m not against you,” I answered, and lowered my light out
of his eyes. He followed suit.

“You are one of the natives of this region?” he asked, and with his
question came the thought to me that he might be a foreigner, although
his full, somewhat throaty voice was perfectly assimilated to the
Anglican inflections. Those coat-skirts somehow gave him a little of a
Continental aspect—and that umbrella! Didn’t Schubert always carry an
umbrella? or was I thinking of Paul Pry?

“I should say not,” I responded. “I, too, am a stranger.”

“Ah, you, _too_? What a pity!”

“Yes, am I not correct in believing that you—”

“Quite so, sir; my name, sir, is Septimus MacWilloughby, and I was
taught not far from Birmingham. And now, sir, will you kindly tell me
what you have been doing here?”

“Been doing? Doing? Why, nothing, in the sense you seem to mean. And
have you any business with me? Isn’t it rather—?”

“It is necessary.”

“I lost my way in fog up there on the hilltops and came down into the
Vale in the hope of finding some sort of shelter. I was just passing
by this—”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. MacWilloughby, in what seemed to me a
rather meditative tone. “Tell me, please: in your travelling to-day
have you run across a very small grey spaniel, with ink-spots?”

I was reduced to repeating, “With ink-spots?”

“Yes, certainly: I repeat, a small grey spaniel, with ink-spots. The
dog was not to blame if the bottle was too near the edge of the table.
No, I see that you have not. Well then, by chance you may have seen a
pair of Scandinavian ponies, both lame in the off foreleg?”

“I certainly have not.”

“Dear me,” sighed my interlocutor. He stabbed the ground with his
umbrella, leaned upon it with both hands, large, red, bloated hands,
nervously twitching fat fingers. “And finally, did you notice whether
any snakes—”

I was growing exasperated, whether or not this _soi-disant_
MacWilloughby was making merry at my expense.

“Don’t you know,” I asked harshly, “that there are no snakes in
Radnorshire?”

“But these were from my menagerie. Dear me, my menagerie will be
dreadfully depleted, I fear. You didn’t—?”

“Look here,” I exploded; “have you a Bull of Bashan on your list? If
you have, your bull’s dead—I can tell you so much. With the exception
of a cave-man who was running up the path there, every animal I’ve
seen has been indigenous.”

“But snakes—from my menagerie,” he protested mildly, ignoring my tone.
He indicated with the umbrella and his free hand, for a pencil of
moonlight from rifted clouds had caused us both to stow away our
torches. “Snakes about so long.”

“No, no!”

He shrugged disappointedly. “Well! if it must be. Then you will tell
me, please, which of these hills”—he included them all with a sweep of
the umbrella—“is called Kerry Hill?”

“Why, none of them. Kerry Hill is outside this county, thirty miles
away.”

“Oh, so far away? Then I must be leaving at once. I have a friend who
lives in a little house on the top of that hill, and he will be
anxious for me.”

Whereupon Mr. MacWilloughby strode past me, but checked himself.
“Stay—what was that you said about a cave-man?”

I was willing to humour him a little longer. “Oh, I met _him_ right
enough. He shouted some gibberish in my face and passed me going to
the uplands.”

“Oh? Now that is very good. You may think it inexcusable of me, sir,
but I had the idea for a little while that you were that cave-man. I
asked you those questions partly to hear a little of your language.
Now, since you say Kerry Hill is so far, I really—”

He commenced to walk away, but I protested.

“I think it’s time you answered a question or two of mine. I don’t
know what possesses you to climb into that wilderness, even if your
whole menagerie is kicking its heels up there—they’ll keep. But you
can at least tell me what I’m likely to find further down the Vale.
Shall I find anyone there?”

The stranger’s face, in spite of its startling features, grew really
pleasant with a smile. “I believe you will find someone further down.
Yes, I believe you will find all you want.”

“I’m not looking for any special number of people,” I told him tartly.
“I want a house—shelter—a place to stop overnight. Am I clear?”

Mr. MacWilloughby seemed to have lost interest in his surroundings. In
answer to my question he murmured, “Yes, you are very likely to find a
house,” but his thought seemed to be running in other channels. He was
biting the beard of his nether lip. Suddenly he drew himself up. “You
might mention—if you decide to stop—to the master of the hostelry,
that his many watch-dogs are causing me inconvenience. Secretly, you
understand. All this you must tell him secretly. I enjoy the society
of the menagerie, and of many kinds of dogs—the Russian wolf-hound,
the Dalmatian—but I do not care for the two-legged kind he has out
to-night. It is not a thing I like to mention, you understand—it is so
delicate—but when one is actually precluded from stepping across a
stile—” Hand and umbrella made an expressive gesture. “You catch my
drift, I perceive.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” I remarked sardonically.

“You will?” he exclaimed with a parade of pleasure. “Then in that case
I shall not need protection against the rain.”

His arm shot out, and I saw the umbrella fly up like a thick javelin
through the air, to disappear beyond the wall beside which we stood.

“Another thing!” he cried, and I detected a real note of sincerity in
his tempestuous voice. “Tell the golden-haired woman that I have
warned her to beware of the blighter with the red face and the pot of
money. She should dismiss him—utterly. I have seen what I have seen.”

I emitted a dry “No doubt.”

“Thank you, sir, for your great courtesy,” said Mr. MacWilloughby. His
lofty hat he removed with a flowing ease; he bent his back in an
old-time inclination. Then in the fluctuating moonlight I saw not only
black beard and brows, but as well a wriggling mass of black hair. He
was smiling, but his smile now had a touch of wildness, even of
ghoulishness. He set his hat upon his brows again.

“I shall not need even finger-nails if I meet another like you,” he
said.

He turned on his heel and continued his stately promenade toward the
summit of the Vale. I watched him until the moon surrendered and the
mist had him. Where was he going? To join that prehistoric man on the
hill? And where in heaven’s name had he come _from_?

Mad? Was he mad? No more mad than I. I realized, the moment he had
projected his umbrella, that he was eminently sane. But he had
overplayed his part a little—for his audience.

Continuing on my southward way, I soon passed the site of what had
been the outer walls of this great castle, though now little remained
save one block of hewn stone upon another here and there. Most of the
material had probably been carried off to build some mansion of a
later age.

I left the ruin, advancing down the Vale, whose bounds of lofty crag
and hanger were darkly visible for a little while. But I could not
leave behind me the thought of the huge man and his eccentric
speeches. Only new surprises could reave that vision from me; and
presently, passing a large, white-painted, wood-gate, I was startled
to observe that although I was in a wilderness, it was an
extraordinarily well-ordered wilderness. The trees along the path, ash
and sycamore, I believed, stood at like distances from one another and
were spaced regularly opposite. I seemed to be marching along a smooth
avenue in a park; the remoter trees, too, although they were obscure
as fleeing ghosts, appeared to flee away in serried ranks. The spaces
in the glades looked clear of underbrush. I was glad to note these
signs, if signs they were, of human tending, with their suggestion of
human nearness, for even my refreshened strength was slipping away
from me and the welts and strains of my body were clamouring again.

Quicker than I had expected, I was out of the toy wilderness into a
clear space of thirty-odd yards (the dominant moon showed me this),
and Aidenn Water was roaming close beside my path. A brook going to
join the larger stream from some hill-recess on my left was crossed by
an old stone bridge with urns at the ends of its stone balustrades, a
ridiculously massive structure for so insignificant a watercourse. But
a few seconds later I passed another object built with overplus of
formality and ostentation, a semi-rustic house which could have been
no more than a summer-house, quite unsuited for habitation but freaked
and loaded with statuary and gewgaws.

“The eighteenth century!” I murmured. “What nightmares did they not
have in the Age of Reason? Am I now to find a geometrical mansion of
Georgian brick?”

I had entered a new zone of drizzle and mist when I had my first
evidence of the house appertaining hereto. The fog thickened almost to
the density of a wall, and when the well-ordered path ceased at the
edge of the lawns, I blundered against a tree trunk, one of three
standing alone in gloom and grandeur in the open space. I generously
cursed the spirits, whose exhalation, as every Welsh peasant used to
know, the mist is. By a flash of my torch I recognized the three
tapering shapes as horizontal cypresses, and at once I felt relief,
for I was sure that these none-too-hardy trees must be of a recent and
venturesome planting. I was becoming convinced that human lives were
not far from me.

A few steps more and I was standing on a pebble walk beneath the
shorter northern wall of a definitely up-to-date structure. The stone
may have been old stone, but it had been smoothed off within a
generation, and the ivy had evidently been somewhat restricted in its
rambling in order that the broad-spread glass of this storey might not
be effaced from the light. Why all this glass? A conservatory? I
stepped across the walk, flashed my torch, peered in, saw a glimmering
galaxy of flowers, sniffed and detected a hint of their thick odour,
was satisfied. A conservatory it was, extending from end to end of
this northern wall, with unlit, wide-paned windows from end to end
save where a steep outer stair led up to a small roofless platform and
door in the first storey; and I perceived a vague second storey, above
which chimneys sprouted.

Now, I should not have lingered here more than a few seconds, had not
there burst forth a chill sound that actually took me out of myself
for a moment, a caterwauling from somewhere behind me and further
toward the mountain wall of the ravine. It seemed impossible that such
a desecration of silence could proceed from a single throat. It was a
sobbing cry full of hunger, but there was positive anger and direness
in it. It had a quality, too, of immitigable anguish, as though all
the hopelessness of dumb beasts were its burden. Once the throbbing
cry subsided into a gruff growl, and then, strangely enough, was the
first time that I recognized its clamour as that of a cat. “But,” I
remembered thinking, “it must be a cat as big as a wolf.” And while
the last throes of the savage wailing echoed back from the hill, I
looked up to the gloomy heights of the mansion, as if I expected each
dark window to flare with inquiring light.

[Illustration: A map of the area surrounding Highglen House. Close to
the house are some ruins and the Stables. A road leads from the
stables, past the house, and then down the map. Off to the left is a
grove of strawberry trees, in the middle of which sits a hard tennis
court. At the top right corner of the map is a building labelled “Farm
of the sisters Delambre”. The farm sits close to a fence, which runs
across the map until it meets the river, labelled “Aidenn Water”. The
river runs down the left side of the map, turning briefly towards the
middle of the map where it crosses under the road. Between Highglen
House and the farm is a footpath, halfway along which it passes a
small structure labelled “18th Century Summer House”. A small brook
branches off of Aidenn Water which crosses the footpath at a small
bridge, and from there another footpath continues up the map, through
a gate in the fence, and beyond.]

In puzzlement and lively eagerness to discover more about this
mansion, I turned to the right and followed the walk to the corner of
the conservatory, where it joined a drive that wound out of the
right-hand darkness. I discovered that the side of the house extended
a hundred feet or more parallel to the course of Aidenn Water.
Visible, too, on the broad lawn at four or five rods’ distance from
the house was a tall, two-legged thing, fifty feet high by a rough
judgment, an erection of twin towers with a passageway above and
between, the whole standing lonely, dark and still.

The conservatory’s narrow side ended in the jutting of a tower, quite
black. Between this and the next tower, its counterpart, I caught dim
glimpses of modern french windows, a pair of them, evidently belonging
to the same large room. There was a formal entrance between the second
tower and the third, but since it was unlit, I decided to go further
in hopes of finding the main portal. Yet I had a view of what was
behind the door, and again I paused, fascinated.

Inside the third tower, the projecting half of an octagon studded with
little windows, I saw a taper burning low in an old candlestick
fastened like a bracket on the wall, a thing of fantastic crooks and
curlicues. The light was blue and brittle, for the wick was surfeited
with grease. But I was able to see three men in the panelled hallway,
two of them standing, or perhaps leaning, against the wall. Of these I
perceived no more than their dark featureless forms, and a marked
stiffness in their attitudes. On the opposite side of the hall from
the candle, they were too vague to be any more particularized than as
human forms. The third man, save for his little tuft of white hair,
had been no more than a smudge either.

For he was bent over, his back toward me, _and he was picking the
pockets of the other two men_! I can describe his actions in no better
way. They, seemingly stupefied, made no motion to prevent!

I must say that the old, white-tufted fellow was not very adroit at
his work. I stood absolutely spell-bound while I watched him paw about
the clothing of the two others. The candle guttered with special
vehemence, and the pilferer turned upward to it an anxious eye. Then
he appeared to make a decision; standing full length, he crossed to
the candle and lifted his lean fingers to snuff it. I was impressed by
a sight of his narrow brown face, vulturine in contour, with the tall,
furrowed brow of a student, the thin, pale lips of an ascetic, and the
broken-off jaw of a fighter. The expression was whimsical and wily.
The light glinted for an instant on a green eye, on white smiling
teeth, and on the diamond stud in his shirt-front. Then the fingers
smothered the feeble flame, and he was in the darkness with those
dazed ones I suspected were his victims.

And I hastened around the fourth tower, larger than the rest, at the
southern extremity of the mansion. What was I to do? Had I in fact
witnessed the induction to a serious crime? Was it my duty to report
what I had seen? It must depend on circumstances; perhaps the old
tufted sinner was the proprietor himself. I must be cautious. I must
be dissimulative.

Above all, I must not be surprised.

An electric chandelier sparkled in the large corner tower, revealing
it to be part of the sumptuous library of the mansion, empty of
persons. I found the entrance I sought in the middle of the south end
of the building. The crunching drive made a great circle, leading to a
square-arched, ivied entry. A barred lamp above the vestibule faintly
revealed the arms of the house cut in stone at the apex of the arch,
and surmounting this, as a sort of crest, was the rude but
unmistakable image of a cat’s head. I dimly perceived a feline nose
with faintest trace of whisker running along it, and triangular ears.
The mouth was grinning, not pleasantly.

Here was matter for vast surprise, but I must not _be_ surprised!

I stepped underneath the arch, to the broad iron-bound black-door.
Another pale light revealed the knocker, an iron piece in the shape of
the paw of a cat. There was also the button of an electric bell. I
grasped the paw and struck twice.

Almost immediately the door opened. “Come in,” said a voice. “You’ve
been—”

_I must not be surprised!_ But I gaped, and gurgled, for all I know.

The sturdy square-set fellow in evening dress who had opened the door
so suddenly and who now stood in the half-light was staring at me,
beginning to look a little _distrait_.

“Oh, so you’re not—” he commenced brusquely, and, changing his tone,
recommenced, “But _are_ you, or aren’t—?”

“No, no,” I managed to gasp. “I’m not—I don’t think so.”

I had known nothing of Aidenn Vale or of the ruins, mansions, or
creatures in it. But I knew this man!



CHAPTER IV

The Bidding Feast

“Pendleton!” I exclaimed, “the Honourable Crofts Pendleton!”

“Eh?”

“Hail, fellow well met! This _is_ a lark!”

The man was nonplussed. It had always been, at least for me, one of
his chief charms when we were in the same college, the haziness and
obstruction of mind that were so queerly assorted with his solidity of
physique. Now, eight years between, he was bulkier than ever and (I
was willing to wager) yet more detached from reality in his mental
operations.

He was scratching his fine mane of hair now, irresolute. And he really
had reason to be confused while we confronted each other in the
dimly-lit porch. For I presented such a scotched and scrambled
appearance as never before, mould-mud-and-sweat-clotted,
unrecognizable no doubt even to my most accustomed friends. Why should
he not be startled when in this gear and guise I greeted him with
burbling cheer?

He looked so dumbly helpless that I had to laugh.

“Man, man, do you mean to say that you don’t remember me by my voice?”

“Your voice?” repeated Pendleton. “Yes, it sounds familiar” (he was
lying), “but somehow I can’t—”

I kept chuckling, and he looked hurt; so I said, “Of course you can’t.
I’m Bannerlee, Alfred Bannerlee.”

The announcement drove him back a pace. “No!”

“Emphatically yes.”

He was studying me intently now, quite rapt. “But how on earth did you
find your way up the Vale? It must be full of stinking fog down there
in New Aidenn.”

“I came _down_ the Vale!” I announced. “There’s a thimbleful of mist
up in the north, too.”

“_Down_ the Vale! You say you came down the Vale!” Then suddenly
realization and recognition of me burst upon him for the first time,
and he reached for my hand and gave it a good pumping, grasped my
elbow, and took me inside. “My dear man, my dear fellow, you must have
had a sickening time. Delighted to have you with us. By gad! How on
earth did you ever find this nook in the woods?”

“I’m an antiquarian, you know, a nomad. I might better ask how you did
the same,” I rejoined. “And, er, are you the butler?”

“No. Of course not. I’m the host. Why, what do you mean?” He stared at
me with the old uncertainty.

“You answered my knock with remarkable alacrity.”

“Oh, I was just at the door, going to open it anyhow. I was on my way
to my room when I heard you out there.” He gestured toward the drive.
“I imagined you’d want to be let right in.”

“But, my dear Crofts, you didn’t know who I was.”

“Oh, yes, I did. That is, I thought I did. Oh, there’s a fine state of
confusion here. You see, we’ve been waiting for Sir Brooke Mortimer
since before dinner. And as he’s not sent word, we’re still waiting
for him.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yes,” said he.

We were standing just inside the hall, which contained some of the
finest screen panelling I have seen. I guessed, rightly, that it was
Henry VIII. work. A multitude of little heads peered out from the wall
beneath coats-of-arms, and the foliated edges of the wood were as
delicate as lace. There was a settle standing on the left-hand side,
where the ceiling sloped down sharply, evidently beneath a winding
stair.

Pendleton seemed struck by a sudden thought. “You’d like to change,
perhaps?”

“My dear man! If you’ll fit me out! I shall perish otherwise. As I am,
I’d rather not see people.”

“Well—would you mind waiting here a moment? I’ll fetch Blenkinson. Not
long. There’s a good fellow.”

He was gone, and I sat me down on the restful settle with some
gyrating thoughts to compose.

But before I had time to set one thought beside another, a new man in
evening dress came breezing nonchalantly past me to the door, which he
opened and peered out of, to close it in a moment with a small shiver.
It had grown chilly out-of-doors during the latter hour of my odyssey.
Turning, he beheld me in my recess.

“Hello,” he exclaimed mildly. “So you _have_ come. No news of him?”

He was, I now think, one of the most deceptive-appearing persons I
have ever encountered, of a type emphatically British, but the extreme
of his type. He was the nonpareil for unobtrusiveness and lack of
distinction; without even the stamp of vulgarity, he was ordinary and
unnoticeable to the last degree. I have never seen a man who appeared
to possess so many properties of a vacuum. His age, perhaps, was
somewhere about the third decade. He was of no particular height
(actually about five feet seven) or weight (about ten stone ten), and
his face was all that was commonplace. A pair of futilely brown
moustaches divided it into upper and lower portions, in the superior
of which pastel-grey eyes kept an unblinking but unobservant watch;
below, his mouth and jaw were neither strong nor weak. His complexion
was pale but not to excessive sallowness, and his brownish hair,
rather thin, was faintly flecked with grey. His dinner coat fitted
exceptionally well.

“Yes, I have come,” I answered, “but I’m not sure I’m the ‘you’ you
mean.”

“Why, you’re Hughes, the keeper, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m just a friend of Pendleton’s.”

“Oh, is that so?”

He was not cloudy and remote like Crofts Pendleton; rather I thought I
detected even a trace of the sardonic in his tone, and I must have
flushed at the remembrance of my rough and woebegone attire.

“I don’t look the part, I admit.”

“Well, no, you don’t.” He held out his hand with a cordiality
surprising to me. “Belvoir’s my name—Ted Belvoir. It’s B-e-l-v-o-i-r,
you know.”

“Bannerlee’s mine. B-a-n-n—”

“Oh, that’s all right. I spelled mine out on account of these
Americans. They think it’s funny to pronounce it ‘Beaver!’”

“Americans!”

“Why, you must be quite a stranger here. Didn’t you know—”

“I know nothing. I am indeed an utter stranger, save for being
acquainted with Pendleton. You see that I’m rather the worse for wear;
well, I’ve been running and scrambling and climbing all over Aidenn
Forest to-day, and to cap the climax I fell into this Vale and
blundered upon this house.”

“All over Aidenn Forest?”

“Yes, I am an antiquary of sorts.”

“Now, that’s very interesting, very interesting. Why, you may
have—have you seen anyone?” There was a glimmer of excitement in his
pale eyes.

Now suddenly it occurred to me that reticence might be useful in this
mansion whereof I knew so little and that little full of perplexity.

“Why, what sort of person?”

“Oh, a gentleman prowling at a loose end.”

“I should say not,” I assured him, “unless he was mightily
transmogrified.”

“Well, that delays us again.”

“I suppose the man you mean is, er, Sir Brooke Mortimer.”

“Yes.” His eyes widened. “Now, how did you know that?”

“Pendleton told me before he went to fetch the butler.”

“That’s the man, that’s the man. Irritating, isn’t it? Hughes and some
of the other servants have gone in search. That’s why our host takes
so long to get Blenkinson, who must be busy.”

“You don’t tell me the servants have gone out to scour for him!”

“He’s such an irregular blighter, you know. May have tried to walk it
from New Aidenn or even from somewhere else on the line. They’re going
to telephone down when the station-master comes for the evening train.
You see, he wasn’t due on any particular train, but they expected him
to send word ahead. So they’re in a pretty pass.”

“What’s the man look like?”

“Oh, a little, piddling sort of minnikin. Wearing a couple of pairs of
glasses, most likely, and sure to be smoking an offensive cigar.
Speaks with a lisp when he gets excited—sometimes when he isn’t. You
couldn’t have seen him?”

“No,” I avouched. “Neither to-day nor any other day.” I had already
resolved, by the by, to tell no stranger about the men I had seen. I
wanted to be believed.

I refrained from asking why Sir Brooke’s presence was so necessary for
the comfort of all, but my new acquaintance evidently saw the question
in my face, for he answered it in a manner to provoke my curiosity yet
further. “He’s going to propose the health of the bride, y’know.”

A third personage came round from the other side of the stairs, and
the blood in my veins gave a little leap when I recognized the
white-haired man whose suspicious behaviour I had overlooked in the
dim room with the tower windows. His gaze was inquiring, as if he had
come to see whose the voices were, and when he saw my unaccustomed
face, he gave a cluck, as if to say, “I know who _you_ are,” and
demanded peremptorily:

“Are you the missing idiot?”

I said, “Perhaps.”

His little dark eyes sparkled. “Then you’re not—no, I see you’re not.
You haven’t, by the way, seen a lost sheep of a knight outside?”

“No.”

Somehow Belvoir had melted away upon the coming of this gentleman; now
the old fellow, with his eyes pursuing the other down the hall out of
my view, snapped, “So much the better. We have at least one crazy man
here already.”

“Indeed! What is his name?” I asked with much enjoyment, expecting to
hear Belvoir identified, for I judged that no love was lost between
these two.

“Cosgrove!”

“Oh! I haven’t heard of him, I believe.”

“Well, you will.”

He was gone!

I listened to his waning footsteps down the hall for only a brace of
seconds before I had made a hasty, rash decision. I would see, before
anyone else, what was the state of affairs inside the room where I had
witnessed this old fellow’s dubious practices. I edged around the
curve of the stair, saw him moving briskly away at the other end of
the wainscoted and carpeted passage, which was quite broad enough to
be called a good-sized gallery. There were two doors on the right,
four on the left (counting one by the stair-foot, where the corridor
broadened almost into a room), and one away at the far end, which last
must lead into the conservatory. A collection of portraits, large and
small, hung over and between the doors, although, since the hall was
wholly enclosed by rooms, they must never be seen save by artificial
light.

By the time I had comprehended so much, the old gentleman had
disappeared through the farthest door at the left. An entrance behind
the stairs I judged to lead into the library where the light was
blazing, perhaps as a beacon for Sir Brooke. The room I sought must
lie beyond the door facing the stair-foot. I felt like a burglarious
person while I opened it and stole into darkness, taking out my
electric-torch. And the moment afterward I felt like a fool.

The yellow cone of light played on walls hung with trophies and
weapons of every age and sort. I saw the old candle-bracket by the
window, and the closed doors leading to rooms on each side, as well as
to the open. Standing where the “men” had been were two hollow suits
of armour, complete in plate and chain.

So the old codger’s only crime must have been a little harmless
fussing about. Still, why had he chosen near-darkness when there was,
as now I saw, an electric switch beside the door? Perhaps the switch
was out of order; I had not the courage to try it and see. Almost, but
not quite, I acquitted the white-haired gentleman of evil design.

I lost no time in returning to my station in the hall. I was on the
settle, and had almost decided that Crofts Pendleton had forgotten me
when he appeared apologetically, with the butler, carrying a loaded
tray, at his heels.

“If it’s compatible with bathing, I got Blenkinson to put some dishes
together. Dinner’s just over.”

“My dear Crofts, you’re too thoughtful.”

“Very seldom, I assure you,” he smiled.

“Certainly, I’d like to break the edge of appetite, anyhow.”

“Then we’ll go up to my room.”

Blenkinson, with impeccable whiskers, looked as if he might be the
Master of University College. With the tray, he followed us up the
circular stairs, whose well reached into the dim heights of the second
storey. A room on the right of the first landing was Pendleton’s.

“Hullo, it’s dark! I expected Ludlow had come up. He complained of
feeling seedy.”

The long corridor of this floor, which I later found to lead to the
door of the landing of the outside stairs at the north end of the
building, was invisible until Pendleton touched a button on the wall.

“Ludlow? Is he the tufted individual, hawk-like?”

“Why, yes. Have you seen him?”

“We have conversed slightly. He’s downstairs.”

“He must be feeling better,” murmured Crofts. Yet somehow I distrusted
that his Lordship had suffered even a little twinge.

Now Blenkinson withdrew discreetly as a Dean, after examining each
dish on the tray and giving every cover an approving caress.

“May I ask a question?”

“Blaze away.”

“Aren’t things a little out of order here, to-night? Or are there no
ladies present?”

“There are ladies, plenty of ’em. But what do you mean?”

“Why are the men prowling around the House? Where are the ladies?
Don’t they customarily leave the men at the board?”

“Oh, yes, usually.” There was a light in his eyes that caused me to
expect something quite illogical and characteristic. “But here it’s
the other way round.”

“What?”

“Here the men leave the table to the ladies. It’s the local custom.”

It had come, the sublimely ridiculous. But still—I ventured: “Then
most of your guests are Welsh folk?”

“Not one; all English and American. But ‘When in Rome,’ you know,
Bannerlee. I like to pay tribute to the _mores_ of the place. That’s a
word of Belvoir’s; you know what I mean.”

In anyone but Crofts Pendleton I should have held such deference to
the manners of the parish or the borough or the shire to be a gesture
of mock. But mockery was out of the question in that face of perfect
guilelessness. So innocent and susceptible were those big features
that I had a momentary impulse to tell him that there appeared to be
“goings-on” in the House. But I forbore.

So, beginning to lay aside my reeking clothes, I asked him the nature
of the party, and if it were in celebration of a particular occasion,
and in so doing I met point-blank another of his vague notions,
disassociated from the working of any ordinary mind.

“A very special occasion indeed,” he declared. “We are having a
wedding party—that is, there’s going to be a wedding party; to-night
it’s a Bidding Feast.”

“Bidding Feast?”

“Yes,” said Crofts, evincing much pleasure in his revelation. “It
accords with the folk custom. You look oddly. Haven’t you heard of
it?”

“Not sufficiently, I fear.”

“It’s very old, very old, to help the married-pair-to-be to set up
housekeeping.”

“Then I am amiss in not knowing something of it, having turned
desultory antiquarian since we were last together. Tell me about it.”

He seemed shy and apologetic. “Of course we don’t go into all of
it—the donations of bread and cheese and sugar and such, or promissory
notes (they’ve been recognized as legal obligations in the courts, you
know). We haven’t had any of that, or selling cakes and ale for the
enrichment of the couple. These are wealthy people. And we’ve
dispensed with the ‘inviter.’”

“Oh, you have?” I asked ironically. “What, perchance, is he?”

“A professional in the business exclusively. He tramps the country for
several days ahead and bids the householders with a set of humorous
doggerel verses, or printed ballad. I’ve several works describing it
all in the library downstairs. It used to be a universal thing in
Wales, but it’s almost a dead-letter now.” He looked as if he were
about to sigh.

“And you say that you’re reviving it for a couple who are not Welsh?”

“Welsh? Of course they’re not Welsh. Paula Lebetwood’s an American,
and Sean Cosgrove—well, he’s an Irishman.”

“One hopes so. And how goes the Feast?”

“We’re being terribly festive! Under the circumstances, you
know. . . .”

Here was the maddest, one might say the most pitiful, of Pendleton’s
fancies. A Welsh Bidding Feast for setting up a couple in
housekeeping—only minus the Welsh folk, minus the donations, minus the
cakes and ale, minus the “inviter,” minus about everything, in fact,
except the good intentions of the host! A ghost of a Bidding Feast.

“Surely, Crofts,” I remarked, “if you are trying to revive the good
old Welsh customs, you might suggest a bundling party.”

He went red, but was too good-natured to take offence. “Nonsense, man.
Don’t mention it. Why, it’s an immoral thing. Sermons used to be
preached against it.”

“But under the circumstances!” I repeated his phrase. “Morality is a
question of local custom, isn’t it? The _mores_, you know.”

“_Mores?_ Oh, you sound like Belvoir, who’s been getting everybody in
a stew.” He overlooked his own introduction of the word.

“Well, I shan’t propose it, my dear man. I know that I should be
mobbed, without a Welshman in the Vale to protect me.”

A flicker of movement crossed his features, and his voice was
constrained, even grave. “Without a Welshman?—well, I don’t know.”

“You’re aggrieved, Crofts. What’s the matter?”

“This place is full of wild-eyed superstitions,” he declared,
beginning to pace the length of the room. “We have a few Welsh
servants—they keep the place up while it’s unoccupied—and they’re agog
with the Gwyllion and the Tylwyth Teg. They’re stirring up the rest
with tales of the haggish fairies and dwarfs and goblins that seem to
infect this locality.”

“Well,” I laughed, yet with a pinch of queerness in thinking of the
near-apparition who had occurred on the ledge-path, “as long as nobody
has met his own funeral and the dames and peers of elfin-land keep
outside the walls—”

“But that’s just it!” he cried vexatiously. “There’s _been_ an
invasion. The women have made me put all their best jewellery in the
strong-box, and still they’re fretting.”

I paused in the act of drying my back. “You don’t mean—”

“The worst visitant of all is in our midst, and unless we dispose of
him our nerves will be in tatters!” Then he lapsed into sudden
contrition for his vehemence. “Of course I’m not such a fool as to
believe any of it.”

“The supernatural, you mean?”

“That’s why I said I’m not so sure we haven’t a Welshman in our midst.
He must be at the bottom of it all. Confound it, somebody must be.”

“Whom do you mean by ‘he’?”

“Parson Lolly,” answered Pendleton, with slightly bated breath, and I
remember that I was impressed into silence for a moment.

“_Parson_ Lolly?”

“So he is called.”

“And who may the Parson be?”

“A legend, just a damned legend.”

“And a Welshman too?”

“That’s it!” he exclaimed with an eager gesture. “Don’t you see it
must be so, or else there’s hell let loose in this valley? It must be
a man, must be, must be! Only—” He checked himself.

“Well?”

“No man can do the things Parson Lolly is said to do.”

I made a complete break in my toilet and scrutinized my friend, who
was visibly shaken. He said, “It’s no use trying to describe how it
feels to be a host in the midst of such a hullabaloo. It’s the very
devil. And I can’t _do_ anything to stop it. Helplessness is a
terrible thing.”

“Now tell me some of this nonsense,” I urged. “And first of all, why
‘Parson’? It’s creepy.”

“It certainly is,” he agreed. “That designation adds oddness,
sinister, too, to the whole portrait of him.”

“What else is there in his portrait?”

“He’s old, several hundred years old at the most conservative estimate
of the servants. His business is general mischief and bedevilment and,
I surmise, thievery.”

“What does he look like?”

“He has the face of a demon, red with hell-fire, and streaked with
smoke. He has the likeness of a man otherwise, but he wears a great
flowing robe of black; there’s where the ‘Parson’ part comes in, I
suppose. The robe is vaster than any prelate’s of earth, though there
again you have the sinister touch. He—he flies in it, Bannerlee, like
an enormous crow! He’s been seen flying away over the Bach Hill.”

“How far is Bach Hill from here?”

“About two miles.”

I resumed my dressing, and simulated a laugh, for it would not do to
seem too much impressed with this fol-de-rol. Pendleton maintained his
appearance of dead seriousness.

“I wonder if there’s anything else. Oh, yes—his voice.”

“Voice?” My question must have been sharp.

“It’s a young voice and an old voice in one. He’s been heard,
Bannerlee.” Pendleton licked his lips. “I’ve heard him myself.”

“You must leave this, Crofts,” I admonished, dimly aware that I was
cribbing from literature. “You’re letting your imagination make sport
of you, of course; but, tell me, what’s been the spring of all your
troubles? What’s actually happened here?”

His mood had shifted. “No, let’s change the subject. This is no way to
receive a guest, with omens and warnings.”

“But, good heavens, you only make it worse when you stop at the
warnings. I want to hear some of the facts.”

“You really do?”

“This is absurd. Of course I do.”

But Crofts’ mind was then in an unwilling state as regarded retailing
the misdeeds of the Parson. He became sketchy. At first there had been
annoyances among the servants, the overturning of pots and skillets,
the displacement of articles, some so thoroughly removed that they
never would be found. For the past forty-eight hours these trifles had
been throwing the kitchen into an uproar, but one more serious thing
had occurred the previous evening in the presence of the guests who
had already arrived. All Pendleton would tell me of this outrage was
that it had to do with the smashing of the conservatory window, and
that then the voice of the Parson had been heard by everyone.

“It makes me feel sometimes, for a minute or two, that there may be
something in it,” he muttered finally. “Why isn’t it possible that
someone has found a method of flying with a minimum of mechanical aid?
It will happen sooner or later.”

“When I see him taking off, I’ll believe—not otherwise.”

“That’s the sensible thing to say—very sensible.”

Now in the course of this long conversation I had disencumbered myself
of my damp-heavy explorer’s gear, had cavorted in the bath between the
rooms of Pendleton and his wife, had donned his dressing-gown and
shaved with his razor, had covered myself with one of his old business
suits, now “uncomfortably snug” for his frame, but flappingly loose
for mine. The food I had reserved until after the bath; although the
things were now cool, I took half a cupful of coffee and sampled the
leg of a duck. I resolved to confide one thing to Pendleton now;
perhaps it would bring him some relief. So, swiftly explaining my
movements in Aidenn Forest that day, I related my adventures with the
man on the ledge-path, and hinted that he might be at the root of the
mischief.

“What time was that?”

“Over two hours ago, I suppose.”

He shook his head, wistfully. “No, I wish it was as simple as you
suggest. But the Parson was making trouble among the servants only an
hour before you came.”

I thought of the menagerie-keeper, yet somehow he didn’t fit into this
situation.

“I’m sorry, Crofts. Still, you mustn’t let such antics disturb you.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” he promised, but I thought his protest a little
feverish.

While we went downstairs I gave him the best imitation I could of the
stranger’s cry on the ledge-path, and asked him if he believed it was
Welsh.

“No,” he said, with the gravity of conviction, “no, that’s certainly
not Welsh.”

Bless his simple heart! I believe he knows no more Cumraeg than I.

We moved along the galley-passage, and nighed the third left-hand
entrance.

Now, just as we were about to enter, while we heard the voices of
festivity inside, he turned to me suddenly.

“I’m sending the boy to your village beyond the hills to-morrow
morning—whatever-its-name-is—for your things. You’re to be one of us,
of course.”

“My dear Crofts, I hate to intrude.”

“No intrusion. And there are other equal strangers among us. Will you
stay on for a couple of days?”

“I’d be delighted.”

“Then I’ll announce you as one of us.”

We joined the Bidding Feast.

I motioned my host to precede me into the midst of the party. Now it
so happened that we entered with none to observe us, for this door
opened beneath an old musicians’ gallery.

We had no sooner entered this shady spot than I placed my hand on
Pendleton’s sleeve and put finger to lips, and stood to take in the
scene in silence. The head of a cat, with ears singularly set back,
made a rest for the hand at the pillared foot of the winding
balustrade to the gallery. It had given me a moment’s shock at first,
but now I set my fingers along that smooth nose and peered covertly
from the concealment of the little staircase. The Bidding Feast, save
for floral and evergreen festoons about the Hall, had all the look of
two tables of ordinary auction bridge.

But I hardly did more than give a secret glance at the guests before
surveying the extent and features of the Hall itself. Flat-ceilinged,
its wooden roof supported by braced thirty-foot timbers, a room
regular in its right-angularity, it nevertheless gave the impression
of spaciousness. It was two storeys in height, full forty feet in
length, and obviously of great age, perhaps a bulwark of war, for its
ashlar masonry was undisguised by arras, woodwork, or plaster.
Somehow, save for the chimney-piece in the wall beyond which the
conservatory lay, a fireplace which was massive without being
cumbrous, the appointments of the room seemed to me inept. All the
Tudor furniture was gone, and in its stead was a collection of
mahogany and walnut pieces from the lion-mask period—and later—looking
frail and prettified in that ancient stronghold of defence. The
woven-backed chairs, the spindly animal-legs of the tables with their
claw-feet, the spider’s web marqueterie decorations, were to my mind
strongly out of keeping. The waxed floor was in part covered by old
English “Turky” carpets. Altogether a medley of anachronisms was the
Hall of the Moth, but its walls a-frown and towering chimney-place
lent nevertheless a thrill of antique grandeur.

[Illustration: A plan of the ground floor of Highglen House. The front
door is at the bottom of the plan, opening into a narrow corridor
leading through the middle of the house, as well as a winding
staircase to the next floor. Large doors immediately to the left of
the front door connect to a library in the bottom left corner of the
building. Above the library is the armoury. The armoury has doors on
all sides, including one to the outside. Above the armoury is a large
room labelled “Hall of the Moth”. The door between the armoury and the
Hall of the Moth is underneath a raised platform labelled “Musicians’
Gallery”. Both the Hall of the Moth and the central corridor have
doors to the conservatory, which runs along the top of the plan, and
has a large window along most of the top wall. The right-hand side of
the plan is mostly taken up by the dining-room, which the conservatory
connects to directly. Below the dining-room are the kitchen and
pantries.]

Two of the eight card-players I recognized, of course, Lord Ludlow and
Belvoir, who were opposed to each other at the nearer table, where the
deal had just been made. Lord Ludlow, who was facing me, lifted his
cards from the table, arching his brows above the pince-nez which now
clung to his sharp-wedged nose. Satisfaction gleamed from all quarters
of his countenance.

“_You_ haven’t the right kind of face for cards,” I thought; then a
notion made me mutter, “Or, I wonder?” The old dissembler!

I was impressed by the vague familiarity of the back of Lord Ludlow’s
partner, and guessed her to be the hostess of the Bidding Feast. I had
known Alberta Pendleton in the early days, and had seen that stately
back preceding me up the aisle at her wedding. It had taken on added
dignity, if anything, in the intervening years, and I expected,
rightly, that her delicate beauty (Pendleton had been ungodly lucky)
would have ripened into greater loveliness.

Belvoir, on her right, was opposite a woman I intuitively knew must be
his wife, for she might have been his widow. It was not only that she
looked older than she was, and gave that impression, for she was
gowned in black relieved by grey, and that her cheek was pale, having
a worn softness, or that her composed voice, rather full and sweet,
seemed full of twilight memories; she had the half-experienced,
half-expectant air which bereft females wear. And indeed I supposed it
could hardly be otherwise for her, married as she was to a man who
seemed without a trace of colour, without a morsel of flesh to him, or
a drop of blood, the acme of innocuousness.

At the far table three men were playing with one woman, whose back was
turned to me. Facing her, and me, sat a bright-eyed, youngish fellow
with short black hair, a face almost crimson-red, and on his right and
left respectively a dandified-looking chap with waxed moustaches, and
a good solid individual of immobile swarthy countenance, the image of
a substantial, dependable Englishman. This ponderous person was
dealing with a regular, unhurried motion that recalled to me the
grinding of the mills of God.

“A pretty kettle of fish!” I murmured to myself, and added to Crofts,
“A variegated lot, old fellow! So many different tempers and
purposeful minds reduced to the same dead level by the permutations of
fifty-two pasteboard slips. Saddening, Crofts, saddening.”

“All intimates, one way or another,” he whispered. “Good friends, mind
you, but you’ll find them fighting half the time.”

“They certainly look engrossed in the game.”

“Ah, but that’s a pretence. They keep up a very brave front, but any
trifling disturbance would set them wild.”

“You don’t say so.”

“I tell you, man, there’s something foul and fearful in this damned
Vale. I half regret—well, come on. You’ve got to meet them sometime.
They’ve all heard about you.”



CHAPTER V

Kingmaker

Forthwith commenced that three-legged race I have already described,
in whose zigzag course I was presented to all these people in about
two minutes.

While my mind was still in a haze, a small thing caught my eye and
made me give a much larger thing a rapid, cursory, and at the same
time careful survey. The small thing was still another image of a
cat’s head, this one in profile with jaws apart and bared teeth, the
head forming a heraldic badge tucked into one spandril of the Hall
fire-arch. The renewed sight of this insistent emblem had a bad effect
on me. The leering head at the outer door, the sleek head at the foot
of the balustrade, and this vindictive head brought the sharp,
nerve-tearing cry of the outer darkness into my ears again.

“Crofts”—I must have spoken with asperity—“why the devil didn’t your
family choose some holier badge than a damned cat’s head, with nothing
funny or Cheshire-ish about it?”

“My family? Not my family.”

“Oh, not—”

“Lord, no. Dirty thing, isn’t it, that one? But not mine. Bought this
place a couple of years ago. Look there, for a primitive genealogical
sign.”

I thought at first he was pointing to the badge and I leaned to
examine it at closer quarters. The spandrils of the fire-arch had the
usual long crinkled leaves of the early Tudors; on one lay the royal
rose, on the other the badge of the head.

“No, no, not that—the mantel-tree itself.”

Pendleton tapped the very old and thoroughly blackened beam of oak
resting on the upraised hands and the heads of a pair of grotesque
knee-bent dwarfs in lieu of corbels. And while I stared at it,
somewhat at a loss to grasp his meaning, he passed his hand along its
outer surface, saying, “If you can’t see, feel.”

This mantel-tree, obviously the original, though forming more than
merely an incipient shelf, was unusually low for the period (if I knew
anything of such) and I had to lean a bit to get my eyes flush to it.
My fingers felt the slight roughness of lettering, and I deciphered,
in French characters, the smoke-stained names “Arthur Kay” and
“Biatryx Kay,” which Pendleton assured me I read correctly.

“None of your ilk, you say?”

“Oh, no! Quite the most ancient family in these parts. Here before the
House itself, before the castle.”

“That ruin up the Vale?”

“No, I mean the castle this house is remnant of. That other—up the
Vale—that was the Kays’ too.”

“And the head of the cat?”

He shrugged. “You ought to know more of these things than I, you
gravedigger. It’s part of their coat-of-arms. Look.”

I had already taken in the entire fireplace. It was in harmony with
the grey walls. The over-mantel, like the interior of the unlit
chimney-place itself, was composed of large stone blocks, very
ancient, and the beam on which the names were cut formed a canopy from
which it receded to the summit of the lofty chamber. The
half-obliterate vestiges of what must have been a cross were visible
in the centre of this curtain of rock, and on either side a shield
with unrecognizable blurs for quarters. Only where Pendleton pointed I
could see what might have been a feline profile.

As my host remarked, the subject of bearings lay more aptly in my
special province than in his (which was, I remember, the excellence of
sodium and its compounds). I was about to launch into a necessarily
brief statement of what this device might signify, when Blenkinson
entered and murmured something inaudible to his master.

“People at New Aidenn,” remarked Pendleton with slight ellipsis. “Be
back at once.” This last was a promise, not an imperative.

He followed the servant out, and my exegesis was, as it happened, for
ever postponed. Gilbert Maryvale, whose partner, Oxford, had made the
declaration, seeing me solitary, rose from his chair with the peculiar
lightness that was so unexpected and came to my side.

He looked at me with inquiry in his very dark eyes while he settled
himself against the over-mantel. “Word from Sir Brooke?”

“I believe Pendleton’s gone to ’phone the station-master at New
Aidenn. We’ll know, doubtless, in a minute or two.”

“Yes, doubtless.”

I thought I perceived a greater interest striving to suppress itself
in him; I looked at him sharply. “Just why, Mr. Maryvale, are we all
agog over this gentleman’s absence?”

He was abashed for an instant, then, cocked an eye in humorous
confession, and spoke low. “Caught, I suppose. Well, Mr. Bannerlee, I
don’t think that, barring an exception or two”—he hitched a shoulder
toward the nearer table where Mrs. Bartholomew was deliberating
whether to play the ace or not—“I don’t think we _are_ particularly
agog as a whole. One may have one reason, one another, but mine is
that I believe Sir Brooke Mortimer is a good deal different from what
he seems. And you may be sure that I’d not be telling you that if I
weren’t sure that his real purpose will be revealed—”

He said more, but I did not take in the sense of it. Eve Bartholomew,
I noticed, played the ace, which was immediately trumped by Oxford;
but that was a trifle. What had taken me out of mind for a moment was
the striking similarity of his words to the thought in my own brain,
that the people in Aidenn Vale were other than they seemed. This,
great as was my attraction to it, was scarcely a topic to be pursued
with my acquaintance of a few minutes, and my next contribution to
talk turned the subject.

“I was about to ask Pendleton a question; may I victimize you?”

“Why, certainly—if I can—”

I lowered my voice to half its volume. “I am sure that you can. This,
according to our host, is a genuine old Welsh Bidding Feast. But as
far as I could discover, most of the attributes are missing, and
especially the most essential one of all.”

“What’s that?”

“The bride in prospect. I am quite certain she is not, er, here.”

He laughed with his eyes, throwing back his head quite gleefully. “You
may be sure she’s not. Of course, our good Cosgrove’s American
betrothed—did Pendleton tell you she’s American?—isn’t in sight just
now. The fact is, Miss Mertoun—Oxford’s her cousin—has been headachy
all evening, and Miss Lebetwood has been staying with her since she
went to her room.”

Crofts Pendleton had returned; he was beside us on the heels of my
latest speech, and his face revealed excitement somewhat chastened by
alarm.

“Shall I tell ’em all at once?”

“But what’s to tell?” asked Maryvale.

“He wasn’t on the night train, but the station-keeper thinks
someone like him came up in the afternoon. How he—supposing it was
he—missed getting in the motor—there Wheeler was waiting for him
especially—unless he wanted the walk—he _would_—well, shall I?”

“It will raise nobody’s spirits,” said Maryvale. “But suppose you do.”

“Hughes and the men are back from below the bridge,” muttered Crofts.
“They’ve seen nothing of him either.” He clapped his hands for
attention.

I kept my eyes on Crofts while he made his statement, but out of the
tail of one I noticed that Maryvale was scanning the inhabitants of
the Hall, as if to catch the effect upon each. The effect was strong.
When my eye took in the room, everyone had laid down his cards and was
looking at the blank countenance across the table. There was hardly a
word spoken; no one asked a question. Then Eve Bartholomew took up her
hand once more.

“Sir Brooke is a sensible man,” she announced. “He has probably
returned to New Aidenn to put up for the night. And there are men
looking for him if he is lost. Let’s go on playing.”

By her determination, which at the time I divined to be only a
courageous sham, she drew the widely surmising minds in the room back
to a focus on bridge. A few minutes later Maryvale, with a courteous
but irresistible gesture, waved Pendleton into his place at the table
opposite Charlton Oxford, and my host picked up the newly-dealt cards
with perturbed countenance. Maryvale rested a foot on the
fire-dogs—they were of much later date than the fireplace itself,
their brass enriched with blue and white enamel—and took from the
mantel-shelf a long-stemmed clay pipe, a veritable churchwarden. This
he carefully packed with a shaggy sort of tobacco and smoked with
deep-drawn pleasure, having offered me an excellent cigar, which I
declined in memory and anticipation of flight from bulls.

Presently, since Eve Bartholomew had given the fumes several looks
askance, and sniffed, Maryvale with a smile led me to the nearest of
two entrances of french windows, opened it, and stepped outside. I
followed, descending a step or two to the drive beyond which lay the
lawn. The air was mild again and the fog had become only a mystery in
the trees.

“Too chilly for you?”

“By no means.”

“We’ll stroll.”

At that moment we were beside the little jutting tower between the
Hall of the Moth and the glassed conservatory, with a small rockery
just across the drive. I noted that the scent of flowers at that spot
was remarkably strong, almost as the heady reek of the interior must
be. I asked Maryvale if he did not notice it too.

“Ah, yes. But that’s because there’s no glass in that window. They’re
burning some oil-heating business inside until the glazier comes.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“You’ve not heard?”

“I think Crofts—he wasn’t at all explicit.”

“Nor could he be. It was only a matter of a crash of a splintering
window, and a shout by a most hollow and bewildering voice. Then, I
must admit, there were other shouts from some of us, and one or two of
the ladies were not above screaming. And nothing was discovered save
the fragments of glass.”

“What did the voice seem to say?”

“It was clear enough. It shouted some rigmarole about Parson Lolly.
‘Parson Lolly’s here,’ or ‘Look out for Parson Lolly,’ or something of
the kind.”

“What do you make of it? It worries Crofts severely.”

“Do you wonder? No, I don’t profess to make anything of it myself. We
must wait until we have more evidence.”

“Which may be most unpleasant.”

“Oh, as for being afraid . . .”

We paused, I remember, by one of the large french windows looking into
the Hall of the Moth. At the table nearest us Cosgrove carefully noted
down the score. He picked up the pack, shuffled deliberately, dealt.
The cards flew bewilderingly from his hand like a flock of
humming-birds released from a cage; they swirled and gleamed in the
light. Yet Cosgrove’s arms were motionless; only his right hand and
wrist moved as swift as the eye could conveniently follow.

“Cosgrove,” murmured Maryvale; “what a man!”

“What do you mean?”

My companion’s surprise was thoroughly ingenuous. “You don’t know
about Sean Cosgrove?”

“I don’t know much about any Irishman.”

“Irishman or not, he’s a rarity—a sort of hardness next to positive
stolidity, yet with plenty of _savoir faire_—caution in thought and
preparation, and then a sure swiftness like that dealing of the cards;
add to it a consecration to an idea so whimsical and quaint that
heaven must laugh, and heaven must speed him.”

“What idea may that be?”

“It’s one of those secrets everyone knows—Ireland redeemed.”

My “oh” was certainly disappointed.

Maryvale looked for some time at the red face of him before he chose
to enlighten me further. “Many wild young Irishmen have burned and
blazed for Ireland free, but never one I’ve known had the genius of
imagination of this man.” He added in a low-toned parenthesis,
“Barring the Marquess of Killarney, I’ve no doubt he’s the wealthiest
Irishman in the realm.”

“That’s enough distinction for one Hibernian.”

“Seldom known in his race, surely. And he saves his money, looking
always to the gleam of his great goal.”

“Well enough, Mr. Maryvale—but you speak as if he had some special
vision.”

“A Free State is nothing compared to the bright morning in mind.”

“Ah, an anarchist!”

Maryvale chuckled. “That was certainly an unlucky dive of logic, my
friend. No, Mr. Bannerlee, Sean Cosgrove aspires to restore the
ancient dynasties of Munster and Leinster!”

“But—well, how will he find the lines? They’re extinct, aren’t they?”

“I should hesitate to say categorically where Cosgrove is planning to
discover them.”

“But how will he set about it?”

“Well, if I tell you baldly, you’ll think he’s utterly mad. He’s going
to advertise in the _Times_.”

A vast vacuum of seconds must have gone by, while I looked again
intently at the huge face so solemn over its slips of pasteboard,
before I ventured, “And what do you think of him yourself, then?”

“Let me explain what I meant when I said that Cosgrove will advertise
in the _Times_ to find the true rulers of Munster and Leinster. He
will not advertise there alone; he will put the inquiry in every
little rag and sheet. He will send men among the peasants on the land
to ask. He will receive answers, will he not, Mr. Bannerlee?”

“Of every sort.”

“Of every sort, as you say. The genealogist will ridicule, the
republican will sneer or snarl, the crank will present his ready-made
conclusions, the peasant will tell the tale his grandmother’s
grandmother crooned to her and she to him. And Sean Cosgrove will
receive every answer for the sake of the good that may be in it. He is
ready to examine every contention of the genealogist, to sift the
fables rigorously, to get at the root of every wild story, to
criticize every legend—and in the end he will find his man, or find
his truth! Let us go in.”

We reopened the french windows, entered the Hall of the Moth.

I looked at him, who had so suddenly, yet so unaffectedly, made almost
an intimate of me in the brief hour of acquaintance, tried to appraise
the pent brows and the fugitive, almost wistful eyes of Gilbert
Maryvale, the “complete man of business.” Those eyes, what were they
seeking, or what had they discovered? They saw deeps, I knew,
soundings surely unsuspected by these more or less ordinary people, by
that old vulture with white plumage, Ludlow—or Belvoir the
nonentity—or, certainly, this fancy man Charlton Oxford—or our
unimaginative host, Crofts Pendleton—or Sean Cosgrove himself, who
from Maryvale’s account must represent the quintessence of insurgency
and holy tradition.

These “ordinary people,” I had called them. But were they, any of
them, ordinary? My total impression of that company at the Bidding
Feast had become one of masks and shadows. Such obvious contradiction
as seemed to exist in the case of Maryvale and such duplicity as
Ludlow’s might have their subtler likenesses in everyone. Mrs.
Belvoir, with her melodious voice, might be a volcano which had never
gone up in flame and ruin; this dapper Charlton Oxford might be a
leading light of the Society for the Cherishing of Atheism. Crofts
Pendleton had assured me that their air of studious interest while
rapt in the complexities of cards was a dissembling of fear, but I
wondered if it might not be a dissembling of something else as well,
something which I could not then grasp intuitively. But I felt its
existence, just as a man in a pitch-dark room may be, they say, aware
of another presence.

Maryvale, catching me look first at him, then at the absorbed
contestants, drew a mistaken deduction.

“No, Mr. Bannerlee, no sign of any of them wanting to give me my place
back again. There’s a riveting fascination in cards if you’re keyed
right.” I believe he looked a bit ashamed of his cross-bred metaphor.
“One of the many forms in which chance plays pranks upon us. All, all
thralled.”

“Some more and some less, however.”

“Oh, of course, but my point was that no one escapes the lure. Even
the unlikeliest—”

“Mr. Cosgrove, that would be, I have—”

“I think not, I really am sure not. Oh, no.”

“What? You don’t mean his Lordship?”

Maryvale took his pipe in his hand, smiling, waved it. “You do not
know us, Mr. Bannerlee. We are really quite a surprising company, we
friends of Cosgrove, and his, er, enemies. Now who, beside the
respected Mr. Charlton Oxford here, seems to you to personify most
thoroughly the spirit of conformity, the one cut out most neatly for a
player of auction bridge?”

I needed not to hesitate one whit, but with a nudge indicated Belvoir.
“He seems made to fit into any background.”

Maryvale laughed long and with absolute silence. “Yes, yes,” he
whispered, “a family man, I grant you, with legitimate children, a
householder in suburbia—so far so good. That’s irony _in excelso_. But
for deep down conformity of spirit, like the thousand and one of his
neighbours in Golders Green, ye gods! Why, man, he’s the most radical
wight in England—a stick of dynamite!”

“He!”

“Haven’t you read his ‘Bypaths’?”

“His! Good God!”

Then from the farther table came a cackle from Ludlow: “Well, I say it
_is_ so! . . . Saint Paul knew as much psychology as any of your
puffed-up pedagogues.”

Alberta Pendleton (who was his partner) said promptly, “Did you play
the deuce?” Our hostess is more tactful than her husband.

Belvoir gave a thin Italian sort of snicker. “He’s trying to,” he
said.

I just made out the low, luscious voice of Mrs. Belvoir: “Ted, that
wasn’t good. Half a crown, please.”

“The family penalty for a pun,” explained Maryvale.

Ludlow gave a sudden sneeze, a whooping big sneeze, which must have
disturbed the cards on the table. “I beg—” he said, and sneezed again.

My face being turned toward Maryvale, and Ludlow’s back being toward
me, I had no more than an imperfect glimpse out of the tail of my eye
at what happened next. Our noble friend drew his handkerchief out of
his breast-pocket with a bit of a flourish, and something white and
smaller came out along with it. At that precise instant Ludlow was
preoccupied with a third sneeze which took him unawares and made his
plumed head bob down to the green board. There was consternation at
his table, amusement at the other, but I was the only one who saw the
object fly off to the left, poise for the cleaving of an instant in
flight, and glide and swoop gracefully down to the floor beside the
long-case clock in the corner. There it lay, a slightly crumpled slip
of notepaper, scrawled upon.

I gave some small exclamation, crossed in front of Maryvale, picked up
the morsel. It was certainly not my intention to scrutinize the
writing, but it was impossible in the act of recovery not to see some
words. All that made the least imprint in my consciousness were the
two concluding lines:

  “. . . you leave it in the mail—you know where; I’ll come and
  get it.”

Not even the signature gave me any impression; but it, I must confess,
looked like an intentional enigma.

A step or two across the floor would have taken me and the slip to the
discomposed Ludlow, but in my way was a large reddish hand, attached
to a long arm, and the arm hung on the shoulder of an Irishman whose
naturally red face was filling with unaccustomed blood.

“Mine, sir,” said the bridegroom-to-be.

I shook my head. “No, Mr. Cosgrove, you must be mistaken. I saw—”

“No doubt. Mine, I said.”

“But I saw it come out of the pocket of Lord Ludlow.”

“No doubt.” Cosgrove swung about in his chair with a ruddy scowl. “And
I’ll trouble his Lordship to explain how a piece of my private
correspondence arrived in his pocket, and will he please tell me what
use he thought to make of it?”

Our minds play us pranks. The quarrel itself should have engrossed me,
but an absurd irrelevant detail about Cosgrove seized my attention.
This was the first time that I had seen the back of his head. His
black hair, I have stated, was short cut, and at the rear the recent
clipping had left a broad streak of white between his splay ears, so
that a person seeing him from behind for the first time, far from
supposing him the wealthiest bachelor in Ireland, might take him for a
yokel just come from his potato patch, rawly scissored for the fair,
to complete with other yokels for the favour of rustic beauties.

Then my glance shifted to Lord Ludlow, who also had swung about in his
chair, stiff and upright, his small bright green eyes sparkling, his
face full of indignation, like an affronted gerfalcon’s.

“What do you mean, sir? I have no interest in your correspondence, I
am sure.”

“Leave your pretences, shame on you, sir!” said Cosgrove (to whom I
had in impotence surrendered the slip). “This is a private
communication. I repeat, what presumption—”

“You’re mad,” scoffed Lord Ludlow. “I know nothing about your
communications. I don’t carry them about—”

Quite half-wittedly I interjected a hasty, “But my dear Ludlow, I saw
it fall when your handkerchief—”

This was mere idiocy, diverting the wrath of the god to my own
shoulders. The thin man turned spryly upon me. “If you will kindly
confine yourself to your own business, Mr. Bannerlee, without
excursions into the fantastic.”

“Mr. Bannerlee is right, I have no doubt,” asserted Sean Cosgrove with
ponderous emphasis; “and he is prying into no one’s business when he
tells the lawful truth.”

“Fiddle-dee-dee!” cackled Ludlow.


_Explicit!_ Here, with the hurly-burly of the quarrel is completed the
exposition; what admired disorder ensued in the next fifteen minutes I
described at the outset of my half-the-night’s scribbling.¹ What has
it meant? What does it portend? I am sure now that the intangible
feeling impressed upon me in the Hall was one of hostility, not the
sort divulged by semi-secret looks and half-heard imprecations, but a
congeries of criss-crossed feuds hidden completely by the thick veneer
of social amenity.

     ¹ All this is more than four times as much as I wrote that night,
     but I did set down something more than five thousand words.
     (Author’s note.)

Well! sleep we must in spite of thunder. I have written as often I
used to, feverishly, with absorption, but never with such a theme!
What will to-morrow bring? What shall I have to relate to-morrow
midnight? Nothing dull, I hope; I trust nothing grievous.

(Eve Bartholomew, whom I thought I heard prowling an hour ago, left a
slip of paper under the door: “Money! I’ve known Sir Brooke to forget
it before.”

Poor devil of a woman?)



CHAPTER VI

Strain

                October 3. 9.15 P.M.

I awoke, late in the morning, of course, very much refreshed. For a
moment or two I was puzzled by my situation; then the tenseness and
terror of the preceding night stung me. I knew that brooding over
those wild events would lead to no good—of this and other matters I
had already made up my mind. I kicked off the bedclothes and ventured
out of my door. It was a minute or two past ten, and on my secret
march in last night’s borrowed dressing-robe down to Pendleton’s room
for a bath, I found no sign of any other guest.

Half an hour later, in the dinner-room across the corridor from the
Hall of the Moth, I sought breakfast. On the threshold, his back
toward me, I found Ludlow vehement, making warlike gestures at someone
inside.

He looked unnaturally thin and bent, Ludlow, attired in a suit of
cottage tweed, a smoky grey, a thing surely inherited from some
plethoric uncle, for it hung on his Lordship like a bag and at the
same time was too short in particulars. His trousers were certainly
not intended to show all that length of woollen sock, and his wrists
shot out from his sleeves like a conjurer’s whenever, as now, he
straightened his arms. His Oxford collar, cut off too soon, exposed a
lean craning neck.

Belvoir was seated at the table. He was on the point of remarking in
his blandest voice:

“And you know, my dear Ludlow, the notion of obscenity is certainly
modern.”

“No such thing,” sputtered Lord Ludlow. “Your opinions are atrocious,
sir, and your books are vile. You should be boiled in oil for your
opinions, sir—and for your books you should, er, er—be parboiled!”

“And you, my good sir, should be embalmed,” rejoined Belvoir with
equanimity. “You _are_ embalmed, by Jove! A good job, too. That will
explain everything.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“Not at all. My good sir, have you ever descended to fundamentals from
that altitude of sublime cerebration that you seem to be soaring in
whenever I expound my lowly beliefs?”

“Fundamentals? What do you mean by fundamentals?”

“I mean facts.”

“You mean a perversion of the facts, sir!”

Belvoir had caught sight of my grinning face over Ludlow’s shoulder,
and for my benefit, I believe, he carried on a spirited rejoinder. “My
books, upon which you have delivered so restrained a stricture, are
little more than depositories of facts, my good sir. When I assert
that modesty is a purely conventional matter, I am not spinning a yarn
from an arm-chair. When I remark that modern marriage—all marriage—is
the outcome of hardened tribal customs, I am not foining in
intellectual darkness. When I comment on the different conceptions of
chastity, instancing the preparation for marriage of Babylonian girls
in the temples of the priests—”

Ludlow had been standing still as death during these words, but I
could see that his cleaver-like brownish cheek had been taking on a
very amiable purple hue. The mention of Babylon fired him.

“Babylon! Filth! Pah!”

“Quite so, if you are viciously entangled in the nets of your own
particular hidebound, Tory—”

“You’re a fool, sir, and the sooner you—”

“But how beautiful to the Babylonian woman—”

“Rubbish! In the first place, you haven’t any—”

“Even you, Ludlow, if you had happened to be a priest in Baby—”

“Outrageous, sir! What right—”

“Why will a Brahmin wash—”

“I am not a Brahmin either, or a—”

“Or take the case of murder. With us it is a crime, but in—”

“Poppycock! Would you do a murder, sir, to show your immunity to
so-called custom?”

“I’m too kind-hearted,” murmured Belvoir.

“And yet you recommend us to throw overboard everything we have saved
from the past—to cast convention to the winds—to wallow in a sty of
the senses—to debauch—”

After a few purple seconds, like a puny Jeremiah, lifting spindle arms
out of his sleeves while he raised his fists, he turned and stalked
forth in a billow of smoke-grey tweed, kicking a porridge-bowl along
the floor. Beholding me, he snapped “Good morning” while he went past.

“Lord Ludlow doesn’t stomach new ideas very readily. His digestion was
formed during the supremacy of the late lamented V.R.”

Belvoir spoke from the floor, wherefrom he smilingly recovered the
porridge-bowl. I then saw that other dishes, and silver, lay
scattered.

The “stick of dynamite” explained, “The good Ludlow _will_ jump
incontinent to his feet when he wants to bully someone, regardless of
whether his tray’s on his lap or not. He _will_ eat his breakfast off
a tray.”

“Good lord!”

“Oh, small harm. I did not press my argument until he had emptied
every dish. As you see, neither ham nor egg hath left a stain.”

I helped him recover the _disiecta membra_. While we collected the
crockery from the carpet, Belvoir murmured, “Poor Ludlow! Too many
spinning-mills—I’m afraid some of them are going on in his brain.”

“Spinning-mills!”

“Yes, didn’t you know? Our noble friend is chairman of a good few
businesses in cloth—from Ulster to the Outer Hebrides.”

“But really, Mr. Belvoir, I’m surprised to find you carrying on any
academic controversy this morning.”

“Eh?” His features held a vague look of trouble.

I had set about loading a goodly plate at the sideboard. “Well, it
strikes me that you were having a row about the wrong thing.”

“The wrong thing?”

“Gad, man, hasn’t anything happened here to set tongues wagging, that
you must bicker with the noble Lord about folkways and the comparative
conceptions of chastity?”

“Why, you don’t mean—”

“Great Scott, is everyone in the House as indifferent as you two? Am I
the only one who remembers there was a massacre last night?”

“Well,” hesitated he, “I suppose that those signs and evidences—at
night—”

“You mean, now it’s good broad morning sunlight, everyone has calmed?”

“Considerably, Mr. Bannerlee. Even Miss Mertoun, who saw that horror,
wanted to go out of doors this morning, but Miss Lebetwood forbade
it.”

“Miss Mertoun!” I looked up astonished from sausage and bacon and
steaming coffee.

“Last night, you know, we supposed that she would have to remain in
bed half a week. But a blue morning sky re-creates the world, and
people. Besides, a couple of the most painful enigmas are considerably
lightened. What do you lack? Milk?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t find any, I’m afraid. The milkman’s man—we’ve had it over
the ’phone—is in the throes of a nervous breakdown.”

“Doesn’t Crofts keep a cow of his own?”

“He does, but the beast has failed ignobly. Well, as I was saying,
last evening’s troubles are mostly dissipated.”

“Which?”

“Sir Brooke, for one. Pendleton has had a note from him in the morning
post.”

“He’s not coming?”

“Well, what should you say? The note consisted of three words: ‘Wait
for me.’ What should you say?”

“What does Pendleton say?”

Belvoir laughed. “Poor chap, he’s almost off his chump still, as you
may guess. Governing a household threatened with theft and no one
knows what else is out of his line. He’s in high dudgeon over it—wants
to know how long he’s supposed to wait, why he should be expected to
wait at all, and so forth. _He_, if you like, hasn’t forgotten last
night.”

“What I can’t see is, why this gentleman’s absence should paralyze the
proceedings.”

Belvoir winked. “We can’t have the Feast proper unless the bride’s
health is drunk, and Sir Brooke is assigned to proposing the toast.”

A few seconds went by while I absorbed this statement. “No one else
could propose it, of course?”

Belvoir grinned. “Well, opinions differ. Crofts says anybody can, but
Cosgrove solemnly insists that no one else _shall_!”

“What difference—?”

“You’ll have to ask Cosgrove; but he won’t tell you the answer, the
real answer, that is. He’s put his foot down, though. No, Sir Brooke
means no Bidding Feast; that’s flat.”

“How long do you suppose the festivities can be postponed?”

“A day, says Pendleton. Then if he had his way, the marriage would
take place, Brooke or no.”

“The marriage! With all that ugliness and horror unexplained?”

Belvoir shrugged. “What would you have? The fact is that the blood is
not so significant as we thought. Pendleton would have sent for the
police to-day, I dare say, in spite of his stand last night, but the
source of the blood has been found, or rather missed.”

“The source?”

“A possible or probable source. A sucking-pig with all necessary
qualifications is gone from the sties. Pendleton seems to believe that
a poacher may have slaughtered it, or that someone has indulged in a
ritualistic blood orgy, or that—but we can’t make out what he thinks,
if he knows himself. Come outside, Mr. Bannerlee, and see for yourself
how the exhibits have lost their grisliness in daylight.”

We met Pendleton at the foot of the stairs. His greeting to me was
effusive yet a trifle strained. He had been going up to call me;
hadn’t expected that after my long—here he looked at Belvoir,
bethought himself, and stammered—well, he hadn’t expected me to be up
so soon. The boy Toby, he said, had at nine o’clock been sent on his
bicycle through New Aidenn to the ineffable village, to fetch my bag
from the inn, and incidentally to re-inquire about the reported
appearance of Sir Brooke at New Aidenn station. Most of the guests,
however, believed the identification had been mistaken. As a fact, Sir
Brooke was quite irresponsible enough to stay overnight and not
’phone. But since the message— Were we going out? He’d come, too.

On the lawn beyond the mighty gate-house—and herefrom in the daytime
we could see the narrow glitter of Aidenn Water beyond the
tennis-court some distance up the bank—on the lawn the blood-pool, now
a dry clot, and the hatchet with helve and blade both stained, were
fenced off with guards of chicken-wire.

“And don’t you think these are serious testimony?”

“To what? to what?” Pendleton inquired. “What can we make of Parson—”

“You have swallowed this Parson Lolly, hook, line, and sinker. Now I—”

“You and Oxford weren’t so chirpy last evening,” observed our host.

I was indignant. “Well! Did I seem to be in the same condition of
nerves—”

“You saw the same thing.”

“But, Crofts, man, it surely can be explained somehow without—”

He was impatient. “Yes, of course, everything can be explained. Things
have been happening, oh, quite explainable things, all of them—only
not one of them _has_ been explained. But what I object to is giving
them an explanation that’s pure conjecture. You evidently think
there’s been murder here. You seem to believe that’s human blood. How
do you know it isn’t pig’s blood?”

“Why not try to get someone here who can tell?”

“Someone _is_ coming,” snapped Pendleton.

“Oh, you have sent—”

“No; more guests arriving, that’s all. Late comers.”

“Like Sir Brooke?”

“No, not like Sir Brooke. Sir Brooke promised to come yesterday; these
weren’t expected until to-day.”

“And one of them will be able to tell—”

“Doctor Aire should be able to tell,” said Pendleton wearily. “Come on
over to the court, and let’s forget this.”

I acceded gladly enough. Belvoir begged off on the score of writing
letters, and Cosgrove, that moment hailing us from the library window,
came through the armoury door in baggy knickers and an Irish edition
of a sportsman’s coat (black and astonishingly high in the collar).

While Cosgrove, Pendleton, and I moved along northward and surveyed
the meagre walls of the glazed conservatory, we could tell from the
mere vestiges that that large room and the storey of three
bed-chambers ranged above it were later engraftings to the house. The
tinting of the stones was bolder, undarkened, and brick had been used
to some extent north of the tower that marked the limit of the
original wall.

An odd thing, that conservatory window fractured by the Parson in his
latest escapade. Brilliant purple clematis framed the lower expanses
of conservatory glass. Beneath a small birch-tree opposite the great
burst-in window we paused for a moment in order that I might see the
damaged section. Again the blooms within sent out a heady breath. The
gap in the glass was extremely irregular in shape, a good five feet in
its tallest dimension, half that in its widest. To-day, said
Pendleton, the glazier from New Aidenn, already come for a preliminary
examination, would bring his paraphernalia and close up the place.

“That’s quite an opening unprotected.”

“Oh, no fear,” said Crofts, “the door from the conservatory into the
corridor had been double-locked and bolted from the corridor side.
Always is, anyhow, unless someone wants to go in to make music.”

“Make music?”

“Yes, the piano’s there, you know.”

“And how do you account for the shape of the smash? It looks as if
someone walking on air had stepped through the glass.”

“Someone flying?” muttered Cosgrove, running his finger along the edge
of the broken pane.

Pendleton made a movement of annoyance. “Oh, I don’t try to explain
it. I leave that to you, sleuth-hound. That description of yours
sounds very probable to me.”

“Our poor, dear host,” I murmured pityingly. “Forgive me for harping
on the ungrateful chord of mystery.”

From beyond the thick-clumped shrubs to the north and toward Aidenn
Water came a staccato of handclapping and a few bright tones of voices
in the fresh, vibrant sunlight. The sounds reminded Pendleton of our
objective.

“Come along to the tennis. That must be Paula playing.”

“Isn’t it a bit late in the year for tennis?”

“I suppose so, but Paula would play it in Iceland.”

“She is good then, I take it?”

“Very good. She’d give you a run, Bannerlee.”

“Oh, Lord, I’m no use any more. What sort of court have you, Crofts?”

“Hard. Too much rain here for anything else.”

While we went our way, I was all alert for signs of the billowing and
swelling marauder of last night, and I thought ruefully how a
fictional detective finds clues even in bent grass-blades. I kept my
eyes wide. We crossed the lawn and passed near the cypress trees where
the black-robed creature had disappeared. Surreptitiously I looked for
footprints; nothing was distinguishable.

Before reaching the track leading to the pretentious bridge over the
tributary stream, we swung left through the bushes and soon came to a
knoll full of scaly-red, twisted strawberry trees.

“These are aliens in England,” explained Cosgrove to me, while we
wound our way upward through the plantation. “But in my country they
are natives. I like nothing better than to loiter among them; they
almost make me think I am in old Muckross again. There is one reason
why I like your Highglen estate, friend Crofts.”

We found a pleasant clearing there, where we could lie, having a view
both of the lawns and of the tennis. The strawberry trees extend
thickly beyond the knoll and around the court, which is only a few
yards away from Aidenn Water where it comes straight down the middle
of the Vale before making quite a detour toward the western
escarpment. A doubles match was in progress, and the knot of
spectators was too intent on the exchanges to notice us.

“There’s Paula,” indicated Crofts. “Look at that shot! She’s master of
us all with the racquet.”

A white-skirted player had given a leap, a _whang_ was to be heard
even from our vantage-point, and another patter of applause. I thought
the Irishman looked satisfied.

“I approve of the excellence of women in games,” he said.

We reclined at our ease and had a good view of Miss Lebetwood and her
partner grinding down their opponents. Cosgrove, it developed, had
never played tennis, nor did he any other game—now. In his “youth,” he
told us, he had been a good Rugger player, I think he called himself a
“dangerous partisan”; “murderous” I thought might be the fitter word
while I gazed at his countenance full of heavy seriousness and
wondered when this young man considered his “youth” to have ended.

He swept his arm toward the enclosure where the players darted and
skipped. “As for this juvenile pastime, my part in it has been
confined to holding the fish-net.”

I gave an astonished “Fish-net!”

“Yes, on the stream bank.”

Crofts Pendleton rolled over so that he might address me. “We lose a
good few balls here.”

“Well, these tangled strawberry trees might swallow any number.”

“There’s more in it than that. It seems almost uncanny sometimes how
many are never recovered.”

Cosgrove said, “The number of missing balls is extraordinary.”

“Yes, and wild shots often go into Aidenn Water. We usually have
someone on the bank with the net to recapture them floating down!”

“That must be a grateful task.”

“It is like all other labours of love,” rejoined Crofts, “a joy to the
doer, a wonder to the Philistine.”

I looked sharply at my friend; little nippy speeches like that were
not like him.

Our talk drifted away from the games. I mentioned that ruin farther up
the Vale, which I was eager to see by daylight. Cosgrove had some wild
tale about it which he told with sonorous impressiveness—only, while I
watched the lithe leaps of Paula Lebetwood and witnessed the accuracy
of her shots, the gist of the history escaped me. At this moment all I
can recall of it is that the word “treachery” kept coming in. Even if
I was distracted from appreciation, Cosgrove seemed to derive a pure
pleasure from hearing himself pour forth. But Crofts Pendleton did not
dote on the tale; instead this account, doubtless half fact, half
legend, seemed to remind him of present broils.

During an exchange of courts, I let my gaze alight on Mynydd Tarw,
that northern hill above the ruin, whereon Aidenn Water begins at
Shepherd’s Well. My glance roved down the western line of hills, Black
Mixen, Great Rhos, Esgair Nantau, and Vron Hill, the last directly
opposite us across the Water.

“Do you see it?” Crofts said suddenly.

“What?” I asked, rolling over with a start.

“The tumulus on Vron Hill. Some old josser lying up there with a ton
of stones on his chest.”

“No, I don’t see it.”

“Neither do I. Funny thing about it, it lies just over the shoulder of
the Hill from where we are. At sunset, though, it looks quite grand up
there, if you can see it.”

“Somehow I’ve noticed that,” I remarked gravely.

“What do you mean?”

“Things look better if you can see them.”

Crofts brushed aside my feeble attempt at leg-pulling. “Seriously,
though, Bannerlee, you should have a try at it this evening—from your
window, or from outside on the balcony. I’m no good at old stones and
that kind of thing, but I do get a thrill when I think of that codger
up there sleeping it off. He chose a breezy place to wait for
Judgment.”

“I will have a look,” I promised. “I can’t see, though, why this
antique gentleman selected that Hill in preference to any one of
several others hereabout.” I indicated with my arm. “Why, that one,
for instance, or that one, must be a couple of hundred feet higher.
Don’t you think so?” I put it to Cosgrove, but he hesitated to commit
himself, and Crofts said that I had better ask Miss Lebetwood, if I
were too lazy to consult an ordnance map.

“She’s hot stuff at all that, really—very useful.”

I saw Cosgrove give his head a doleful wag.

“Her brother—American army officer—killed,” explained our host.
“Before he sailed for France she made him teach her all he knew,
apparently. She and he would pore over the maps and plans together, I
understand.”

“Yes,” came in Cosgrove with his voice like the great slow tramp of
oxen, “she has too many of these unwomanly things in her head, I
misdoubt. Photography—”

“Topography, you mean,” contradicted Crofts, surprised out of his
jaded condition into smothered laughter by the Irishman’s blunder.
“Topography, not photography.”

“I said photography, and I’ll stick to it,” replied Cosgrove with
never a smile. “And topography as well. Do you call them fit studies
for a woman?”

“They, and others like them, are the very things that make you ache
for her,” said Pendleton with what I considered remarkable
penetration. “They form part of the wonder of her, the quality that
makes it hard for you to realize just what a prize you’ve captured.
Come man, frankly, what would you give to have her for your wife two
days from now if she didn’t have intellect as well as a treasury of
golden hair and emotions which permit a strange susceptibility to such
as you?”

I looked curiously at Cosgrove, to see how he would take the
challenge. He took it stolidly, with never a sign on his rufous
countenance; only after a while his eyebrows lifted sharply, as if he
considered the possibility of truth in his friend’s words.

For my part, I soon was too absorbed in the dart and dip of the tennis
ball to notice much more of the talk. Pendleton kept trying to tell me
more about Miss Lebetwood, how she loved climbing, how on earlier
visits she had taken the unpromising lad Toby in hand and uncovered
surprising intelligence in him. It all had something to do with
photography—or was it topography?—no matter. She had even brought down
some apparatus—or was it maps?—and given it to him. Cosgrove kept
still now, while our host rambled on, evidently glad of any topic he
could talk of without unpleasant associations.

Suddenly the game was over, and everyone concerned trooped toward the
House. Pendleton was hailed by somebody and had to join the returning
party, though I think he would have been glad to remain out of sight
of his country home just then. I was well content to stay with
Cosgrove, for the man rather fascinated me; his mind seemed to be full
of admirable inconsistencies.

We strolled southward where Aidenn Water makes that monstrous sweep to
the west beyond the towered gate, and further where the stream swings
sharply eastward again under the very toes of the bounding hills.
There stood the bridge, a crossing of one arch: ill-hewn, moss-grown
moor stone with a two-foot parapet, quite immeasurably old and quite
quaint, with an immemorial ash-tree overlooking it from this side. The
water stole peacefully underneath. I expressed surprise that it would
bear any considerable weight, and Cosgrove with an air of commenting
on the irrelevant remarked that he did not suppose it was ever
expected to bear any greater weight than Pendleton’s motor or a
tradesman’s team and wagon.

“Look at it, I say, look at it. They build no bridges like that
to-day.”

We remained several minutes there beside the water-crossing, which was
indeed picturesque, then turned toward the half-hidden House in some
haste, for the sky had gradually been overcast and now there was a
premonition of showers in the nip of the wind.

We hastened through the main portal of the House, beneath the stone
head of the cat, just in time to escape a flicker and dash of rain.

There at the foot of the stair-well was Pendleton again, with a long,
sour face.

I suppressed a desire to laugh.

“Well?”

“That damned, diseased pest!”

“What! Not the Parson once more!”

Cosgrove cannoned an incredulous “No!”

With the suddenness of a conjurer our host thrust before our noses a
second cardboard placard scrawled across with uncouth printing mingled
of capitals and small letters, now composing a message of more
sinister purport:

    L o o K  o u T  F O R  P A R S O N  L O L L Y  H e  M E A n s
                           B U S I N e S S

“Ah, yes,” I murmured with perhaps a little too much surface effort at
nonchalance. “Parson Lolly means business now. He was only trifling
last night.”

“He was interrupted last night—be sure of that,” intoned Cosgrove.

“Damned lucky for us, then.”

Pendleton was unsteady with righteous embarrassment and rage when
Cosgrove interrogated him. “Where was this thing found?—who found
it?—when—”

“Harmony—one of the housemaids—the vixen,” snapped Pendleton, and
seemed unable to make headway.

“Why is the good Harmony held in such opprobrium?” I inquired.

“I swear she’s lying—the minx—or she put it there herself.”

“Where?”

“In your room, Sean, lying in the middle of the floor.”

Perhaps Pendleton had been saving that item for rather a stiff jolt at
the last. I happened to be looking at Cosgrove and saw his eyebrows
jerk upward prodigiously, as if they were going to fly off his
forehead, and the eyes beneath them bulged and stared like glass.

“In my room? When was this?”

“She just came down from doing the beds—says she found it there not
five minutes ago.”

“Hem,” said Cosgrove, his features settling into a study.

“Come, come,” urged Pendleton, making a nervous movement of
impatience. “Tell us—when were you in your room last?”

“A little after nine, I think,” answered Cosgrove, solemnly scratching
his black-thatched head behind the left ear, his look scowling and
intent upon the floor, his brow cleft by one heavy wrinkle. “I saw the
boy riding the bicycle out of the barn; that would be nine, you said.
I heard Lord Ludlow quarrelling with the man Soames for bringing him
the wrong color of towel, a quarter of an hour later—fully. And I came
out in the corridor in time to see Soames disappear down the stair.”

“After a quarter past nine,” said Pendleton. “That leaves over two
hours—unless Harmony—”

“It couldn’t have been there and you not see it?” I asked.

“In the centre of the floor? Mr. Bannerlee!”

“Are you implying that it was left there last night?”

“I withdraw the suggestion, Crofts,” I said, “although—”

“There are enough ‘if’s’ and ‘although’s’ in this to—to stock a
political editor,” grumbled our host.

“Has the placard any mark, any peculiarity—”

“For identification, you mean?” Pendleton turned the cardboard over
between his fingers, dubiously. “It’s like last night’s—cut round the
edges with scissors or a knife—might have been part of the bottom of a
box of sweets.” His voice was despairing. “I suppose enough board for
twenty foul things like this comes into this house every week. And in
all Wales—”

“Our search—supposing we go about a search—will hardly be as broad as
that,” said Cosgrove, and I was struck, as many times before, by the
lack of lightness in his voice. He meant just that: that if the
placard were investigated, the whole country need not be drawn into
the matter.

Our host turned to the Irishman: “Search won’t do any good; that’s
certain sure. But I’ll have the servants up this afternoon.
(Bannerlee, you be with me while I question ’em and tell me what you
think of their candour—you’ve no prejudices, you know.) Sean, what do
you think of it? Are you alarmed?”

Cosgrove laughed contemptuously.

“But it’s directed to you this time.”

“It’s casual, casual. What could anyone—what could this meddler have
against me?”

“It was left in your room.”

“By chance,” insisted Cosgrove. “There could have been no malice
toward me in it.”

“But, by gad, what shall I tell the people here?”

“Nothing—and swear the woman Harmony to whisper never a word.”

“Yes, of course, I’ve sworn her on the Bible until she was
blue-scared, the jade. But this thing?”

Cosgrove reached out and took the placard. He tore it across, placed
the pieces together and tore it again, and repeatedly, and handed the
bits back to Crofts.

“Make a small fire in the Hall.”

It impressed me as a really brave thing, and I believe that Crofts
felt the same admiration for him who dismissed such a message,
apparently out of the air, from man or superman or sub-man.

“Here goes, then.”

“Has the boy come back with my bag?”

“Not for at least another hour, I’m afraid. He has a long hilly road
to ride—down through New Aidenn and all the way around by the south
skirts of Aidenn Forest.”

“Sir Brooke?”

“Not a nail of him. But the others have come.”

I echoed, “Others? Guests?”

“Doctor Aire and the two young, very young Americans.”

“And what says the Doctor to the blood on the lawn?” asked Cosgrove.

“He took some of it up for microscopy. He can tell if it’s probably
human or not. He’s more than a little interested.”

We had entered the Hall of the Moth from the portrait corridor, and
through the plenteous windows saw a swift rain pouring down.

“The evidence is getting wet.”

“Canvas spread over,” Crofts assured us. “And _this_ evidence now gets
carbonized.”

We watched the fragments of cardboard smoulder, flare, and become
consumed in the fireplace where raindrops spattered down the chimney,
until only ashes were left, and a tiny spire of smoke. Cosgrove
disintegrated the ash with the poker.

“_That’s_ a blessing,” said Crofts, taking out his watch.
“Luncheon-bell in ten minutes. Between now and then I shall smoke not
less than three cigarettes.”



CHAPTER VII

Court of Inquiry

We ate beneath a sprinkling of electric lights and my mind was glum
with foreboding.

As usual, Ludlow made himself manifest. His sneer in a shrill staccato
was apparently directed against Doctor Stephen Aire, a new arrival.
Him I had not yet met, the table being already seated when I came down
from revising my toilet in my lofty bed-chamber.

“—and the wrigglings and windings of the new psychology, the _new_
psychology, forsooth!”

A diatribe by Lord Ludlow I already considered to be in the nature of
a treat, and I leaned forward to see how the challenge would be
received by Doctor Aire, who was seated at the same side of the table
as I. All that was visible of him, of course, was head and shoulders,
extraordinarily broad and square shoulders in rough purplish tweed,
and a shocking small and yellowy-looking head with tight-stretched
skin, a balt spot like a tonsure in a ring of sparse grey hair, and
short pepper-and-salt moustache. His eyes (I could see, for he sat
only two away from me) were small and bright and seemed to be
twinkling amusement.

“The new psychology, sir—”

“No, Ludlow,” clicked the doctor, his thin bloodless lips curved
sharply upward at the ends, “not the _new_ psychology, of course.
_Why, Saint Paul knew as much psychology as anyone living to-day!_”

At this iteration of his own words of the night before his Lordship
stared, swallowed, and collapsed into silence. A small but delighted
squeak produced by a morsel of a girl at the other end gave away the
secret of pre-arrangement, and a laugh murmured about the table.

Now, I was not the only one who particularly noticed this very young
lady, “Lib” (short for Liberty!) Dale. While I took in her appearance,
I became almost intuitively aware of another gaze making an angle with
mine. Cosgrove was staring at her, so enigmatically that I removed my
glance from her to him, just as she turned her blue eyes upon me with
a quick little movement of her head. Vastly _interested_, totally
engrossed, seemed Sean Cosgrove just then, but the quality of his
interest was untellable. In the judgment of a second, I guessed his to
be a look of, almost, aversion; he seemed fascinated, yet scandalized.
Then the fleeting expression was gone, and he leaned back, turned to
his neighbour.

Now I was aware that another beside myself was intent on Cosgrove!

Pendleton sat in sole occupancy of the head of the board. The ends of
the table, however, were broad enough to seat two of our numerous
party, and Alberta Pendleton shared the foot with a youth of sturdy
appearance. Bob Cullen completed the American group among us. His
alert eyes had the queer habit of blinking owlishly at whiles; he
possessed also a pug nose, a good, clean-cut mouth, and a jaw meatless
and determined. Between the mode of his smooth black hair and that of
“Lib” Dale’s there was, as far as I could see, little to tell. He was
very shy. His contributions to conversation, such as I had happened to
overheard, had been “That’s right,” and “Yes, Ma’am,” addressed with
schoolboy gruffness to Alberta Pendleton, who smiled on him with
aunt-like approbation. He has attended for a year, I understand, one
of the great American universities.

He, then, was staring at Cosgrove, while the Irishman’s regard rested
in trouble on the boyish features of “Lib” Dale. The American youth’s
face went unwontedly white, and his eyes, now wide open, glared. There
was nothing puzzled in his expression, only resentment and a vague
awe, as if he knew he confronted a better man than he.

Then Cosgrove shifted, and the drama of three seconds, which has taken
three pages to describe, was over.

Chairs scraped; we rose to our several heights. “Lib” and Bob were
distinctly the shortest among us, and Doctor Aire was not much taller.
But the physician, standing up, was the strangest creature in the
room—a clockwork man.

That broad-shouldered body in the tweed-suiting was boiler-shaped, and
the long, gaunt arms and short, stodgy legs, seemed casual appendages
joined at convenient locations. Atop this mechanical contrivance his
head stuck like an absurd plaster carving on a pedestal. I could not
but feel a queer, half-repugnant sensation when, on my being
introduced to him, his yellowy, almost Chinese-looking face was close
to mine, and I saw only the blue shadows where his eyes had retreated
and the narrow-lipped mouth nigh to white in its bloodlessness.

I looked about to be presented to the pair of young Americans; they
had already skipped out of the room.

“Since it’s still raining and we’re tired of the things we’ve been
doing anyhow, we’re going to get Doctor Aire to tell us about the old
magic in this neighbourhood,” said Alberta.

“That will be frightfully jolly,” I remarked, surprised at the bizarre
field of knowledge evidently studied by the physician.

“I’m afraid it will be, as you say, ‘frightfully jolly,’” remarked
Doctor Aire, with his smile at the very ends of his mouth. “I’m not
sure the subject—in view of events—”

“Why not the new magic instead?” asked Crofts.

Doctor Aire turned his head sharply; I almost expected to hear a
ratchet click. “What’s that?”

“The stuff in old Watts’ attic, I mean. We’ve found a conjurer’s
outfit there, Doctor. Why not give ’em a show? That performance of
yours at Coventry was as good as any professional’s.”

“Oh, we’ll settle that in the Hall,” smiled Alberta. “Come along, Mr.
Bannerlee.”

“But I want him here,” objected Crofts. “We’re going to examine the
servants.”

“You really want me?” I exclaimed. “But I don’t know your
servants—haven’t seen but four of ’em yet.”

“That’s just it,” he explained. “I want someone to be here who can get
a good unprejudiced impression of how they behave.”

“Well, if I can assist—”

“But have you asked Mr. Bannerlee if he _wants_ to stay and listen to
the silly—”

Crofts besought me. “Oh, come, Bannerlee, you know as much as Doctor
Aire does about magic—you with your antiquities.”

“On the contrary, it is one of the fields where I have done very
little spading, but—”

“There, see,” smiled Alberta.

“But I was going to say that this interrogation of yours sounds
particularly interesting. I’ll stay, if you don’t mind, Alberta.”

“Of course not,” laughed Pendleton’s good-natured wife. “I only tried
to protect you. Crofts is a fearfully long-winded inquisitor.”

“I think I am the best judge—” began he, but the door closed, cutting
short his speech and her laugh.

There were thirteen servants in the room when the tale was made. The
dessert dishes from luncheon had not been removed. Crofts sat at the
head of the board; I was inconspicuous in the curtained recess of the
window where Belvoir had sat at breakfast-time.

From this vantage-point I had my first glimpse of the grounds
immediately east of the House. I saw an unexpected lawn with lovely
flower-patches extending to the kitchen-gardens. On both sides were
topless and toppled walls much gnawed by time, clearly a portion of
the ancient, much vaster edifice of which Highglen House is a
survival. A group of well-preserved square stone buildings about
thirty yards away on my right were, of course, the stables and garage.

The half-dozen women-servants and two elderly men-servants, besides
the magisterial Blenkinson, were in chairs along the inner side of the
room, while the other men stood with marked differences of composure
before the screens that guarded the entrance to the pantries and the
kitchen. The number of “below-stairs” folk would have been much
greater, of course, had not the Pendletons requested their guests not
to bring personal servants. Thus we men all valeted ourselves, and for
the ladies the staff of maids had to “go round.”

Pendleton began bluntly: “It’s about this foolishness of Parson
Lolly.”

Blenkinson lifted the lid of one eye, the better to observe the master
of the House. “And did you mean to say, sir, if I may make so bold,
that any of _us_ have anything to do with the honfortunate affair?”

“Everything, everything!” said Crofts, and to allay a hum of dismay
and dignity offended, hastily added, “Oh, don’t misunderstand, please.
I mean just this: this Parson Lolly—this ridiculous Parson Lolly—of
course, we don’t believe in any such nonsense. What I want to do is to
get from each one of you, if you can pull yourselves together and give
plain, straightforward statements—I want to find the origin of this
folk-tale—this fairy-story—from each one of you—that is—do you see?”

“Can’t say as we do—speakin’ for me at least,” drawled a
gaunt tawny-faced man in a leather coat and vest and corduroy
riding-breeches, a cartridge-belt hanging over his arm. His voice had
the pleasant modulation of this countryside, with a little chirruppy
uptilt at the end of each phrase.

“Hughes, I expected—you see, of course, that it’s that common talk of
you—all of you—and such as you, that spreads such wild, romantic, and
unfounded legends through the countryside. Now, a man four hundred
years old—which of you has seen such a man?”

“If I may hinterpose,” came in Blenkinson again, “I might remind you,
sir, that most of us are not of Welsh extraction. These foolish
stories don’t ’ave much credit with us from London and other parts,
you may be sure.”

This speech was approved by vigorous nods on the part of several,
while three or four, the darker-faced and smaller ones, glowered for a
bit, particularly two of the women, strikingly handsome and strikingly
alike. Old Finlay the gardener smiled with sublime sarcasm, such as to
elicit a question from Pendleton.

“I was thinkin’ as how they was all flummoxed and flabbergasted last
night. It tickle me—that it do. They fules!” The ancient slapped his
knee and burst into a silent guffaw. “Why, they tales—”

“One moment, Finlay,” said Pendleton; “we must go through this in an
orderly way.”

“Sir,” Blenkinson cautioned.

“Oh, yes, yes, of course—what you say is very true—forgotten about
it.” Pendleton scratched his head, saw light suddenly. “Why, of
course, er—most of you are English, not British—”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Not Welsh—same thing. I suppose, then—there won’t be much—well, let’s
see how much we do know. I’ll take you in turn.”

He spoke to the men standing by the screen. “Wheeler, Tenney,
Morgan—any of you had any, er, experiences in the stables? Wheeler?”

“No, sir,” answered a young, rubicund fellow with a swollen and
discoloured cheek and blue-ringed eye. (He drove the Pendleton car.)
“Nothing but when we were called out last night.”

“Where did you get that eye?”

“Fell over pitchfork, sir, and hit the side of a stall.”

“Tenney, you?”

“No, sir.” He who answered was a tired-looking man, whose eyelids were
most of the time let down. The two words, his total contribution to
the inquiry, were drawn out to the length of polysyllables.

“Morgan, you’re a Welshman from around this district. You must have a
lot of these old wives’ tales simmering inside that head of yours.”

The man, a swart, square-bearded little man, speaking with the
sing-song of local accent, answered that he had heard tell of Parson
Lolly “out of the cradle.”

“I’ve no doubt—ignorant folly,” commented Pendleton. “Well, what is
all this nonsense?”

“You mean about Parson Lolly, sir?”

“Yes, what about him?”

“Well, sir, they do say he be the biggest of the farises and he be out
of sight of any man for age.”

“Farises?”

“He means the fairies, sir,” interpreted one of the women, a mite of a
person sitting on the edge of her chair, with a wisp of tartan colour
at the throat of her black lady’s maid’s uniform.

“Eh? Oh, Ardelia, thanks,” exclaimed Pendleton, while the stableman
Morgan mumbled something about the propriety of a “not Welshly
person’s” keeping still, and one of the two handsome women gave
her small fellow-servant an unsisterly look and ejaculated,
“Hop-o’-my-thumb!”

“Go on, Morgan,” bade Pendleton, quieting a general stir.

The ensuing account was full of omens and transformation, of black
calves and fairy ovens, of wizard marks, sucking pigs, “low winds,”
and horses ridden by the “goblin trot” in stables at night.

“Great Scott, man! Do you believe all this?”

The “London servants” and those from other parts tittered.

Morgan seemed to be weighing his words. “Well, that be hard to say,
sir.”

“What’s hard about it? Don’t you know what believing is?”

“Right well I do, sir, but—”

The small Ardelia woman with the fleck of colour at her collar bobbed
forward. “If he can’t say it, I’ll say it for him. Sometimes he does
believe, and sometimes he doesn’t. Now, Saul Morgan, say if ’tisn’t
so.”

The stableman gave her a critical glare, but assented. “That’s nigh
the way of it, as Miss Lacy says, sir.”

“Well!” snorted the interlocutor. “Sometimes you do and sometimes you
don’t! And what causes these changes of front?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“What makes you believe—”

“Well, sir, sometimes it’s right dark outside, you understand, and
things or somethin’ you can’t see—well, they—”

“What, the things you can’t see?”

“Yes, sir. They have a way of surely creepin’ in your blood, if you
understand what I mean, sir.”

“Yes,” said Pendleton, settling back, and, I thought, shivering a
little, “I suppose I do.”

Morgan, on account of his complete and ingenuous exegesis of the lore
of Parson Lolly, the object of much ironic commiseration from the
“Londoners,” pulled out a florid handkerchief and wiped the beads from
his brow. He stole a half-ashamed glance at the diminutive Ardelia
Lacy, whose wide disapproving eyes made him squirm and shrink.

Pendleton turned to the women ranged along the wall, whose examination
was shorter. Harmony, Em, and Jael, minxes with buxom bodies and good
fresh faces, were “not Welshly people,” and had no traditions of
Parson Lolly in their mental make-up, but they evidently had some
respect for him born of the stories of indigenous servants. Harmony’s
troubled look showed, to be sure, that she was remembering painfully
to keep the secret of the new announcement of the Parson, but by none
save Crofts and me was her embarrassment marked. Ardelia Lacy, minute
and prim, personal maid of Alberta Pendleton, was also a “Londoner.”

The two dark-featured, vivacious women, were the “Clays,” Rosa and
Ruth, cook and housekeeper, nieces, it appeared, of Hughes. Rosa Clay
it was who had shown a little animosity toward the “foreign” Ardelia,
indicating possibly a rivalry in respect to the favour of Morgan the
stableman. They knew of no doings of Parson Lolly prior to the arrival
of the guests for the Bidding Feast.

There remained three men-servants grouped in chairs about the foot of
the table: Blenkinson the staid, Soames, footman, with mutton-chops
and unction, and old Finlay the gardener with his irrepressible silent
guffaws. And in the background against the screen loomed the figure of
the man in out-of-doors clothing and cartridge-belt, the gamekeeper.
Crofts looked at Soames and Blenkinson reflectively, but passed them
as already examined. He raised his eyes.

“How about you, Hughes?”

“_What_ about me, sir?” Again the keeper’s voice betrayed his kinship
of race with Morgan.

“You, too, have this mythology of the Parson pat, like Morgan?”

“Well, sir, I hardly think Morgan had it ‘pat,’ as you say,” answered
the man, turning the eyes in his motionless head toward the stableman,
who muttered something unintelligible. “I don’t think he was very well
taught, sir—things mixed up, or something, and things that didn’t
belong there, you might say. Now, as it was always told me—I come from
down Powys-way, sir—”

“You surprise me, Hughes, a man of your age and sense. Now, what about
this? While the House was empty and you and the rest were caretaking,
what signs were of Parson Lolly then? I don’t mean larks and pigeons—I
mean real evidence lying around, or real activity.”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Not anywhere in the preserve? Not in the whole estate?”

“No, sir. Nothing used to happen until you brought down the folk that
are here now.”

“I see, I see. And you know nothing of the cause of the disturbances
of the last few days?”

There was an ominous pause, while Hughes seemed to be considering his
words. The room grew a little tenser; Pendleton looked up in surprise.

“What! You do!”

“Well, sir, I might say so; it’s connected with what I’ve heard about
Parson Lolly. But it’s an old story, sir—tells about the great lord
who built the castle that was here.”

“Ha! it does? About Sir Pharamond Kay?”

“It’s sure to, sir.”

“Sir Pharamond—hm—built this castle—exactly—well, come on, man; what
is this?”

Contrasted with Morgan’s, that was a thoroughly intelligible tale the
tall keeper recited in his voice with the mellow burr and up-ended
sentences. Under those conditions of semi-darkness and suspense in the
old, black-beamed chamber, it made a thoroughly moving story. And to
one who knew the rigours and alarums of feudatory existence, who
realized the ingrown awe of their masters felt by peasants with a long
tradition of ancestral servitude to imperious Lords Marchers, it was
quite obvious what a foothold in fact this tale of enchantments must
have had. For from his youth, or ever that most ancient castle up the
Vale was destroyed, Sir Pharamond Kay had been a wizard, and between
him and Parson Lolly, then presumably a magnus in the prime of his
powers, existed a rivalry shrewd and unflagging!

Wizards, to be sure, are not born but made, and Sir Pharamond went
through complicated and profound measures to acquire his occult
influence. This was before he had achieved his turbulent lordship, and
his father ruled all Aidenn Forest with mailed fist. Sir Pharamond
first unbaptized himself by three times spewing out water from the
Holy Well. Then he stitched up his own lips with three stitches and
for a certain space fasted and remained dumb. When he had unsealed his
mouth again, he went by himself to a lonely room and did certain rites
with a Bible, a fire, and a circle drawn with blood upon the floor,
whereafter the Bible was ashes and Sir Pharamond, as he well deserved,
was a true and certified wizard.

All this while Parson Lolly, whose sphere of influence included Aidenn
Forest, had been watching the career of the ambitious necromancer with
baleful interest, and now the older magician believed that he must try
conclusions with the usurper or be shorn of his potency in this
region. In the guise of a skipping hare he invaded the castle, and
having come into the presence of its lord, suddenly assumed his wizard
shape and challenged Sir Pharamond to a contest for supremacy. This
took place at the Four Stones (monuments of an eldern time still
standing lonely in a field-corner some miles beyond the mouth of the
Vale) and the Lord of Aidenn proved to have an Evil Eye so strong the
Parson was put to rout. In the form of a buzzard he fled to the
desolate summit of Black Mixen at the top of Aidenn Forest. But Sir
Pharamond, having assumed the shape of a small caterpillar, clung with
all his legs between the shoulders of the bird and reconfronted his
rival when he alighted where The Riggles are now. Those enormous
scratches are the marks of his buzzard-claws.

Then when the Parson strove with powers enforced by the deadly fear he
was in, the tide of battle turned. On that solitary hilltop, moreover,
the elemental influences were on the side of the older magician. With
a dart of his beak the Parson sank a deep wound in the cheek of Sir
Pharamond, destroying the efficacy of his Evil Eye. Then it was the
Lord of Aidenn’s time to flee, and he escaped to the innermost black
sanctuary of his castle.

But Parson Lolly overthrew the castle, whose skeleton of clay slate
chunks lies wasting up the Vale to this day.

Thenceforth, although Sir Pharamond lived on, his magic was only the
shadow of what it had been, and he lived in perpetual dread of Parson
Lolly. He built him a new castle where the mill had stood, and where
Highglen House stands to-day. But he never found content within his
re-erected halls. The menace of the Parson hung over his days and
nights. Whenever in his woeful heart he meditated regaining his former
ascendancy, from the cheek of his portrait on the wall blood would run
and in his own cheek he would feel overwhelming pain, as when the
Parson had driven his buzzard-beak into the flesh.

“One moment!” interjected Crofts. “Do you mean the painting in the
corridor?”

“No, sir; it’s that little one way up on the wall of the Hall of the
Moth as I mean.”

“Ah!” My host licked somewhat dry lips. “Go on.”

“There’s not so much more to it, sir, I expect. The Parson finally
_would_ make an end of Sir Pharamond. He sent Sir Pharamond’s own
corpse-candle for Sir Pharamond to see.”

“Corpse-candle!”

“A dimmery light, sir—it floats in the air. It’s a sure sign of a
death in these parts. And the Tolaeth sounded, too; so Sir Pharamond
knew then that it was all up with him.”

“The Tolaeth—I don’t think I know what that means,” said Crofts. The
Welsh folk stirred just a little.

The keeper’s voice fell, I do not think by design. “The rappin’s, sir,
that come just before a person dies. Tappin’, sir, like—”

Our hearts were in our throats while he finished the speech in a
sudden gasp—“like that.”

For from the other side of the corridor wall, high toward the ceiling,
had sounded three sharp knocks.

And again, before a breath was taken in the room, three knocks
again—and again.

“It’s the Three Thumps.” Morgan’s voice was that of a strangling man.

“Coffin-making,” muttered one of the Clay sisters, her eyes lightless.

I saw Crofts’ glance flit about the room, taking in the whole group.
I, too, had thought of collusion, but the number of servants was
complete; none had slipped out while the keeper’s story was in
progress.

Crofts remained irresolute for only a few seconds before he jumped up
and sprang to the door, flung it open and glared down the corridor.

“Empty,” he said, and I could not tell whether satisfaction or
distress was uppermost in his voice. Then the silence for a bit was
blank and appalling. He returned to the table. “Get on with your
story, Hughes. We’ll find out about this fol-de-rol later.”

“Well, sir, the Lord of Aidenn was sure to fight the Parson again when
the signs had come. He still tried to get back his magic power, and
the blood stood out on the picture and the pain came in his cheek. But
he knew that it was life-and-death, and he kept repeating his spells
and made a man of wax against the Parson. But just as he was going to
drive a bodkin through the man of wax, the pain of his old wound made
him stagger, and everyone heard the Parson laughing though they
couldn’t see him, and the portrait fell down from the wall—and Sir
Pharamond was dead!”

All of us, I believe, drew a long, grateful breath. Crofts sat
quietly, seeming to cogitate.

At length he said, “Look here, Hughes. That’s a priceless fairy-tale,
but what makes you think it may have any connection with what’s going
on here?”

The keeper hunched a shoulder toward the corridor wall. “You’ve just
heard that, sir. And if there _is_ a Parson Lolly, sir—”

Crofts leapt in the breach to nullify this dangerous beginning. “We’ll
not discuss such a preposterous supposition.”

“They do say, sir,” appended Hughes, “that blood will come on the face
of the picture when the time comes for Highglen House to be
destroyed.”

“Destroyed?”

“Yes, sir. By Parson Lolly.”

There was no denying that Hughes had scored several palpable hits,
besides the unaccountable business of the knocking on the wall, and
Crofts was glad to dismiss him, so to speak, from the witness-box.

I, seated in the embrasure of the window a little way behind
Pendleton, had an unobstructed view of the upper iron-bound door
leading into the portrait-corridor. While, then, I happened to glance
at the substantial iron handle of the door, for it had no knob, the
roots of my hair stirred and a thrill shot down my spine.

For, very slowly, the black bar was turning while something outside
softly pressed downward on the handle.

The fascination that took hold of me then was almost hypnotic. I
forgot the room, the people there, the cracked fleering voice of the
old gardener; all that existed for me then was the slowly descending
bar. To call attention to the thing never so much as occurred to me.
Nothing occurred to me. When the bolt of the lock had been drawn back,
the door began to open with imperceptible motion—an inch—two
inches—and was at rest. The handle gradually returned to its
horizontal position. It seemed as if I had taken only one breath
during those four or five minutes.

Crofts’ questioning went on, and little by little I came out from the
spell of the door, which remained ajar. The questioning went on, with
some secret listener outside in the passage. Still I held silence,
for, clouded with excitement as was my mind in those minutes, the
notion of danger did not possess me. I kept my eyes on the motionless
door, dreading that it might open further, distinctly unwilling to see
what it might disclose—and the questioning went on.

Pendleton was learning nothing from Finlay; I was vaguely aware that
the old gardener was fencing with the over-anxious Crofts.

Then a thing occurred to relieve the tension: from the kitchen entry
came sound of hurried movement, of a dish falling to the floor, and
presently was visible the tousled head of a boy peering around the
edge of the screen, a head surprised into a gape by sight of the
assemblage.

“Come in, Toby,” said Crofts. “We’re—”

“I just got back, sir, with Mr. Bannerlee’s bag and all. Oh, sir,”
cried the head, bringing its body into the room, “the Water’s swellin’
awfully from the rain—”

His hair was quite tangential, and his shoes and clothing bore marks
of the storm. An ulster dangled both ends from his shoulders. He was
breathing hard with exertion added to stress of spirit.

Pendleton began to explain to him: “We are trying to clear up this
business of—”

“I waited under ellum, till the rain stopped,” persisted the excited
lad. “It went under old bridge with a roar and a roar. I misdoubt—”

The exciting thought of the door softly released and pushed ajar had
grown weaker in my mind upon the entrance of Toby. But again my eyes
chanced to light upon the portal, and again my blood rushed pell-mell
through a throbbing temple. For, unless my senses were false, the door
trembled a little, as if uncertain whether to open farther or to shut.
The secret watcher’s hand must be upon it still!

In a daze I arose and came out of my retirement in the window-place.

“Crofts,” I said. . . . “Crofts.”

So hushed was my voice that he spun around in his chair with open
mouth, and the servants’ chorus gave a slight gasp.

I tried to open a path through my throat for words to issue.

“Crofts . . . there’s something—someone, I mean—watching us.”

“How? What on earth do you mean? What’s the matter with you?”

I extended my arm toward where showed a long narrow slit of blackness
between jamb and door-edge.

“There.”

“How do you know?”

My courage was small, but I summoned more to add to what I had. “I saw
the door opened from the passageway. I tell you this inquiry has been
overheard.”

I strode toward the door, while from behind me came the scrape of
Crofts rising to his feet, and the rustle of the servants. Open that
door I would, if the fourfold centenarian himself were waiting outside
to do me mischief. But I believed, and would not have been sorry to
discover, that the unknown visitant had by this time fled, and with
this hope upholding me I gripped the handle-piece and jerked the
portal open.

But no! A man stood in the corridor.



CHAPTER VIII

Wager of Battel

Gilbert Maryvale!

“Oh, you!” exclaimed Pendleton, and appeared completely contented at
once.

“Isn’t it awful?” asked Maryvale. “Isn’t it awful?”

Pendleton and I stared speechless at him; in me, at least, the old
surprise had given place to new astonishment twice as strong. What was
the matter with this man? The only light in the long windowless
corridor came from a translucent electric globe far at the foot of the
stairs, but even in the vaguely illuminated passage I realized that
something had happened to Maryvale.

“I saw the boy coming by the drive, and I thought he might—there might
be some news of Sir Brooke at last. The doctor is telling some
powerful things. I’ve been in and out of there twice. I always—I
thought I’d better get away . . . came to see if the boy had . . .”

“One question, Mr. Maryvale,” I said quickly. “Were you in the
corridor a while ago tapping the wall with something?”

“Why, yes, with my friend Crofts’ cane.” He turned to our host. “But I
assure you I did not harm the cane.”

“The cane be hanged,” responded Crofts. “But why in thunder did you do
it?”

An expression vanished from Maryvale’s eyes almost before it deepened
there, a softness, a look of meekness, a chastened look; I thought it
a revelation of painful things kept subdued.

“Something suggested to me that there might be a secret passage in one
of the walls of the corridor. I was trying, high up—”

Our host made a disgusted sound. “One thing you may depend upon,
Gilbert, no matter what happens. In this extant portion of the castle
there are no secret passages. There’s not so much as a priest’s hole
or a trap-door or a double wall to a cupboard. There’s one bogie laid,
anyhow. You may as well know that you made fools of us in there. Where
the devil did you go afterward?”

“I’m sorry if I annoyed you. I just went back into the Hall of the
Moth. But Doctor Aire—I didn’t care for the hobby of Doctor Aire. So I
returned again to hear if there was anything about Sir Brooke.”

The servants, of course, had clustered around the door with quite
natural and honourable inquisitiveness. Pendleton turned on them.

“You may go—and mind, don’t talk about this all afternoon. The subject
is closed.” Ah, trustful Crofts!

So out of the dining-hall they filed to their aloof world of
below-stairs: Ruth and Rosa Clay of lustrous person, Ardelia Lacy
(giving the Welsh stableman a look in passing that was obviously a
piece of her mind, though its crushing significance was hardly clear
from the evidence), the maids, Jael, Em, and Harmony. Morgan and his
fellow stablemen, Tenney and Wheeler, got out next, and the tall
keeper gravely followed them behind the screen. Soames and Blenkinson
both had hard work getting rid of old Finlay, who seemed to think that
the occasion demanded more of his japes, and who finally thrust his
head out from behind the screen for one last comprehensive wink at me.

Pendleton turned to the boy, who had set about his somewhat unorthodox
task of clearing the dessert dishes.

“Did you inquire about Sir Brooke, Toby?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” answered the lad, looking white over a load of
china and glass ware on a tray.

“No news, I dare say.”

“Oh, yes, sir, as a fact there was, sir.”

“Eh? Who told you?”

“It was the station-master at New Aidenn, sir. He was very angry, sir,
when I told him that you didn’t believe he had seen Sir Brooke. He
said to tell you, sir, that he was certain-sure. Those were the words
I was to tell you, sir.”

“Did he take a ticket from him?”

“He can’t exactly remember, sir, but he’s sure he saw him somewhere in
the crowd. He must have taken his ticket, sir.”

“Bosh!” exclaimed Pendleton. “Why, I have a letter from Sir—”

Toby continued in his unruffled style. “And he said he remembered Sir
Brooke very well from other times he was here, sir. A thinnish,
middle-sized gentleman, with a bang of mouse-coloured hair over his
eye, and double glasses, and his silk bow tie tilted toward his ear.
He remembered him quite well, you see, sir.”

“It seems,” said I, putting in my oar for the first time, “that _you_
remember remarkably well, Toby.”

The boy gazed at me as if I were a sport of nature, a phenomenon of
dubiety amazing. “Why, he made me repeat what he said until I had it
by heart, sir. He was very angry, Mr. Pendleton.”

Pendleton was in a brown study, until I plucked his sleeve and
whispered. “Thinking won’t help. Let’s get out of here, or the boy
will have something to regale the servants with.”

But Toby now proffered a request. “Please, sir, will it be all right
if I take a picture of the servants to-night? Miss Lebetwood gave me
her old flash-light camera when she came down this time, sir, and I
want to use it.”

(Photography—not topography!)

“Why, hm, yes, I suppose so. Are the servants for it?”

“Some are afraid of the flash, sir, but I’ll show ’em how it works.”

“Go ahead, then, after dinner. Don’t blow up the place.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t, sir. Miss Lebetwood will help me, sir.”

Maryvale was still standing in the corridor when we came out.

Crofts relieved his pent-up bitterness. “What a man! He sends me a
letter, very explanatory, containing three words: ‘Wait for me.’ He
arrives at New Aidenn station last evening, but doesn’t deign to make
use of the car I sent to meet the train; he even avoids speaking to
the chauffeur, to mention that he intends to walk. He then strolls off
somewhere, apparently to lie low until it pleases him to disclose
himself. He’ll be lucky if he finds the house occupied when he makes
his appearance.”

“But he may have got lost, of course.”

“I had men out searching. Every foot of the Vale was beaten last
night.”

“Still, your men may have missed him.”

“Well, then,” Crofts declared with fine sarcasm, “suppose the
gentleman did get lost and have to sleep in the nasty, damp Vale and
get sniffles. Where’s he been all to-day? Climbing about up there
where you were yesterday?”

“Ah, now you are asking reasonably. I can’t imagine. What is it, Mr.
Maryvale?”

For Maryvale had suddenly grasped my arm. Now he released it, and
ignored my question.

I could not gauge the look on the face of the “man of business”; it
appeared to have volcanic possibilities, yet subterranean still. To
regain the trivial and commonplace, I sounded Crofts on the matter
that had irritated me ever since I had seen the unstartling words in
the letter of dispute last night.

“By the way, Crofts, I may have to be sending out a message or two if
I remain here long—”

“Of course you’ll remain—”

“Where’s the mail for posting?”

“Why, just hand whatever you have to one of the servants. If you need
stationery—”

“But isn’t there a particular place—”

“Oh, yes, if it’s more convenient—there’s a rack for outgoing mail
under the staircase. It hangs above the end of the settle.”

“Thank you.”

Maryvale was busy fingering the lower part of the wide gilt frame of
one of the portraits, a full length representation of a man in cuirass
and metal thigh-plates, holding his helmet in one hand, leaning with
the other arm upon a convenient pedestal; his narrow face looked like
that of a newly-elected thane of Hell.

“_That’s_ Sir Pharamond Kay,” Pendleton remarked, “first builder of
the castle this House is remnant of.”

“Yes . . . yes,” Maryvale murmured to himself, concluding his
investigation of the frame. “The gilding is valuable at any rate.”

Pendleton and I reciprocated glances of bewilderment, but Maryvale
seemed disinclined to explain himself further. He was even unwilling
to precede us back into the Hall of the Moth, which he had deserted a
little while before, and wherein the entire rest of the company were
still listening to Doctor Aire. Alberta Pendleton received us with her
charming smile, and we took places beside her at the foot of the room,
and that other, smaller, bewitched or accursed portrait of Sir
Pharamond glared down on me from the wall.

The rain having ceased long before, and the clouds being a little
broken, the sun was, so to speak, red in the face from trying to dry
the lawn. The french windows were opened, through the northern one we
caught glimpses of the glassman from New Aidenn making whole the
damaged conservatory window. But there was no tendency toward seeking
the out-of-doors. Most of the party were quite sated with the open-air
sports afforded in Aidenn Vale.

Doctor Aire, moreover, would have demanded attention under any
circumstances. Apart from the fascination of his subject, there was
authority in the clipped, methodical manner of his speech. Just now he
was telling of the last case of Appeal of Murder, that relic of early
ages whereby one acquitted of a death-crime could be compelled to
defend himself anew by the might of his body. As late as 1819, it
appeared, one Thornton, when acquitted, and when the dead girl’s
brother had made Appeal of Murder against him, had thrown down in
challenge to “wager of battel”—this we were in time to hear—a gauntlet
as strange as the occasion, without either fingers or thumbs, made of
white tanned skin, ornamented with sewn tracery and silk fringes,
crossed by a narrow band of red leather with leather tags and thongs
for fastening.

Cosgrove was listening. But of a sudden it seemed to me that his
attention was curiously directed beyond Doctor Aire, beyond the
vicissitudes of the accused and acquitted Thornton, who had needed to
go on trial again with only the prowess of his body to defend himself.

“Listening, surely,” I told myself, and asked myself, “_For
what?_” . . .

Doctor Aire’s recital went on, encyclopedically.

“Lord Ellenborough had to admit that the procedure was competent,
although there had not been a whisper of the Appeal throughout the
kingdom for forty years. But the curious crowd was disappointed when
the appellant withdrew; so there was no gladiatorial exhibition for
the chief justice to preside over. It is extremely unlikely that Mary
Ashford’s brother had ever intended to carry his Appeal into force, he
being a slighter man of body than the appellee—and for that reason
Thornton had probably been emboldened to make the brave show he did
with his extraordinary gauntlet of white tanned leather.”

In the half-darkness underneath the musicians’ gallery were a pair of
listeners who had been within neither the range of my vision nor the
scope of my thought. Now one of them, the young American, Bob Cullen,
became in an instant the cynosure of the company.

For the youth, scarcely more than a lad, rose from his seat beside Lib
Dale, and the exclamation that came from his lips twisted every neck
in the Hall.

“So _that_ was it!” The expression of ire on those young, unformed
features was almost comical.

Despite a hurried, “Bob, don’t be sil,” from Lib, the youth advanced a
couple of steps toward Cosgrove, leaving no doubt against whom his
wrath was directed. He raised his shaking arm and pointed at the
Irishman, he opened his mouth and was attempting articulate words, but
only one word issued, a smothered one:

“You—you—”

Cosgrove’s face was a thing to watch, while the parade of emotions
passed across it. Mere surprise vanished with the first turn of his
head along with the rest of the heads. His eyes widened, but for a few
seconds were blank with absolute stupefaction, and when enlightenment
finally appeared to come within him, the resentment expressed in his
lowering brows and glowing eyes seemed to be mingled with a sense of
shame, or else there was no meaning in the sidewise shift of those
eyes and in those irresolute lips. He swallowed, and his head made a
small, sharp jerk in the act. A muscle twitched in his cheek. Bob
Cullen was still saying, “You—you—” and Lib Dale was whispering dire
things to him.

That other, admirable, American tried to deal with the frenzied youth.
Paula Lebetwood said, “Bob, you’re making a child of yourself.
Remember where you are.”

“What’s the trouble?” asked Ludlow in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Ask him—ask him, that’s all!” cried Bob Cullen bitterly, and then, as
is the wont of youths who believe themselves wronged, commenced
himself to explain. “He thought—you thought, Mr. Cosgrove”—(“_Mr._”
Cosgrove; much revealed by that “Mr.”)—“you thought that because you
were bigger and stronger than I was, that you could get away with
talking the way you did. Well, you needn’t think that it was because I
was afraid of you—”

I noticed that Lib Dale was actually twisting her young compatriot’s
arm in an endeavour to gain his attention, but he held on through
pain, white and red by turns.

“I’m ready any time you are, Mr. Cosgrove, and don’t you forget it.
I’ll show you, Mr. Cosgrove. I’ll fight you a duel or a wager of
battle or anything—”

“My dear boy,” slipped in Doctor Aire, who took the interruption of
his narrative in very good humour, “the wager of battle is null and
void. That was the whole upshot of my story, if you had only the
patience—”

“I don’t care if it’s null and void or not. Mr. Cosgrove, if you’re a
man—”

Paula Lebetwood had taken hold of the half-hysterical youth’s other
arm; she placed a firm hand across his mouth, effectually stifling
what further wild challenge he might have uttered on the spot. Lib
sank down flushed and pouting, her blue eyes flinging defiance to all
of us. Cosgrove, who had not uttered a word, had a face like a man’s
in an apoplexy, and his head was lower between his shoulders than it
was accustomed to be.

The youngster Bob Cullen was still standing there like a bulldog in
the centre of the ring, anger adding a degree of dignity to his
stature. Ten, twenty, seconds may have gone by, and still he
confronted the Irishman, whose only recognition of his challenge had
been a turn of his head and that slow dark flame in his face.

“Well?” demanded Bob Cullen.

Still the Irishman preserved a silence of stone.

“Oh, Bob, you sorehead,” cried Lib Dale, grinding her heel into the
carpet. “Of all the id—”

“But Bob, dear,” pleaded Miss Lebetwood, “what Sean said to Lib was
long, long ago in the spring, and she’s forgotten all about it, and so
should you, you silly kid.”

The voice of Cosgrove came thundering, overwhelming. “Woman,” he said,
and a quite perceptible thrill passed over us, for he spoke to his
intended wife, and “woman” as he said it then sounded the most brutal
word he could use—“woman, no need for you to defend me. The code of
this young upstart is not my code, by the heavens—nor is yours my
code. Stand aside.”

“Sean!”

“Stand aside—did you hear?”

“But Sean—”

“While the light is in me, I shall offer it to you, woman, and to all
others I find in need of grace—even if it gall your young upstart
there.”

Paula Lebetwood had tottered a step backward, with an expression of
the utmost pain and loss upon her face. Suddenly her face was hidden
in her hands, and her shoulders heaved with swift gusts of feeling.
Then she lifted her face tearless and hot-eyed and defiant beneath
golden hair turning to riot.

“Sean, how unmanly, how cowardly! Oh, if you knew how I despise you
now. Oh, I need air—air!”

She turned from us abruptly, then paused. Her bosom moved in a long,
slow breathing, and she turned her head to look at her lover, whose
gaze did not meet hers. A veil of anger seemed to fall from her
features, and the fire softened in her eyes. But this was no melting
mood. Instead, a serene aloofness reigned in her face, and she seemed
like one who studied Cosgrove from some region above, studied him with
sympathy and compassion. For a space of time—perhaps a minute—there
was this silence. Then, as if she had shown enough that she was not
embittered by passion, she departed swiftly.

Through the passage of the french windows she strode, out to the lawn,
and across, to be lost to sight in shrubs alongside the gate-house.

So, splitting into new faction and fresh enmity at every hour, the
Bidding Feast at last witnessed the discord of the lovers themselves.

Cosgrove’s rebuke of his betrothed had stunned us, and her answering
rebuke had left us wild and speechless. None stirred to follow Miss
Lebetwood. In me, at least, the strife of feeling was comparable to
the mad stress of the night before, when the first message of Parson
Lolly had been found. I knew a delirium of bewilderment, a very
horror, in the instants following those outbursts.

Cosgrove’s face, now so blotted with blood, took fantastic dimensions,
seemed twice its size. The room appeared an enormous room, and the
people pigmy people. Sir Pharamond’s portrait leered and sneered.
Every proportion was indecently distorted, and time, like space, was
bereft of its comfortable conventions. The seconds seemed to stagger
past.

Then Pendleton, no longer held by Alberta, rose so hastily that his
chair banged backward against the stair-post of the little gallery.
“Yes, by gad! Let’s all get some air. This room is stuffy as blazes.
That’s what puts us all at sixes and sevens.”

“I really think,” observed Eve Bartholomew, “that it’s the absence of
Sir Brooke that gets so on our nerves.”

“Let’s declare a truce—no, let’s make peace,” smiled Alberta
Pendleton. “Sean, you and Bob haven’t any ill-will, have you?”

Since his betrothed’s condemnation of him, no petty enmity could very
well find hold in Cosgrove’s soul. His defeat told in his dejected
head and drooped lids. He didn’t answer Alberta.

But Bob Cullen, whose excitement had flagged, was suddenly overwhelmed
by his former audacity. “I—I suppose you folks must think—you must
think—”

“That’s all right, Bob,” soothed Alberta; “you just lost your temper
for a minute, that was all. Anybody is likely to do that.”

“He let Mr. Cosgrove get his goat,” put in Lib Dale in a _sotto voce
obbligato_; she was still much displeased with her compatriot.

“I’m—I’m sorry—I apologize,” said Bob.

“As for me,” said Cosgrove suddenly, “I do more than apologize; I make
anew.”

“Why, Sean, how—what can you mean?” gasped Alberta, for the Irishman
now stood on his feet looking around the Hall without explaining his
remark.

“Yes, it will do,” muttered Cosgrove. “God can come from there”; and
he gestured toward the musicians’ gallery.

“G-g-god?” stammered Pendleton.

“God the Creator,” responded Sean Cosgrove, and he appended a few
words as inconsequential as any Crofts himself could have used: “I’ve
seen the book in your library.”

“But what do you mean, man?” cried Pendleton. “I never heard—”

“To-night,” said Cosgrove, “in this Hall we shall rehearse the play of
‘Noah’s Flood.’”

“‘Noah’s Flood!’” came a gasp from most of us.

“Animal crackers,” mumbled Bob Cullen obscurely.

“What’s ‘Noah’s Flood?’” asked Pendleton. “I’ve never seen any book of
that name—”

“It is inside a book of another name,” answered Cosgrove; “one you
have never opened, I dare say. Here, at five o’clock, we shall have
tea; is it not so? Then I shall unfold—”

“It’s an old mystery-play,” said Alberta. “Crofts, I’m surprised.”

“But won’t there be, er, costumes, and so forth?”

“For me, at least, no costume,” declared Cosgrove. “Man, made in the
image of God, shall need no gaudery. I should scorn to deck and
disguise myself to play my God.”

“You don’t mean that you’re to appear in the, er, in the—”

“In the altogether?” finished Eve Bartholomew in a thin
quasi-hysterical tone. “Oh, Mr. Cosgrove—”

“No doubt,” Doctor Aire put in sardonically, “Sean is thinking of the
mediaeval way of playing Adam and Eve with a screen up to their
necks.”

“Leave it to me,” said Cosgrove.

“But won’t all this furniture have to be shifted?” inquired Pendleton
nervously.

“Leave it to me.”

“Alone—how will you do it?”

“With my God-given arms.”

“But shouldn’t the servants—”

“I will do everything that must be done. But first,” and here I
thought Cosgrove became a little wistful, “let us go outside and
breathe the God-given air. Leave all to me; assemble here at five
o’clock.”

He marched out, his face, with a look of grim regret and
determination, turned toward the place in the shrubbery where Paula
Lebetwood had disappeared. The last we saw of him, he had followed her
out of sight.

The company began to disband.



CHAPTER IX

The Bone

He might hardly have been in the Hall of the Moth all afternoon, had
my impressions been evidence—so quiet he had kept, relapsed out of the
main light of the room into the shadow between the beetling
chimney-mantel and the old long-case clock. Perhaps the indefatigable
quaffing of whiskey-and-sodas, which industry is surely his favourite,
had proved soporific in that dusky alcove, whence only his crossed
feet had appeared, shod sparklingly, spatted sprucely. But now
Charlton Oxford, glazed to a hair, waxed to a needle, was standing in
the aperture of the opened french windows, and his look, whatever his
legs might be, was steady.

His eyes were fixed upon the gap in the lawn shrubs where Sean
Cosgrove had disappeared. Surely that was an unguarded moment; his
speech, although low, was vehement, since it was addressed to a man
now far out of sight and hearing:

“Your code, hey? Your damned code.” He wiped the back of his fist
savagely across his mouth; the heartiness of his baleful speech may
have given him the satisfaction of deep drink.

I, who alone had heard, tiptoed close behind him, and like the tempter
spoke softly over his shoulder.

“And what may your code be, Mr. Oxford?”

Frightened, he swung, caught his heel on the carpet edge and thudded
heavily against the corner of the age-blackened mantel, face bleached
and eyes popping.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Bannerlee,” he exclaimed with much relief, and
attempted to pass his alarm off in jest.

“Yes, and really, what did you mean? I’m interested.”

“What’s my code, you say? Ha, ha, Mr. Bannerlee, ’s too long, sir, to
put it in so many words, if you know what I mean. . . . But there’s
_one_ thing”—for emphasis he dug a flabby forefinger into my
ribs—“_one_ thing I’d never do that our fine C-Cosgrove wouldn’t have
the decency, the _decency_, sir, if y’understand—and the common sense,
too, damme, if it comes to that, you know—’s much common sense in it
as anything else . . . y’understand . . .”

“And what article and section of your pandect could Mr. Cosgrove learn
from?”

Oxford steadied himself, and over his face came a phase of profundity.
He gave me a knowing look, and his voice sank to a sibylline tone:
“Never take another man’s woman—never meddle with ’em!”

“But a woman unprotected, eh?” I felt like asking, yet refrained, for
someone else was nighing us, one at whose approach Oxford appeared to
feel distressed. The fancy man evaporated into the afternoon sunlight
down the lawn, and Maryvale, who I think had been standing alone in
the centre of the room, was at my elbow.

That changed look was stronger than ever about him; there seemed a
gaunt and haggard spirit in his eyes.

“Mr. Bannerlee, you must have heard terrible tales to-day.”

“Surely none that deserve such a violent—”

“Oh, yes, yes—some dreadful things have happened in this countryside.
Cosgrove tells me that this morning he related to you the fall of the
old castle, and in there”—he gestured toward the dining-hall—“what
awful things you must have listened to.”

I smothered a laugh that was half-breathless, for there was real
distress in him. “Mr. Maryvale, you exaggerate—”

He laid his hand heavily on my arm, and his fingers took hold. “But
there is one story more terrible still!”

“Indeed, indeed?”

“Yes, indeed. There are legends of this Vale—none more appalling. Did
they tell you—but they could not—of the Lord Aidenn’s arm that would
not die?”

“The arm that would not die?”

“You know the man’s picture, for you examined it in the gallery. And
there”—he motioned toward the portrait—“is the other representation of
that orgulous, cruel man.”

I stared again at the pitiless, thin face with a slight and enjoyable
stir of nervousness.

“It is a dreadful legend,” averred Maryvale. “They never found—” He
turned his head, saw something, and ceased.

For now came a new interruption, and one that I was right glad of,
since Maryvale just then was too remote and metempirical for comfort.
Of his grisly story of the arm of Sir Pharamond Kay, whatever the
fable was, I had no dread; but in the baffling Maryvale himself now
was something unapproachable that moved a mild antipathy in me.

The interruption came in the form of a small, hoydenish, vivid-lipped
creature called Lib Dale. The last to remain in the Hall, save those
who had spoken with me, she and Bob Cullen had been engaged beneath
the musicians’ gallery in a tense-toned division of ideas. Even while
Maryvale had been drawing near me, I caught a glimpse from the heel of
my eye of Bob shuffling his feet in loathness to depart at the hest of
Lib. At length, apparently in disgrace, he had passed limply through
the farther entrance into the corridor. “Go out and soak your head,”
was Lib’s parting tenderness, which I overheard. Then, spying me with
Maryvale, the startling little thing came to interrupt. The man of
business had checked himself in the midst of his sentence; he seemed
to withdraw into some inner chamber of himself; a darkness enveloped
the peaked soul in his eyes. He was gone, and I was left alone to
encounter the sprightly bit of femininity.

“How do you do?” she asked. “Shake. You’re you and I’m me. We know
each other’s names, or else they shouldn’t let us out.”

“No, they shouldn’t,” I retorted feebly, without knowing what I said,
save that it was idiotic.

“Well, don’t shed tears about it. Don’t be so vulgarly emotional.
Can’t you dig me up a real live saint, Mr. Bannerlee—something I can
take home maybe and show the folks?”

“I should think that the legends of this countryside—”

“Or a legend, if it’s handier. I’ve never seen a genuine legend, Mr.
Bannerlee. Lead me to it. Hasn’t my education been neglected?”

I uttered a faint denial.

“Oh, yes, it has,” she chortled. “For instance, I get my English all
gummed up. But that’s your fault.”

“Of course.”

“Now don’t be sil. You don’t know what I mean. For instance. Have you
noticed how all the books you English writers write about we
Amurricans have us saying ‘I guess’ this and ‘I reckon’ that about
every once or twice in so often? Now, over where I come from nobody
talks that way so that you could notice it, but over here in your
delightful little island we have to pull that kind of stuff once in a
while or the natives wouldn’t know where we’re from. Savvy?”

“Oh, quite.”

She had perched on the back of a carved gilt couch with upholstery in
rose _Brocade de Lyons_.

“And now how about getting busy on that saint proposition? One out of
the Old Testament or anything. Warm puppies! won’t I have the kids at
home goggle-eyed? I should snicker.”

“Saints in the Old Testament are few. And I’m afraid—”

“Not so rough, not so rough! What do you mean, you’re afraid? How will
this sound in your biography, that you refused a maiden’s prayer? I’ll
have to take you in hand; you ought to be trained.” She reached down
and gave a tug at a gravitating stocking. “No, from your face I see
it’s hopeless. Well, what are you going to do to keep the ennui away?”

“I had an idea,” I remarked hopefully.

“Quick, quick! Don’t keep me in starvation.”

“In connection with the method of making up the quarrel suggested by
the good Cosgrove—”

“Yes, yes, I follow you there—everything except the ‘good’—”

“Since the good Cosgrove says that the text of our play of
pacification is in the library, I was thinking of having a look at it
and refreshing my memory.”

“I can follow you there, too; only no refreshments here,
thanks—‘Noah’s Flood’ is all news to me as a big, throbbing drammer.
Sounds sort of frisky, I mean riskay, putting all those animals to
bed. Who wrote it?”

“The authors of the mystery-plays are unknown.”

“Something fishy there, I’ll bet. Come on, show me this sensation.”

She grabbed a hand of mine and dragged me through the room of weapons
into the spacious library, a room of irregular shape, since the curve
of the staircase well rounded one wall and the huge jut of the
south-west corner tower made a pocket-like projection almost equal to
a separate room. A monumental mahogany break-front bookcase occupied
the principal straight wall of the room, and other glass-covered
stacks of shelves lined the shorter and the semicircular wall and the
spaces between the windows. Altogether there must have been three
thousand books.

“Gee whiz, Croftsy must be some reader,” said Lib. “I was never here
before, and I’ve got a brainstorm already.”

I smiled, wryly, no doubt. “I believe that the library, like the
portraits and the symbol of the cat and the legends of Aidenn Forest,
came to Crofts with the building. In fact, though I haven’t looked
these over, I imagine many of them are of a sort unlikely to interest
our host.”

Indeed, the major portion of the collection were volumes which could
stir the interest only of the antiquarian and the erudite student of
literature. Few, I am sure, bore the twentieth-century imprint.
Included were old books of all assortments of inconvenient sizes from
folio to duodecimo, and although in their glass prisons, whence no
doubt they were taken and dusted quarterly, they looked spick and
span, still they had a lonesome air, as if longing to be handled for
love.

I mused. “Now where shall we look for one particular volume in all
this?”

“Are you putting that as a question, Marshal?” asked Lib. “That’s not
fair. I’m in the enemy’s country here; don’t know the landmarks.”

“We might look over the ones of reasonable size first. The thing’s a
reprint. Early English Text, I dare say.”

“I don’t get you, Admiral, but am game to follow you in a leaky boat
to the death. I gathered that this Flood has an alias.”

“Er—”

“Doesn’t go under its own name, I mean.”

“That is correct.”

“That’s right, you mean. Well, well, Duke, can this be it?”

She had opened one of the doors of the mahogany case and reached high
from the basis of one toe. The volume she persuaded to fall down and
which she caught was actually a bound issue of the Early English Text
Society and contained the Digby and Coventry Plays.

“By all that’s wonderful! How did your eyes pick out that title so
quickly?”

“Never looked at the title—way up there. What do you think I am,
Senator, a telescope? Say! I just took a slant along the shelves.”

“A slant—along the shelves?”

“Right. I thought that maybe the ‘good’ Cosgrove had been taking a
peep at the crucial volume lately and maybe hadn’t put it back quite
even. Savvy? Now, let’s have a look.”

But she wrinkled both nose and forehead from the first sight of
“Processus Noe cum filiis,” and fluttered the pages very much askance.

“I don’t get this stuff at all. What language is this?”

“English.”

“Why, it’s worse than Amurrican.”

“It’s really Middle English, you know.”

“No, I don’t. See here, what does a choice morsel like this signify?”
She read, in a manner unknown to linguists, the following lines:

  “Ye men that has wifis whyls they ar’ yong,
  If luf youre lifis chastice thare tong:
  Me thynk my heart ryfis both levyr and long
  To se sich stryfis wedmen emong.

That looks as if it might mean something.”

“Yes, Noah was very wroth with his wife.”

“His wife? His missus?”

“She was a scold, and Noah, as the gloss of Professor Pollard says,
bids husbands chastise their wives’ tongues early.”

“Not so hot, not so hot,” remarked Lib, apparently in disparagement.
“Where do all the other folks come in?”

“Oh, there’ll be parts for everyone. Noah’s family was large, and
there were plenty of animals to go round. . . . He beats her a bit
later on,” I added hopefully.

She clapped the covers to. “This is too rough for me. It’s not
ladylike. I’m not crazy about—say, what goes on in there?”

Somebody was making a stir in the armoury, whence issued an occasional
scrabbling sound. Lib poked her head cautiously around the doorpost.

“Why, Doctor, what would you seem to be doing this elegant afternoon?”

Doctor Aire was standing with a cutlass in one hand and a claymore in
the other. He lifted his gaze from the floor in surprise and gave an
affable welcome.

“Oh, hello. I had no idea anyone else was indoors.”

“We’ve been giving Noah the once over,” said Lib. “What’s the idea of
all the weapons?”

“Well, you see that early battle-axe lying so well protected out
there, if it was chosen for the commission of crime, has one or two
peculiar things about it. It amused me to find whether—but no, you’d
better guess for yourself. I understand that the subject is taboo just
now, and a very good thing.”

Lib stamped with animation. “That’s not a bit nice. This is such a
dull afternoon, and now you won’t even tell us your secrets.”

“Well, there’s one,” smiled the Doctor with a sort of saturnine
indulgence. “Feel the weight of these.” He handed over to her the pair
of weapons. “Take a look over the lot.” He made a sweeping motion to
indicate the walls crowded with arms. “Then think of the axe that lies
out there inclosed by chicken-wire. Then draw your own conclusions.”

Lib poised the cutlas and claymore and returned them. “Doctor, you’re
a whiz. Any more funny little wrinkles?”

“Take your time,” said the doctor. “Examine them all.”

“You give me too much credit,” she declared. “Come on; what have you
found out?”

Doctor Aire gave a slight shrug, one shoulder lifting higher than the
other. It was a mannerism I had observed before. “Miss Lib, you have
all the brains necessary for this extremely simple point, which I have
practically given away already.”

“Well, you’re a teaser. I’m not a little girl any more, you know. I
don’t _like_ being teased.”

“You must think it out for yourself,” insisted the Doctor, still
smiling.

“Well, I won’t; so there! You’re perfectly horrid!”

“Perfection in any wise is seldom gained. I am honoured,” he murmured,
but Lib, tossing her head and departing to the lawn, in affected
dudgeon, probably did not hear the conclusion of his courtesy.

We laughed together while he replaced the weapons to their props and
fastenings upon the wall.

I looked about the chamber, up the walls crowded with weapons to the
very shadows of the ceiling. Save for the two full-armoured figures of
sheet and mail, most of the equipment I supposed to be Elizabethan or
later, although the Doctor was sure to be a better judge than I. One
gigantic harquebuse _à croc_ with its support attached dominated the
broad wall between the armoury and the Hall of the Moth; all around it
were muskets, calivers, petronels, dags and tacks, and a couple of
blunderbusses, besides firearms whose names I did not know. The short
wall opposite was full of cutting and crushing weapons; hence had come
the two with which the Doctor had been experimenting. Between two sets
of lances standing upright for a frame, the eye was mazed in an
intricate pattern of partisans, maces, falchions, hangers, axes,
poniards, and, one might believe, every other size and shape of
sticker and slasher and pounder.

“I suppose you alluded to the heft of the axe we found last night out
there? Its weight is certainly inconsiderable.”

“Yes,” agreed the Doctor with a drawl, “it appears to have been about
the lightest object on the wall. Why did he take that—that hatchet?
I’m inclined to think that it was made for a plaything, not a real
working instrument. Odd, its selection, very odd.”

“I don’t see why you emphasize the point.”

“Well, look here, where it was taken from, about shoulder height. Now,
assuming naturally that the man who took it wanted it for business
purposes, why didn’t he take this axe here, something less than a yard
further up? There’s real power in this fellow. Or was the intruder
fumbling around in the dark in a room he wasn’t acquainted with? And
then the blood.”

“Ah, yes; I have been waiting with interest to hear your decision
there.”

“No decision is possible immediately, if you ask me where it came
from. I have no kit with me, of course. I accept for the time
Pendleton’s assurance that it belongs to the missing pig, slaughtered
in we don’t know what ritualistic manner. But the position of the
blood on the weapon is what annoys me. You recall it?”

“The handle was slobbered with it.”

“And only a few spots on the blade. That would assure us the killing
was done with the axe, even if the weapon weren’t so inefficient. Ah!”
He lifted his hands in an attitude of dismay, a stiffish caryatid-like
pose. “Pendleton’s right. No good comes of talking of these things.
They’ll unravel. I’m going to get cleaned up for the rehearsal at
five, Mr. Bannerlee. I’ve been discussing transplantings with old
Finlay the gardener, and my hands have tested some extra fine dirt.”

I saw the Doctor swing his body out of the armoury with the regularity
of an automaton, his trunk stiff and upright, his narrow legs working
like scissors; I heard the Doctor enter on the winding stair.

Then, alone in the armoury, into which the first faint smoke of dusk
was creeping, among so many instruments of death, where the intruder
of the night before had stolen while the mockery of cards was in
progress in the Hall, and where he might steal again—there, then, I
was not at ease. I had flickers of apprehension, and the room seemed
musty, close. Both mentally and bodily I felt cabined, confined. More
than half an hour remaining before we were due in the Hall, I resolved
upon taking a light breather up the Vale, to stir my sluggard blood
and puff away my fancies.

No one appeared on the lawn or in the environs of the House. As I
faced north up the Vale a fairish breeze met me face to face, and I
realized that the storm was still in the atmosphere. The airy armies
high above the hills were marshalling once more. A little while later
the sun, not far above the ridge, was flecked with cloud, and the
smouldering embers of the beechen hangers were, one might say,
extinguished to black ashes.

By the time the glories of colour were lost on the hillsides, I had
reached the clearing beyond which lurked the cottage of the sisters
Delambre. This stood in a gorge-like recess, where flowed the small
stream with the ridiculous bridge which I had noted when first I
journeyed down the Vale. Good, full inspirations of the untainted air
had restored physical tone, and my thoughts, too, were less troubled,
perplexed. I was free of most of the jangling discord of the day, of
Belvoir with his eternal harping on morals as accidental products, of
Ludlow in his vigilance to combat offensive ideas, of Lib and Bob and
their little bickerings, of Cosgrove and all the enmities that had
heaped around him: Bob’s and the Baron’s and Charlton Oxford’s,
and—almost—the abrupt flaming of the Irishman and his bride-to-be.
That single incident must have impressed the houseful of us as rudely
as a dozen ordinary quarrels of man to man.

Of the taste of this unpleasantness I could not wholly rid myself, nor
of another thing, which strengthened in the diminishing of light. This
was the witching time of day—and I could not get away from Parson
Lolly.

Well I understood Morgan the stableman when he said that there were
whiles when the “otherness” took hold of one. Having crossed the
clearing, I stood near the cottage of the French sisters, who, though
nothing concerning their characters had been told me, I conceived must
be eccentrics, women so distant from their nativity, if not in mere
statute miles, certainly in their lives and surroundings. While I
looked at the cottage, a rugged thing of stone, scarcely two stories
high, with roof of hewn stone tiles, as is common hereabout, I thought
it had a deserted and disappointed appearance. It was far too early,
indeed, for even tired farm-women to be abed; yet no light glimmered
through window or cranny. I approached; I even knocked. No response.

Puzzled, disturbed, I retraced my path.

So feeling, I came in view of Highglen House, all dark and still on
the edge of sunset. I passed beneath the clustered cypress trees; I
traversed the northern span of the lawn and passed the conservatory
with its mended panes. I stepped on the driveway where it passed the
Hall of the Moth, intending to advance to the front entrance and ring
the bell there, having enough hold on reality, in spite of my fuming
blood, to recall that my own shaving things had been in my bag
recently fetched by Toby, and that with hot water I could quickly
remove the stubble of the day, before the first reading of “Noah’s
Flood” in the Hall of the Moth. At the moment of my setting foot on
the drive, I remember, the faintest sound of speech wandered to me
from somewhere beyond the gate-house. I could not distinguish any
voices, but there seemed to be both men and women in the party,
doubtless returning from beside Aidenn Water.

Then I chanced to look inside the Hall of the Moth.

Now, now, now is the time when I need to hold each sense and faculty
to accurate account. For what I saw then, what then I took to be
hallucination, now I know too well was something real, something
serious, and something totally inexplicable to all who have heard of
it.

Through the cleft between the eminences of Esgair Nantau and Vron Hill
a single dart from the sun still leaped, lustering the twilight about
the house. A fragment of that glimmer, about the size of a top-hat but
rudely circular in shape, played and smouldered mild, high on the bare
stone of the inner wall of the room. Except for this wavering spot,
dusk had taken possession of the empty Hall, wherein even the masses
of the furniture were invisible to me.

The chanciest glance took in the gloom of the chamber, but before I
had looked elsewhere, my eyes perceived yet one other thing
distinguishable in the obscurity, and all the blood in me leaped. To
indicate definitely the position of the object, I should say that to
the best of my affrighted recollection it was just beyond the couch
which Lib Dale had mounted earlier in the afternoon during her talk
with me, although the couch itself, like the rest of the furniture,
was now absorbed in the pool of darkness.

In the air perhaps a foot above the imagined position of the back of
the couch, with no visible means of suspension or support, was what I
can describe only as a clean white bone.



CHAPTER X

The Laugh

A white bone, six inches long, the broadened knobs at each end a
little darker than the rest—horizontal, perfectly still.

Perhaps I had gazed at this thing in fascination for twenty or thirty
seconds before it stirred at all. Then the faintest swinging motion
seemed to occur, on a horizontal plane, and suddenly—now my heart was
going mad—it rose a couple of feet as if jerked by a string, and
remained motionless once more, until the swinging recommenced, one end
and then the other moving slightly toward me and away.

The comforting tones of voices had died; it might have been that I and
that apparition were alone in the Vale, a man and a white irrational
bone. I was of no mind to linger there until the thing should leap up
again and drive me into an apoplexy. And all the while the basis of
reason in me was firm, and there was a voice bidding me quit my folly,
for there could be no bone in the unsupporting air of the Hall. Yet I
did not enter the chamber and get within the same walls as the
apparition; instead I abandoned the place to its ghostly visitant,
hastened around to the front entrance of the House and rang the bell,
although the door itself was unlatched.

I wanted hot water for shaving.

Soames, answering the ring, I met at the foot of the winding
staircase. My voice, I believe, was controlled out of its excitement
when I ordered the water, which he promised to bring at once.

It was with a doubtful, distracted mind that I entered my room and
caused a tiny apex of flame to glow on the fresh candles standing at
either side of my writing-table. For a breath of open air, I swung the
casement window inward. The breeze, forerunner of storm, brushed past
outside, but no more than writhed the candle-flames.

I looked out.

As I have stated, my window gives on what I suppose I must call the
balcony, though part of the ancient battlement stands there in lieu of
a balustrade, remnant of an age before even this room was built and
when the top of the wall was no higher than the window-sill. Odd that
the old parapet with its indentations remained when this lofty course
of rooms was made. This wall above the second storey cut off my view
of the lawn, save where a gap of the crenellation permitted me to look
almost straight down to the drive. Directly below me I now saw
nothing, and far beyond the gate-house towers, rising to the level of
the roof of the mansion, was only the dusky dark expanse to Aidenn
Water. But about the twin-legged gate-house itself the afterglow
lingered in a tiny pool.

I suddenly remembered Crofts’ admonition to have a look at the tomb on
Vron Hill, and my promise that I would. With an athletic effort I
squeezed through my window and stood on the roof outside. To my
disappointment, the sky beyond the Hill was darkened with clouds whose
purple came near to black. The tumulus was indistinguishable against
them.

I moved to the edge of the parapet and leaned over one of the cops of
the crenelled wall for a better look about.

It appeared that two or three people were gathered by the winch that
works the drawbridge and were having great glee in their endeavours.
Rusty metal shrilled, a little cloud of laughter burst upward, and the
huge bridge descended. There came a thump when the platform settled
into place. Then amid a new little cloud of laughter, the winch set to
work again, and the bridge commenced to rise.

My attention was diverted by something at my feet, the merest trifle
lying at the base of one of the merlons: a twisted strand which might
have been part of a piece of light rope. It was about the length of my
finger-joint, far from fresh, one end newly abraded, the other
decayed. It was, as I said, a trifle, but it was curious. I could not
think then, nor can I now, how it got there; and certainly the fresh
abrasion was not more than a couple of days old. I had a notion of
showing it to Crofts for an opinion, but when I considered what the
energetic response of our much-tried host might be when asked to
account for a fragment of half-rotten rope, I changed my mind. But I
tucked away the strand for future reference.

One last look up and down the empty lawn, and I slipped back into my
room.

I recalled my shaving, which now must be rapid if I were to be ready
in time for the reading of the play. A few preliminary preparations
made, I ran into an unprecedented number of mishaps.

I seemed to have an unsteady fit. Soames had not yet come with the hot
water, and I was in a hurry; my watch said a quarter to five. I made a
beginning, however, ridding myself of my coat and shirt and addressing
myself to the oak chest whereinto I had transferred my things from my
bag during the ten-minute interval before luncheon. But at once I
realized the unsuitability of sixteenth-century appointments for
purposes of personal convenience, for the upper drawer was jammed or
stuck. I hauled, jerked, and jogged sidewise. Suddenly, bang! came out
the drawer, but the handle had parted from it, and I, handle in hand,
staggered back, crash! into a stool in the corner of the room. When I
separated myself from the stool, and we were both on our legs again, I
recollected that I had tossed my shaving utensils into the drawer of
the writing-table, as being readier to hand.

Then indeed I had a brainstorm, an eagerness for haste being added to
my disquiet of mind. Soames might be there with the water at any
moment, and I not ready. Clutching razor and strop, I looked in vain
for a proper place to attach the strop; my dissatisfaction with the
old room as a place for personal embellishment was not diminished at
all when I finally chose one of the curlicues of the candle-bracket on
the north wall for a hook. Like the similar one in the armoury, this
was very old, and like the bureau drawer, it seemed malevolent to
thwart me. Holding the strop firmly while my razor executed loops and
pirouettes, I was aghast a moment later, so suddenly did the fastening
of the bracket give way under the strength of my hold upon the strop.
Squeak! went the old, damp-rotted iron, the candle-holder on its pivot
drooped crazily, and I was staring at the thin red cut beside the
finger-nail where the razor-edge had nicked me. This capped the
climax.

It was comedy, no doubt. For me, nevertheless, it was a bad
half-minute. I smashed the bracket back to uprightness; one blow
sufficed, since there had been no fissure in the metal itself. But my
finger could not be cured so cavalierly. And shaving now was out of
the question before five o’clock! Of such trivialities are wrought
either contentment or black spirits.

I chucked away strop and razor and went to the door, wondering what
had become of Soames, and shaking off the drops of fresh blood from
the index-finger of my left hand.

I heard someone coming up the stairs, and at the same time a peculiar
sound of rending rose from the Hall beneath the threshold where I
stood, followed by the loud slam of a door.

I said to myself, “There must be someone in the Hall now,” but the
next instant thought, and all else, was reft from me.

For from some part of the house someone was laughing. No—to avoid
error from the first—I thought then, and at the present hour this all
who heard are willing to swear: the laughter came from no human
throat. Yet is Parson Lolly not human? And if he—but this shows the
inconsistency of our fear. Yes, I will swear it was no human sound
that roared and re-echoed through the House, gleeing and gurgling,
curdling the blood of us who were within the walls. So huge was the
uproar that the place of its source could not be told, and it went on
and on unendurably for immeasurable seconds, to change to silence with
a sudden gulp.

I dashed to the window for a quick look, and could see nothing in the
darkness, but discovered a glow spreading from immediately below me.
The chandelier in the Hall must be lighted now. Then flinging my coat
on, I rushed out of the room, impelled by a sense of dread and danger,
and an anxiety to get where people were. I met Soames, hot-water can
in hand, at the head of the stairs underneath the solitary electric
bulb. He was green, a mildewed colour, startled into stone.

I sprang down the stairs without a word, and he, galvanized, followed
with a gasp:

“Gord, sir, is that _him_?” He meant the Parson.

On the landing of the first floor stood Lib Dale, her fingers
nervously fluttering about her face.

“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“Something drastic,” I said, while we went speeding together down to
the entrance vestibule. Soames, still carrying the water, brought up a
thumping rear.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be awful if someone’s kicked—I mean, if someone’s
been knocked off?”

“Knocked off?”

“I mean if an individual has been assassinated,” she explained
haughtily, and then for an instant her impertinent little face went to
chalk.

We were standing indecisive in the passage. Hardly a minute had passed
since the end of the laughter. A scream suddenly sounded from the lawn
beyond the Hall of the Moth, a cry of agony which might have seemed
terrible had not it been for that astounding laugh which had preceded
it. In its awful context the scream was pitifully thin and feeble, but
it was human, certainly.

“That’s on the lawn.”

“Yes, Governor,” choked Lib, following me at a half-run through the
gallery-door of the Hall, through the nearest french windows, and so
to the drive.

Beside the small tower near the mended conservatory window something
dark was stretched, with three or four people about it. While Lib and
I were still thirty feet away, we could tell in the widespread light
of the Hall chandelier that a body lay there.

“It’s a corpse,” cried Lib. “Oh, my God, is it Bobby?” She rushed
forward.

I turned to Soames. “Round up the others, quickly.”

“Y-yes, sir”; he went back with the ineffable water.

I remember that just as I came up from the lower french doors of the
Hall, Belvoir, crossing the lawn from the direction of Aidenn Water,
arrived at the other side of the group by the small tower.

He looked down with a curious, contemplative expression. “This,” he
said, “must be the body we missed last night.” It was not a flippant
speech; it seemed to fit the occasion.

The body lying here, half on the ground, half on the step to the
french window, with Miss Lebetwood kneeling on one side, Doctor Aire
on the other, was Sean Cosgrove’s. Supine he had fallen, or had been
turned, his face bereft of its solidity, a flabby thing, his eyes
closed, and the edge of a bloody wound showing beneath his left ear, a
wound that apparently had a continuance behind.

With knit brow Doctor Aire let down Cosgrove’s wrist and shook his
head. His thin lips stirred; he muttered:

“It’s no use.”

Miss Lebetwood rose in a paroxysm of pain; she warded off Alberta
Pendleton. In the scattered glow, with hair dishevelled and eyes
afire, she looked like a prophetess of old, pulsing with authority.
With a gesture she put us aside; it was as if she were putting us out
of her thoughts. From us she went, and disappeared in the vacancy of
the lawn.

Pendleton, smitten by a thought, cried “The weapon!” and dashed into
the Hall. We saw him go to the armoury door and saw the room brighten
with electricity. Then the Doctor and I made the same decision.

“Don’t touch the body,” cautioned the Doctor, and he and I together
followed our host into the room of weapons, among which he was wildly
ranging in a mad search.

“Nothing’s been disturbed here,” observed Doctor Aire.

But Crofts, deaf, continued in his frenzy, drawing every old rickety
sword from its sheath, tearing every weapon from its peg or stud,
rubbing his fingers along the cutting parts.

“Not there, Crofts, not there!” I cried, taking him by the arm, since
speech had no effect.

“Which of these did it?” he demanded.

“None,” answered Doctor Aire decisively. “You can see at a glance—”

“But one of them must have a stain. There couldn’t have been time to
wipe it dry.”

“None are stained,” returned the Doctor. “Come with me.”

He and I had nearly to drag Crofts out to the lawn, to the spot beyond
the gate-house towers where the small axe had lain covered from the
storm.

“But that’s a puny thing!”

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “but even a bullet may do damage, and the puny
axe may have been in the hand of one of prodigious strength. A light
weapon and a heavy blow; it may have broken the weapon, of course.”

“It will hardly be here, in that case,” I suggested.

We were beside the chicken-wire. There stood Miss Lebetwood, her white
hands clenched against her dark dress.

Her voice was cold, toneless. “I’ve been waiting here, wondering how
long—”

“No matter, Miss,” said the doctor, “we’re here—that’s what matters.”

I lit a match which managed to keep alive in the stir of air. The
canvas, held down by heavy stones, was in place. Crofts yanked the
sheet away. We gasped.

There lay the small axe, undisturbed. The Doctor stooped and touched
the blood-slobbered handle.

“It’s dry, absolutely. Well, I’m whipped. I’d have sworn—”

We were hastening back to the House almost while the words were in his
mouth. Now there must have been a dozen guests and servants clustered
about the body. I turned to Crofts.

“Who found him there? Was anything seen? Where was he killed?”

He was too distracted to pay attention. He was running his fingers
through his mane and whispering little phrases to himself.

A woman with trembling hands held out some white thing.

“Look,” said Eve Bartholomew. “See what I found when I came by the end
of the House—down there by the large tower.” She pointed toward the
corner round which lay the main entrance.

“Another—another!” I exclaimed, and Crofts snarled, “It was time for
another, damn his black heart! What does this one say?”

We read:

            L O o k  O u T  f o R  T H e  C A T S  C L A W
                        P A R S O N  L O L L Y

“The Cat’s Claw! What’s that?”

“How do you expect me to tell?”

“Again we find this damned thing—too late!”

“There’s fresh blood on it!” exclaimed Crofts, taking the placard from
my hand.

“Of course there is, you fool. Look at my finger.”

“How did you do that?”

“Razor.”

Alberta was looking over her husband’s shoulder. “Where did you find
it, Eve?”

“Right at the corner of the House. It was on the grass, with the
writing downward.”

“Now,” said I, “if there’s one thing about this atrocious deed that I
can swear to, it is that there was nothing at that spot ten minutes
ago. I rounded the corner to enter the House so as to fetch one of the
men-servants by ringing the door-bell. The grass had nothing on it.”

“I was over by the gate-house,” said Bob Cullen, “but I wasn’t pulling
the winch. I was waiting for Lib to come out again. I was watching the
end of the House all the time until the lights flared up in the Hall.
I’ll take my oath, I will, that nobody went round the corner after Mr.
Bannerlee.”

Doctor Aire objected. “But after the chandelier was lit—when that part
of the House and the lawn outside the windows was bright—you might
have overlooked some shadow slipping along the wall further south.”

Yet this explanation satisfied me no more than it seemed to quell Bob
himself.

“Look here,” Crofts suddenly roared. “Perhaps _he_—” He flung out an
arm toward the dead man.

“What do you mean?”

“He—himself—”

“This placard was his doing, you think? Impossible!”

“Why not? There was no one else here. That one in his room this
morning: he took _it_ mighty calmly.”

“Sean was not a child, or a fool,” said Miss Lebetwood coldly.

“Who lit the chandelier?” I asked.

“Ah!” murmured the Doctor, and raised one shoulder higher than the
other.

“Did anyone see him before—this?”

Miss Lebetwood spoke. “I was the first to see him, Mr. Bannerlee. He
was kneeling, I thought, on the step outside the window—but he must
have been—falling. . . .”

“Paula—don’t tell it, dearest,” cried Miss Mertoun.

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Paula Lebetwood, still brave, still
vibrant, commanding. “I am not going to break down, Millicent dear.
I—have told of myself. . . . That was all. He lifted his hand from the
stone, as if he wanted to reach his head—but he fell forward. That’s
all.”

“But that unholy bawling laughter—”

“It was from—somewhere else. It wasn’t very loud out here, but it was
what made me look towards the House. Then I saw—him—while the laugh
was still going on. But I didn’t scream until—afterward, when he
fell.”

“The lights were on at the time, of course,” observed Doctor Aire.

“They had been on for a minute or so, I think,” said Miss Lebetwood.
“But I had paid no particular attention when they were lit.”

“The fact is,” said the Doctor, “we don’t know where he was when he
was struck. He must have been nearby—couldn’t have gone far with a
bludgeoning like that.”

“Blenkinson, you there?” asked Crofts.

“I am, sir.”

“Have you ’phoned Superintendent Salt at New Aidenn?”

“I ’ave, sir. ’E’s coming, and looking out for hall suspicious
characters on the south road.”

“All right, then.”

“Hadn’t the women better go?” asked Ludlow practically.

“Go in, everybody,” said Crofts.

“Must _he_ be left?”

Doctor Aire said, “Put something under the back of his head and cover
his body with something. I’ll stand guard here. He can’t be moved
until the police arrive.”

“God!”

A bellowing leaped upon us out of the north, a roar that instead of
tailing away mounted higher and higher upon itself. The wind, which
had been bustling, seemed to disintegrate while the darkness of sound
swept through the Vale. Resonant, tremendous, devastating, the sheer
undifferentiated noise bore down on us, oppressed us with its weight.
Brimming the hills, it actually made the ground tremble. It was
nothing like thunder, but as if something buried alive beneath the
earth had awakened and vociferated horribly. Several of the women
stopped their ears, and there was an awfulness in seeing their mouths
open in screams when the sound was wholly lost in the roar up the
Vale. It was as if they had all gone dumb and raving. Even when it had
ceased at climax, the echoes of the roar bruited from crag to crag
made the Vale alive with sound. And when the final reverberations had
sunk to peace, we gaped at each other silenced for a little while,
even the body of the man forgotten in the overwhelmingness of sound.
When we spoke, it was in whispers.

“Could that be—thunder?”

“Thunder—like that?”

“It was like Judgment.”

“What was it, then?”

“I can tell you what it was,” I said.

They were round me in a moment, greedy.

“An earthquake?” asked Doctor Aire.

“A landslide—almost an avalanche—on one of the north-most hills.”

“But what could have caused it?”

“There may have been a condition of incipient instability, waiting for
rain, perhaps.”

“For rain—what rain?” interposed Pendleton.

In answer to him a vast sheet of purple lightning pictured all the
north of the Vale. It vanished, sweeping us into an instantaneous
blacker darkness, but again it glared, and again, while unmistakable
thunders rang. In that dazzling fulgour the nearby features of the
scene were revealed to us as in bright noontide, but above the Black
Mixen, above Mynydd Tarw, above the other northern peaks, hung a great
tower reaching into illimitable night like a waterfall from heaven.
Again the lightning blazed, and we beheld the hanging shafts, like
sun-pillars among clouds, save that these were black—or like aerial
waterspouts soaring above the earth. And this stupendous cliff of
water was visibly moving toward us, down the Vale!

Crofts Pendleton turned from the terrific sight, with a bitter-happy
look. He gestured toward the north. In the effulgence and clamour of
the storm he stood like a valiant pygmy.

“By God,” he shouted, “there’s one direction cut off—for the fiend who
did this!”

“Particularly if the zigzag path has been blocked by the landslide,”
added Belvoir.

“Praise God, the police are coming by the south road. There’s no
missing him if he tries to leave the Vale to-night!”

“Sir Brooke!” cried Eve Bartholomew suddenly. “Sir Brooke! Where is
he?”

“We should all like to know,” said Crofts.

These speeches had been shouts. Now the Doctor made a megaphone of his
hands in order to be heard. In a blaze of lightning lasting several
seconds we saw him hunch his shoulder and head toward the top of the
Vale, whence the rain, white rain now, and horrible, was pushing
back towards us. “This will be on us in a minute. We can’t leave
this poor fellow’s remains here, regulations or no. We must get the
location and position of the body down in writing at once. I’ll take
responsibility.”

Crofts and I stooped to lift by the shoulders and feet respectively.
During our brief act of carrying the corpse into the Hall and
composing it on the couch, the wind suddenly rose into a mighty
strife, and heavy plashing drops of rain came sousing on the windows.
The gale was mad with leaves from the dishevelled autumn trees, which
came knocking on the panes, clung there for moments like silhouettes,
and were whirled on to their fate.

Crofts stood beside the useless and ironic tea-service, agaze at the
streaming windows. His lips were moving, but I heard no speech from
them.

I moved over beside him. “Who is Superintendent Salt?”

“The best man for detective work in Radnorshire, and the Chief
Constable knows it, they say. Lucky for us Salt lives in New Aidenn.
But he’ll never get here to-night—not in this deluge.”

Something dashed against the window-pane, and from us came a stifled
cry. Handsome Ruth Clay, who had come in to remove the tea things, was
standing with her fist jammed halfway into her mouth, her frightened
eyes staring to the stormy night.

“What’s the matter?”

“See, see! The Bird!”

I followed her look, just in time to see some small dark object blown
before the wind and lost in the howling murk. “It came up against the
window. I saw it.”

“And what of it?”

“It’s the Corpse-bird, sir. It means a death!”

“What!”

“Oh, I saw it, sir—no feathers it had—only like the down of other
birds’ wings—and eyes like balls of fire!”

“Nonsense, woman. Besides, this Corpse-bird, as you call it, should
have come before. The damage is done already.”

“Yes, sir, there’s poor Mr. Cosgrove’s body lying there, sir. But the
Bird means another death.”



CHAPTER XI

Superintendent Salt

                October 4. 2.35 P.M.

Yet the two men from New Aidenn had come up the Vale through that
ruinous rain and wind. From the corner library window I myself had
dimly seen them plodding up the leaf-stained drive against the blast,
and had been at the cat-head entrance when Blenkinson admitted them,
grotesquely dishevelled by the storm. The very tall one, whose hat was
gone and who carried a bulgy black instrument-case, was Doctor
Niblett, Coroner as well. Superintendent Salt, a man of more pulp, and
built on the underslung plan, wore a necklet of grizzly beard and had
short curly hair, like a Roman Emperor’s. I at once christened him
Peggotty, “a hairy man with a good-natured face.”

Quite a little lake had sluiced and oozed from their coats and shoes
before Pendleton came rushing downstairs from his wife’s room.

“You got here?”

“I expect so,” answered Superintendent Salt in the indecisive way that
I have learned is universal with native Radnorites. “I had my
neighbour the Coroner come along, Doctor Niblett here.”

“Oh, yes: glad you did. We’ve met, haven’t we, Doctor? Gad, you look
war-shot, both of you. Is the storm so bad?”

“We’ve tramped it from beyond the bridge or thereabouts.”

“Tramped it!”

“Half the bridge was down, Mr. Pendleton. We were forced to leave the
car on t’other side and make a dash over afoot. The way it looked, Mr.
Pendleton, with the water risin’ so, I doubt you’ve any bridge at all
there by now. The stream’s fair ragin’. And you say there’s been a
killin’ here or something? A guest of yours, maybe? Shockin’.”

“What a day!” cried Crofts fervently. “This way, gentlemen.” But in
the midst of the portrait-corridor, he paused. “This is murder, and a
damned mysterious murder. There’s been a landslide up the Vale, and
that path must be blocked. Did you pass anyone going south as you came
along?”

Peggotty, or perhaps I had better let his name go as Salt, responded,
“We did not, and we have a witness who was by the bridge since before
five o’clock to show that nobody had been across either way.”

“What kind of a witness?”

“Reliable. The Coroner and I have known him for these a-many years.”
From aloft Doctor Niblett nodded grave agreement. “Road-mender, he is.
Shelterin’ under a tree from the rain. Had been at work just beyond
the bridge, so he couldn’t have missed seein’.”

Elation seemed to make a dark glow in Pendleton’s soul. “Then he’s
trapped, the dog! That is, if you—did you tell this witness to
watch—?”

“I think,” said Superintendent Salt, “that we might be havin’ a look
at the body.”

“Er, yes. Yes, of course—I was taking you. I’ll order a good fire lit
at once to help you dry.”

I followed Crofts with the overshadowing Coroner and the plump
Superintendent into the Hall of the Moth. Doctor Aire and Lord Ludlow
were waiting there; the body of Sean Cosgrove lay on the couch with
the _Brocade de Lyons_ upholstering, and across it was stretched a
decorative leather skin plucked down from the wall.

Introductions were curt. Doctor Aire pulled off the cover, revealing
the corpse. The limbs had been adjusted carefully. _Rigor mortis_, of
course, had not yet supervened, and the features, save for the laxity
of the jaw, had much the expression I should have expected to see in
untroubled sleep. First Doctor Niblett bent for his swift, searching
preliminary examination, turning the dead man’s head in his long,
large-jointed fingers. The Superintendent followed in more deliberate
manner, while Niblett went gratefully to the climbing fire.

It appeared that Salt is not one of those master-minds who require a
vacuum in order to get results. He actually began to function in our
presence! For at length, rising ponderously from his knees, upon which
he had been scrutinizing the soles of the dead man’s shoes, he said,
“See here, where’s the weapon?”

Crofts shrugged his shoulders, having a bit of a flea in his ear, and
Doctor Aire answered, “We haven’t the slightest idea. There’s a pretty
muddle about weapons. We’ve weapons to burn, but none of them appears
to be connected with the case.”

“We’ll go into that later, then. You haven’t disturbed the contents of
his clothing, I see.”

“Certainly not.”

Methodically Salt removed what Cosgrove carried on him when he died,
turning out each pocket when empty and examining the inside. Besides
the loose coins, watch and chain, and wallet, there were a number of
hand-written and printed sheets in several pockets.

Ludlow singled out one slip from the heap and called Salt’s attention
to it. “This thing,” he said, “was the subject of some acrimony on the
part of the deceased last night. He accused me, in fact, of pilfering
it.”

“What’s that?”

“Perhaps,” continued the wily Ludlow, “I had picked the sheet up
somewhere, absent-mindedly, I suppose, and forgotten about it. It was
rather a tense day. But Mr. Cosgrove saw fit to declare that I had
rifled his correspondence—he claimed it as his, at any rate. Can you
make any more of it than I?”

“What do you make of it?” asked Salt, who had been reading it the
while.

I fancied a little spite in his Lordship’s tone. “In the light of
events, nothing. Suppose you show it to my friends here. One of them
may suggest some interpretation that will throw light.”

Crofts was obviously bursting to get a look at the screed, and I
myself was glad of the opportunity to see what else it contained
besides the singular remark about “the mail.” It commenced without
indication to whom addressed:

  “Dear Sir,

  I suppose that I shall see you before long, and we may discuss the
  topic conveniently.

  I must inform you, however, that my principals leave me no option in
  the matter. I hope you will realize your untenable and actually
  perilous position; we do not want your brains scattered about. On
  the evening of my arrival, I shall expect a communication from you,
  stating whether you will be amenable. Suppose you leave it in the
  mail—you know where; I’ll come and get it.”

I studied the signature for some time before I made it out:
“Lochinvar.”

“And you say that you have no idea what this means?” asked Salt.

“I wish I did!” responded Lord Ludlow; then, looking sorry he had
spoken with such feeling, he added, “I mean that if I did, I might see
some reason for Mr. Cosgrove’s bursting into a tirade against me.”

“Oh, yes?” remarked the Superintendent dryly, and turned to Crofts. “I
suppose you couldn’t tell when this was delivered?”

“Not while he was here,” returned Crofts promptly. “The only delivery
is at eleven, and I sort the mail myself. Cosgrove never got any.”

“Well, I suppose we must show it to the others in the house and see if
anyone recognizes the hand.” Salt stood pondering a moment, then
braced with decision. “And now I think that I’ve heard enough puzzling
odds and ends about this crime. I want somebody to tell the story of
it right straight through, so I’ll get the tit-bits in their proper
places.”

This was clearly for Crofts, and I did not envy him. I remember that
the rest of us were going to depart when Salt retained us with a
gesture. So we were part of the audience while our host, with much
nervousness and with some little assistance from the rest of us, told
who were in the House, and what, in the main, had happened until the
time Blenkinson had rung up the New Aidenn police station at
five-twenty-two.

Only once did the Superintendent put in a word. Crofts had been
setting forth as well as he could our bodily dispositions after
we had left the Hall of the Moth. “So none of us could have been
near him, and there’s no trace of anyone else. And there you are,
Superintendent.”

“Oh—ah—um,” remarked Salt, his eyes moving about the walls. “Secret
passages?”

“None,” snapped Crofts.

“Go on, sir, please. This is very interestin’.”

When our host had finished, Salt emitted a noise both gruff and
complacent.

“A pretty job,” he observed. He cast a look about the room, as if the
atmosphere of the Hall of the Moth impressed him for the first time,
and he gave a conscious shiver. I saw his eyebrows twitch for a moment
when his glance fell on the iniquitous portrait of Sir Pharamond on
high. “A pretty job and will take a lot of doin’, I expect.”

“Do you want to see the rest of us now?” asked Crofts. “The party is
waiting in the conservatory.” He indicated the door with a nod.

The Superintendent regarded the corpse with lack-lustre eye, and
pulled his beard reflectively. “N-no, not to-night, if you please. Not
now, thanks. I’ll take ’em all in the morning. As a plain fact,
there’s too much blood-and-thunder in the atmosphere to-night. Keeps
people from thinkin’ straight. And we can’t catch the murderer
to-night, anyhow.” He paused a moment, blinking thoughtfully again; he
was given to these interludes of cogitation. “But see here; we may
clear this matter up.” He showed the “Lochinvar” letter. “I’ll just
pass this round and see if anyone twigs the writin’.”

“This way, then,” ushered Crofts. He preceded us into the conservatory
with its great windows, where the company was sitting in little
breathless groups of twos and threes.

Only Maryvale lingered alone, beyond the grand piano, his fingers
sometimes very lightly pressing the keys in chords of some neutral
mode, neither major nor minor.

Salt explained that he intended to ask but one question just then,
alleging anxiety lest anyone should be overwrought in the situation of
time, circumstance, and weather. He gave an uneasy look at Maryvale,
whose chords seemed to deepen the sombreness of the rain-beleaguered
room. The “Lochinvar” letter went the rounds, until it reached Eve
Bartholomew beneath a large potted plant whose leaves were like
donkeys’ ears. She gave a pleased cry, then a gasp.

“Sir Brooke wrote this! . . . But what does it mean!”

“Never mind what it means, Ma’am,” said Salt. “And who’s Sir Brooke?
Not here, is he?”

“Don’t you remember?” Crofts asked. “He’s the missing—”

“Idiot,” murmured Ludlow, and went on to say: “I haven’t known our
infirm absentee as long as this good lady, and his writing is
unfamiliar to me, but it surprises me greatly that he signs himself
‘Lochinvar.’ Curiously unfit I should say. Madam, was that one of his
baptismal names?”

Mrs. Bartholomew bridled. “I have no doubt Sir Brooke had good reason
to sign himself any way he thought proper.”

“I have no doubt either,” acquiesced Ludlow, and added the remark,
“Don Quixote.”

“Haven’t eaten yet?” Salt asked.

Our host ejaculated, “Hardly!”

“Suggest you do, then, and everybody try to get some rest. All doors
locked, windows latched. No danger now, of course—only never give
temptation.”

“This way, then, if you’re for food,” bade Crofts, and led the way
into the dining-room, where he himself was to make a wretched job of
eating.

The conservatory emptied slowly. A few people followed Crofts; perhaps
two-thirds of men make for the stairs and the cold comfort of their
bedrooms. At the bottom of the well I drew Miss Lebetwood apart from
Mrs. Belvoir. Then, I confess, I felt ashamed, and spoke awkwardly.

“Miss Lebetwood, forgive me if I—that is, I hope you won’t mind—if you
don’t want to answer—”

Her voice was quite controlled. “Yes, what’s the matter, Mr.
Bannerlee?”

“It may not have anything to do with this awful—”

“What do you want to know, Mr. Bannerlee?”

“You remember telling how Miss Mertoun—before she wandered out last
night—how she said something about its being ‘his music’? Well—”

Paula Lebetwood winced and said, “You want to know what that meant?”

“It’s rather stuck in my mind, you see—and I thought—”

“You’re not a detective, are you, Mr. Bannerlee?”

“Why—no—I—”

“Your name _is_ Bannerlee, isn’t it?”

“Certainly, Miss Lebetwood.”

“Forgive me; it was rude. But I am so tired—and your question—”

“Please don’t—”

She interrupted, but her hesitation had become as great as mine, and
there was certain displeasure in her tone. “Excuse me, I beg you, but
I—don’t—think I want to tell you, Mr. Bannerlee. I can hardly call it
my—secret, you know.”

“Pray excuse _me_ for asking. But you may be called on to tell
to-morrow. It will be painful, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I hope I won’t have to. Really—really, it has nothing to do
with—”

She fled up the stairs, and I, full of musing, went into the
dinner-room and tried to eat. But it was no use then. I excused myself
from the group about the table (pale, they were, as if Death itself
had taken a seat at the board) and slowly proceeded to my
second-storey room.

I wrote in this diary, and while I wrote I heard slight sounds below.
Not until a long time later, when hunger had at last made itself felt
and I hoped to burgle the larder, and stole down near midnight—not
until then did I realize the full import of those sounds. While I
passed through the corridor to reach the dining-room door and thence
the kitchen, the far entrance of the Hall opened, and an unusual glare
of light burst forth. Doctor Aire stood on the threshold. He wore a
cook’s white apron tied beneath his arms and pinned to his trousers
below the knees. He was rubbing his fingers on the edge of it. Using
the instruments of the tall, wordless Coroner, he had just performed
the superfluous but required necropsy upon the body of Sean Cosgrove.

“The blow on the neck did it; nothing else the matter. He had a whale
of a constitution.”

Aire, too, was hungry. But it almost robbed me of my appetite again to
see him eating with those gruesome fingers.

As the Superintendent foresaw, it was well that the _post-mortem_ was
quickly done. After all, we were cut off from escape. The bridge was
wholly gone; so we had already learned by telephone. Burial of the
murdered man somewhere in the Vale might yet be necessary. The
King-maker entombed alone, uncoffined, far removed from the odour of
sanctity!

Aire, Salt, and I came up together at half-past eleven. Poor Crofts
had been troubled enough about finding places for the two officials
overnight. On the first floor the rooms were filled: the Belvoirs,
Oxford, and Miss Lebetwood take up the left portion of the storey not
part of the upper reaches of the Hall, and on the other side the
Pendletons, the Aires, Bob Cullen, Ludlow, and Miss Mertoun have
rooms. Above these the only habitable chambers are those of Maryvale,
Mrs. Bartholomew, and Lib at the south end, and mine up the passage.
Between my room and Lib’s are two chambers filled with stores of
oddments anything up to a century old. The great rooms across the
passage from me are also depositories and magazines of much that has
been undisturbed since long before Crofts bought Highglen House.

I knew that our host took Salt and Niblett over the House in a sort of
preliminary inspection about ten o’clock, for they arrived finally at
my antique domicile. Crofts, thoughtless oaf, had given me no warning,
and I was nearly caught in the exercise of pen and ink. I contrived,
however, to thrust my writing-book underneath the table and to snatch
a piece of notepaper. I was inditing a letter when the Superintendent
looked in.

Then they stood in the doorway and discussed sleeping-quarters.

“Disadvantages every way,” complained Crofts, “whether you try the
ground floor, the first, or the second—but of course I forgot—there’s
no place available on the first.”

“The first floor will do us very well,” said Salt.

“Eh? What do you mean? You surely don’t mean—”

“Mr. Cosgrove’s room? Yes. Dr. Niblett and I will divide the sleepin’
there and beside the corpse.”

Cosgrove had occupied the east-projecting room furthest north in the
older body of the House. Miss Mertoun’s, beyond it, is above the
newly-built conservatory, and since, as I may have said, the
conservatory does not extend the entire width of the house, Cosgrove’s
room juts out, making a notched corner at that end of the mansion.

“But surely—”

“I’m leavin’ my superstitions out with my boots to-night,” observed
Salt solemnly.

“But why not carry the body up there? I’ll have a bed made—”

Crofts gave it up after a while, though I am sure that not for a
king’s ransom would he himself last night have occupied the narrow
chamber that had been the Irishman’s. The voices became faint down the
passage; the last I heard was Salt’s diminishing assurance.

“I took the liberty of usin’ your telephone. I gave the Chief
Constable a stiff surprise. There are two of the county police—”



CHAPTER XII

Noah’s Flood

                Same day. 8.30 P.M.

And now we know that the Chief Constable has left the direct handling
of the case to Salt, under a discreet supervision from afar. Wise of
the Constable, since he had no hope of reaching the storm-bound house!

By chance at the bottom landing I met Millicent Mertoun. I thought her
more lovely than ever, though the terrors of the day before had
altered her cheeks to something like the hue of wax. But her
inexpressible dark eyes glowed with undimmed fascination. She smiled,
courageously, I imagined.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it, Mr. Bannerlee, to have to eat when
everything is so awful? But I’m hungry, really. I couldn’t take a bite
last night.”

I sympathized.

“Have you heard anyone speak of finding a scarab, quite a small
scarab?”

“I’ve just come down myself this morning, you see; so, of course— But
perhaps I can help you look for it. Whereabouts do you think you lost
it?”

“It’s not mine—it’s Paula’s. She won’t tell anybody about it, of
course, because it’s so unimportant compared with . . . She’s troubled
about it, though. It’s an heirloom, I believe, from someone of her
family who was in Egypt.”

“I shall have a look for it, I assure you.”

“I’m afraid it’s no use looking, thanks, unless someone’s just
happened to pick it up. It was a tiny scarab, set in a ring, and it
probably came loose outdoors.”

“Outdoors!”

“Yes, she didn’t notice it was gone until after—after—”

“I see. Well, Miss Mertoun, I’ll let you know in case anyone mentions
such a thing.”

“Oh, thank you. But don’t say I told you.”

The straggling procession into the breakfast-room was not merely a
subdued but even a sorry lot. Dismay and hunger both had been at work
on most of us. Few, I believe, had slept. I myself had, but it was a
sleep tossed and pulled by past and future. Food, however, worked its
customary melioration, and when at ten o’clock we were summoned to
meet Salt in the conservatory, scarcely anyone looked the worse for
the mental battering of the day before. I suppose Crofts Pendleton was
actually the hardest hit.

It transpired that Salt had already been about the grounds,
rain-infested as they were. Insulated in rubber, he had examined the
site of Cosgrove’s death, seen the canvas-covered axe, and made a tour
of the immediate environs of the house. Already, too, he had concluded
an intensive search in Cosgrove’s room and among his belongings, and
to that room the unlucky Irishman’s body had lately been conveyed,
which relieved some of the gloom in the Hall of the Moth. Now, with
the Coroner of few words seated beside him, the Superintendent stood
watchfully in the sinus of the piano while we filed into the
undertakers’ Elysium. The servants were already standing hangdog along
the wall.

“I’ll have to interview each of you separately, ladies and gentlemen,”
Salt announced. “But I must really get acquainted a bit with you
first, and have your names down. So, if you please, I’ll just ask each
of you in turn to tell who you are and what brought you—I mean what
association you’ve had with Mr. Pendleton here.”

At this moment Blenkinson took the centre of the stage without a cue.
“If I may hinterpose, sir, I ’ave in my pocket a very comprehensive
document, I may call it, which will simplify your task considerably.”

“What’s that, for God’s sake?” exclaimed Crofts.

I am sure that the butler never had so many heads looking at him
before, but with the coolest air he produced from his tail-pocket a
sheaf of papers, and smoothed them lovingly.

Blenkinson was balancing a pince-nez on the bridge of his nose. “With
your permission, sir, I will read. Hm! Hrrum!” He teed off and began.

It proved that the butler the evening before had assumed the rôles of
despot and inquisitor in the world below stairs, and had then been my
serious rival for honours in composition. Blenkinson read loudly in a
high, thin voice, a woeful torture to the ear, his eyes behind the
pince-nez bulging whenever he licked his thumb to turn the page. The
screed he unfolded to the gaping company began with a preamble and
concluded with a peroration, and must have been a couple of thousand
words long. It was a vindication of the servants’ hall against base
suspicion in the matter of the late demise of Sean Cosgrove.

The evidence was in a sort of interlocking system. From the time
Crofts had dismissed his court of inquiry after luncheon, until the
hideous laugh that emanated from we don’t know where, the whole
baker’s dozen of servants were accounted for and quite removed, I
should say, from the province of investigation.

The boy Toby had been outside the kitchen entry peeling potatoes and
onions all afternoon, on promise, vain, as it proved, of being let off
at night for semi-bucolic revelry in New Aidenn. With him for half the
time were Jael and Em, the maids, who according to the condensed
economy of the house always joined in the “parin’s and dishin’s.” When
released from knives and vegetable-baskets, they resorted to the room
of their companion Harmony, whom they awoke from snores, and the trio
proceeded to improve the afternoon with gossip. Rosa and Ruth Clay
could testify to the earlier snoring of Harmony; under the eye of
Blenkinson they had then prepared tea, had early wheeled the
tea-table, minus tea and hot water, into the Hall, and had gone to the
stables for a bit of genteel chat with Morgan. From then until the
catastrophe they vouched for him, as well as for the other stablemen,
who were moving about, momently in and out of sight, over one hundred
feet from the place of Cosgrove’s death. The jealous eye of Ardelia
Lacy, too, herself seen in and seeing from Alberta Pendleton’s window,
corroborated the Clays; she had come down and was sipping tea in the
kitchen at the moment of the attack upon Cosgrove. Soames polishing
silver until he answered my ring, and old Finlay pottering about in
the flower-beds, were amply vindicated. Even Hughes the keeper was
accounted for in Blenkinson’s compendium, for there was plenty of
evidence that he had been in his room mending a refractory gun for
three solid hours.

That gives a faint idea of the method of Blenkinson’s “document”; it
does not begin to do justice to the detail and close-meshed cogency of
it. The servants, severally and individually, are out of the
investigation. For my part, I never for a moment considered the
implication of any of them could be other than mad.

Blenkinson, however, had done more. He had unearthed one or two bits
of evidence that may be valuable. Of these I shall relate one, leaving
the other until the problem occurred of checking Cosgrove’s
whereabouts after he followed Miss Lebetwood from the Hall of the
Moth.

Very early indeed yesterday morning Jael, polishing the kettle, sat at
the window by the door leading from the kitchen along the passage to
the servants’ rooms. In her carefreeness she was singing a measure,
when her eye caught movement in the kitchen-garden near the chicken
yard. A strange man, “shaped like a lump,” was prowling there. She
opened the window, shouted warning to the stables; the invader uttered
a short heathenish exclamation and ran away toward the head of the
Vale. The men later found his footmarks in a carrot-bed.

Strange to say, there had been no inclination on the part of the
servants to assign the attributes of Parson Lolly to this interloper.
Perhaps the fact that he left footprints robs him of the distinction.
Instantly, however, I recognized in him the gorilla-man I had
encountered in the twilight when entering the Vale for the first time.
Probably Jael saw him seeking breakfast.

Blenkinson concluded with a peroration the essence of eloquence,
pleased with himself as an old stager applauded on his return at sixty
in the part of Romeo. For our lively buzz showed that the butler had
stimulated us out of our moroseness, made us forget ourselves, even in
that rainy, melancholy morning.

“Priceless,” I heard Belvoir chuckle, and our harassed host unbent so
far as to smile, whereas Lib Dale forgot the solemnity of the occasion
in open chortling. Lord Ludlow muttered something about “probably a
stickit minister.” As for the servants, they seemed to be in a stupor
of admiration.

Whatever Salt may have thought of Blenkinson’s taking evidence behind
his back he kept it to himself. Reaching over, he grasped the document
about to disappear into the coat-tail pocket once more, and placed it
in his own inner pocket instead.

“Very interestin’,” he remarked. “Now I’m fully informed on that
subject. I could pick out every one of you,” he said to the servants,
“when Mr. Blenkinson here alluded to you. You’re all excused for the
present.” He turned to the guests. “But I’m not clear yet about all of
you ladies and gentlemen. You first, Mr. Pendleton, though. How long,
now, have you owned this place? I seem to recall it’s about two
years.”

“It is, just.”

“And did you know Mr. Watts that was here before you?”

“No, Superintendent, I did not. The House was an unsold portion of old
Watts’ estate. It must have been five years after his death that I
negotiated for it. . . . Wish to God I hadn’t heard of it,” he
appended under his breath.

“That was all my fault, old fellow,” consoled Alberta Pendleton.

“This furniture and the pictures, now, eh?”

“Everything came with the House. Library of books, tooled-leather
style—storerooms full of odd stuff, costumes and furniture, crocks
mostly—but we did find a fine Buhl bureau buried among some stacks of
Victorian newspapers, and dragged it out. There was a little of
everything in the attics. He must have been a prime scholar and
collector, old Watts.”

“A little of everything, you say? What do you mean, Mr. Pendleton?”

“Cheese-parings and candle-ends: trash, you know. Some queer pieces
though. Old Watts must have rowed for his college, or with some club,
when he was a youngster. There were oars and other boating
paraphernalia in one of the rooms—so much of it we expected to find a
shell entombed. I ran across equipment there for a parlour
magician—quite elaborate. We were hoping Doctor Aire would give us a
show with it only yesterday. And—well, I’ll take you through the lot,
if you like.”

“Yes, please.” Salt addressed Alberta. “_You_ hadn’t known Mr. Watts?
You spoke just now—your fault, you said—”

“Oh, no; I meant that Crofts bought the place because I preferred it
to any other we inspected. It was so out-of-the-way.” She drew the
silk scarf about her shoulders closer, as if she were cold. “But that
makes it all the more horrible now.”

“Who were the solicitors?”

Crofts told him.

“And by the way, Mr. Pendleton, what is your line of business? You,
er, are in business, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered our host briefly. “Drugs. Manchester.”

I knew that after this preliminary survey, the Superintendent would
interview us separately on the events of the fatal afternoon.

He chose to commence with Maryvale. Salt held the door open for the
man of business to pass through, entered himself, and carefully closed
the door. It was with a kind of misgiving that I watched them
disappear, for now began the really crucial part of the investigation,
the ascertainment of precise times and places, the attrition of fact
against fact, and the weighing of hypotheses. And I was not at all
sure that I fancied Salt, any more than I had last night in the beat
of the rain.

The rain continued. The servants had gone, of course, and now the
taciturn Coroner departed to catch up sleep in Crofts’ room; so we
were an intimate group once more. But the blight of cheerlessness had
fallen on us again, and mystery reached its wings of fear about us.
The mutter and hiss of rain sometimes redoubled at the vast windows,
sometimes sank to a whisper, and those windows from their very size,
seemed to admit a darker darkness. Hardly a word was spoken, and that
not always heeded.

It was a quarter of an hour before Salt appeared with Maryvale. The
official tugged at his border of beard with somewhat dubious
expression. It was not hard to imagine that Maryvale had proved an
unsatisfactory answerer, now that this strange, detached fit was upon
him. Salt nodded to Alberta Pendleton, who passed through the doorway.
Maryvale without a word took the piano-seat she had vacated, and began
softly to play his sequences of brooding, atonic chords.

The inquiry progressed behind the closed door. Some of us Salt
detained only a couple of minutes, persons who could merely verify,
but not add to the information already at his disposal; others were
with him twenty minutes or more. Among these I was.

“I don’t think—ah, yes, now I seem to remember. You’re the gentleman
who had a nasty fall or something. Well now, do you mind tellin’ me
how you happened to get here, and if you know anything about this
case?”

I suppose that I was able to tell him more than anyone else. I decided
then to give my information without stint, since it was not the sort
of thing that could possibly benefit mankind by concealment, and it
might even speed Salt on the track of his theory. I recounted every
incident I have here set down: the search for St. Tarw’s devotional
site, the bull, the gorilla-man, the menagerie-keeper, the winking
window, his Lordship in the armoury, and whatever else did not merely
coincide with other evidence. I did _not_, however, allude to this
diary. Salt, by the way, did me the great honour of hearkening without
gasp or demur to my story of the tall, bulgy man with the Paul
Pry-Schubert umbrella.

In the end he reverted to the matter of the saint’s oratory. “This
ruin or something you were lookin’ for, now. Maybe I could give you a
feeler for findin’ it.”

I said that he was very kind, that when I set forth from London the
task had seemed dubious, and now the death of Cosgrove had driven my
hobby well-nigh out of my mind.

“You’ll soon get over that, I expect,” he encouraged heartily. “Now,
I’m none of your experts on old stones or old codgers, of course, and
I never did hear of the party you mention, but when I was a boy I had
a good share of climbin’—aye, and of fallin’—in Aidenn Forest. I can
mind once runnin’ across something that sounds like your whatnot. By
gummy, sir, if I don’t think I could guide you there yet!”

And forthwith he gave me a series of directions, which he insisted I
take down. However interested I should have been in these two days
ago, now among grimmer things the project of finding the oratory seems
trivial, seems superfluous. But I jotted down what he told me, thanked
him, and returned to the conservatory.

The spark of speech had been fanned into life during my absence. They
were talking of the events of the day before—what else could they?—but
they had happened upon a particular and engrossing phase. No longer,
as all last evening, did they repeat to each other what they
themselves had done; they had been over that so many times, all to no
purpose. When, like me, each had given his account of the afternoon,
it was evident that none of them could possibly have been concerned in
the death of Cosgrove, or even could have seen the manner of it.

Where, as a fact, had they been after the moment of the Irishman’s
disappearance through the shrubs among which Paula Lebetwood had fled?
Well, no one had remained long in the House. The Pendletons and the
Belvoirs, together with Mrs. Bartholomew, had formed a party for a
walk and had gone south. Avoiding the road, they had made their way
through park-like portions of the estate all the way to the bridge, to
marvel at the volume of Aidenn Water there. Far in the distance beyond
the bridge, they had seen the road-mender working his long hours.
Ludlow and Miss Mertoun had struck off for a stroll where Aidenn Water
makes considerable of a bend beneath the western hills. Bob Cullen,
feeling wretched after his dismissal by Lib, had gone alone the
opposite way, kicking a disgusted trail in the turf past the stables
and on beyond to where the steeply-wooded slope of Whimble Hill
commenced. After her departure in dudgeon from the armoury (and from
Doctor Aire and me) Lib had gone outside to look vainly about the
grounds for Bob, then had come in to find Miss Lebetwood, but had
encountered me on the stairs instead. Dr. Aire, having washed
his hands free of gardener’s loam, immediately went out, chanced
upon Maryvale in the tiny grove of cypress trees, and sauntered
up the Vale with him. The men turned off the path to approach the
eighteenth-century summer-house, upon whose rotting steps they sat for
a half an hour. Incidentally, they saw me wandering toward the
deserted farm of the sisters Delambre, and saw me returning therefrom.

Oxford had spent the most peaceful afternoon of all: seating himself
in the shade of the gate-house to smoke a cigarette, he had gone to
sleep in good earnest. Awakened by a sound, he discovered Miss
Mertoun, Ludlow, and Belvoir amusing themselves by turning the winch
of the drawbridge. Belvoir, having left his wife and the others below
for a brisk walk back along the stream, had met Miss Mertoun and his
Lordship, and had suggested the pastime. By now Bob Cullen had made a
broad circuit of the House, and stood aloof somewhat churlishly,
refusing to be beguiled by the action of the drawbridge.

My report of my own doings, told at breakfast, and including as it
needs must the impossible bone, had met a polite but agnostic
reception. The table had lapsed into nervous silence. Ludlow, tapping
his pince-nez on one knee crossed over the other, stared out the
eastern window with a crinkly smile.

“The mystic bone!” he murmured ironically. (The epithet has stuck.)

“What are you suggesting, Lord Ludlow?” I asked brusquely, for my
feathers were perhaps a little ruffled.

“I should say you needed to have your sight examined.”

“It has been, recently, and pronounced excellent.”

“Then why not consult our friend Doctor Aire, professionally? He has
had something to do with mental cases.”

I was going to retort when Alberta’s even tones admonished me “not to
notice his nonsense or he’d get vain”; so I let it go at that.

As for Miss Lebetwood’s hour before the tragedy, she had soon relaxed
her pace among the strawberry trees, and the wave of anger had ebbed
away. She found herself nearby the tennis court. Feeling, she said,
very much ashamed of her lack of self-control, she postponed returning
to the House as long as possible, and began to search industriously
for some of the lost tennis balls. She failed to recover a single one,
and at length, noticing that the planted grove was becoming thick with
twilight, and glancing at her wrist-watch, she realized that she must
hasten back to the House unless she were to miss tea, and appear more
ungracious than ever. She did not, of course, know of the plan to
rehearse “Noah’s Flood,” for neither Cosgrove nor anyone else had she
seen. Aire had spied her just emerging from the thickets to the lawn.
From the time of her outburst against him, she was not to see her
betrothed again until, when half-way across the lawn a few rods above
the gate-house, she saw him kneeling, as she thought, and dying, as it
proved, beside the small tower.

All this, certainly, was threadbare to tell by this morning; backward
and forward the courses had been traced until there was disgust at the
_resultlessness_ of it all. But now I returned from Salt to find a new
problem had arisen in the company. Miss Lebetwood (who with Millicent
Mertoun was now engaging in the last of Salt’s private conferences)
had said that since Cosgrove had not found her by the tennis court, it
was extremely unlikely that he had ever looked for her at all; and
once she had uttered these words, every person in the conservatory was
acutely aware what a _non sequitur_ yawning lies in the seemingly
harmless assumption that because a man stares hard and plunges into
some bushes he is of necessity searching for something beyond those
bushes. Well then, what _had_ Cosgrove been doing, and where, from
leaving the Hall until receiving his death-blow by the tower?

In vain we attempted to make out for him an itinerary which would
account for the afternoon. All that the united company could supply
was one fact sandwiched between two uncertainties, and even that fact
had been offered by the servants’ hall. I may record the items thus:

  First uncertainty: Doctor Aire, who left me alone in the armoury a
  good quarter of an hour after Cosgrove departed from the Hall, says
  that before seeing Maryvale, he caught a glimpse of what may have
  been a human face among some dogwood shrubs a little to the right of
  the cypress grove. But whether it was Cosgrove’s face, or that of an
  intruder, or “the prodigious Parson’s” (who is so familiar that he
  seems no intruder), or whether it was no face at all, Aire refuses
  to commit himself. He seems rather inclined to believe himself the
  victim of an illusion. The scientific mind, I suppose. (Query—Could
  _this_ have been the gorilla-man? If so, we have the first evidence
  to substantiate any definite person’s presence about the time and
  place of Cosgrove’s death.)

  Fact, from Wheeler, the youthful chauffeur, via Blenkinson’s
  document: Cosgrove beckoned to Wheeler from behind a corner of the
  garage at about ten minutes past four. Answering the signal, Wheeler
  had been conducted to a place out of sight among the decaying
  stonework. (Stables and garage occupy part, but not all the site of
  the ruined south-east portion of the castle.) “I want no one to
  overhear us,” said the Irishman, “and I want you to keep eternally
  silent about what I am going to say.” For emphasis he placed a pound
  note in Wheeler’s hand. “There will be five more for you at the end
  of my stay here if you do what I bid you and hold your tongue.”
  Wheeler swore eternal fidelity, and Cosgrove gave his orders. “It’s
  almost nothing I want. To-night there will be a foolish
  entertainment in the House, and everyone will have the costume of an
  animal. The costumes, I know, are in the storerooms on the second
  floor. Now, I have a friend who must enter the House to me without
  anyone being the wiser. He can come in during the mummery if he has
  the appearance of an animal, and I want you to see that he finds his
  costume. You know my room?” Wheeler said he did not, and Cosgrove
  explained that he occupied the room next the inner conservatory
  wall. “The tower there juts out corresponding to the one on the
  other side between the Hall of the Moth and the conservatory. At a
  quarter past nine I shall drop the costume from the tower window; it
  will be an extra progeny for the elephant, or some such vanity. I
  want you to be on hand from the time I mentioned until my friend
  comes a little later, and I want you to see that he gets into the
  costume and into the Hall, where the performance begins about ten.
  My friend will also come beneath my window, but I shall no longer be
  in my room; so you must be there to meet him.” Wheeler guaranteed
  satisfaction, and was sure that he and Cosgrove had not been seen
  during this colloquy. (Nor had they been, but they had been heard.
  Morgan, overhauling a saddle in a harness-closet just beyond the
  wall, could verify the tones of the men’s voices, but had
  distinguished none of the sense. In vain, later, he tried to wrest
  Wheeler’s secret from him.)

  Second uncertainty: Belvoir believes, but is not prepared to swear,
  that just as he and Miss Mertoun and the Baron approached the
  gate-house from the direction of Aidenn Water, he saw Cosgrove on
  the lawn. Two things make Belvoir doubt if he actually did see the
  Irishman or not. First, he was talking about and thinking about
  something else at the time, and the sight was no more than a surface
  impression, so to speak, on his mind. Furthermore, he may have been
  tricked by the twilight, for the huge shadow of the gate-house
  reached across the lawn just there, even ascending the wall of the
  House part way. If he saw the Irishman in the shadow, the image must
  have been extremely vague, for not only is the distance considerable
  from where the three were walking, but Cosgrove, it must be borne in
  mind, was wearing a black coat and dark blue breeches. Belvoir is
  extremely uneasy on the prongs of his dilemma. (Those with him saw
  nothing.) Asked what position Cosgrove was in, he answers curiously
  enough that if he saw the Irishman at all, he had lifted the canvas
  cover part way and was regarding the unexplainable battle-axe.

But I came past soon afterwards, between then and the time Belvoir and
his party reached the tower—and there was no Cosgrove staring at a
battle-axe then! What does Belvoir’s evidence imply, if it is
evidence? Did the axe leap up and smite him while he gazed, and was he
lying there unnoticed by me when I returned from the cottage of the
sisters Delambre? And that “friend” of Cosgrove’s, who was to come at
a little after a quarter past nine—did he arrive so soon? Precious
little he could have done to harm the Irishman at the appointed time.
If only Wheeler had kept the tryst in the storm, instead of forgetting
it completely in the horror of the night until Blenkinson nagged it
into his memory again! Was this “friend” the same whose indeterminate
face Doctor Aire had perhaps seen, perhaps not? To ask these questions
is to realize how vain they are! Yet if we are to know the obscure,
impalpable limbo of truth that lies behind this man’s death, must we
not know the answers?

The click of the door-lock startled us in the midst of almost lively
discussion. Paula Lebetwood and her friend re-entered the
conservatory, and Salt stood on the threshold with a thin sheet of
bluish paper in his hand. The American girl was paler than before,
and, I thought, exercising great self-restraint. While she took her
seat beside me, I could see the tremors pass along her throat with
each breath. But her eyes were staring at the Superintendent, and my
glance followed hers.

Salt said, “This paper, I expect, is Mr. Cosgrove’s Will and
Testament.” He held it up for us to grasp at; it was a single
translucent page, a tiny thing to dictate the disposal of great
riches. “With Miss Lebetwood’s permission—I mean by her request—I’m
goin’ to read it to you.”

“One moment,” darted in his Lordship as Salt was about to begin
without taking breath: “don’t you know that it is highly irregular to
read a copy of a Will until all the legatees—”

“You’ll see why, sir, in a minute. Besides, this is sure to be the
original of the Will, and all the heirs happen to be present!”

“Eh?”

“There’s not much to it, you might say, sir. And Miss Lebetwood
particularly wants there to be no misunderstanding.”

Forthwith, in that zone of awe, he read the instrument, dated two
months ago. It contained fewer than two hundred words. I do not know
which to admire most, the clear-cut terseness of it, or the hard
cynical sense of its incidental comments, such as, “my body to be
buried as soon as possible after my death and as near as practicable
to the place of my death, with the least emolument to lawyers,
priests, and undertakers.” And withal, according to those of us who
have scanned the law most thoroughly, the Will is adamant to any who
may attempt to break it.

As for its sense, it devises Cosgrove’s entire fortune to Miss
Lebetwood “for her own absolute use and benefit without exception,
limitation, reservation or condition, forever.” Cosgrove’s brother,
mentioned as having self-denied a share in the estate, is made sole
executor. Rather pathetic, those words:

  “IRELAND DELIVERED is the cross in whose sign I would conquer; but
  should I die, without me I know the good work can never go on.
  Therefore to her who is, or is to be, my dearest helpmeet and sharer
  of these the Lord’s bounties, best fit to use them wisely, I
  bequeath all my worldly goods.”

Salt gave us a few breaths to absorb the shock of this overpowering
disclosure. I was almost clean stupefied, but I confess that a feeling
of despondency came over me at that moment. It was not, of course,
that I grudged Paula Lebetwood the fortune _for herself_. But I had
supposed, in what brief moments I had thought of it, that Cosgrove’s
money would have gone to fight Cosgrove’s good fight, even though a
losing one. The lines of that fine poem recurred to me:

  “They went forth to battle but they always fell:
  Their eyes were set above the sullen shields.”

No, that had not been this Irishman’s philosophy; the great cause must
wait now for the next great man.

The women had instantly begun to crowd about Miss Lebetwood with
exclamations of surprise and pleasure, a flutter of congratulation
which must have been an ordeal for the American girl.

Salt extracted from a side pocket an envelope whose flap he loosened
with a pencil. He made the round of the room so that each of us could
see what was inside. “Paper-ash, this is sure to be. It was all there
was in Mr. Cosgrove’s grate. Not a word legible, but one or two blank
bits didn’t get burned, as you see. . . . Now, there’s no paper like
that anywhere in the house; Mr. Pendleton will go surety for it. It’s
different paper from the ‘Lochinvar’ bit. I was wonderin’ if any of
you ladies and gentlemen had some like it—could explain the note,
perhaps.”

But not even Eve Bartholomew could help the Superintendent now.

Salt turned to Crofts. “It couldn’t have been in the post, you say?”

Crofts answered doggedly, “Cosgrove never got any mail.”

“For a man who never got any mail, he had a tidy bit of mysterious
correspondence. Well, I see I shall have to wait a bit before I find
what little secret was here.” He looked at his large silver watch.
“Thank you very much, all. I don’t think I’ll need to trouble any of
you again soon; so I’ll just take this opportunity to give you a
suggestion, and maybe a bit o’ reassurance. There are a good many
folks we haven’t located that must have somethin’ to do with this
case. You all know about Sir Brooke—Mortimer, I think it is; well, I’m
telegraphin’ for full particulars of him from wherever he came from,
and havin’ a look-out made for him. There are two men Mr. Bannerlee
ran across the night he came that I want to find, and also it seems
that those Frenchwomen, the Delambres, aren’t on their patch of land.
Through one of these outside channels, we’ll come upon a solution. And
that means simply routine police work. However, if I were you, I’d not
go about separately very far from the House, and just for precaution’s
sake you might lock your doors and windows. No alarm, you
understand—only you’ll feel safer. Doctor Niblett will hold the
inquest as soon as possible. I shall probably be here a good bit for
the next few days, and I trust, with the kind permission of Mr.
Pendleton, that you will not end your visits until I am certain-sure
you can’t assist me.”

“Only too glad, Superintendent to have them all stay until you’ve
cornered the brute,” said Crofts between his teeth. Then, becoming
expansive, he looked about with a satisfied air. “Well, I’m beginning
to think this won’t be a Scotland Yard case after all. And it’s one of
those outsiders surely. Crazy to think it could be any of us.”

Suddenly a strange voice was in the room. “And I, Mr. Pendleton,
believe in the possible implication of everyone here, including
myself.” Paula Lebetwood said the words, unlike any speech we had
heard from her lips, a terribly controlled utterance, toneless, as if
some insentient thing had spoken. She stood up. The tremor of her
throat was still.

“Of yourself, dearest?” cried Miss Mertoun. “How awful to say such a
thing!”

“Of yourself!” echoed half a dozen voices.

She was looking straight ahead, sightlessly. “Isn’t it too clear for
words? Can’t you understand how _I_ feel?—how I have felt all these
weeks? It rests on me, don’t you see? How can I ever touch a cent that
was his until his killer has paid for his death? Oh, I’ve felt it ever
since he told me—told me he was going to make his Will—” Her eyes
darkened, and the first tinge of feeling came into her voice:
bitterness. “I was a fool. I should have told him—then.”

Miss Mertoun came over, leaned her cheek against Paula’s, recalling to
me that first scene by the tower on the lawn. “Paula, _dearest_.”
Gently she pressed the American girl back into her seat, soothed her
with soft little speeches, almost made her smile.

Suddenly Mrs. Bartholomew lifted her head, an expression of
penetrative power on her face, as if she were probing beyond the realm
of sense. She made a quick outreaching gesture with her hands,
withdrew them, clasped them in her lap. She began to speak once, but
checked herself. Then:

“I have the eeriest feeling, but it is strong, so _strong_!”

“What feeling do you mean?” asked Alberta Pendleton with bated breath.

Eve Bartholomew’s eyes were shining wide. “That Sir Brooke is _here_,
_now_, among us!”

She stirred us. We pitied her then, in silence. Whatever he had been
to her, or she to him—

She turned to the window close beside her. “This flood may end
to-morrow, but it’s the act of Providence all the same!”

“Oh, come, Mrs. Bartholomew,” protested Belvoir’s soft voice. “It’s
deuced inconvenient; no two ways about that. We may have to take
spades and bury our poor friend here on the spot if it keeps up.”

“That was his wish, wasn’t it?” she retorted. “I say this sundering
flood has been our one blessing. How shall the guilty escape now, if
he is not one of us? And if he _is_ one of us—” Her eyes beneath that
lustrous black hair shone like gems in a mine. “If he _is_, he will
betray himself before the flood goes down!”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Lord Ludlow. “Madam, I applaud you. You have
feeling, and I respect you for it.”

Miss Lebetwood raised her voice to the man across the room. “That
sounds like an indictment of me, sir.”

“Never!”

The American went on. “I suppose I seem to have no grief, no feeling.
I am passionless; oh, yes! I tell you I am devoted to only one thing,
the finding of the murderer. My task commences to-day, this hour, now.
I see by the look on all your faces, and one of them still may be a
murderer’s face, that you are shocked. No, I have sorrow; I am not
hard-hearted, save for a purpose. I have sorrow—you will never know
how much—but I must get it behind me.”

The easy tones of Superintendent Salt intervened. “Miss, I wouldn’t
feel so. Everyone is heartily takin’ your part. Why you should think
otherwise I don’t know. And have no doubt of one thing: we shall get
at the heart of this mystery soon.”

“We must,” said Eve Bartholomew. “The innocent suffer as well as the
guilty.”

“I am now going to make a careful inspection of the House,” said Salt.
“I got the lay of the land before turnin’ in last night, but now,
ladies and gentlemen, I shall take the liberty of lookin’ through your
rooms. Mr. Pendleton, I particularly want to see those store-places
Mr. Cosgrove evidently had a fancy for, and the cellars. Plenty of
cellars, of course?”

“Plenty. And a sub-cellar no one’s been in since before we bought the
property.”

“Have you any idea what’s down there?”

“How should I know? Nothing, I suppose. And anyhow, the trap-covers
are locked with padlocks and sealed with an inch of dust.”

“Ah, well,” said Salt good-naturedly, “I don’t think I’ll make you
sweep ’em off and unlock ’em. Only take me where they are.”

Again while he and Pendleton made their way from the conservatory, I
was assailed with doubt concerning the confident Salt. Was he to
fumble the case after all? For it seemed to me in trying to resolve an
enigma so baffling, no opening ought to be ignored. And the
Superintendent was, to say the least, eclectic, when he chose not to
enter the sub-cellars.

A hand was laid on my shoulder. I looked up, and was held by those
eyes with their unsearchable gleam, Maryvale’s.

“How will they ever solve this riddle and set this wrong aright, if
they forget the spanning and roofing of the waters, and the deathless
arm?”

“I do not understand you, Mr. Maryvale.”

“What were Sir Pharamond’s words? ‘Let traitors beware!’ Mr.
Bannerlee, remember, sir, that they never found the arm of Sir
Pharamond—and his tomb in old Aidenn Church attests it.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Oh, Gilbert has a theory all his own,” laughed Belvoir in a friendly
manner. “It has absolute novelty to recommend it, and artistic value.
It’s the artistic side that appeals to you, isn’t it, Gilbert?”

“Truth appeals to me as well.”

“Well, really—truth!”

“What is your theory, Mr. Maryvale?” I asked with an attempt to
disregard the twinges of apprehension that I felt in his presence.

“I have no theory: I have the key.”

“Gilbert means that the corporeal, material, substantial right arm of
Sir Pharamond Kay, builder of the castle which now is Highglen House,
has risen from its cerements and laid a certain party low. Isn’t that
about it, Gilbert?”

“It is all you need to know.”

“But what’s that about the proof being in Old Aidenn Church?”

Belvoir gave a sly chuckle. “Go there some afternoon and have a look
for yourself, Mr. Bannerlee. Old Aidenn is only three miles beyond New
Aidenn, and both of ’em happen to be as old as Doomsday.”

“It’s as sound, anyhow, as Crofts’ idea that a murderer couldn’t
escape from Aidenn Vale,” remarked Aire.

For my part, I looked first at Maryvale’s stooped retreating bulk, and
then at the other two men, who solemnly looked at me. We did not
speak, but the same thought must have been in all of us. The servants
might understandably be shy of strange forms in the dark, but what was
to become of _us_, if we began gravely to discuss wee grey-bearded men
with voices like honey, or pixies perched on toadstools?

Young Bob Cullen had strayed to the window, was watching the
raindrops, now meandering slowly, now darting down the pane.

“Talk about Noah’s Flood,” he growled.

“Forty days he had of it,” mused Lib Dale. “If this keeps up forty
minutes more, I’ll be dotty. Oh, look!”

The whole conservatory thrilled with light. A golden-green path lay
shimmering across the lawn. It had ceased to rain.



CHAPTER XIII

The Weapon

Suddenly, and very softly, Superintendent Salt was among us once more.
I knew of his presence only when I heard him speak.

“My Lord, one more question, if you please. The man—Soames I believe
his name is—who has just conducted me to the cellars says you gave him
a letter to post last evening.”

“I did—confound him! I handed it to him and expressed a wish that if
the storm should cease as suddenly as it commenced, it might reach New
Aidenn in time to go out in this morning’s post. Of course, when the
downpour showed no sign of abating, I had it back.”

“I presumed so, my Lord. In that case, I shall have to see the letter,
with your permission.”

“And that you certainly shall not!”

Salt was like the everlasting hills. “Only the envelope, my Lord. The
superscription is all I need to see.”

After a long ten-seconds’ hesitation Lord Herbert drew a letter from
his breast-pocket and held it close to the Superintendent’s face. Salt
peered.

“Hm. Is that it? Seems to be. Stamp uncancelled. To the Bangor and
Newcastle Corporation, eh? 12 Gate Street, London, E. C. Very
innocent, I’m sure, my Lord. Thank you.”

I saw the quick purple flash into the Baron’s face when Salt read
aloud the words intended only for his eye. “I consider this an
impertinence, sir.”

“To be called things is all in my day’s work, my Lord,” responded
Salt, and turning to Pendleton, he said, “You ought to open a little
Post Office here.”

“What on earth for?”

“For surreptitious mail.”

“Bangor and Newcastle Corporation,” I could not help repeating
puzzledly, half-aloud, I fear. “What on earth connection can there be
between little Bangor with its agriculture and Druid Circle, and the
coal and battleships of Newcastle-on-Tyne?”

Ludlow said nothing, but I observed in his eye and in the hook of his
bloodless lip a sublime contempt for my ignorance.

But at that moment everyone save me was looking toward the door
leading to the Hall of the Moth, which had opened sufficiently to
admit first the head and then the rest of Blenkinson. Again the look
of transcendence appeared natural, even casual on his person.
Spiritual transcendence, that is, for bodily he was in great
bedragglement, as if he had wallowed in the rain just before it ended.

“Mr. Salt, I beg to report that the weapon ’as been found. I ’ave left
it where I and Finlay discovered it, almost—”

I think the feeling of elation that visited me was shared by nearly
everyone in the conservatory. I saw faces brightening. But Salt’s did
not.

The Superintendent gave one leap toward Blenkinson, cutting him dead
off in the midst of his glory.

“Mr. Blenkinson, your admirable researches—invaluable
assistance—indispensable services—fill me with alarm. Please be more
discreet. Inform me in private of your discoveries, and let _me_ be
the judge whether they are to be shared by these ladies and gentlemen.
For, mind you, _technically_, every person here is under suspicion—and
that goes for you, too, Mr. Blenkinson. You may, or may not, be
revealin’ something valuable to the murderer himself.”

Under this withering sardonic fire the smug efficiency of the butler
had fallen ingloriously. “I’m—‘gulp’—very sorry, sir, but—‘gulp’—the
fact is, I was so helated—‘gulp’—that I—”

“Quite,” agreed Salt; “quite. And now, Mr. Blenkinson, if you please,
lead the way to this weapon, whatever it is.” He thrust the butler
before him through the door into the Hall, and looked back upon the
threshold. “Kindly do not let your curiosity to see Mr. Blenkinson’s
find tempt you to follow us, any of you. Thank you.” The door closed.

The weapon found! Tongues were wagging anew. I thought of the
difference between Salt’s previous assurance to us that the solution
was to be sought among the many missing persons, and his recent
proclamation that no one in the House was exempt as a possible
murderer. Then in the midst of the babble came a still voice close
behind me. I turned; Doctor Aire was leaning over the piano, his
abbreviated form easily sheltering underneath the lifted cover.

“Mr. Bannerlee, how about a stroll up the Vale, now it promises fair
weather? Mr. Salt has admonished us to go in pairs.”

“Up the Vale—now? You must be emulating Noah himself, Doctor! The
waters haven’t yet descended from Ararat.”

“I want to get rid of this cursed miasma of flowers. It’s like some
noxious emanation. My head aches with odours.”

“But surely it’s out of the question. Why, after this
downpour, the Vale’s certain to be swampland all the way up to
Water-break-its-neck.”

The yellowy doctor shook his head, smiling. “Strange, but you’re
wrong. You should really dig into the lore of this region, Mr.
Bannerlee. The Welsh name of our locality, I have read, is Maesyfed.”

“Oh? Meaning?”

“The absorbent field, probably. For the thirsty soil does wonders
after rain; in summer even Aidenn Water sinks underground for long
distances and leaves its channel dry.”

“Well, I’m in favour of getting out of here if it can be done.”

“It can; I know from previous visits. We’ll give the sun and soil a
couple of hours to restore dry footing.”

“Well enough. I’ll meet you in the library.”

Salt re-entered just then and took Aire away with a few whispered
words. I wandered into the dinner-room where stragglers were sitting
at belated luncheon, for since yesterday’s disaster the schedule of
meals seems to have fallen into anarchy. I did not stay long at the
board, however; perhaps the fumes of the conservatory had stopped the
pangs of appetite. I excused myself and crossed to the armoury,
intending first to glance over the array of the library shelves in the
hope of discovering something of interest, then to go to my room and
set down some of the multitudinous details of last night and to-day.

But I never got as far as the library. I heard a strenuous young voice
through its door ajar:

“Ah, g’wan. You make me laugh—_you_. When they put a lily in your
hand, you’ll deserve the Good Boy’s Epitaph.”

“What’s that?” demanded Bob suspiciously.

“‘He loved his grandmother.’”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you? Well, I wasn’t crazy about this
Cosgrove. I would have been ready to do him in. He was no good for
Paula, even if he did have all that coin. He was a fast worker, that’s
what he was. I guess you ought to know. He was a dirty bum.”

“‘Swine’ is what you say in this country.”

“I said I’d have polished him off, and I meant it. Wouldn’t you?”

“Hush up, Bobby. Keep that stuff under your hat. You don’t want
somebody to overhear you talking crazy, do you?”

“Well, wouldn’t you?”

Lib lowered her voice and spoke rapidly. “Yes, I would, for a brick
like Paula. My God, what a man Cosgrove was! And she fell for him!”
Then, “Change the subject, change the subject! To hear you talk like
that would give an alligator nervous prostration. Suppose a few of
those detectives were in the armoury.”

There was a spell of silence, sharply broken by Lib. “Leggo my hand!
What do you think this is, a golf links?”

“You tol’ me to change the subject,” said Bob with deep grievance.

“Don’t be sil. Say, I think there _is_ somebody in there. Look quick.”

But I had fled into the corridor and, laughing heartily within, was
half-way up the stairs.

In my room I immersed myself in that task of writing which has become
almost my principal interest. I quite lost track of time while I wrote
of Salt’s arrival last evening and the rest of it. With a start I
recalled Aire, looked at my watch, and leaped down the stairs. It was
nearly four.

The short, spindly-legged man was waiting, and with a touch of
annoyance I saw that Maryvale was consulting some book in a corner of
the library, a book which he put down upon my arrival as if he
expected to accompany us.

“Gilbert has consented to come along.”

“Oh? Glad.”

The sky was unblemished with cloud when we set out for that supposedly
uneventful walk in the bracing hill-air, but the sun had sloped nearly
to the high horizon of the ridge, and the light already had in it a
subtle infiltration of yellow. Some jewels still glittered on the
lawn, but the turf was surprisingly firm and pleasant to the tread.

We struck under the shade of the cypresses; through the systematic
“wilderness” of planted trees we strode, toward the pretentious
bridge, past the mouldering eighteenth-century summer-house, a thing
quite dismantled and defeated and gutted out. Once I had fancied it as
a possible hiding-place for mysterious visitants, but now I rejected
it utterly. The old smooth lawns there were now ragged stretches of
rough grass, still heavy with the rain where they lay beneath any
trees, and sluggish lake-like ponds were the remains of once sparkling
basins.

Aire paused where a grey fallen statue and its pedestal lay beside one
of these sad meres, a place where the trees had hunched their
shoulders together to make an extra twilight shade.

“About here, they say, a former occupant of the mansion, the one who
built that summer-house, was found.”

“How found?”

“Dead, Mr. Bannerlee, with his head neatly shorn away from the rest of
him. That was nearly two hundred years ago.” He grunted. “The chap
_ought_ to have been killed for putting up that thing.”

“Good heavens! Who had done it?”

“I wish I could tell you. He was never discovered. I don’t think the
victim was a very popular gentleman; so there may have been connivance
in keeping the secret locked away. A baffling affair it must have been
for the Salts of that day. The time-and-space problem was mystifying
then as now it is in Cosgrove’s death.”

I looked curiously at the little man with the broad shoulders.
“Doctor, you certainly hit upon the queerest tales. Where could you
have found that recorded?”

“On a special pasted-in leaf of an old family Bible. Quite a
fascinating library Crofts owns without comprehending it.”

“This is accursed ground,” said Maryvale. “It reeks with lawless
bloodshed.”

We left the park with its sickly poetry and bore to the right by a
field-path toward the prosaic potato-patch of the sisters Delambre,
where the scarecrow bore almost too great a likeness to Baron Ludlow
in his tweeds to be laid to coincidence. It was here that the brook
later spanned by the absurd bridge came down from the indentation of
the hill. We followed the narrow channel, where the rain-swollen
stream now leaped against its banks, to where the deserted cottage
stood in an oak-clump. The morsel of a stone-roofed house gave only a
shy peep from its covert; it was like a doll’s house, dwarfed by
overshadowing branches.

“Do you think it possible that these women were concerned either last
night or the night before? What were they like?”

“Cranky Frenchwomen. I’ve seen them on previous visits,” answered
Aire. “They always gave me the impression of being a couple of—well, I
might say unfrocked nuns, if you understand.”

“Sounds rather ambiguous, Doctor,” I remarked.

I was suddenly put in mind of a tale I had heard in another spot of
demon-haunted Wales, and I told it with some gusto. There two sisters
had lived together and managed a small farm with the aid of one man.
They were unfamiliar people and the country-folk were turned askance
to them. The pair would vanish at a particular time of day, and their
hats would be hanging in their bedrooms upon the looking-glass. One
afternoon the farmhand hid under their bed to find out their secret.
He saw them take off their caps and hang them on the glass, whereupon
they themselves immediately turned to cats, and ran to the dairy and
began lapping the cream.

A somewhat dubious look upon Aire’s face as he gazed at Maryvale
during my recital was, I fear, lost on me, for it gave me a thrilling
pleasure to apply this tale to the sisters Delambre, particularly
since in that grimalkin of appalling voice they had a fit companion
for many an impious Sabbath.

“And by the way,” I concluded, “the beast spared us its caterwauling
last night.”

“Last night, but not to-night,” said Maryvale. “It will be hungrier
than ever to-night. We shall hear it, unless—”

“Unless what?”

“We shall see,” he parried.

“It’s a vicious beast, if ever there was one,” said Aire, looking in
one of the cottage windows. “It’s twice the size you’d believe it
could attain. There’s never been any other cat in the Vale whose nine
lives were worth sixpence when this animal discovered its presence.”

“And the birds,” added Maryvale. “The nightingales that once loved
this valley so—scarcely one is left.”

Returning toward Aidenn Water at a point somewhat further north, we
heard from beyond a gnarl of blackberry bushes the sound of footsteps
and voices which proved to be those of Salt, wearing rubber boots, and
of Hughes the keeper. They were making their way up the stream by the
principal path, and I noticed that Hughes bore an axe of considerable
heft.

Salt greeted us while we fell into step. “Sensible to get out of
doors.”

“But you’re not here for your health, I fancy,” said Aire.

“I am not. Mr. Hughes here and I are going to devote the last hour of
daylight to satisfyin’ ourselves about traces of the assassin on the
other side of the Vale. We’ve scoured north, south, east, and west on
this side of the stream, and never a footprint of him or anybody else.
Mr. Pendleton seemed a bit anxious we shouldn’t overlook the chance,
and it is a chance.”

“What is that axe for?” suddenly demanded Maryvale.

“To chop down a tree, sir,” answered Hughes. “I know where I can make
one fall across the Water. It’s the only way to get over.”

“I thought as much,” I said. “What, just, is the state of things down
at the bridge?”

“There isn’t a trace of it left, sir,” Salt informed me. “Sometime
last night the stone ends were undermined by the current. There are
men on the other side, though, riggin’ up a makeshift, and to-morrow,
maybe, if the stream goes down reasonably, we can get out of here, and
get Mr. Cosgrove’s body out, too.”

Hughes pointed to the north, where the zigzag path down the mountain
had been obliterated by the landslip. “Men from Penybont beyond the
Forest are coming from the other side to clear that up to-morrow,
too.”

“Well, someone must have been moving heaven and earth!”

“Yes, sir; Mr. Pendleton was quite busy on the ’phone this afternoon.”

“That telephone is not the least of our miracles,” I observed. “I
should have expected the line to be smashed to smithereens by the
storm.”

“Our wires run underground, sir,” said the keeper.

“What!”

“Yes, sir, all the way to New Aidenn. There was too much trouble with
it the other way; so Mr. Pendleton had it changed. Now nothing ever
interferes with it.”

I remembered something. “To bring into this discussion an element
sadly wanting—”

“What’s that?”

“Disclosures. Tell me, Superintendent, does the pall of official
secrecy still cover the weapon discovered by the astute Blenkinson?”

“Not much use trying to keep anything secret hereabout,” said Salt
with a smile, which made me wonder what recent discoveries actually
reposed undivulged beneath that sodden hat and those iron-grey curly
locks. “The lid is off that little matter.”

“It _is_ the weapon? What had Blenkinson found?”

“A piece of angular slate, well shaped for holdin’, provided with an
almost sharp edge. Queer, isn’t it? Here’s a chap—I mean the guilty
party—helped himself to what he wanted out of the armoury the night
before; now, when he’s in a killin’ mood, he fetches along a stone.
Plenty of rock like it in the Vale, of course. Seems likely, though,
that it was picked up from that gimcrack rockery old Finlay wants to
get rid of—just opposite the tower where Cosgrove was found.”

“You’re sure it’s the instrument?” I asked.

Salt looked at Aire, who said, “The Superintendent called in Doctor
Niblett and me for our opinions on that point. The Coroner and I agree
that in the hands of a vigorous person, who must have approached
Cosgrove secretly from behind, the stone might well have done the
damage.”

“But where was it lying?” I asked, with incredulity sounding in my
tone. “How could we have missed it?”

“It wasn’t lyin’ anywhere,” answered Salt. “That’s a feature about it.
It was embedded, sir, almost buried among the flowers outside the
central windows of the Hall. If the rain hadn’t played hob with the
beds, and the man Finlay with Mr. Blenkinson hadn’t been assessin’ the
damage, it might have remained there unnoticed for a tidy while.”

“By Jove, though, that’s a far-fetched hiding-place.”

Salt raised his brows. “Is it? I think it was a clever one, sir. One
second he strikes the blow, the next he hurls the weapon straight down
into the loam. Inside half a minute he may be anywhere, and nothin’ to
connect him with the crime. Just a little more energy, and the earth
would have fallen in about the edges and covered the stone completely.
But as it was it must have taken strength, gigantic strength.”

“It must have taken superhuman strength, Mr. Salt. Why, there had been
rain, but it blew a bit easterly then, and those beds couldn’t have
got much of it. It was nothing like last night’s inundation. The
ground must have been hard.”

“On the contrary, the ground was exceedingly soft. Remember what it
said in Mr. Blenkinson’s document, sir. Finlay had been waterin’ those
very beds, and waterin’ ’em plenty after four o’clock.”

“Were there any marks on this stone?” asked Maryvale. “Any signs such
as I understand often guide the police in their search?”

“No, sir, none. And—”

“I thought so.”

Ignoring this somewhat cryptic remark, Salt explained: “Unpolished
stone isn’t a good medium for takin’ impressions. I’ll stake my little
finger, though, it was the stone that finished Mr. Cosgrove.”

“Here we turn off, sir,” advised Hughes.

We had been in sight of Aidenn Water much of the time, its cheerful
flow increased to boiling spate. Through a partly cleared copse of
larch, we could see it now, laughing with white teeth and greedy
gurgle along a sort of rapids. The particular tree Hughes intended to
chop was visible, already leaning half across the flood.

Somewhat to my discomfiture, Aire announced that he intended to
accompany the pair across the stream. “Don’t mind, do you, Bannerlee?
I want to be in at the death of Pendleton’s theory. Or will you two
come along with us? Any objection, Superintendent?”

“More the merrier,” said Salt.

But I cared nothing for the death of any theory compared with my
eagerness to get farther north and see the great ruin beneath the
hills again. Maryvale had no love for the thought of crossing above
the churlish Water on a tree-trunk, and said so. We left the three
proceeding to the bank of the stream, but I confess it was with a pang
of premonition that I paced beside the man of business and heard the
sound of the lusty axe grow fainter and fainter.



CHAPTER XIV

The Fiendish Cat of the Sisters Delambre

For half an hour we walked on almost in silence, making the tritest
remarks about our surroundings, particularly those peaks which shut in
the valley ahead of us, from Great Rhos on the left across Black Mixen
to Mynydd Tarw on our right. We now saw only a broken secant of the
sun, and most of our light was reflected from the golden tops of the
hills. Maryvale for some reason maintained an unusually sharp
look-out, glancing restlessly every way among the glades.

Almost before I was aware, we had reached the outer of those dejected
and scattered walls for so many centuries lying the prey of the
elements and the spoil of house-builders and church-builders from down
the Vale and beyond.

Some of these still remained high enough to show the embrasures where
the upper windows had been, tall, slender apertures, one of them far
on the other side even now perfect in the stonework of transom and
mullions and semi-rounded arch. It was indeed the ruin of a knightly
house, once spacious and splendid. The fallen walls seemed to have
been struck or hurled outward by some terrific force or inward
convulsion, as if behemoth had stirred and heaved himself from beneath
the floor.

Flanking the walls to the left, where I had come past two nights ago
and encountered the menagerie-keeper, I peered inside, over a
chin-high portion, and gave an exclamation of surprise. The thick
walls had indeed been hurled down from within. The vast flat slabs of
the floor, what few of them remained, were tossed in disorder, and the
earth on which they lay was piled in fantastic heaps alongside deep,
irregular trenches—all grass-grown now, of course. A few bushes and
one enormous beech tree found livelihood inside the wall.

For a couple of minutes Maryvale had been standing quiet behind me,
peering this way and that in the twilight, as if he looked for some
particular object.

“This gutted carcass makes me fancy things,” I laughed. “Come,
Maryvale, sweep the spider-webs out of my mind by flourishing
vigorously the broom of truth. In other words, relate to me something
about this place, and pity on your life if it’s the old story of
‘deflor’d by Glindur.’”

“Why, haven’t you heard?”

“If I did it went in one ear and out the other. Say on.”

I braced my hands on the broken top of the wall and leaped up, making
my seat there. Maryvale joined me with very little effort, and we sat
there kicking our heels schoolboy-like.

Again I saw him look about very intently, under the beeches, through
the gaps between the stones, across the scrub growth between us and
Aidenn Water a quarter of a mile distant.

“What are you looking for, Maryvale?”

“Sathanas.”

“This place is too thinly populated, my friend. Come, what of this
ancient hold? Bring on your heroes and cravens, your demigods and
dastards.”

“Gwrn darw—the pile of contention,” muttered Maryvale, and he launched
on the story.

I had expected another farrago of myth and tradition, perhaps larded
with the same episodes that Hughes had spellbound us with in the
dinner-room yesterday morning. Instead it was a fairly plausible story
from some wholly different source, this account of the first
historical building in Aidenn Vale. I enjoyed listening to the
narrative; Maryvale enjoyed telling it. Gusto was the keynote of his
voice, with its rapid utterance and changes of inflection. He made
drama of it, and a valiant man of Sir Pharamond.

“Why, Maryvale, where did you learn all this?”

“This is history,” he affirmed solemnly.

Moreover, he was beginning to peer about again, turning more than once
in his speech to stare beneath the branches of the trees. That feeling
of repugnance to Maryvale which I had before experienced returned
hazily, and of a sudden I realized how lonely this place was, how
close to us the hills were, and how dark and steep. I might instantly
have urged our return had not my own roving glance caught a black
object protruding from a bush inside the wall.

I broke in. “Look! Here’s evidence the world’s a madhouse!”

Down inside the wall I slipped, crossed to the bush, and triumphantly
held high the black umbrella.

“He was real, Maryvale! He was no nightmare!”

While I unfastened the loop and opened the umbrella, Maryvale dropped
from his seat and came beside me. He asked me what this was, where it
came from, and whom I had met here, all in a breath.

“This is a clue, man!” I exclaimed. “Perhaps it has some
manufacturer’s mark—what’s the matter?”

I could no more have released my arm from Maryvale’s grip than from
the strongest vise. But in a moment his hand relaxed, and then I
caught sight of what he was looking at so hard.

On the northern wall, twice the height of that whereupon we had been
sitting, crept something darker than the hills against which its form
was obscure. Softly, swiftly, the form slunk along the stones, then
gave a leap to the arched summit of that one perfect window and stood
still, its head lifted, its form now stark against the sky—the form of
an enormous cat, lean and lithe and tigerish.

Maryvale was breathing loudly. I gave him a swift look; his face was
working, and with his eyes set on the cat of the sisters Delambre, he
drew from a hip pocket the last thing on earth I should have imagined
him to carry, a large revolver, one of the sort called in America, I
believe, a six-shooter.

But the hideous expression of his face was more alarming still.

Here was a combination of circumstances I did not envisage hopefully:
the lonely spot, the great cat, the man apparently unbalanced by the
sight of the beast, and the revolver. I had only the umbrella.

Not a little afraid, I sought safety in valour. I reached out my hand.

“May I see that, Mr. Maryvale?”

He let me have the weapon without demur, and while I examined the
deadly thing, I saw out of the corner of my eye that his attention was
still riveted on the shape of the cat. I hesitated to break into that
almost hypnotic absorption.

Perhaps a minute passed. I had put down the umbrella.

Then from the gloaming woods that fringed the mountain foot welled a
sound like a bright bubble bursting into a hundred bubbles, a sound
like the spray of a sweet fountain—the song of a nightingale from the
deep solitudes of Black Mixen.

“The nightingale of Water-break-its-neck,” I thought, for I had heard
someone speak of this lonely music-maker.

The form of the cat stiffened; gradually it sank to a crouching
posture, as if its prey were near at hand. Then tail and head went up,
and its jaws were sharp against the sky, and the valley bristled with
its starved and destructive yowl.

Maryvale was a man transformed from trance to action. Spasmodically he
felt his pocket for the pistol, then recollected me. His voice was
jumbled with the cry of the beast.

“Give me that gun.”

“Wouldn’t it be better—”

His utterance was quickly controlled to a whisper. “Give me that gun.
I am going to perform a humane act. I came here for this.”

“But, Mr. Maryvale—”

“Don’t you understand?” he burst out. “I will free the soul of a ghoul
from its tenement!” He grabbed the pistol from my hand.

“For God’s sake—!”

“I am the best shot in the Midlands with one of these.” He raised the
weapon with a marksman’s care and confidence.

The animal, surprised by our voices, had reared its head in our
direction, and now, instead of making off, scrambled down from the
window arch and came loping toward us, growling, as if it actually
contemplated an attack. Its fur on end swelled it to twice its size.
Maryvale shifted his aim quickly, and the clustering hills resounded
with the echo of his shot.

But the cat, unhurt, sprang toward us spitting and snarling, with eyes
that flashed. I realized when I saw those intensely flaming eyes that
green, not red, must be the colour of hell-fire.

Again the revolver blazed, with no effect save to cause the beast to
give a high leap toward Maryvale, full length upright, all fours
spread wide and clawing, mouth hissing. Maryvale shot point-blank in
the face of the animal, and the beast was enveloped in a fiery cloud,
but it dropped to earth on all fours, fled unscathed past us, and
disappeared beneath a bush.

Maryvale lifted his hands to the dark and empty sky. “Too strong—too
strong—the infernal magic of this place.”

I took a step toward the man, grasped the weapon, tugged to get it
from him, cried, “What did you expect? You’ve loaded this pistol with
blank cartridges.”

“Blanks?” he shouted. “Never a bit.”

Twenty feet away a straggling thin branch of a rowan tree came over
the western wall and was ebony against the sky, having at the end some
finger-clumps of leaves. Maryvale took quick aim, eyes protruding
grotesquely, and fired; the branch trembled and one of the leaf stems
fell away. Twice again the pistol rang out; the branch itself suddenly
hung down, all but severed by the final bullet.

Maryvale laughed wildly with tempestuous eyes. “I should have known it
was impossible. You cannot kill the soul of Parson Lolly with lead.”

He threw away the weapon, went lunging along the wall. I followed,
took him by the shoulder.

“Maryvale—”

But he thrust me off, violently, and began to run. I fell with my knee
against a stone, and when I arose my chagrin was great, for apart from
the pain my leg had gone almost dead, and I could scarcely hobble.
Maryvale had found a gap between the stones, leaped through, and
charged down the Vale. When I had managed to drag myself out from the
enclosure, he was beyond sight and hearing. I shouted his name many
times; no answer came back.

I knew that lamed as I was I must get down the Vale as soon as
possible, for there was no telling what the man might do in this
demented state. He might even have another gun.

The cat the incarnation of Parson Lolly! Then the realization leaped
on me. What would they say, those in the House, when they were told
that none of the three bullets had done the beast any harm!

So stunned I was by this lightning-stroke that without knowing what I
did or being aware of my injured knee, I walked on with my brain in a
storm of confusion. When, some time later, I was rid of the shock, but
still wondering, I had gone half a mile and my knee was almost
painless.

I commenced to run.

Ten minutes late I encountered Doctor Aire, who fell in beside me
while I gasped what had happened.

“I was a fool,” he panted. “Fool to leave him alone with you. He was
excited—upset—I saw—that when you were telling—that story down by the
cottage. You’ll have to—go on alone. I can’t—keep up.”

He dropped behind, and the last thing I heard him say was, “I couldn’t
foresee—a miracle.”

Talking winded me. I was spent when I reached the summer-house, and
could scarcely walk to the mansion.

Alone in the Hall of the Moth I found Mrs. Belvoir sitting, rather
pointlessly, it seemed.

“Maryvale—here?”

“Yes, Mr. Bannerlee.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs. They all followed him when he came in. He is in his room.”

“Was he violent? Why did they go after him?”

“Not exactly violent, no. But I don’t think it’s worth while following
him any more.”

I checked my foot on the threshold. “What do you mean, Mrs. Belvoir?”

“A personality balanced on a knife-edge is never safe. Poor Gilbert
was too rash when he tempted the Influences in this valley. His mind
is gone, for certain.”

“Influences?”

“Of course there are Influences. I can feel them myself. Gilbert is
only the first to give in.”

I left this placid lady and made what speed I could up the stairs. In
the passage outside Maryvale’s room on the second floor, the Coroner
and the rest of the men were standing.

“Is he in there?”

“He is,” answered Crofts.

“Why don’t you go in to him?”

“Because—well, because—”

“Because we all want to stay healthy,” said Bob Cullen.

I learned what had happened. People in the Hall had seen Maryvale
stagger across the lawn, in their alarm had heard him enter the
armoury and disturb the weapons there. When some of the men looked
into the room, Maryvale had departed, and a sword was missing. They
heard him clamber up the stairs. Consulting in perplexity for a few
moments, they decided to follow. The curious thing about this part of
the affair is that in those doubtful moments Maryvale had not at once
entered his room at the head of the second flight of stairs, but for
some reason had hastened along the passage on that upper floor. For
while the pursuers were on the second flight, Maryvale came rushing
back, invisible (because of the curve in the staircase), and secured
himself in his chamber. Knocking and calling evoked no response, save
once. Then Maryvale flung wide the door, in his hand the drawn sword—a
thin two-edged one like a Toledo blade.

“I’ll kill anyone who comes in here,” he said. “Leave me to do my
work.”

“Which,” remarked Ludlow, when Crofts had finished this account, “I
for one am going to accede to, as a reasonable request.”

We agreed it was best to take turns standing guard. Belvoir, on
account of his being particularly a friend of Maryvale’s, offered to
be the first on duty. We left him there, smoking his pipe, leaning
against the doorpost, his ear to the door.

What “work” could Maryvale be doing?

Poor Crofts, a host with a dead man and a madman in his house! I
passed him on the bottom step, gnawing a knuckle, apparently making
quite a meal.

“Bad luck, old man.”

He regarded me listlessly. “I had a ’phone call this afternoon from
the Post Office. Harry Heatheringham has wired for full particulars.”

“Ye Gods! Who is Harry Heatheringham?”

“Oh, I supposed you knew. One of the really high-powered detectives.
Happens to be a friend of mine.”

“Scotland Yard?”

“No, he prefers the country air. He’s a Worcester man. I wonder what
Salt would say.”

“Ask him; he can’t arrest you for it. By the way, how does the great
man from Worcester happen to be so prompt in sniffing out this case?”

Crofts became nervous, as he always does when he has something to
conceal. “He—he—we’re, er, in what you might call communication. Dash
it all, I wish the fellow would keep his promises!”

Salt came in, just before dinner, not a merry meal. He heartily
approved Harry Heatheringham.

“Do you know, sir, I wouldn’t be sorry to see him on the ground.”

“I’m damned if I know why he isn’t!” remarked Crofts, and fled to the
telephone, to dictate a lengthy wire.

It transpired that the Superintendent and his aides had found not the
slightest trace of recent human presence across Aidenn Water. They did
not even find a new puzzle; they found nothing.

But after dinner Salt made a more fruitful inspection of the rooms on
the second floor, except Maryvale’s. He had been curious to discover
why the demented man had gone down the passage before shutting himself
in. He found why.

“There was a box of paints and a palette and easel, and some brushes,
in the store-room next to you, Mr. Bannerlee. Mr. Maryvale must have
known about ’em, of course.”

“Some canvases on stretchers, too, weren’t there?” added Crofts. “All
here before my time. Seems to me I’ve heard old Watts used to dabble
in paints.”

“They’re all missin’ now, sir,” said Salt. “That’s what he was after.”

“Paints!” exclaimed Belvoir. “Yes, that explains it, indeed.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Gilbert Maryvale has been a very unhappy man,” said Belvoir slowly.
“He has been chained to a big business that would have gone to pieces
without him. He has made lots of money, but always wanted to be a
painter. You see, Mr. Superintendent, he had an exquisitely sensitive
spirit, for all his dealing in bills and notes.”

“I’m tryin’ to see,” said Salt.

“Well, he will never look in the flabby faces of a Board of Directors
again. He has begun to paint.”


Is all the heart-crushing suspense in the world packed into this
little Vale? Beyond the hills, I know, men and women are peacefully
sleeping, and farther beyond, in the Glamorgan collieries, perhaps the
night-shift is working with never a hint of the nameless dread that
keeps us wakeful.

If I live through the night, I shall get out on the uplands early in
the morning. I know a trick or two of throwing a hitch from tree to
tree. With a stout rope I can climb one of these wooded hillsides,
even if it prove vertical! Then I shall _breathe_!


                3.50 A.M.

I have just awakened with a grim and unalterable thought. Confound
Doctor Stephen Ashmill Aire for his subtle hints and theories. If what
he suggested this afternoon is true, that there is some hidden means
of access to the lawn, what awful consequences are thrust into mind!
Yes, if he is right, the murderer may be one of those people who came
rushing in from all directions while we stood about Cosgrove’s body. I
hesitate to write their names, but it may be Belvoir or Bob Cullen or
Maryvale, for instance, or even one of the women, if in her fury her
arm became iron.

And that fiendish cat that has driven Maryvale mad and that his
bullets could not harm!

Worse and worse!

I shall now dress in tramping kit and doze until dawn.¹

     ¹ I have postponed until now a note which should have been
     inserted some pages ago, but which would then have interrupted
     the narrative. References to _the song of the nightingale_ in
     this chapter and elsewhere in this diary demonstrate, as I think,
     the innocent romanticism of Mr. Bannerlee. Neither he nor Mr.
     Maryvale appears to have possessed a rudimentary knowledge of
     birds. Nightingales, to be sure, visit Radnorshire, and the old
     ones do not leave until autumn, but of course their descant
     ceases in _June_, when the task of feeding the young becomes
     absorbing. Unquestionably, the bird these gentlemen listened to
     was the song-thrush, which (as is well known) _resumes_ its
     singing in October, when the now-silent nightingale has departed
     from the land. (V. Markham.)



CHAPTER XV

The Rainbow

                October 5. 10.18 P.M.

I slipped on my rough shoes, thus completing my toilet, scribbled a
note for Crofts, and passed out of the door. From the top of the
stairs came a soft recurrent sound. Bob Cullen had insisted on
sentinelling outside Maryvale’s apartment during the night; now the
guardsman slept industriously, his head reclining in the angle of the
doorpost, the rest of him curled up, his jaws alarmingly open.

Not disturbing him, I descended to the first storey, where I placed my
note under Crofts’ door, and continued down. My previous night’s
experience had taught me how to find the food supply readily, and I
stocked my pockets with concentrated nutriment. Letting myself out by
the front entrance, I turned to the left and directed my steps toward
the kitchen demesne betwixt House and stables.

I was in luck. Twenty yards of fairly stout clothes-line were mine for
the taking.

With the rope bent over my arm, I hastened past the dinner-room
windows toward the cypresses that marked the first point on any
journey up the Vale. Then I stopped dead.

For a woman was standing by the far corner of the conservatory,
half-turned from me, looking at an object which she held in her hand.

With her other hand she made a slight gesture to someone around the
corner, and the next moment I beat a swift retreat to the shelter of a
rank of low birch trees. A man in his shirt sleeves dashed out from
the behind the House, running like mad. He was a man I had never seen
before!

With great galloping strides, his arms working like pistons, his knees
rising incredibly high, he rushed straight for the clump of cypresses;
there he turned as sharply as his momentum would permit and sped back
to his starting point out of my view.

He had come and gone so quickly that I had little chance to take in
his appearance. Decidedly, however, he was a long, lank man, and there
was a touch of red about his face in hair and beard. But any attempt
to mark him closely was defeated by mere astonishment at his presence,
and wonder, in the name of reason, at what he was doing.

I quickly balanced the courses open to me. Should I reveal myself and
challenge these unknowns? Or return secretly to the house and awake
Crofts and Salt? Or continue my journey?

This last was what I did, for the cloaked woman happened to turn her
head in my direction, and I saw that she was one of the Clays. Unless
the Clays are to be relied on, no one is. As for my curiosity, which
was more than a little, I smothered it. If the many perplexing
incidents in the Vale have not by this time chastened the
inquisitiveness of each one of us, we are difficult to school.

I went safe in the hiding of the birches until I reached the unshorn
grass of the summer-house park; the blades were loaded with dew. While
I crossed toward the regular path, I caught sight of the unknown
racing again in my direction, and was half-alarmed for fear that he
had espied me and was on my trail. Once more, however, he turned
beneath the cypresses and fled back full tilt.

I had much to ponder on while I marched through the bleak and clammy
dawn, and pondering made the miles seem shorter. I thought of
Maryvale, who had walked here with me yesterday, of his dark sayings
and the blight upon his spirit—of Doctor Aire, whose theorisings
strike a vague discomfort into my mind. He, by the way, has taken full
responsibility for the sudden madness of Maryvale. He blames himself
for relating the story of the man found decapitated near the
summer-house. That account, together with my yarn a little later about
the witch sisters and the subsequent failure of Maryvale to destroy
the cat, turned the balance of the unfortunate man’s intellect, which
had previously given token of a disposition towards instability. The
incredible fact that three bullets did not injure the beast Aire says
he cannot account for; yet I suspect him, somehow, of keeping close
counsel on the point.

But even with these matters to turn over and over in a tussle of
thought, constantly I kept wondering about the pair on the lawn, the
man from nowhere practising his uncouth capers, the woman so intent on
what she held in her hand.

I came to the spot where Salt and the others had parted from Maryvale
and me the evening before, and now I turned aside too, for my
determination was to cross the stream by the fallen tree and to
assault the eastern wall of the Vale. There was no trouble in
clambering along the improvised bridge; I leaped to the ground and in
ten minutes reached the steep base of Great Rhos, prepared for an
hour’s battle with the densely-wooded slope.

Finally, wet to the waist as if I had waded a stream, I emerged on the
brow of the hill where the heatherstems lay wriggling like the hair of
a thousand Medusas. I walked rapidly, waiting for the sun to break
through and dry me, and when it came soon afterward, I sat under a
whinberry bush by a bank of rare Welsh poppies and ate a few dried
figs and a piece of nut-bread for breakfast. From Shepherd’s Well
nearby I took a long draught.

The day promised to be glaring hot and abundantly clear on the
uplands, and doubtless steaming in the Vale. I passed on to find some
brink for reconnaissance. Among the hilltops, what a difference a few
feet may make in the prospect!

I found a place on the edge of the sheer flank of the north of the
Forest where the wide plains and fastnesses for miles about were
revealed in shimmering prospect. I reclined and rested here for long,
dried out thoroughly, and had luncheon: two legs of chicken, a chunk
of unsweetened chocolate, and an orange which had wonderfully escaped
crushing in my ascent. While I ate, I looked at the cloud-flecked
hills spread all about in lovely confusion with fantastic writhen
crests and crowns of Silurian rock. They were scraped and clawed by
rivers channelling: Ithon and Clywedog and Wye gliding down their
shady courses with here and there among them a glimpse of hill-hung
woodlands, or church tower peeping over castle rise, or drowsy village
looking unchanged for centuries. Surely from Aidenn Forest one could
see the better half of Wales.

Of a sudden I slapped my thigh. “I’ll do it!”

My large-scale map of the Forest was in my pocket, as was a map of
greater scope, showing Wales and the western counties, from which I
could transfer the angles and make a fairly good job of it. I would
draw sighting lines on the Forest sheet, so as to identify those
magnificent and anonymous hills that showed crags and colours from
twenty, thirty, forty miles away.

I was at the northern end of the Forest. Should I work here? No, the
sun had not yet driven the vapour from the remotest peaks of which I
wished to find the names. Besides, there was no shelter near, and I
saw some cool-looking groves on Whimble. I headed south for Whimble.

Wryneck and woodlark sometimes came curiously past while I worked on
my maps under disadvantages, without table or board; I had to fold one
sheet for a straight-edge if I wished to make a mark on the other.
Sighting was difficult without a firm plane surface. But I had
enthusiasm, and patience. I fixed lines pointing to mountains that,
when I had found their names, for the first time seemed real to me,
Cader Idris, the Brecon Beacons, many others—as the tracing I include
here will remind me when I look through these pages in later years.

I still had some cheese in my pocket. I ate it for tea.

Then out of the sultry day came a sudden dash of rain along the
hilltops, blotting out my mountains, and hedging in my horizon to the
profiles of the nearby slopes. I realized that the copse of trees I
occupied abutted the field where I had fled from the bull. Fair
shelter must be near.

I made short work of hastening across the field and climbing down,
this time, to the long broad ledge upon which I had fallen on the
other occasion. There I found refuge from the weather, snugly
ensconced on a lichenous seat of stone where the slaty rock was
hollowed out underneath the eyelid of the hill. In my dim cubicle I
laughed at the storm that was sending down its battery of rain.

For the first time in the day, I bethought myself of smoking. I had
out pipe and tobacco, filled my pipe, and struck a match. It flamed
and died. I realized in an instant what a tragedy my carelessness had
caused.

That was my last match.

I would certainly have cursed myself in the limited number of
languages at my command, had not something I had seen in that moment’s
flare of the match caused me to catch my breath.

The little recess of the rocks where I had taken refuge was filled
with bracken and some coarse grass. The brief light had shown me that
at the rear of the cave, if I may call it so, the sparser growth had
been crushed down, thoroughly flattened—and the impress was that of a
human form. Someone had used this place of late as his sleeping
quarters!

I must have sat there stunned for several minutes before I stirred, or
even began to think. When I had gathered my wits, it was not hard
determining to get out of the place at once. Was this sleeper the man
who had shed Cosgrove’s blood? For all that had been discovered, he
might be. But whoever he was, I had no wish to encounter him alone,
and he might at that very moment be hurrying this way to escape the
rain.

The rain, to be sure, had almost ceased, a fact which did not alter my
determination to be quit of the ledge with all speed. Half a minute
later I was out of the shelter and clambering up the bank, with my
face set toward Mynydd Tarw’s gorsy slopes. And now I watched the
curving limits of the hills with half-apprehensive keenness, expecting
at any moment to see the black dot of the unknown head rise into
sight.

The shower had all but ceased; through a fine spray of rain the sun
came glinting. I looked across the Vale, over Great Rhos. Ahead of me
among the waste of hills beyond Aidenn Forest the land was black with
storm for leagues, save where one great monument of light rested
thirty miles away on Pen Plinlimon-fawr. On that bleak mountain-top
the zone of splendour shone like a spot of hell touched by some ray of
heaven.

I had the impulse then to look the opposite way. Yes, as I had
surmised, to the south-east the meadows of Herefordshire were steeped
in sun. And through the gauzy air with its wandering vapour-drops I
saw a rainbow’s glittering bridge from wooded slope to wooded slope
across the mown hayfields, an arch beneath which the distant Malvern
Hills lifted their profile against the sky.

I remembered then the great freedom and elation I had felt when on the
uplands only two days ago, and wished that among these wonders that
seemed spread for my eyes alone I might regain that long ebullient
rapture. But I could not. Why could I not?

There I was with pipe and tobacco, perishing for a match!

Unless the cave-dweller whom I wished not to meet were near, there was
no other smoking creature within miles.

But stay! I suddenly remembered the men from Penybont, repairing the
one sole path to the uplands. If they had succeeded in establishing a
new trackway, there was my best route back to Highglen House, toward
which I must be tending, since the hour was nearer five than four. And
one of them must have a match. If only they had not given over work
for the day!

I had still a little distance to go north along the edge of Mynydd
Tarw before reaching the top of the path. Signs of the landslide were
not apparent here; yet I had made but one of the hairpin bends when I
saw a broad scar and scoop where both earth and rock had torn asunder
from the hill. Not until I was half-way to the floor of the Vale did
the course of the landslide obliterate the zigzag path. The workers
had not dug all the earth and stone away, but had made a substantial
walking-surface some feet above the original one. And going a little
further down, I saw to my joy that the men had not yet departed. They
were not working, indeed, but standing about some object on the ground
at the foot of the hill—and I had a premonition like a sword-cut what
that object was.

It was the ill-clad, coatless body of the gorilla-man.

Not a quarter of an hour before, the men who had worked to the very
bottom of the path, where the wreckage of the avalanche tailed away,
had seen protruding from the earth a long and hairy arm and purplish
hand. A large stone weighted down the body when it was found, and it
appeared from the position of the corpse, and particularly from the
writhen expression of the features, that the stranger had not been
stricken instantly to death. Instead, he may even have been some way
up the path when he had seen the hillside falling, and may have fled
and nearly escaped. The groping arm upthrust seemed an indication that
had not the heavy stone pinned him under, he might have struggled to
the air, instead of being buried alive.

“Did any of you know him?” I asked, looking down at the face with its
long, uncouth jaw and narrow temples.

“No, sir. He must have been a foreigner in these parts.”

“This is a bit sickening.” I certainly needed a pipe now. “Who has a
match?”

They were quite as doleful as I. “Sorry, sir, our matches was all wet
in the rain just now. Our coats was lyin’ up beyond, and the shower
got to ’em before we did. Matches are fair ruined.”

I looked down at the ill-clad body. “By thunder, if I wouldn’t rob a
dead man for a match now. Were there any on him?”

“Not a one, sir.” The men seemed to regard the idea as a thing of
abhorrence, and I had to laugh my question away as a grim joke.

A couple of miles southward on the way home, I met the two workmen who
had gone to Highglen House for a shutter on which to transport the
body. Salt was with them, and all three regarded me queerly, which was
natural, for I was carrying, besides the clothes-rope, the umbrella
which I had left in the ruin last night.

“Decided not to hang yourself?” asked Salt, his eye on the rope.

I handed him the umbrella, which he received with puzzled brow.
“Item,” I said, “to prove the objective of the menagerie-keeper.”

“Quite,” he responded. “Have you seen what we’re goin’ after?”

“I have. He was the first of the men I encountered that night.”

“I guessed so. Well, this party’s out of it _al_together—time and
distance, you know, time and distance.”

“I suppose that’s so. Time and distance, the two greatest villains
that ever feazed the detective force. The landslide certainly did not
occur more than fifteen minutes after Cosgrove’s death.”

“And this man was in it, was he?”

“What do you mean? Of course he was.”

“Not just buried there afterward, maybe?”

“I should say not. By the way, Superintendent, don’t go without
letting me have a match.”

“Not afraid of the dark, I hope?” Salt looked significantly up among
the trees, where the light was thickening.

“No, not exactly, but I’m famished for a smoke.”

“Smokin’ is not one of my virtues,” he responded. “I’m sorry, sir;
you’ll have to wait until you get to the House.”

I was angry, yes poisonously angry with Salt. It takes all kinds of
lunatics to make up a world, but is there any lunatic as irritating as
the man who doesn’t smoke?

I returned to the House, having all the while the awareness that forms
were following and eyes watching me in the shadowy walks. To tell the
merciless truth, these episodes of the Unforthcoming Match had
chagrined me so that my nerves were teetering, and I had the
uncomfortable sense that if I were to step from the centre of the path
or make any untoward movement, something disagreeable might happen. I
felt like a prisoner, and even when I had emerged upon the lawn, I did
not like the way the black windows of the House stared at me.

“Great heavens,” I thought, “am I coming under the thumbs of the
Influences, as Mrs. Belvoir called them?”

The Vale was dim when I reached the House. I knew that I should surely
find a match-holder on the mantel in the Hall of the Moth. I did, but
some other smoker had abstracted the last match! I hope heaven’s ears
were closed at that moment.



CHAPTER XVI

Parchment—and Paper

There was, of course, a match-holder in the library. I looked into the
room of weapons: although the light shone beyond the library door
ajar, no sound came from inside. I thought the risk worth taking, and
stepped in, rope and all, hoping (in my grimed condition) not to
discover anyone.

The quiet of the room was deceptive. There were a lot of people there.
Belvoir and Mrs. Belvoir were close together at the table with its red
velvet cover, reading from the same book, which could not have been
very fine sport for him, since he required about one-half the time she
did to peruse a page. In the embrasure of the corner tower, Lord
Ludlow was sitting with his back to the window and his volume held
before his face so that no light from the chandelier might possibly
fall upon what he read. This position he maintained the entire time I
was in the room. In a secluded nook Lib and Bob were standing before a
glass-covered case full of dark and mysterious tomes.

Belvoir looked up, while his wife began the page he had finished.
“Hello! Where have you been?”

“On top of the Forest—all over it: a breather. What’s happened?”

“Man killed by the falling hill the other evening.”

“Yes; I’ve seen him. I met Salt going up there. But down here—what
about Maryvale?”

“Quiet all day. He’s working hard—too busy to eat—fact. (Finished it
yet, my dear? Don’t hurry.)”

“Is he really painting?”

Belvoir shrugged. “Wish I knew. This morning, through the door, he
said he was, and warned us against interfering with him. Aire’s
standing by at present.”

“But have you thought—the materials. Oil pigments need to be prepared.
You can’t pick them up on instant’s notice after a number of years, or
decades, and find them suitable.”

“Salt showed us that yesterday’s dash was far from being Gilbert’s
first visit to the store-room. He had pottered there quite a bit, and
some colours he left behind in his frantic haste are fit for immediate
use.”

“He has painted before, then?”

“Yes, but not in this generation. Long ago.”

“Pity. Did he say what he is working on?”

“No—no details. There’s another development, though. Did Salt tell
you?”

“Not a thing.”

“You remember Sir Brooke?”

“Do I?”

“Well, that same useful road-mender who kept the vigil in the car last
evening was interviewed in person by Salt about noon to-day.”

“But how—”

“Oh, they’ve rigged up a practicable bridge for one person at a time
down where the old one stood. Salt crossed it unscathed. (Very well,
my dear. Carry on. I’ll catch up with you.)”

“Yes?”

“Two nights ago the road-mender saw Sir Brooke as sure as taxes,
crossing the bridge and proceeding up the road toward the House. (I
agree with you, my dear. It’s infernally dull. But Carlyle was a great
man.)”

“Great Scott! We’re closing in on him.”

“I wish they’d leave off tracing that old boy,” said a peevish young
feminine voice from the corner. “He’s old enough to take care of
himself. I wish somebody’d trace my tennis balls.”

“Why,” I smiled, “what’s happened to them?”

“The usual death,” said Lib. “Bob knocked both of ’em into the Water
this afternoon and presto vanisho! Now we can’t play any more until
somebody goes into town and pries a few loose from the corner store.”

“Gee, he’s got nerve, that butler,” urged Bob, turning his plus-foured
self toward me, and more toward the light, so that his somewhat
pug-like countenance showed the full measure of affronted innocence.
“You know what he said, Mr. Bannerlee? He said that it served us right
because we played tennis so soon after Mr. Cosgrove died—Cosgrove!”

“It served you right because you thought my side of the court was in
the next county,” Lib snapped. “Now what can we do, except read?”

“There are worse things,” I offered mildly.

“That’s what we’re looking for over there—a good book,” exclaimed the
youth.

“Well, these are just a little too rich for your taste, I fancy,” I
remarked. I scanned the titles behind the glass; I had not examined
this case before. The shelves were not quite comfortably filled with
bound volumes of learned periodicals and manuscripts in expensive
leather covers, all having their titles impressed in bright gilt.

“Hullo, now there’s a thing.”

“What?” asked both juveniles at once, alert for something, even
literature, to break the monotony of their existence.

I pointed to a cover with the words “MS. Elis Gruffydd” stamped upon
it. “Evidently a copy of part of a historical manuscript I once read.
If I remember rightly, it contains a passage about this house.”

“Gee whiz, it does?”

“You’re a wonder,” declared Lib, with her nose pressed against the
glass. “Why, we had that one down and gave it the once over. It was
all Welsh to us.”

“Oh, I mean in translation,” I hastily amended. “Don’t credit me with
any knowledge of Cumraeg.”

“What kind of a rag?”

“The Welsh language,” I explained. “But I should think you’d find
better hunting on those shelves over there.”

“Those? They look sort of dull.”

“I realize that the volumes are not provided with art-jackets in three
colours depicting the discovery of slaughtered bodies and the rescue
of lovely women, but behind those drab covers reside the works of Jane
Austen, Scott, and the Brontës, Thackeray, Dickens—and Wilkie
Collins!”

“Christopher! Seems to me I’ve read something quite hot by Wilkie
Collins. Thanks, Mr. Bannerlee, I’ll take a look.”

Alone, then, at the case in the obscure corner, I opened the glass
doors and ran my eye over the titles at close range. “Old Watts,” as
everyone styles him, had been something of a bibliophile, and I saw
what I believed to be a number of absolute rarities, quite thrown away
on Crofts, of course. I had reached my hand up to a dark corner, where
a couple of volumes were lying on their sides, when an exclamation
from my lips brought Lib back from Wilkie Collins at once.

“That was a strong one. What’s the matter? See a snake up there?”

“No, but I found a mighty startling book,” I answered, looking around
and noticing with relief that probably only Lib had heard my
exclamation. Bob and the Belvoirs had departed, and Lord Ludlow was
holding his page so close to his face that I supposed him insensible
to external stimuli.

“What’s the big kick here?” she asked, looking at the little old book
I had plucked from the shelf and whose age-tawny pages I was
scrabbling through.

“If Crofts knew what a hoard he has in this library! Why, two or three
of these quartos must be worth their weight in diamonds.”

“Boy! What a chance! I’d sneak a couple away; only they all look worth
a thin dime to me. What’s this one you’re palpitating about?”

“This is the volume responsible for my being here, Miss Dale. ‘The
Book of Sylvan Armitage,’ imprint 1598. What do you think of that!”

She was holding the quarto to the light, screwing up her face while
her eyes roved across the page. Something flickered to the floor. I
stooped and picked it up: a flake of moss.

“That’s funny,” I said. “Some servant nodded when he dusted here.
Well, how do you like it?”

“Too many f’s. I get all tangled up reading.”

“Those aren’t f’s; they’re s’s. You’ll get used to them soon. Poor
Cosgrove would have revelled in this.”

“Oh, Cosgrove. Funny things he revelled in.” Suddenly she snapped the
quarto closed, and gave a careful look toward the harmless Ludlow,
whose book was still held defiantly against the light, shutting out
the universe. She lowered her voice. “Say, Mr. Bannerlee, remember the
day I came down here, the way Cosgrove was watching me, like a fish?”

Before I could put in a restraining word, she began a hasty whispered
account of events occurring some months ago, when Cosgrove, already
engaged to Paula Lebetwood, met Lib for the first time at Coventry.
Unquestionably, the orthodox Irishman had been shocked at the daring
dress, behaviour, and speech of this insouciant American minx. Mingled
with his disapproval, however, was a strong spell of attraction which
caused him to be constantly hanging about in her presence. I believe
that just as the element of unexpectedness in Miss Lebetwood’s broadly
capable character was in a large measure responsible for his desire
for her, why here in this alert, sharp wasp of a girl, was also
something Cosgrove had not experienced before, something tantalizing
that would not let him be at peace. His attentions to Lib, so I
gathered from her story, had grown more obnoxious as the days went by,
and reached their climax one evening when by her bad luck he happened
to find her alone at the far end of one of the gardens.

I had some difficulty at this point in following the extraordinary
language of Miss Dale, especially since her speech now became spiced
with a good many terms expressive of emotion. But it is clear enough
that Cosgrove, detaining her in spite of her unambiguous complaints,
entered into a long exhortation over her, more like a fanatical
Puritan than a son of the Church. At first Lib had been bewildered,
then frightened, for mingled with the Irishman’s obloquy was a strain
which at first she could not comprehend at all, but soon realized was
an appeal to “make his banner her banner,” an invitation of no
uncertain tenour to “ride by his side through the high places of the
world.” The union of repulsion and fascination under which he must
have laboured, as shown in this outburst, was identical with what I
had observed on his face at the luncheon table.

“And that’s the kind of a bozo Cosgrove was,” perorated Lib. “That’s
the blighter (isn’t that what you say?) that everybody around here
thinks was lily-white. That’s the Eringobragh that Paula’s eating her
heart out on account of his death!”

“Do you think so?”

“Do I? Don’t I! Say, I know Paula. She’s the best kid on this little
ol’ earth. Bannerlee, my boy, just because I like to talk like a fool
half the time and can’t get back on the rails the rest, don’t get me
wrong. I love Paula: I have ever since when I was dressed in a towel
and she used to keep me from breaking my neck a dozen times every day.
What I mean is, I know Paula. She hasn’t been natural for months, not
since she got engaged to this devil. She was a darn good sport and
peppy all day long, not one of these heavy thinkers. But ever since
this Cosgrove got so big on the horizon, she’s been worrying for
him—you know—the ‘King in Ireland’ stuff—or worrying _about_ him—the
dog! And since somebody polished him off with that rock, instead of
feeling better, she’s acting so quiet and intense I’m scared to death.
Honestly, I’ve been crazy-scared. Last night she just sat and thought.
I hardly slept last night. I heard you going downstairs awfully early
this A.M.”

“I wish I could help. But you see it’s so peculiarly and emphatically
a situation where I can do nothing.”

“I know it, I know it,” she acquiesced mournfully. “Gee, though, I
wish she’d fall in love with you or something like that. I wish she’d
take her mind off that Irishman. To think, he got so fresh with me,
and then he went and bounced one off Mr. Oxford’s jaw.”

“What?”

“Sure; didn’t you know? He got sort of green-eyed about Oxey. Maybe he
had a right to; I don’t know. I mean I don’t know about Oxey; he did
seem to be around a lot of the time. Paula wouldn’t look at him, of
course. Then Cosgrove hung one on Oxey’s jaw, and we thought we’d seen
the last of him. But Oxey shows up here last week smooth as
ever—hadn’t given up hope, I guess.”

“I must tidy myself a bit for dinner. I wish I could help you, Lib.
You mustn’t worry.”

“I suppose I’m making things out worse than they are.” She took up the
Book of Sylvan Armitage. “I’ll plunge into this exciting narrative,
and try to make some head or tail out of it.” And just as I was going
out of the door, she called with a flash of her usual impudence:
“What’s that you’re smuggling under your coat?”

“My shoulders,” I laughed.

“You must have the hump, then,” she rejoined, and when I was at the
stair-foot, I heard her cry, “Oh, look what I’ve found!” but I did not
return to learn of her discovery.

Nor did I immediately ascend to my room. In truth, one reason why I
left the library was that I had heard voices in the portrait-corridor:
one tone was Crofts’, the other a strange, high-keyed speech I had
never heard before. To learn whose voice this was I had retreated from
Lib and her find.

I stole to the front entrance, opened the door with the cat-head
knocker, peeped out. A dozen yards away my host was saying good-bye to
the red-headed, red-bearded young man I had seen cavorting on the lawn
at early day-break. The stranger now wore a blue suit of provincial
tailoring and sported a huge yellow flower in his buttonhole. A moment
later they parted, Crofts with a wave of the hand, the youth with a
respectful salute. The owner of Highglen House then walked around past
the library in the direction of the Hall of the Moth.

I noiselessly gained the lawn and followed the youth, who wandered
with an air of negligence across the grounds by a shrubbery path which
soon was lost in the grove beneath Whimble. Among the trees I ventured
to draw closer to him, and was nearly discovered in consequence. For
when I slipped around a stout oak to creep upon him, I caught him
lying or rather rolling on the other side, convulsed with silent
mirth! I marched backward on tiptoes, collided with a tree, and
returned to the House.

After a plunge in the bath which Aire has kindly invited me to share,
and after such improvement of my dress as my tramping kit afforded, I
knocked on Crofts’ door and had the secret out of him. He was waging a
pitched battle with some shirt-studs, and would have told me anything
in return for my relief.

“That red-haired chap? Foggins’ new man. He came ‘sweetheartin’’ this
afternoon, and I had a little talk with him.”

“But who is Foggins, and how does his new man come to be here at break
of day? How does he come to be here at all?”

“Oh, they’ve slung a footbridge over the Water down below. Finished
late last night. Foggins sells us our milk. What do you mean by ‘break
of day?’”

“I saw this milk carrier dashing like a red streak across the lawn
when I set out this morning.”

“You did! So did I.”

“You!”

“I heard him coming round the House past Alberta’s room, while I lay
awake at some ungodly early hour. I looked out, saw he was carrying a
pair of spiked shoes in one hand, the milk can in the other. That
looked queer. So I got into a pair of slippers and my dressing-gown
and went to the upper end of the passage on this floor, intending to
go out of the door and down the outside flight of steps to find what
was up. But I saw everything through the glass. Rosa Clay—”

“Ah, Rosa!”

“You see (I got all this from the young chap himself just now) since
this house-party began Rosa and Ardelia have been a little huffy over
this man Morgan. Ardelia seems to bear away the prize; so for spite
Rosa has begun to walk out a bit with this young fellow—seems a good
enough young fellow.”

“And why the athletic exhibition?”

“The way of a man with a maid—showing his prowess. Prides himself on
being something of a runner, says he possesses a number of cups and
medals won at fairs and such by fleetness of foot. In fact, this
afternoon he showed me his card of membership in the Brecon and Radnor
Young Men Mercurys.”

“Ah, now I know what she had in her hand!”

He gaped; this was new to him. “What do you mean?”

“She was holding his stop-watch on him.”

“Curious. His voice reminded me of something, too.”

I remembered the laughter-spasm of the youth beneath the tree, but
forebore just then to plague my host with new vexation.

The dinner-gong rang. While we passed down the stairs, I recalled our
words of last evening on this flight of steps.

“Tell me, Crofts, has the great Harry Heatheringham of Worcester wired
you his solution of these riddles?”

“He has not, but unless the fool who took my ’phoned telegram at the
Post Office bungled it in transmission he has the facts.”

“I look forward to seeing him.”

“So do I. Good Lord, the night you dropped in on us, Bannerlee, I
thought this was Lost Man’s Vale. Sir Brooke omitted to appear, as you
know; but I had already been waiting three days for Heatheringham!”

“Three days!”

“Since the Parson Lolly trouble had become serious. I had sent word
for him to come as a guest; he had accepted. And until yesterday’s
wire, I haven’t heard another word from him.”

It was rather low of me, but I could not resist the second temptation
to prod Crofts a little. I said:

“I hope you don’t mind my pointing out that you haven’t a particle of
proof that wire came from Heatheringham at all, or that your message
actually reached him, or that he’s alive. How can you tell that you
haven’t been betraying secrets to some unknown enemy, or at least to
some shrewd newspaper reporter?”

My host seemed to shrink to about half his size.

To-night’s dinner was the first orderly meal since Cosgrove’s death.
It was good to see people eating again with the suggestion of
appetite. Even Miss Lebetwood had come down and had lost her tense,
restrained look of earlier hours. Opposite me, Lib, most fresh and
radiant, more genuinely girlish than I can remember her before, smiled
on me mystifyingly.

The men had reverted to the English fashion of remaining behind the
ladies. When we rose from the table I buttonholed Salt.

“Superintendent, does your censorship permit a letter to go out of the
Vale once in a while?”

“Now you’re jokin’ me, sir. What is it this time?”

“No, seriously,” I showed him an envelope containing a note I had
scratched off in my room. “I want to send this to Balzing to-night for
my own copy of Sylvan Armitage. That’s an old book I’ve discovered in
the library here.”

“Bless my soul! and you want another copy? One for each eye?”

“Quite so; for comparison.”

“Of course, Mr. Bannerlee. Carry on.”

No sooner had we joined the women in the Hall, where a fire was
lighted against the chill of evening, than Lib darted toward me, took
my hand, led me to a small shaky-legged walnut cabinet, one of the
objects which decorate but most inadequately furnish the room. An
ornamental ebony box rested on the cabinet, and lifting the box cover,
Lib revealed the Book of Sylvan Armitage.

“Prepare for a great shock,” she said, slyly glancing about to ensure
we were not observed. “You should have waited a minute before you
skipped out of the library. Aren’t I clever? I’ll bet your copy at
Balzing hasn’t one of these gadgets.”

While she spoke she had opened the cover of the quarto, a cover which
looked to be unusually thick. The slim pink fingers of her left hand
were prying, then disappeared beneath the edge of the book, and I saw
that the apparent thickness of the cover was due to the fact that a
pocket of paper had been pasted to the board with cunning, but with no
special secrecy. From the receptacle she drew two folded pages, one
age-stained, the other much younger, even rather new.

“See that!” she bade in a Gargantuan whisper, thrusting before my face
the yellowed sheet, which was calf-skin. “Read that!”

“But it’s in Welsh, and the parchment looks at least two centuries
old.”

“Oh, absolutely—but this goes with it.” She handed me the other piece,
and stood beaming, her smile including and enlivening every feature of
her already brisk countenance. I could not help smiling back, and it
was several seconds before I could turn my glance to the white sheet
of ordinary folio paper, whose close script was legible enough.

“It doesn’t mean such a much to a low-brow like me,” I heard her say.
“But if that’s not some modern shark’s translation of what’s written
on the skin of the fatted calf, I’ll eat the calf-skin. What about
it?”

I would have needed only a comparison of the proper names in the first
few lines of each writing to assure me that it was so, had it not been
the obvious conclusion, on the face of it. Lib had discovered an
unpublished document, or part of a document, connected with Highglen
House.

Two minutes later I had informed the company of the circumstances, and
the Hall was as still as a vacuum. When I realized that all these
people were listening to hear me read from the paper I held in my
hand, my undisciplined hand shook. It is horrible to be nervous, and
have to betray it.

I shrugged my shoulders and kept my hand as steady as possible. Here
goes:

  “‘. . . in some fear of being ill-received in Cwm Melin, for the
  lord there had the name of an intemperate man, one savage to
  strangeness when the humour was upon him. But mammering was more
  harm than use in the pass to which I had come, and save in that
  stronghold I had no surety of shelter from the snow, the town of New
  Aidenn lying some uncertain number of miles beyond the Cwm.
  Increasing storm and cold compelled me to seek kind reception within
  the castle, avouching truly that I was a person who had lost his way
  in those wilds and stood in danger of the elements. Being admitted
  within the gate and taken before my lord, I was excellently
  welcomed. The man himself sat alone before the blazing hearth in a
  room called the Hall of the Moth, with weapons and machines and all
  the abiliments of war heaped in the corners. He was none of your
  pouncing and mincing followers of court, but sprawled like a great
  bulchin in his chair, with ragged Abram-coloured beard, immense
  mouth, and eyes like yellow flames. He bawled for sewer and
  cup-bearer, and a table was straight fetched, and a feast-dish set
  thereon, with a manchet and good sherris wine a-plenty. I fell to my
  refreshment, nor did it escape my notice that my lord was somewhat
  in his cups, which caused him to be exceeding merry and boastful. He
  vaunted long about himself and his own great valour and prowess,
  exulting mightily in his late triumph over Roger, Earl of
  Gwrtheyrnion, which was truly an achievement which will redound in
  the history of time. Much he said that is known among men, and
  presently fell to speech of Sir Pharamond, fourth lord of that name,
  who builded this castle on the mill-site, after his house close
  under the valleytop had tumbled to its fall through the perfidy of
  the false steward David, a most foul and dastardly act, published
  far and wide among men. Very gleefully and asperly did my lord
  relate how they had skummed the countryside for the scroyle, and how
  they had meted out his fearful fate. Now my lord waxed more strange
  and withal crafty in his words, saying that which is not of common
  report, relating how above the newly builded battlements Sir
  Pharamond had made a tier of chambers, so that rumour whispered he
  was mad—but lord Pharamond only smiled, and called the windows of
  those chambers his eyes for descrying treachery. And ever afterward,
  said my noble host, the builder of the castle on the mill-site was
  untroubled by plotters against his peace. Now when I was emboldened
  to ask my lord to make this thing clear, he said no word but seized
  a flambeau up into his hand and beckoned me to follow. He led me
  through the kitchens and down into a cavern that was there, with a
  standing pool of water in the midst. This, said my lord, is the
  drowning-pit of my ancestor, for it was his merry mood to fling his
  disobedient folk into the water with his own hand, not binding them,
  but pressing them back into the pit while they essayed to come
  ashore. Thirty he had once drowned in a single afternoon. For the
  rest, were he werry, he could shuffle them off with no more trouble
  than snuffing a night-light. Now do you see, said my lord, but in
  such cunning wise that I knew some deceit lurked behind his words.
  Nor would he say more, but departed from the vault, leaving me
  constrained to follow him or remain in darkness, though wishful to
  examine the cavern—yet full of thanks, on the other hand, that he
  had not practised upon me the custom of his ancestor.

  Again in the Hall of the Moth my lord laughed immoderately before
  the fire, saying that for that gear he himself was proof against all
  traitordom, for he kept there a cat that was never tamed, more sure
  than forty watch-dogs, more trusty than twenty men-of-war, since
  that it leaped to the attack without a snarl or a struggle, full
  silently and suddenly, until it had achieved the kill, and it failed
  not to lay his enemy low. Beware, said my lord, of gib my cat’s
  claw, and how you hear the purring of the cat, for its purr is more
  dangerous than the innumerable growl of hounds upon a hunting. The
  purring of gib my cat means death. I dared to ask that I might be
  shown this beast, provided it purred not at me. My lord, who had
  drunk much more wine since we had come from the cavern of the
  drowning-pit, bade me thickly go seek the beast for myself, and upon
  asking where, he bade me look beneath the perfidious tree, but
  beware lest it purr or I was doomed. So I said no more of it,
  discerning that while he grew the more merry he grew the more
  savage, and might well be goading me on to my destruction. At length
  my lord having fallen into a stupor, he was borne to his bed, and I
  conducted to mine, among those upper rooms which rose above the
  battlements. I slept sound, awakened but once, as I thought, by a
  long belch of laughter from some unknown part of the castle. Again
  sleep visited me, and in the morning, when the snow had ceased, a
  party of my lord’s men being at point of breaking away to New
  Aidenn, I made one of their company and reached my destination in
  soundness, the afternoon being that of the fourteenth day of
  January, 1523.’”¹

     ¹ It may be necessary, in view of the occurrence later in the
     evening when Mr. Bannerlee read this paper by an unknown hand, to
     state that the translation here included is both correct and
     substantially the same as that which he read. (V. Markham.)

“Well,” avouched Mrs. Bartholomew, almost before I had completed the
last sentence, “now we know the ancestry of that frightful animal.”

“The cat of the Delambres, you mean?” asked Belvoir.

“Yes. No wonder the Frenchwomen left it behind and Mr. Maryvale’s
bullets couldn’t kill it.”

“The cat’s claw, eh?” mused Belvoir. “‘Beware of the cat’s claw.’
Funny, Superintendent, that the Lord of Aidenn and Parson Lolly should
use the same words.”

“I wish someone would tell me,” said I, “what is a perfidious tree.”

“I should like to know, too,” Alberta declared, “and what’s more, why
anybody should keep a cat under one.”

“I wish Mr. Maryvale _had_ annihilated that fiendish cat,” said Mrs.
Bartholomew. “It gives me a shiver whenever I think of it somewhere up
there, maybe waiting for one of us.”

Pendleton looked towards Miss Lebetwood and lowered his voice. “Why,
you don’t mean to say that you think the beast had anything to do with
Cosgrove’s death?”

“Cats don’t usually hit people with stones,” contributed Bob.

“Nonsense,” called Ludlow sharply. “Fiendish cat, flying Parson,
perfidious tree, deathless arm, mystic bone, and all balderdash!”

“Very well, my Lord,” said Salt, who appeared ready to indulge in a
little crossing of swords, “explain this tragedy without the
balderdash.”

“Explain it _with_!” retorted his Lordship.

The documents had been passing from hand to hand. “My Lord, I’ll have
a look at that manuscript, if you’ve finished,” said Salt. “No, I mean
the English-written one.”

“I haven’t it.”

“But I thought—”

“I did have it a moment ago. I gave it to—er—”

“You laid it down on the mantelpiece. I saw you,” said Alberta.

“Ah, yes; so I did. But it’s not there.”

Salt raised his voice. “Who has the English manuscript?”

No response, until a gasp from Bob. “Look, isn’t that it?—in the
fire!”

Something ashen and fluffy was smouldering on top of the log,
something that turned from grey to translucent pink when the flame
brightened. Salt reached the fireplace in a leap, bent down,
scrutinized the fragment.

“That’s it, sure enough.” He ever so carefully attempted to remove the
crinkled piece, which vanished at the first touch of the fire-shovel.

Crofts extended the parchment in mollifying wise. “At any rate,” he
said, “we have the original here. No trouble having a new translation
made.”

Salt swelled like a small balloon, and his jaw was tight. “No, thank
you, Mr. Pendleton. I’m not having any.”

I heard Aire’s suppressed exclamation behind me: “Of course not!”

“What do you mean?” I demanded, turning to the dark, outlandish face
that came only to my shoulder.

“Why, Salt wants the manuscript because he wants the man who wrote it:
someone, probably, who has lived here or been here before, knew the
book, knew the Welsh language, and, particularly, whose penmanship is
that of the paper.”

Crofts, crestfallen, was still urging the original parchment. “At any
rate, Superintendent, take charge of this. The burning must have been
an accident; perhaps the sheet fell in the fire. And you can have
another trans—”

Salt took, or rather snatched, the sheep-skin from Crofts, as much as
to say, “Better this than nothing,” and he did say, “I don’t want
_any_ translation; I want that particular one.”

“That’s right,” murmured Aire. “Whoever wrote that paper is Parson
Lolly!”



CHAPTER XVII

Lancelot’s Ultimatum

                October 6. 11.25 A.M.

Was he, I wondered, in the room at all? So far, since eight o’clock, I
had not been able to detect the slightest sound from within the
chamber. For longer and longer periods I listened with my ear to the
door, all senses alert. I thought of knocking, but refrained, for Aire
had counselled against it. But that inhuman stillness inside the room!

Suddenly footsteps resounded crossing the floor, no secret footsteps,
but blatant and decisive ones. I had hardly time to draw back a little
from the entrance when the door opened and Maryvale stood on the
threshold.

I was shocked, for with the exception of two days’ bristle he looked
so much himself. When he saw me, he tossed his head back in a laugh
that had the natural ring.

“Ah, you, Mr. Bannerlee. I wondered which of the gentlemen was
protecting me this morning.”

Yes, he seemed quite the same as when I had first met him and we paced
the walk outside the Hall of the Moth. Quiet and courteous, sane and
substantial, he smiled on my embarrassment.

“Aren’t you coming in? You’ve had a long wait.”

I was trying to meet his cheerful eye and to think at the same time.
“I should rather expect you’d wish to come out.”

“No, thank you; I have been out.”

“You have? No one told me.”

“Of course not,” he said with his fluent ease of manner. “Last night
my oils weren’t quite right, and I looked for some common varnish in
the stable supply room.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I should think you’d have thought of food before
varnish.”

“True, I have not been eating very heartily. Some carrots and raw
cabbage from the kitchen garden was all I could obtain. The darkness
rather hindered me.”

“But I heard nothing of this. Who let you out?”

“Let me out? My dear sir, I go out when I choose, by the window!”

“But you couldn’t have climbed down the wall.”

“Mr. Bannerlee, we seldom know our latent powers. What I set myself to
do, I do. It is a great deal easier than you suppose when the windows
have cornices and the ivy is reasonably firm.”

“But climbing back?”

“You have observed the ladder, of course. For the present, I find it
obviates much of the difficulty. Later—” His voice trailed out, and he
changed the subject with a renewed invitation to enter. “I am glad it
is you who are the first to see my work. I think you will know how to
evaluate it.”

Perhaps I was not prudent, but I was bitterly curious to see what was
the product Maryvale had taken extraordinary measures to create. I
stepped inside, noted the broad, slant-shouldered room to be in order,
saw lying across a chair the thin sword, a mere rapier, with which the
man had threatened to make a ghost of any who interrupted him. A stout
walking-stick would have smashed the blade to splinters in a
twinkling. The bed had not been slept in, or on. The only litter in
the room was near the casement, where easel and canvas stood and rags
and brushes were scattered on the floor.

“The pigments are not dry yet, of course,” said Maryvale. “Still, the
work is done.”

Maryvale’s canvas was about four feet each way, and save for an
irregular space in the centre, every inch had been drawn and coloured
with minute care. Almost it might be said that the one derogatory
criticism was that overloaded detail diminished the interest of the
principal subject. For the picture was no mere daub of good
intentions. Though even my inexpert eye saw deficiencies in technique,
they were faults due to a long unpractised hand—they were nothing.
Once on a time, indeed, Maryvale must have studied his art to
advantage, for now in spite of imperfect materials at his command, and
in spite of long unacquaintance with the medium, the power of his idea
overrode the difficulties, and the magnificent though intentionally
uncompleted painting drove its impression home.

Only, as I have said, the background and lesser adjuncts demanded a
greater share of interest than usual. A peculiar circumstance abetted
this fact. The central figure had no face.

The scene was above a valley so deep that its bottom was lost in
darkness, where the whole middle air was drenched with rain to the
colour of smoke, through which the sun, westering and low, sent a
shaft of dripping light. Higher, against a black and sullen
mountain-side, the thunder-heads were gathered in inky monochrome, and
down the sky wriggled a huge worm of lightning, so dazzling that it
affected the eye with torture keen as that which a loud shrill sound
inflicts upon the ear. And round about, outside the clouds and within
them, flickered the suggestions of menacing shapes, skinny arms,
abysmal eyes, demonic smiles.

In the centre, a solitary figure hung in the track of the storm, not
upright, not poised as if for swooping flight, but horizontal in the
turgid air, resting with four limbs widespread, like some unholy ghost
brooding over the nether gulfs of hell—Parson Lolly. The pitch-black
cloak flapped restless in the tempest, and from the indistinguishable
murk below came up the scarlet gleams from unknown forges.

Parson Lolly’s neck was twisted upward and the face turned toward the
beholder, save that there was no face. Examining closely, I saw that
not the faintest lines had been drawn for one, that Maryvale had
simply ceased at that place in his design. The sinister suggestion was
enforced by the bulk of the decapitated figure against the livid
storm, by the hands with their hint of feline claws, by the shadows
cast downward by those hands, like the doom of pestilence scattered
down the gulf.

The artist stood by the window, his back to the light, but I could see
the high glint of satisfaction in his eye.

“You _do_ approve, I can tell.”

“Maryvale, this is—well, it’s beyond anything I expected. Where did
you study?”

“Two years with Coselli in Milan. But that was long ago; I could not
have done this then.”

“What are you going to do about the face?”

“I doubt that I shall ever finish it,” he said, looking at his
handiwork. “No.” He shook his head and his eyes contracted to points
of light. “It may be the only picture I shall ever paint—”

“Surely not!” I cried with much feeling. “You have the incommunicable
gift.”

But Maryvale was far aloof. His voice had changed into that distant
tone that suggested withdrawal beyond the sphere of ordinary mortals.
And when he spoke, I became as cold as ice.

“I know now why Cosgrove passed away, with all the embroilments and
hubbub he used to cause.”

I responded with a sense of rigid self-control: “You aren’t, er,
implying he terminated his own existence?”

“He was killed so that I could paint. When all this excitement and
investigation is over, that is what they will find. I think it is well
his life is ended.”

“Come now, Mr. Maryvale, without cavil or casuistry, tell me who
performed this beneficial murder.”

“Someone, I do not know who, of the house of Kay.”


                Same day. 4.30 P.M.

For some reason the Superintendent appeared highly gratified and very
lenient toward the universe. Alberta Pendleton, though perhaps no more
curious than the rest of the table, was the only one who ventured to
find out why. Wheedling, she persisted from the fish to the fruit, and
at length wore out Salt’s defences by attrition.

The table grew still while the Superintendent opened a wallet capable
of holding a couple of folios and very carefully withdrew a piece of
notepaper which he held by a sheath of blotter fastened with a clip.

“Take it by the corner, _if_ you please, and mind it don’t catch fire.
That was a neat trick somebody played on me last evening, but I’ll
thank you not to repeat it,” he admonished a trifle grimly, opening
the note and handing it to Mrs. Bartholomew, whose eyes grew twice
their size within two seconds while they were fixed on the writing.

“What does it say?” chorused half a dozen voices, but Mrs. Bartholomew
could only give a huge swallow and an audible sigh, and handed the
paper to Maryvale without looking at him.

“Read it to us,” besought Crofts, who sat at the far end of the table
and whose turn would not come for at least a couple of minutes.

Maryvale complied. “‘Sir,—Will no plain speech cause you or your
principals to understand that the die is cast and the snowball is
rolling downhill!’” A long low whistle broke from the reader’s lips.

“Go on!” (from Crofts.)

“Oh, Mr. Maryvale, that’s not fair!”

“Don’t stop, please.”

“For God’s sake, go on!”

“I will go on,” said the man of business. “‘My deeds be on my head!’”

After that perhaps prophetic sentence the silence seemed to sway and
swirl. Alberta asked in a small voice, “Is that all?”

“No, there is another paragraph, equally concise: ‘I have acquainted
Mr. Oxford sufficiently with the particulars, and I do not see that
there is any need for you and me to discuss the situation. It remains
simply for you to take what measures you consider best, or to accept
the inevitable. You cannot stem the tide.’”

About twenty-four startled eyes suddenly turned full glare on Charlton
Oxford.

“No signature?” asked Aire.

“Yes, the message is signed ‘Lancelot,’ and a postscript adds, ‘These
notes and their method of delivery are an unnecessary risk. I suggest
that your answer be the last, since on my side the question is past
debate.’ That _is_ the end.”

Oxford sat between Miss Mertoun and Lib Dale, on my side of the board.
Lib promptly struck a finger into his waistcoat, so that he squirmed,
while the English girl looked at her cousin with wide wonder, or a
clever imitation of it, in her fine black eyes.

“What in thunder have _you_ got to do with this mess?” demanded
Pendleton.

“Yes, Oxey, old sport,” appended Lib, “what’s all this secret stuff?
Are you a great man and we didn’t know it all the time?”

But Oxford, his eyes very uncomfortable, made no answer than to shrug
his modish shoulders, and Salt came to his rescue.

“Don’t press Mr. Oxford, if you please. He is bound in confidence to
me.”

“This, I believe, is an admissible question,” said Aire. “Is the note
a recent discovery of yours?”

“Found it an hour ago.”

“But surely you couldn’t have overlooked it in your previous search in
Mr. Cosgrove’s room.”

“Right you are. But I didn’t discover this in Mr. Cosgrove’s room.”

“Oh?”

“No. It had been delivered.”

“Delivered? What the devil do you mean?” asked Crofts.

“It was put where Sir Brooke told Mr. Cosgrove to leave it.”

“In the mail!” I exclaimed, a great dawn rising in my brain. “Wait a
moment, Superintendent. I’ll tell you where you found that paper!”

“Gumme, if you haven’t guessed it or something.”

“In the armoury!”

“Right.”

“In the armoury?” Crofts echoed dully, his brow scowling down.

How clear the recollection was: the armoury in misty bluish light, the
three vague shapes of men, the one with the white tuft and shirt-front
picking the pockets of the other two, the narrow face at the candle
before the room was turned to darkness. Unsuccessful that search must
have been; Cosgrove must have “posted” this letter afterward. But what
was Lord Ludlow’s part in this muddle? Surely he played an extra hand,
perhaps a lone hand. I looked at his guileless countenance and would
have given a guinea to know what was going on behind it.

I shifted my attention to Salt again. “But there must have been some
disturbance, Superintendent. I don’t believe that even you—”

“Cleanin’,” acknowledged Salt. “Miss Carmody—Jael, that is—was dustin’
about. No question she shook it loose, for it was lyin’ on the floor
under the newer suit of armour when I passed through at twelve
o’clock.”

“But I don’t see—why, the mail is—” commenced Mrs. Bartholomew
diffidently.

“The coat of mail, the coat of mail,” growled Bob Cullen.

“That’s it,” said Salt. “You see, Mr. Pendleton, you had a little Post
Office here after all. This note was tucked away between the
chain-mail and the cuirass. Couldn’t have been a better hidin’-place,
as long as there were no children in the house to pick things to
pieces.”

The ladies had passed from the room, and we were on the point of
following, when Salt recalled us with a casual remark. “Well, I’m
poppin’ off now, gentlemen.”

“Eh!” exclaimed Crofts. “I thought Dr. Niblett—”

“We’re off together, sir. The Coroner’s conductin’ the bodies, and I’m
conductin’ the Coroner.”

“For heaven’s sake, send us some newspapers to read,” I urged.

“I will, I will.” Salt cast his eye somewhat sardonically about the
circle. “Any more small commissions from any of you gentlemen?”

We clustered at the doorway where the melancholy caravan set out in
charge of Dr. Niblett. The bodies of Cosgrove and of the unknown,
stitched in sheets and laid along improvised stretchers, were to be
carried by motor as far as the temporary bridge, across which they
must be borne by hand. The undertaker’s van was waiting across the
Water to convey them to the mortuary, where to-morrow they will be
“viewed” by the Coroner’s juries impanelled to sit on the bodies.

They were gone.



CHAPTER XVIII

Grisly Planting

With the departure of the dead men from the House, the mansion seemed
to me for the nonce most lonely.

I drifted away from the others, into the vacant Hall of the Moth,
slouched down in one of the flimsy chairs. My mind was rather wistful
for the deceased Cosgrove, wanting him back, but not quite sure
whether I preferred him to return alive or dead.

Voices of persons passing in the armoury came to me.

Belvoir’s: “Why, Galton proved that long ago. It stands to reason—”

Lib’s: “Shoot that man!”

A pause in the universe. Then the lightest sound of feet tripping down
the stairs, the flutter of a white skirt in the corridor, and an
apparition crossed the door. At unexpected sight of me, the apparition
became motionless in a pretty sort of confusion, while I staggered to
my modest height.

“Oh, Mr. Bannerlee! I didn’t expect to find you here. That horrid old
man!”

“Why, er—good heavens, Miss Lebetwood, what do you mean?”

“Blenkinson.”

“What, the Master of University College!”

“Why, no—”

“That’s only my ambition for him, you know. When the post is vacant, I
intend to put up his name for it. But what’s the wretch done?”

“He scolded me!”

“The impudent—”

“Or he would have if he dared. That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“But what, specifically?”

“Well, you see, I was coming out of Millicent’s room. She was going to
have a game with me this afternoon, but told me she felt too tired
after all.”

“With the last ball disposed of by Bob Cullen?”

“The last I’d let that precious pair have, that was. I had sense to
keep a few for myself. Well, I was awfully sorry Millicent wasn’t up
to it, and I would have gone back to my own room and changed out of
these clothes. But when I came into the passage, Blenkinson was
stepping along as large as life and as still as a—as a cat. When he
saw me he stopped about six feet away and just let down his jaw and
stared.”

“Very bad form.”

“I said, ‘What’s wrong, Blenkinson?’ pretty nippily, I guess, and he
gave a sort of groan and said, ‘They are taking Mr. Cosgrove’s remains
to the mortuary, Miss.’ I didn’t say anything; so he groaned again.”

“Really, you mustn’t concern yourself with the foibles of a foolish
old servant. Anyone with an ounce of sense would know you mean for the
best.”

“_Mean_ for the best!” The sweet grave eyes dimmed a little. “I’m
_doing_ for the best! Each day since this happened I’ve been alone for
hours, thinking, thinking, thinking. I know more about Sean than
anyone else here, and I go over every particle of knowledge I possess,
to discover if it can have any bearing on his death. Oh, I’ve thought
so hard that my head hurts—and emotions like this tear you up even if
you’re too busy thinking to pay attention to how you feel. Don’t you
see, Mr. Bannerlee, I mustn’t be a weeping-willow sort of person; I’ve
got to get some relief once in a while. I’ve got to get the air into
my lungs and the blood into my brain, if I’m to do any good. I’m doing
more for Sean by swinging a racquet than I would if I bedewed his brow
with tears.”

“You’re right, by George! Did you tell this to Blenkinson?”

“To that old woman!”

A silence came. I watched her; her eyes wandered restlessly from
object to object within the room. She turned suddenly toward the
window and looked at the glorious day, and as quickly turned to me
again. “Oh, this is too good to be wasted! I must play. I’ve got to
have someone to beat, Mr. Bannerlee; may I beat you?”

The youth and verve of this girl, her strength of spirit, and the
unspoken appeal in her clear blue eyes, were almost too much for me.
There was a directness about her, like the passage of an arrow to its
mark, unusual in women, I believe, when combined with such softness
and allurement as is hers. I had a very noble impulse to take that
straight and slender body in my arms, and to bestow a needful comfort
of kisses on lips and cheeks and on that cruel golden hair.

As with most such good impulses, this one changed into something
inferior: I bowed politely. “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Give me ten
minutes. I’ll borrow what I need from Crofts, as usual.”

“Will you? Oh, thank you so much!” (To be thanked, so earnestly, by a
_dea certe_!) “I warn you, I’ll beat you. I hope you can give me a
battle.”

Such was my hope, too, when we stepped on the concrete court a quarter
of an hour later.

I should have been routed had I not been able to deliver a smashing
serve which landed in the proper court about one time in three. These
serves were almost always clean aces, and after one of them I was
startled to hear applause from the little knoll which overlooked the
court some distance away. There was Lib.

“Hotto servo, old sportsman!” she called. “Glad there’s somebody
Paula’ll let play with her old tennis balls.”

It was due to happen sooner or later, of course, but it was rather
humiliating immediately afterward to have a wild shot from my racquet
fly many yards over the enclosure.

“Bravo,” called Miss Dale, and laughed and laughed. “Hotto smasho!”

“Sorry,” I called, rushing across; “I’ll get it.”

“Try,” laughed the lonely spectator on the hill. “Serves you right,
Paula. The great big brute of a man!”

“I think it went into the stream,” said Miss Lebetwood. “You’ll have
to run.”

“Oh, I’ll save it right enough; plenty of time to intercept it,” I
answered, turning my rush toward Aidenn Water, which, owing to a
convolution of its course, was some forty yards above the end of the
court and about twice that distance from the side-line.

I kept a careful watch; no ball came down.

“It must be among the strawberry trees after all,” I said, and we
commenced a search through the planted grove which had been so
grateful to the dead Irishman, while Lib favoured us with audible
quips at our discomfiture.

“Just the same, I believe it went into the water,” said Miss Lebetwood
at the outset of our hunt.

“Well, I’m sure it didn’t,” I contradicted. “How could it have? I got
over there in plenty of time—”

“Well then, find it here.”

But the ball was not to be found.

We resumed the match. I served doubles.

“Don’t lose your nerve,” called Lib. “I’ve mortgaged my—say, folks,
there’s a rumpus up at the House. Jiminy, I’ll bet something’s
happened!”

Miss Lebetwood and I looked at each other.

“What is it, Libkins?” she asked sharply. “What do you see?”

“Slews of people—millions of ’em—running around the House. Say,
there’s Doctor Aire going like a pump-handle. Say, I’m going to see
what this is.”

I looked at Miss Lebetwood, and we broke into a run, following Lib.

Although we arrived almost the last of the crowd, Finlay, the
venerable gardener, was still positively drooling with excitement. To
him the credit must go for having inadvertently put a term to more
than one of our galling problems.

Crofts rather fancies carrying on old Watts’ custom of experiment with
unusual trees and shrubs. For the sake of their jewel-like red
berries, he had a couple of Guelder Rose plants, almost full-grown,
ready to be put in the soil, when Cosgrove’s death set all things
awry. To-day they could not be kept out of the ground any longer. One
of the small trees was to be placed at the turn of the drive around
the front of the House, about fifty feet from the library tower.

At the appointed site Finlay had merrily tossed up the soil from a
considerable cavity while Miss Lebetwood and I played our game. There
had come a jab of the spade which appeared to make the earth settle
somewhat. Again the gardener pressed the spade with his heel; the
earth seemed to give way. Alarmed, for he knew that there were no
drains passing beneath this lawn, Finlay got out of the pit he had
digged, reached down and poked experimentally with his tool. Of a
sudden, the bottom of the hole sank something like a yard, and a chunk
of antique subterranean masonry, broken off, was revealed, with
sluggish black water visible through the gap. But something else was
showing there, too, besides the mass of soil which had fallen through
the collapsed roof of the waterway:

A face, with lips, nose, eyelids, cheeks distended into a simple green
sphere—and a hand, its palm covered with thickened, white, and sodden
skin.

Sir Brooke Mortimer was found.

I was far too late, of course, to hear what had been said by those
first around the hole. I learned afterwards. Crofts Pendleton, barring
some natural repugnance to the body in process of dissolution, had
seemed to take a sullen joy in the discovery.

“Here’s your murderer!” he had even cried.

“No, no! Never!” Eve Bartholomew murmured, gave a slight shriek, and
fainted dead away, to be carried by stalwart persons into the Hall.

“I wonder,” said Belvoir.

“Of course not,” declared Miss Lebetwood, and challenged Doctor Aire:
“Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” he answered; “he’s been dead at least as long as Sean.”

The Guelder Rose plant, which must have a new hole dug for it now, lay
alongside the cavity with its branches bound up and its root encased
in a bag. Beside the rose lay the body of the unfortunate Knight,
drawn from the mysterious water-channel. I should not have recognized
it, had it been the corpse of some friend of mine.

Mastering the disgust that welled in me, I bent over the drawn face,
with its nostrils dilated and eyes forced forward from their sockets.
The dead lips were parted and the blackened tip of the tongue
protruded between the teeth.

I arose, looked down into the eyes of the physician. “Strangled?”

He shook his head slightly. “By water only. The tongue’s a
_post-mortem_ result. Look at his fingers.”

The fingers of the huge hands resting across the chest were covered
with slime, save for two or three, the ends of which appeared
excoriated.

“He was drowned in this subterranean waterway. God knows how he got
in, but you can see that his fingers clutched at the oozy walls and in
some places must have pressed through the slime to the stone itself.
There’s a mark on his forehead, too, not quite so easily accounted
for. No connection with cause of death, however.”

“This _is_ Sir Brooke, of course?” I asked. “It might be anyone, for
all the humanity left in the lineaments.”

“I’m sure it is from the description of the clothing alone,” declared
the Doctor, “but we can satisfy ourselves without delay.”

He plucked the arms from across the chest, then unbuttoned the coat.
Across the waistcoat extended a black band affixed to a pince-nez with
double lenses. Aire held these up with a significant look, then
reached into the inside pocket and withdrew the dead man’s wallet.
This was conclusive, for inside it was stamped the name in gilt:
Crowell Brooke Mortimer. But the flutter of voices that came was not
for this discovery.

From between coat and waistcoat two objects had been dislodged,
objects which rolled out upon the lawn: a couple of water-logged
tennis balls.

I picked one up. The cloth was rotted, and slipped off with a scrape
of the finger. “Well,” I said, “now we know how Sir Brooke lost his
way.”


                Same day. 9.55 P.M.

In half an hour Salt was among us once more, and half an hour later he
had come upon the entrance to the underground channel, an arch of
stone masonry veiled by an overhanging branch of alder and almost
wholly submerged in the stream. It lies, as we expected to find, at
the part of Aidenn Water nearest the tennis court, and a fair current
sweeps beneath it. This curious tunnel appears to extend several
hundred feet, and does not end where the Knight’s body was found. The
corpse had been detained by a partial stoppage caused by the collapse
of some of the masonry. But we have not discovered where the channel
rejoins the main stream. If I am at all a judge of facial expressions,
Salt is a disappointed man. Evidently this gruesome factor casts some
elaborate equation of his out of all computation. It struck me at
dinner that Aire, too, looked a bit frustrated.

Talk in the Hall of the Moth after dinner was equally divided between
pity for Sir Brooke (and for Mrs. Bartholomew, who was absent) and
amazement at the lopped and disordered accounts given of our mystery
in the London papers which Salt had brought with him as he had
promised. I rather enjoyed hearing Ludlow pitch into the gentlemen of
the press, for whom it is obvious he has no love—and for those for
whom he has no love he has no mercy.

Maryvale came up, and for once I did not feel uneasy at the sight of
him. He was smiling broadly, I thought a little too broadly after what
had occurred this afternoon. I recalled, however, that Aire was now
taking precautions to insulate Maryvale from contact with any
atrocities which may present themselves—and then flashed through my
mind almost the very words which the man of business was about to say.

“You don’t think so cheaply of my warnings now, Mr. Bannerlee. Now you
must realize what was meant by the spanning and roofing of the
waters.”

“Fully.”

“No, sir!—not fully. There is much for you yet to know. But all this
agitation, this ebullition in the newspapers, this official scrutiny,
will lead to nothing.”

“You refer to what you told me this morning?”

“As I said, this man Cosgrove was removed because he stood in my way
and in the way of my art.”

I thrust in sharply. “Did you remove him yourself?”

“No,” answered Maryvale, “but I have done worse deeds.”


                3 o’clock in the morning.

I have heard a curious thing. A few minutes ago I woke with a start
and lay wondering what had roused me. Then the cry of the cat throbbed
from the upper Vale again. The howl rose and fell endlessly, as it
seemed, until, while it mounted to a new pitch of despair, it broke
off. There has not been the faintest murmur since.



CHAPTER XIX

The Deathless Arm

                October 7. 11.15 A.M.

A Spartan is among us.

Not only did Eve Bartholomew appear this morning at breakfast at the
early hour Salt had suggested, but she seemed almost in brighter mood
than before, and I can understand how the discovery of Sir Brooke, for
better or worse, may have taken a burden from her mind. Still, she is
brave, though she spoke with a rather wan utterance, addressing me,
who had the fortune to consume porridge next her in the window.

“I had expected it,” she said. “Of course I never could have hinted
such a thing before, but I realized that sooner or later such a man as
Sir Brooke must fall foul of one of his many enemies.”

I uttered some vague sound.

“Mark my words, Mr. Bannerlee, the villain will be brought to
vengeance for that blow! I understand how Miss Lebetwood feels—why,
Blenkinson, what’s the matter?”

“N-nothing, Ma’am. I beg your pardon,” said the butler, who had been
fussily arranging the window-shade, and took flight.

“What did he do?” I asked quickly.

“He made the most extraordinary grimace I have ever seen. I hope the
man is not subject to, er—anything.”

“I think not,” I answered drily, guessing well the cause of the facial
disturbance. “But you were saying, Mrs. Bartholomew?”

“I have something that would do the poor man good. I must speak to him
later. Er, what _was_ I saying?”

“That you understood how Miss Leb—”

“I do, indeed! I admire that young woman, and I intend to follow her
example. Until the murderer of Sir Brooke is found, I shall not rest!”

But this was nothing to what was in store later. An hour afterward
Salt had us all in the conservatory, very much on tenterhooks. When he
had surveyed us with calm and taken the roll mentally, he made a
little speech.

“Since you’ll all be goin’ to New Aidenn for the inquest this
afternoon, I thought I might give you a few hints. The fact is, we
want as little as possible to come out. I have those orders from
higher up. The Coroner’s business is to ascertain the cause of death,
if he can; the rest is my business. I know Dr. Niblett will play the
game accordin’ to my rules, and he won’t try to carry the question any
deeper than that the deceased came by his death by means of the stone
that Mr. Blenkinson luckily discovered. But there’s no tellin’ what
some busybody juryman or other may want to know; so I want to warn you
there’s one subject you must be shy of—that’s this ‘King in Ireland’
topic. There’s enough hullabaloo in the Emerald Isle right now without
spreadin’ that.”

“Still,” said Alberta, “I don’t see how we are quite going to tell
whether a question will lead—”

“I’m comin’ to that, now. I’m goin’ to share some facts with you. This
that I’m tellin’ you is the result of special information from Miss
Lebetwood, Mrs. Bartholomew, and Lord Ludlow, added to a few small
discoveries of my own. Now, remember, I want you to keep this budget
of facts in mind and not show by a word or a sign that you know
anything about it. That’s the only reason there is for this assembly.
Anybody behind that door, Mr. Pendleton?”

Crofts flung open the studded portal, revealing emptiness in the
corridor.

“Servants sometimes like to wait behind doors, just in case anyone
should ring for ’em,” observed Salt. “You might keep an ear open in
that direction, sir. Now, here’s the way of it.”

From what we heard in the next half-hour, what a change comes over the
picture of Sir Brooke! I had heard of him as capricious, cantankerous,
unsure-footed, gentle-hearted, weak-eyed, sick: the image of
ineptitude. Yet what was he but the emissary of the powers behind the
powers that be!—no fool at all, but the super-confidential spokesman
of an Office powerful and discreet! I had heard of him as a guest like
the others, save that he was to “propose the bride’s health.” Now we
envisage him as coming to meet Cosgrove plenipotentially under the
guise of the Bidding Feast! There had been earlier meetings here
between these men. Indeed, while the revelation increased in scope, I
began to wonder if the whole idea of the Feast was not shrewdly put
upon Crofts by Cosgrove’s suggestion, so that there might be an
out-of-the-way corner for the final tryst between the representatives
of the United Kingdom and of the Kingdom of Ireland about to be
reborn.

“It may relieve Lord Ludlow’s mind,” said Salt, “if I clear up his
connection with the affair at once. That Bangor and Newcastle address,
sir,” he went on, looking at me, “seemed to give you a turn the other
day, but it was really rather enlightenin’, you know.”

“I must be very stupid—”

“Not a bit of it—only you should have studied your geography just a
little more thorough. So should I, for that matter; I didn’t guess the
connection either. You see, both those places are in Ireland.”

“Ireland!” came several gasps as one.

“Fact. Two little towns near Belfast, nearer twenty than thirty miles
apart, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“What goes on in those places?” asked Aire. “I’ve been in Bangor,
County Down. It has no industries to speak of.”

“Yes, in the main those are seasonable towns; both on the coast, I
believe. But Lord Ludlow and the other principals have projected a
tolerable business in the linen-weavin’ line to give employment to
every inhabitant the winter through; so there’ll be flourishin’
manufactories in both a year or two from now. And that properly
explains Lord Ludlow’s interest: day by day here he was tryin’ to find
what was goin’ to happen to his pet lamb.”

“I don’t see what you were in a sweat about,” said Crofts, turning to
Ludlow. “Cosgrove wouldn’t have matured his plans in a generation.”

“That’s where you’re sure to be wrong, sir,” contradicted Salt. “The
truth is, nobody except Sir Brooke could have had an idea how near
Cosgrove’s coup was to takin’ place. One or two more parties to sound,
a little time to work out the final details and give the final
orders—and the fat would have been in the fire! Why, the papers say
Ireland’s half-mad to-day as it is.”

“Where do you come in?” asked Crofts belligerently, fixing his eye on
Oxford this time, and that well-nurtured gentleman lost countenance,
but Salt made answer.

“Mr. Oxford has been pretty close to Mr. Cosgrove all along, as you’ll
recall,” he said to our host. “He may have excited Mr. Cosgrove once
or twice, but that was in another connection altogether.” Although
guardedly, the Superintendent gave a swift look toward Miss Lebetwood.
I intercepted it. “Another connection altogether. I think perhaps that
it was due to Mr. Oxford keepin’ such a good watch on Mr. Cosgrove and
his servant that Sir Brooke made up his mind to come down here when he
did and have the cards laid plain on the table.”

“This servant, who was he?” put in the insatiable Crofts. “Cosgrove
never brought a servant to any house of mine before.”

“He’s in the mortuary, too, now.”

“What, the gorilla-man!” I exclaimed.

It was so. I comprehended many things in an instant, and Salt’s
re-enforcement of them came tumbling after. The creature I had met
near the top of Mynydd Tarw, who had dwelt in the cleft of the hill,
had been an Irishman, Cosgrove’s servant. That was an Irish yell he
had yelled plump in my face, some adjuration to bid a demon begone,
for he must have taken me for a fiend of the mist when I fell in his
path. The unaccountable burned paper in Cosgrove’s grate was a message
from this man; he it was whom Cosgrove had intended to smuggle into
the House as an “extra progeny for the elephant.”

I recollected our meeting, how he had seemed to be straining,
staggering, spent with haste, even before he had encountered me and
found a new cause for flight. The presumption was strong that he had
lately met with some alarming experience. What could that have been?
Had he seen the black-bearded unknown, the menagerie-keeper? There was
nothing in that person’s colloquy with me to suggest it.

More likely the gorilla-man had run across Sir Brooke. Still, in the
mere encounter there could have been no cause for terror; neither was
anything to the other, and the Knight was hardly a figure to inspire
awe. What was more probable than a meeting on the Water bank above the
tennis court? One man was skulking secretly; the other had lost his
way. Possibly there had been a collision, or perhaps the prowler had
only seen the shape of Sir Brooke taking form in the fog, then
suddenly falling in the Water at a fatal mis-step. That abrupt fall,
perhaps one choking cry, no more, before the instant total
disappearance of the body beneath the tunnel arch (of which the
gorilla-man could have no knowledge)—these account sufficiently for
the fear in Cosgrove’s servant, spurring him hillward. This, I
believe—and it is Salt’s belief as well as mine—is the true story.

“Maybe it’s not quite cricket to criticize Cosgrove, now he’s gone,”
said Crofts in an unusually reflective manner. “I do think that he
might have shot straighter, you know. I don’t see what he was driving
at when he brought this ruffianly man of his down here in secret, to
lurk about, perhaps to thieve, and above all, to be brought among us
in disguise that evening. What was the point of that, I’d like to
know!”

“No doubt about it,” declared Salt. “Mr. Cosgrove, havin’ no idea what
had happened to Sir Brooke the night before, expected him surely to be
here by the time the Noah thing commenced.”

“What’s that to do with it?”

“Why, Mr. Cosgrove was particularly anxious to bring the pair of ’em
together, I expect.”

Crofts looked at Salt as at one suddenly seized with dementia. “To
bring them together? Why should he want to do that?”

“To show he meant business, Mr. Pendleton.”

Aire asked quickly, “Who was this wild man?”

“Ah, I was wonderin’ who’d ask me,” said Salt. “Please don’t mention
it, ladies and gentlemen, but the man killed by the landslide was sure
to be Toban First, the royal King of Ireland!”


                Same day. 10.10 P.M.

A couple of snubbed and highly aggrieved juries brought in verdicts of
“Wilful Murder” and “Misadventure” respectively, as they were told to,
and within half an hour of my entering the mortuary, I was in the
street again. For a few minutes I was busy resisting the minions of
the press, who buzzed about all of us but secured small plenishments
of honey. I surmise that the likelihood of exposure to blandishing
newsgatherers was the principal reason why Blenkinson, finder of the
stone, was the only servant brought from the Vale to give testimony.

Alberta suggested that instead of returning to the House immediately
the party should spend the afternoon in motors. Everyone gladly
acceded to this means of relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the
Vale; everyone, that is, save Aire, who, having given his evidence in
the second inquest, had withdrawn to prepare for the third, which will
be held in a day or so. At the last moment, since we made too large a
crowd to be packed loosely into the pair of available cars, I, too,
seceded from the group, alleging quite truly that since the afternoon
was fine, tramping and exploring would do me perfectly.

Time-wracked New Aidenn lies in the shadow of its huge castle mound
whose fortress no longer stands atop, and the vestiges of old city
walls are far out in the fields where the cows find succulent grazing.
In ordinary circumstances these vestiges of greatness and evidences of
decay would have kindled my ardour in the antiquarian way, but now I
was resolved upon two queerer visits.

I found Aire with Sir Brooke in a side chamber of the mortuary itself.
There was a faint scent of balsam in the room, which was fitted with
some of the appurtenances of a laboratory, and Aire, in a white smock,
had a slip of glass and a pipette in his hand. Sir Brooke lay on a
table at the far end of the room, mercifully covered with a sheet.

“Ceremonies over?”

“They are, and no one the wiser. Your duties finished?”

“Oh, this isn’t duty, exactly. I could shunt it if I wished. Only
chance, you know, has made me the responsible medical witness in all
three deaths; so I have assumed the mantle of whoever corresponds to a
divisional police surgeon in the country. I’m well paid—curiosity, and
all that sort of thing.”

“Well, has curiosity received any communicable reward?”

“Prophecy fulfilled, at any rate. As I said, this man was
drowned—drowned and nothing else.”

“But didn’t you say something about a bruise on the forehead? Mrs.
Bartholomew won’t give you peace until that’s explained.”

“No, I mentioned a mark, not a bruise. Peculiar thing, you know—no
contusion, just scraping and scratching of the skin above the left
eye. In itself nothing unusual, but there was a long wood splinter
stuck there; that’s the oddest feature of the death.”

“What’s it like?”

Aire took from a rack on the wall an envelope, and from it extracted a
thin fragment, about an inch long, dark brown in colour, and feeling
like rock.

“Why, this isn’t—”

“It requires microscopy to show that it’s wood at all.”

“I’d never believe it, surely.”

“It’s almost petrified. That happens, extremely rarely, when certain
kinds of wood are immersed in running water for long periods. The
organic substance is replaced by precipitated mineral matter.”

“Well, it doesn’t strike me as being of such vast importance.”

“One wonders, for instance, what’s kept it submerged and stationary.”

At the door of departure I laughed. “A question indeed. But I must be
off.”

“Sounds as if you had plans for the afternoon.”

“I have. I am going to take a walk—Belvoir’s hint, you remember.”

“I can’t say I do.”

“A walk into the past. By the way, you had a letter this morning. May
I ask if it was in reference to the blood-test?”

“It was, indeed. And pig’s blood you found that night for a certainty.
The test reaction of the blood I sent with anti-human sera was
negative.”

“There’s some comfort in that, but it leaves the problem no less vexed
than before.”

“More vexed, if you ask me. If it had been the vital fluid of a man,
we’d have some notion of what we’re looking for. As it is, even the
nature of the problem is vague.”

“Cannibal,” I said. “Well, I must be going; these roads are new to me.
When I return to New Aidenn, I expect a bit of interesting mail
myself.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes; I’ve sent for my copy of the Book of Sylvan Armitage—not that
the missing portion of the manuscript is in it. I’ve thumbed the
volume too much to have overlooked anything of that sort. Well,
cheerio.”

“Cheerio.” Aire returned to his far from cheery work while I set my
footsteps out of town and eastward.

On every side around the graceful slopes of hills intercepted one
another in a little-changing prospect while I trod the highway across
green Radnor Plain. I passed the prehistoric Four Stones in their
black-grey stoicism, passed Doomsday parks, passed old cottages with
slate-shingled roofs. Above an avenue of oaks the square tower of St.
Stephen’s in Old Aidenn had been gradually mounting the sky ahead of
me, and in due time I diverged from the road and climbed the oak
avenue to the village.

What would I find beneath that Norman tower? Hints of symbolic
meanings of the “deathless arm” were rife in mind. Are the descendants
of Sir Pharamond Kay living yet? Perhaps—and the suggestion caused me
to bate my breath—one of us guests in Highglen House actually belongs
to the family of Kay. This supposition had not occurred to me before
as a live idea. Now it had force. It was, too, an hypothesis that
offered scope and direction for investigating, and in a subject where
I was more or less at home. Perhaps (a big perhaps) I might play a
large part yet in the untwining of these twisted skeins.

I will not say that I was growing excited while I procured the church
key from its custodian in one of the handful of straggling houses
remaining of the mediæval town: I had, in fact, been excited and eager
all during my walk across the monotonous plain. I entered the
churchyard by the lych-gate; the place was overcrowded with crumbling
stones among the red-barked yews. The men and women with shears, who
trimmed the grass along the graves of dear ones, looked at me, I
thought, with more than ordinary interest; there must have been marks
of eagerness in my face. I unlocked the wire-screen outer door, found
the portal within the vestibule unfastened, and entered the little
church.

The empty air smelled sweet and sanctified. The hour was clouded, and
I wished that some of the oil lamps hanging from the low roof might be
lit, for the interior was rather cavernous in the absence of sun.
Searching, I seemed fated to encounter everything but the thing I
sought. These were features with a reputation: the rood screen of fan
tracery and leaf-flower-and-grape carvings, that unique organ-case
dating back to the Gothic period, the window of St. Catherine’s
Wheel—but I spent not a second apiece on them, looking with greater
interest at the tombstones in the floor, at the memorial tablets
between the windows, and at the ’scutcheons painted on the wall with
colours still bright.

A flash of lightning drove the darkness from even the remotest corners
of the church, and my heart gave a leap. That instant I had seen a
long, bulky object in a recess of the chapel on my left.

It was the tomb of Sir Pharamond, stained and gnawed by centuries. The
effigies of the lord of Aidenn and his lady rested there in stone,
with small beasts recumbent at their feet. I lit a match to examine
the face and figure of the man. The crown of the head was clean gone,
and a fragment of the chin had fallen away, but it was impossible not
to recognize the sharp, malignant features, the keen lips, the
close-set eyes as being those of the paintings in Highglen House.

The left arm of the effigy lay across the breast, the mailed fist
clasping a broken sword. The right arm was missing.

At first I thought that, like the pieces of the head, it had been a
prey to time, but careful examination by the light of a second match
proved the carving to be complete: the chain mail ended neat at the
shoulder. No right arm had ever been there.

In haste I stooped and lit a third match to read what might be
decipherable of the inscription, but another lightning flash disclosed
the words still distinct on the side of the tomb, and I read while it
thundered:

    Let Trecchours be Ware My Right Arme Shall Not
             Dye For soo I have Ordeyned

These were all the words upon the monument.



CHAPTER XX

The Recrudescence of Parson Lolly

I chanced upon an alternative road, with more variety in its
prospects, to take me back to the mouth of the Vale, omitting New
Aidenn entirely and saving a third of my journey. Even on this
short-cut southward, I found daylight part drawn into evening when I
reached the top of the vast hill called the Smatcher, shaped like a
loaf of bread, and began to descend through its larches to the
entrance of the Vale. Gleams of sun walked from peak to peak while
violet dusk deepened along the skirts of the hills. On the highway
below me I perceived a human figure trudging toward the branch road to
the House.

I straightway recognized that sawed-off, machine-like form, and the
peculiar drawing-up of the shoulder with each step. Doctor Aire was
preceding me through the twilight.

I hailed him and joined him. “I thought the others might pick you up.”

“Not returned yet, I dare say. Didn’t call for me, at any rate. So I’m
getting my fortnightly exercise.” He looked up at me quizzically. “You
found everything satisfactory?”

“Damnably the reverse. Why, there never was a right arm on that
effigy. Do you know, Doctor, I believe Maryvale has the mission in
life of plaguing me!”

“Not you alone, let me assure you. Other persons are agog over his
cryptic remarks. I, for instance.”

“You? Oh, no.”

“Yes. You didn’t hear what he told the Pendletons and me this morning
at breakfast? He said that Parson Lolly is dead.”

“Parson Lolly dead! That was fudge.”

“On the contrary, he assured us with perfect gravity that the Parson
died last night.”

“He was pulling your leg.”

“Not a bit of it. I know Maryvale that well, anyhow.”

“Give it your own name, then; I’d call it empty talk.”

Aire twitched around at me in a surprised way. “Never,” he declared.
“Sure, Bannerlee, you must realize by this time that there’s always
something behind what Maryvale says. He doesn’t merely vaporize.”

We were approaching the temporary bridge. “I wish you’d tell me
exactly what you think of Maryvale, Doctor. I confess that to me
there’s something uncanny about the man. If he’s mad, he ought not to
be loose among us, and if not—”

“If not?” Aire cocked his head to hear.

“—if not, he’s up to some subtle game.”

“Oho, you think so?”

“What else, for heaven’s sake?”

He waited to cross the bridge before he answered. “No, that’s not my
reading of Maryvale. I look on him as a man wrestling with an idea,
the idea of Parson Lolly.”

“And still I don’t get hold of your meaning.”

“It’s this way. Gilbert Maryvale has come to Aidenn Vale before. Each
time, certainly, a tradition of the countryside, a popular
half-belief, has been mentioned, more often discussed with some
fullness. It is, to say the minimum, a fable of much piquancy, a
legend above the average in interest, this tradition of the
goblin-parson—is it not?”

“Granted, granted.”

“Haven’t you often wished that fairy-tales were true? Maryvale has
almost convinced himself to believe in Parson Lolly. His mind hasn’t
conquered the idea, seems to be more or less at the mercy of it. But
sometimes he rebels. Now and then he can see the absurdity as well as
you or I; he can even laugh at the Parson. But again he will fall into
perplexity, confusion, shame, fear over the idea. And he is capable,
under suggestion or after shock, of getting into the throes, quite
possessed with the reality of the unreal, virtually a maniac if you
like that word. At these times he makes the supreme surrender one is
capable of making to ideas.”

“What is that?”

“Why, he _acts_ on them. Remember his carrying that revolver up the
Vale.”

“Thanks, I remember well enough.” We went on in silence a little way,
and then I said quickly, “But that doesn’t explain everything. Madmen
are consistent; that’s why they’re mad. But Maryvale tells me that
someone of the house of Kay did this murder, and sends me over to Old
Aidenn to find out about that missing arm, and—”

“Of course he is not consistent; that’s why he is _not_ mad, as you
persist in thinking. He is very much mixed, but his ideas don’t fit
into a complete system. I shall be sorry when they do, and I think the
sooner he leaves the Vale the better.”

“Why don’t you suggest it?”

“I have, to Salt. However, the Superintendent doesn’t want our group
to be dissolved for a few days yet. I’d have Maryvale out of here in a
jiffy, though, if I felt his mental condition were critical, not
simply fluctuating, for there’s not the remotest possibility of his
being implicated in Cosgrove’s death.”

“Let me see, where was he, just?”

“Sitting with me on the steps of the summer-house the whole time
during which the murder could have happened. But if he is shielded
from any further mental concussion, I suppose there’s no harm in his
staying on here a while longer. Besides, you know, he will have it
that the Parson is dead.”

In the thickening gloom I could make out no expression on the face of
the man keeping step beside me. I spoke cautiously.

“I take it, then, Doctor, that you don’t think Maryvale may have a
hand in the manifestations of the Parson?”

He laughed. “Rather not! How could he?”

“I wish I could tell you. But in any case I suppose—I devoutly hope,
anyhow—that the manifestations are over, and the explanations will be
in order henceforth.”

“I second you willingly.”

We went on. I stumbled against a stone in the roadway. “Doctor, you’ve
heard about the man I encountered the night I came here; I mean the
one with the umbrella.”

“Yes, Salt asked my opinion about that chap.”

“What opinion could you have?”

“Question of sanity again.”

“What do you think?”

“Hopelessly sane, I should say. You didn’t take him for crazed, did
you?”

“No; I suppose his talk was fabricated.”

“From Salt’s account, I judged it was—most of it, anyhow.”

“Which part do you exempt?”

“Well, wasn’t there an urgent warning about calling off the dogs, and
a reference to golden-haired woman? Believe me, Bannerlee, this
Mac-whatever-his-name-was meant what he said just then.”

“Perhaps. But what I wanted to tell you, Doctor, was that I can’t help
connecting Maryvale with that man. The physical differences in their
appearance aren’t so great that they couldn’t be one and the same,
what with a false beard stuck on crooked, and the rest of it. It’s
unlikely, of course, but still—”

“Tut! it’s impossible.”

“You don’t know. You weren’t here that night.”

“Trust Salt. He has ascertained beyond a shade of doubt that Maryvale
and the rest of the party were in the House the whole evening. The
only possibility is that one of the servants _might_ have gone out
looking that way, and you know how likely that is.”

I gave a shrug to dismiss the whole question as insoluble. “I thank my
stars I wasn’t born a detective.”

“Curious how dark the House is,” said Aire. “So close to dinner, too.”

The building had been in sight for a time, but only as a black beast
crouching with closed eyes on the lawn. Now we were some hundred yards
or so distant, but had still to go through the gate-house archway if
we followed the westward trend of the drive.

I said, “I suppose our friends haven’t appeared. I’d make my outing as
long as possible, too, having to return at last to this devil’s
playground.”

We passed underneath the arch, crossed the lawn.

“Even the kitchens looked dark from down below. Can’t tell about them
from this side, though. I certainly expected the motorists to be back
by this time; didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“It looks like a tomb.”

I was aware that Aire had made a swift movement; then I saw him stock
still, with his hand part way to his lips in a gesture of surprise.

“No lights, no. But there’s someone in the conservatory.”

“What!”

“I saw the gleam of a face at the window of the tower. Just a white
blotch. See that?”

“Right-o.”

We made across the lawn at a run, entered the Hall of the Moth by the
unfastened french window, and encountered two figures emerging from
the conservatory.

“I’m so glad you’ve come!”

“Miss Lebetwood!”

“Yes, it’s Millicent and I. Don’t—don’t be afraid,” she added with a
little, unsteady laugh.

“Are you alone? Is there something the matter with the lights?”

“The lights are all right. Yes, we’re alone.”

Aire demanded, “Aren’t the servants here?”

“They’re all here, I guess. I meant our people, you know. They brought
us to the bridge, so we could come up and have an hour or two of rest
before dinner. They didn’t want to come in yet; so they drove on
again.”

“But why didn’t you switch on the lights?” Aire queried. “With all
deference to your courage, I should think you would have felt easier
in your minds—”

“We didn’t dare turn on the light,” said Miss Lebetwood.

Aire and I barked astonishment.

Miss Mertoun, who had been clinging to the American girl’s arm, said,
“Do go on, Paula. Tell them what we saw.”

“It’s very little after all,” said Miss Lebetwood. “We had driven down
to the Wye Valley, had tea, and come back again by five-thirty, and
someone suggested going north to Ludlow before returning to the House.
But Millicent and I said we’d rather be excused; so one car waited on
the main road while the other brought us up and dropped us at the
bridge. We walked very slowly, and it wasn’t until about half an hour
ago that we reached the House. It was pretty dark, you know, even
then, but light from one or two kitchen windows showed in the garden;
so we weren’t scared at all.”

“Ah,” remarked Aire. “You didn’t come by the drive, then?”

“Oh, no, it was too dull for us. We came round through the grove under
Whimble and across the lawn south of the House to the cat-head door.
The door wasn’t latched, and we simply walked into the vestibule, and
we would have gone straight upstairs, but Millicent remembered a book
she had left in the Hall of the Moth. So she went in there to get it,
and I waited by the steps, but a moment later I heard her give a small
scream. I ran in—”

“What had you seen, Miss Mertoun?” asked Aire, turning to the English
girl.

“Something looked in the window. Paula saw it, too.”

“‘Something’ is a trifle vague, isn’t it?”

“But we don’t know what it was.”

“Well, what was its shape, and how was it dressed?”

“It was as tall as a man, maybe taller,” said Miss Lebetwood, “and it
was wrapped in a long black robe from the top of its—head to the
ground.”

“That’s the creature Oxford and I saw on the lawn that first night,” I
exclaimed.

Aire asked, “What was its face like?”

Miss Lebetwood spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “It didn’t have any
face.”

Aire actually staggered back a step, and I reached out for something
to support me, but encountering nothing, concluded to stand upright.

I found my voice. “You mean you couldn’t see any.”

“On the contrary, I was quite near the window—that one by the armoury
door. Millicent had left her book on the cabinet there, and had
reached the place before she saw the shape, and I naturally went to
her side. We had all the light there was, and would have seen a face
if there had been any there.”

Stricken by a memory, I put my hand on Aire’s arm. “Remember, Doctor,
how Maryvale put no face in his portrait?”

He ignored me, and said, “What then?”

“We were petrified, of course. It seemed to peer in, if you can
understand, even without a face. The whole attitude of the thing was
inquiring, curious. And then perhaps it saw us, for suddenly it
twisted and hurried away.”

“Why didn’t you get the servants?” I put in.

“Things were bad enough without that.”

“What shall we do, Bannerlee?”

“Go after it, don’t you think?”

“Right. You have a torch, haven’t you?”

“Yes; I’ll fetch it. You stay here to guard the womenfolk.”

I made dizzy haste up the spiral stairs and down again, and found the
three outside the french window where the intruder had stood. Aire was
lighting matches in search of footprints, but as had been predicted,
vainly. We agreed that it would be best for the two girls to return to
the conservatory and keep watch through the windows, having care to
remain invisible. If anything untoward happened, they were to signal
us by switching on the light, at the same time ringing for the
servants if danger was evident.

Aire and I went side by side over the lawn toward the small solitary
copse. First one of us flashed the light along the sward while the
other tried to penetrate the darkness ahead; then we reversed duties.
As for footprints, if there were any they were exceedingly light and
vague, and singularly small, but we could not even agree there was a
definite trail.

The distance from the House to the cypresses was over two hundred
feet, and before we had covered the distance the Vale was filled with
a soft illumination, as if twilight had re-begun. On our right, the
moon was rising over Whimble, a crescent moon glowing like white-hot
metal. Then Aire, who had been looking ahead, drew up.

“Something’s among the trees for sure.”

While he spoke I saw movement underneath the horizontal branches, and
that queer, black-robed, conic figure—unmistakably the same I had seen
on the evening of my arrival—swiftened from the shelter of the
cypresses toward the expansive darkness of the park where the
summer-house stood. The long loose-flying sleeves flapped curiously as
if there were no arms within them. The wide garment spread along the
ground, but we had no sight of legs or feet, and I admit I felt uneasy
at the thought that if we caught this unknown, it might prove to have
no face.

We ran in pursuit, but I was careful not to outstrip Aire, lest the
thing should turn and fell us separately. In consequence, we barely
maintained our distance, and had the mortification of seeing the black
robe merge with the night among the sycamores of the park.

“Hear that?”

“It’s jumped into the stream.”

“Or fallen in.”

A little way within the park we found the steep-sided channel of the
brook which flowed across the farm of the sisters Delambre, later on
passed beneath the elaborated bridge, and eventually joined Aidenn
Water. The bank at this point was five or six feet high.

“What next?”

Aire slid and floundered down to the edge of the rivulet which
whispered along the channel.

“Can’t tell for certain, but I believe it went toward the bridge.”

I got down beside him, and we sped between the banks, which gradually
lifted above us. Dry land was scarce, and we did a deal of splashing
in the brook, but by the aid of my torch I seemed to see ahead muddy
traces of other splashing before ours. A wild rose growing on the edge
of the water had been trampled down.

A couple of short turns in the course of the brook brought us to the
stone bridge, a structure magnificently heavy in the body, but leaving
a semicircular arch only about eighteen inches high for the passage of
water.

“It’s a blind alley. No man—or woman—could have gone through there.
There isn’t room for a good-sized dog.”

I bent down and shot the light underneath; there was nothing but water
there.

“Well—”

“Up the bank, did it go?”

I flashed the torch up and down both sides of us. On the one hand was
a miniature precipice more than ten feet high, on the other was a wall
of earth nearly vertical, thickly grown with ivy-leaved toad-flax
showing no sign that anything larger than a mite had travelled over
it.

“I never—” Aire began.

I could not repress a tremor when he suddenly looked skyward, showing
that the spell of magic could exist in his bones. I turned my gaze up,
too, as if I really expected to see a black-robed figure floating over
the ruined summer-house or receding into the depths of the night sky.
But it was eastward that Aire was looking, and while we stared, some
solitary winged form flapped across the narrow surface of the moon.

“We’re beaten,” said Aire.

“Let’s get out of here. I need a tonic.”

“Shall we go back?”

“No; I’ll give you a leg up, and you reach down a hand to me.”

In this wise we crawled up the toad-flax, and a minute later our wet
feet were taking us back toward the cypress grove again. I kept my
light running along the ground, though my hope was feeble of
discovering any traces of the unknown. But when we had reached the
grove itself, Aire darted forward with a chortling cry.

No need to tell me what the white thing was that he picked up and held
in a trembling hand. He tried to decipher it in the moonlight before
my torch made the letters clear:

  L o O k  O U T  F o R  m E  T o N I G h T    P A R S O N  L O L L Y

There was singularly little reaction on the part of anyone; I think
most of the minds in the House are drugged with dangers and alarums.

“But, I say,” protested Charlton Oxford. “The beastly placard says
to-night, y’know.”

“Can you use a pistol?” asked Crofts.

“Yes, but—”

“You can have mine, then. As for me, I’m going to sleep with one ear
and one eye open, and shan’t be surprised at anything, including being
murdered.”

Alberta rang for someone to remove the coffee-cups. “And nobody must
whisper a word of it to the servants, must they, Crofts?”

“Of course not.”

Blenkinson himself entered, slipped about the room with deferential
soft-footedness, collected the débris, and carried it out on two
trays. I noticed his eyes once or twice sliding into their corners
while he stole an inscrutable look at Miss Lebetwood.

“Extraordinary staff of servants you have,” remarked Aire, as soon as
the butler had departed.

“I’m paying double wages,” said Crofts shortly.

“I agree with Stephen,” declared Belvoir. “And I don’t think wages
alone cut much figure.”

“Tell them, Crofts,” said Alberta.

Her husband looked a bit abashed, but having encountered the steady
beam of her eye, growled, “Blenkinson.”

“Elucidate,” I said.

“Blest if I know,” confessed Crofts. “But there’s the fact. The
fellow’s a perfect lord among the community, and somehow he’s induced
the lot to believe that he’s able to protect ’em. I don’t know his
method. He just assured me I could depend on him.”

Silence fell, in which the clock was audible, and I noticed that it
was a quarter to ten.

Alberta yawned and made a gesture of weariness. “What do you say to
ten o’clock bed, people?”

Assent was unanimous.


Those gate-house towers that nod to me across the lawn—may they
harbour the Parson? Those locked cellars that no one has seen for
years. Who or what may not be down there? There are persons
unaccounted for in the Vale. And where now is the drowning-pit? In
olden days this castle must have had one. Discovering it, would I know
more about the Parson, or about the perfidious tree, or about the
cat’s claw?

Some of these questions I may be able to answer, if—

Yes, just now, at eleven minutes to twelve, I tossed a sixpence to
decide. It fell spinning on the table, wobbled provokingly, and said,
“Go forth.”

Let the Parson beware! If I catch him—or her—to-night!


                Five minutes to twelve.

Great God, through my open window—

Some woman’s voice, very faint. . . . I am not sure whose. It is not
Paula Lebetwood’s.

It called “Sean, poor Sean!” many times, and died away.



CHAPTER XXI

The Midnight Expedition

                October 8. 11 A.M.

Furtively, yet with a strange half-fearful pleasure, I made my way in
safety to the top of the stairs and down. I knew it was useless to
inspect the rooms which had been examined many times by day during the
past week. So I would have passed the library entrance without a
moment’s check in my rapid movement, had not a streak of light shot
forth from beneath the door just as I reached the bottom stair.
Someone had lit the chandelier.

I felt shock. I curdled. To investigate is one thing; to run
point-blank on revelations in the wrong place is another. I had a
panicky impulse to slip upstairs again and lock myself in. But instead
I loitered where I stood, staring at the yellow drugget spread from
the lintel.

The door was slightly ajar, and I saw a portion of the panelling of
the library wall; yet no sound came from within. A pale screen of
light, of which the edge drew a line on the opposite side of the
corridor, indicated that I might peep into the room through the slit
of the door. And though my curiosity had somehow turned sick within
me, presently I found myself with my eye at the crack.

My legs seemed to wilt. If it had been Cosgrove himself, burly as
life, I could not have had a worse turn. A trim young fellow, clad in
dinner clothes and wearing a black cap, was inside, and he was a
stranger!

He had been standing beyond the table, apparently in thought, his head
three-quarters from me, so that I caught only the remote profile of
his smooth face, and a narrow slice of his white shirt-front. But now
he moved across the room to a bookcase just within my triangle of
vision, drew open its glass doors, and commenced looking for some
volume. He stood in full view with his back toward me, turning his
head from side to side in a survey of the upper shelves. I could see
then that though slight of stature, he was, for his height, no mere
skeleton, but of fairly solid build, being even a bit broader across
the hips than at the shoulders.

A minute later he was beneath the light, his chosen volume lay open
before him. I recognized it instantly as the Book of Sylvan Armitage.
With his face cast into shadow by the peak of his cap, he leaned
across the table with one hand flat on the red velvet, while the other
ran through the pages. I could tell that the outspread hand was
delicate and tapering, an “artistic” hand; but what I wanted to see
plainly was that clean-shaved face.

Of a sudden he picked the book up from the table, pushed himself erect
from his leaning position, walked toward the armoury door and beyond
my range of vision. There was a click, and the chandelier faded out; a
moment later I heard a tiny jingling sound, as of curtain rings
disturbed. The young man was restoring the portières to their original
places. Then—nothing.

The debonair manner I discerned in this youth even during observation
so brief and cramped, the easy, natural way in which his dapper feet
carried him across the floor, as if the place belonged to him—all so
much at variance with the stealthy habits of a lawless intruder—rather
increased the numb, foreboding ill-ease I felt.

At last I ventured into the library, and found it, as I expected, in
moon-bathed vacancy. The armoury and the Hall of the Moth were also
empty save for their furnishings. I stood in the midst of the Hall,
wondering where the young chap had betaken himself, whether out of
doors, which seemed unlikely, whether into some crypt or cove in the
massive walls, which seemed unlikely, too, or into thin air, which, in
spite of the compulsion of ancient sorceries, seemed less likely than
either. Anyhow, he was gone, and it remained for me to consider what
course to take.

No need to retail my devious thoughts. In the end I saw no good in
rousing the house, particularly since I must reveal my secret
projects. I went on as before, with caution redoubled.

The corridor—no one there, apparently. The dinner-room—no one there
for certain. The kitchen—now I was in unknown territory. I waited,
listened, breathless. Only the whistle of a bat outside, the creak of
a timber within. I ran the shifting circle of my torch about the
walls, across the floor. A cockroach, devil’s coachman, fled across
the flags, and a great moth with eyes glimmering green fluttered
toward me from some corner. There on its pillar hung the gate-house
key; there, beside the chimney-place where a modern stove presided,
was the door I sought.

With prodigious care I passed through this portal, for besides leading
ultimately to the bowels of the earth, it ushered me at first into a
passage off which opened the precincts of the servants. These
half-subterranean chambers lay beneath the dinner-room and
conservatory. While I stole past the doors, I had audible evidence
a-plenty that the dwellers within were sleeping soundly enough.

This passage I was traversing had a distinct downward tendency and
stretched underneath the corridor of the ground floor. It terminated
in a door which, when I passed my light over it, appeared very black
and cumbrous. The key was in the lock.

To my surprise, when by a series of graded pressures I commenced to
turn this key, it moved easy and soundless, as if very recently oiled.
Beyond was a winding stone stair.

By way of sensible precaution I removed the key and brought it with
me, having no wish to be immured in the depths for any cause
whatsoever. The stairs, a dozen or so in number, brought me to the
entrance of another passage beneath the first, leading me in exactly
the opposite direction. While it proceeded it widened into a goodly
cellar, and I made out the yawning mouths of bins on either side, a
comforting sight. There were dark archways leading to other caverns.
And when I stamped, an unmistakable hollow sound came from below,
proof that some buried chamber existed there.

The trap-doors by which one gained these sub-cellars, Crofts had said,
were long disused, inch-deep in dust. And a few seconds later I came
upon one of them, a heavy iron plate in the floor, clamped down with a
clumsy padlock—but the dust was cleared away, and the padlock was not
fastened at all! I picked the thing up from where it was lying by the
flange, and stared at it stupidly. It would never lock anything again;
it had been forced.

Now, surely, this was none of Salt’s work; he had promised to do no
more than inspect the dust-covered entrances. It became increasingly
evident that someone had preceded me in this search, someone careful
not to be detected while he came, but careless whether it was known
that he had been. God forbid that he was still below!

With one fierce tug I lifted the door by a ring in the centre; it fell
backward with a heavy clang, and an atmosphere of choking damp came up
from the hole it left.

A stair descended therein, very steep and narrow, with a thinnish
fuzzy coating which must have been dust, though where it came from
would have been difficult to tell. In the dust there were footprints,
big footprints.

I didn’t like it, but I went on down. The rough stone walls were
crumbling with water-rot and the sheer decay of age. While the air
grew more smothering, I ran my head into stalactitic cobwebs and
rubbed elbows with evil fungi sprouting in every crevice.

It seemed as if there must be a hundred of those steps, though
actually they were about the same number as had been in the winding
stair. At length I saw that I had come to the last of them, for the
big footsteps tramped across a lumpy floor, athwart the glistening
path of a snail. The door was earth, soggy and covered with that same
thin dust-layer.

Midnight was midnight there indeed. Without my torch, I should never
have returned a sane man. Nor did my light, dancing about from wall to
wall, make it endurable. Fungi grew riotously everywhere, and the
cobwebs, black as a funeral, hung down thick from the vaulted ceiling,
like infamous hair. One or two spiders darted out and scurried
immediately back into their loathsome jungle. Whenever I shifted my
light, I had a feeling that from the place left in darkness the vile
growth was reaching out tentacles to grasp and cling to me.

I intended to make my business here as brief as possible, but first I
must find what the other visitor had been doing before me. I followed
the big footprints across the marshy floor, and noted a thick mark
drawn beside them. Something had been dragged.

Then the traces ceased, and I drew back suddenly with a cry at my
lips. I had had a narrow escape.

There was little to tell that the floor stopped here, for like it the
water was covered with an unclean growth. I stood on the brink of the
water-pit, where Aidenn’s lord had once drowned thirty wretches in a
single day! If ever a place was accurst for the cruelties performed
there, this is it.

Over the stagnant pit the ghastly festoons hung so thick that the
torchlight could scarcely pierce the darkness to the farther wall.
From that wall a queer shape protruded, round like an enormous barrel,
but too vague to be identified.

I suddenly caught sight of an object beside me on the verge of the
water. A stake had been driven into the earth through the gathered-up
mouth of a large cloth bag. The bottom of the bag hung over the edge
and down into the water, and the weight of its contents drew the whole
bag taut.

I gave a prolonged look through the shaggy gloom, where the black
streamers faintly shivered in the air my body had stirred. Was some
obscene presence spying on me from the murk?

Banishing fear, I wrenched up the stake, lifted the bag from the pool,
and let its burden fall upon the floor. Stark and stiff, with its eyes
staring, its tongue thrust out, its fur tousled into knarls and lumps,
its claws extended, the enormous cat of the sisters Delambre lay
outstretched at my feet. I stooped over the body; my fingers touched a
cord drawn tight about the neck.

So Maryvale had made this abysmal journey before me, and there had
been substance in his madness when he announced that Parson Lolly is
no more. Since bullets would not kill, with cord and water he made
assurance double. The long despairing cry will never shudder down the
Vale again.

I must have stood there a long while almost oblivious, gazing into the
invisible, until the darkness seemed to enter my brain. The most
infinitesimal sounds crept into my consciousness: the muffled murmur
of water in motion somewhere, the charnel breath of the things that
drooped from the vault, the very voice of silence! Then disgust at my
surroundings mounted in an instant almost to nausea, and I wheeled
about in flight to the cellar above.

I took the stairs in a leap and a scramble, the trap-cover closed with
a shout behind me while I darted among the bins and arches to the
winding steps. At the top of these I paused to replace the key but not
to turn it, then made tiptoes past the doors until I gained the
kitchen. With the key of the gate-house in my hand I passed into the
dinner-room, thence through the corridor into the conservatory, one of
whose smaller windows I proposed to use as a means of egress.

The valley seemed pale and quiet in the moonlight. In a trice I had
the casement open and had stepped through to the ground, concealed
beneath those outside stairs leading to the door at the end of the
first floor corridor. I pushed the window shut, and on the instant the
long screech of some predatory night-bird shrilled from the
summer-house park. If it was an omen, it was not for good—and my path
lay among those shadows!

This was for secrecy. If I passed directly across the lawn, some
wakeful eye in one of the long range of windows might find me out; so
I had no choice but a long three parts of a circle screened by trees.
First I stole behind the birches where I concealed myself at dawn the
other day on catching sight of the red-bearded runner, next through
the cypresses, then the sycamores of the park, and finally the
strawberry trees. These last extended far enough south to enable me to
reach the towers from the side opposite the House. The door was on the
other side, unconcealed, but I had to risk being seen while I unlocked
it.

I stood still beneath the twin, mute towers for a minute or two before
gathering determination for my effort. Salt, of course, visited this
place the day after his arrival, but has kept his discoveries secret.
My hope, of course, was that someone came here _after_ Salt, in
particular the black-robed object of our pursuit to-night.

I noticed that the moon was near setting, since it had but a short
progress to make from eastern to western hill. When it was down, the
Vale would be dark indeed. Was it worth waiting until that happened?

Impatience decided not. I sped around the tower that contained the
door, turned the monumental key, got safely inside the entrance, and
stood with bated breath. Seen or unseen, I was in for it now. Heaven
help me if I found a presence inside these walls.

My light showed the beginning of the spiral stair; there was
absolutely no sound. I commenced to climb.

It was a long way up. My stockinged feet were all but noiseless on the
overlapping stony steps, and more than once I checked myself, thinking
that I heard footfalls following mine. The torch, directed downward,
revealed the empty stair winding into nether darkness. This delusion
persisted; indeed, when I was at the point of entering the little room
atop the tower, I thought that I heard even the breath of some
stealthy climber. The light showed only the bare winding beneath me,
and I spoke a murrain on the narrow tower which had no well to enable
me to see clear to the bottom.

My imagination cooled down, and I set about examining the circular
chamber. Owing to the thickness of the walls, it was only some five
feet in diameter. It was low, and save in the centre, where the
pointed roof gave space, I could not stand upright. For windows it had
three slots, through one of which the moon cast a slanting beam. The
floor was thickly daubed with mud, but this in itself was not
surprising when one considered that Salt had sloshed through here on
the morning of the downpour.

But that mud would have dried long ago, and this showed signs of damp!

Eagerly, critically, I bent and studied the floor in the full glare of
my torch. There were dubious faintly moist impressions, of feet, I
believed; but I could make nothing of them. No entire footprint was
evident. Over the general surface of the dirt, however, something
sopping wet had recently been trailed, but not so heavily as to
disturb the topography of the mud. The little ridges and knolls left
by Salt’s rubber boots remained intact, but portions of that
microscopic countryside looked as if they were recovering from an
inundation; in one or two hollows there were positive pools,
one-sixteenth of an inch deep.

Something exceedingly wet, but not very heavy—what else but the gown
of the creature that had fled from Aire and me and plunged into the
stream? Only, how in the name of magic did that creature evade us to
get here, unless it skipped _up_ the stream, which both Aire and I are
prepared to attest on oath it did not do?

A flat-headed aperture led the way across the bridge between the
towers. In that direction the water-trail appeared to tend, although
at the edge of the dirt, where the gown had been drawn along the
stones themselves, almost complete evaporation had taken place.
Further along there was no sign of damp at all; I suppose the intruder
had observed the puddles he was making and had lifted the garment
clear from the floor, perhaps doffed it and rolled it under his arm.

I had to crouch nearly double in that low passageway to reach the
inner room, which now I believed to be the headquarters of Parson
Lolly. My light, cast ahead, showed that it was a chamber of identical
mould with the one I had just quitted, and, much to my relief, it was
empty. One difference there was, indeed: the corresponding stairway
which led down from this tower had for some reason been walled up. I
tested the mortared stones; I pounded them with my fist; I butted them
with my shoulder. They were sound and secure, leaving no doubt that
those stairs condemned to everlasting darkness held no secret
connected with the present mysteries.

When I had reached this comfortable certainty, I made a detailed
search of the turret. Someone, for sure, had been in the habit of
coming there; I found what appeared to me sufficient evidence of
occupation, and of hurried, perhaps permanent, departure.

There were pencil-whittlings on the floor, from an indelible pencil; I
know the nasty taste of the aniline preparation. Now, when I
re-examined the Parson’s placard inside the House this evening, I saw,
though I did not comment on the fact, that such a pencil had been used
in writing it.

There were two or three dark stains, splashes now quite dried, which
yet had a dim, offensive odour when my nose was close to them. To my
mind, no more proof is needed that a young pig was murdered here.

There were a few short lengths, an inch to four or five inches, of
some pliant fibrous wood, perhaps bamboo, which I cannot account for.
With these, perhaps, are associated the fragments of black crepe I
found cut in wedges, rhombs, and various irregular shapes.

I detected, while bending near one of the slender openings, a
sub-acrid, faded scent, which seemed specially localized on the sill,
so to speak, of the window, as if some pungent stuff had once been
spilt there and removed. In its proper context the source of the odour
would, I am sure, have been obvious in an instant; yet here it baffled
me.

Last I found a torn end of paper. The side uppermost was blank, but to
my joy the other proved to contain printed words. The piece was
obviously detached from the title-page of some old book, octavo size,
with which I am not acquainted, though “CATTI” looks obscurely
familiar. I shall hardly have any trouble in identifying it.¹

   ¹ Reproduced on following page. (V. Markham.)

I felt actual elation, for Salt would never have overlooked this, or
left it here, supposing he had found it in the course of his
inspection.

[Illustration: A torn piece of paper, missing much of the left side.
The printing on the paper is laid out like a handbill or a book’s
title page. What can be read says: “The ―es & Vagaries of ―on Catti,
―ones, Esq., ―d Wag of Wales; by ―yn Prichard”.]

Five minutes had revealed these things; an hour could not reveal more.
I tucked the slip of paper into my breast pocket and departed from the
turret. Half-way across the bridge I was again aware of the sound of
footsteps climbing to the first chamber, but dismissed the idea as a
renewal of the delusion which had troubled me before.

But there was no mistake this time, as I realized very soon. The
pad-pad of the unknown feet was growing louder, coming nearer. At once
I was terrified, yet possessed of reason. I knew it might be fatal to
let this creature see me before I saw him—it—her. Particularly
disastrous it would be to be caught in this low passageway where I
must go with my head almost touching my knees. I snapped off my light,
staggered into the room beyond, and stood at the edge of the
stair-head, leaning perforce on account of the funnel-roof. It was a
position of vantage. There I was in darkness, whereas whatever was
coming must emerge into the moonlight that shot through the opposite
slit. I might even escape undetected down the stairs if the creature
hurried past me to the bridge and the farther tower.

But this hope was abortive. The creature knew I was there: that belief
stuck like a knife in my heart.

The steady steps were only ten feet below, one twist of the stair.
They were like the steps of any ordinary man.

The moon must have been nearly swallowed by the hills all this time,
for now it went down with appalling suddenness and left the room in
thick and absolute night. I could not see my foe in darkness; could it
see me?

Every nerve in me was ringing its own alarm. The subtle glue that
holds the body-cells in friendly ties dissolved; it was every cell for
itself. I was fleeing in all directions.

The creature actually passed me by; I felt the touch of some part of
it, cold as an Arctic stone, on my arm.

It was like awakening from an evil dream. My fear welled up in fury.
Silently I launched an attack; with the torch I held I let fly in
blind and murderous onslaught. I struck something a blow that glanced;
the torch slipped from my grasp, but the creature staggered and sank
to the floor. I had my hands on its body now, and a crazy exultation
took hold of me when I realized that my opponent was merely a man like
myself and at my mercy. The stroke I had given blindly seemed to have
stunned him, for he made no resistance, but lay crumpled up, as I
found by groping. His breath came harsh and irregular.

Who was he? For what seemed immeasurable time I searched, but I could
not find my torch.

Obviously I had made an important capture, and the best thing to do,
since my light was lost, would be to lock the fellow-prisoner in and
go for reinforcements.

I had a handkerchief; so had he. With their assistance I triced him in
a position from which he would not easily free himself. I placed him
face downward, with his head turned aside for breathing and his legs
doubled back, and I clipped each wrist to the opposite ankle.

Then I groped my way down the long turnings, found the darkened world
again, locked the tower door, and made for the House.

The rest was like the return of horrid dreams. With the moon gone,
still the stars gave a grey cast to the darkness. I saw some
fluttering-draped figure descend from the first storey by the outside
stairs; I heard distracted sobbing. I saw vague forms that followed
one another on the lawn, heard phantom calls and a queer hysteric
laughter. The place seemed more alive by night than at any hour of
day.

Maryvale, I discovered afterward, had come out again, clambered down
all the way by the ivy. Lib, in the room next his, had heard him this
time, caught sight of him, fled across the passage to Mrs.
Bartholomew, shared that lady’s dismay on finding me also flown,
summoned Pendleton, who had roused Aire and come helter-skelter in
pursuit of the errant man of business. Lib and Mrs. Bartholomew, in
different styles of negligée, now stood spectators of the course.
Millicent Mertoun, too, had come crying out of doors by those northern
stairs, in her sleep, as she had come that first night with the
American girl watchfully by her side.

But to-night she roved alone. Where was Paula Lebetwood, whose room is
next the stairs, and who, however soundly she may have slept, must
have heard her dear friend’s weeping?

Lights were awakening in various chambers. Maryvale, much surprised at
the solicitude of his captors, was explaining courteously that he had
merely descended to “pick herbs.” Alberta Pendleton had appeared and
was taking Miss Mertoun back to the House.

By the time I had called attention to myself and had caused my story
to penetrate Crofts’ brain, many minutes had gone by. Four of us,
followed by those audacious females, Lib and Mrs. Bartholomew,
approached the towers. The door stood open. The intruder, securely
trussed and locked in by me, had made off. He had taken my torch,
invaluable as both light and weapon.

_Satis._



CHAPTER XXII

The Beginning of the End: Parabola

                Same day. 3 P.M.

In spite of early bed last night, no one was downstairs early this
bright morning, Sunday. I myself wanted breakfast at nine, but then I
am the one person in the House who has anything concrete to do (to
wit, this writing)—hence I require the less repose.

I visited the library before I went for food. To my grim pleasure, the
Book of Sylvan Armitage was back on its shelf. I am always grimly
pleased nowadays when anything baffling turns up. Crofts, by the way,
has proved blatantly sceptical about my experience last night; he said
that if I must go crawling about the House when decent folk are abed,
I mustn’t hold him responsible for what I think I see.

The telephone jangled in the corridor while I was at the table. I
heard Soames answer and take some message. Presently the servant came
to me.

“Superintendent Salt is holding on, sir, if you please.”

“Me, he wants?”

“He asked for any of the gentlemen, sir. Would you mind speaking to
him?”

“Not at all.” A few moments later I was saying, “Hello,
Superintendent; this is Bannerlee. Anything I can do for you?”

“Thanks very much, Mr. Bannerlee. Would you mind givin’ a message to
the doctor—Doctor Aire, I mean?”

“Delighted.”

“I’ve been lookin’ up _his_ whereabouts the two days before he came
down to Radnorshire.”

“_His!_”

“Yes. Nothing like thoroughness, is there? He might like to know he’s
not the Parson. Tell him he’s absolved, clean character, goes
scot-free.”

“He’ll be grateful, I’m sure.”

“Certain to be. Another thing, too, sir. I took the
liberty—unpardonable—of checkin’ _you_ also.”

“_Me!_”

The sound must have deafened Salt, for it was a little while before he
resumed, with smothered amusement. “Couldn’t help it, sir. All in the
way of routine. You’re acquitted, too, and can go your ways.”

“Thanks awfully.”

“Don’t mention it. By the way, I just told that man to inform Mr.
Pendleton that I’m comin’ up there this afternoon early, around
dinner-time. I’m bringin’ someone with me.”

“Oh? Any harm in asking who it is?”

“None at all,” chuckled Salt. “Good-bye.”

It was about one o’clock when I came downstairs again, after setting
down the record of last night’s expedition. I think everyone was in
the Hall, surrounding Salt and a young fellow in a neat grey suit, who
was lank and had freckles and brown hair. His appearance and manner—he
was smiling most of the time—were engaging. Salt also wore a
respectful grin; in fact, everyone looked brighter for this chap’s
presence, especially Crofts.

“Come on, Bannerlee,” he said; “let me introduce the beginning of the
end. You can guess who this is.”

I had a flash of genius. “Yes, I can, by George. It’s Harry—Mr.
Heatheringham.”

“Right!” declared the young man. “But after all, Mr. Bannerlee, you’ve
an unfair advantage in this guessing business.”

“You mean—?”

He winked, took my torch out of his pocket, and handed it to me with a
low bow, such as I had seen somewhere not long before. “Many thanks
for this. I had to borrow it when my own failed last night.”

“Gods! was it you I hit? I’m most awfully sorry.”

“It didn’t hurt, really, but for a little while I didn’t know where I
stood—er, that is, I wasn’t standing at all.” He felt a place on the
back of his head. “It’s hardly the size of a teacup—I mean the bump.
And I wasn’t dazed for long either.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I avowed. “You certainly lost no time waking
and legging it.”

“Oh, I was awake, wide enough, when you were fastening me up—and a
neat job, that.”

“You don’t mean to say—”

“Yes, but I thought it was better to let you do your worst and untie
myself afterward. I wasn’t sure that the time for explanations had
come, and I wasn’t sure—then—just what you yourself were up to.”

“But if I’d been someone else, you might have been killed.”

His eyes were merry. “I knew it wasn’t somebody else. Suppose we call
it a draw.”

“We’re dying to hear how you escaped,” said Lib. “Why do you keep it
bottled up?”

“It’s my living, you see,” returned Heatheringham apologetically, but
with his customary smile. “I have to be up to a few of the little
secrets of my trade, or I don’t get any bread and butter. Some do it
on the stage for money, but in my business it comes in valuable in
good earnest to carry a few skeleton keys and know how to twist a hand
out of a knotted handkerchief.”

Gradually, while talk went on, we disposed ourselves in chairs, making
a group about this young man who showed from the first minute of
acquaintance such a winning, and even naïve, nature. He sat in the
midst of us now, busy parrying all sorts of questions, and I noticed
that while he spoke lightly, he glanced from person to person, making
brief, sharp studies of us. Particularly he kept stealing looks at
Miss Lebetwood and the two younger Americans.

I had returned the study intensively, striving to capture some elusive
recollection. “Pardon me, Mr. Heatheringham, but really I believe I’ve
met you somewhere—another time, I mean. Am I right?”

“Yes, indeed, we have met. We’ve been having lovers’ meetings all over
the place. You recollect the umbrella?”

The menagerie-keeper! I uttered a great gasp. “That was never you in
the crooked black beard!”

“Wasn’t it, though?” he retorted brightly. “I can see your eyes
popping now, Mr. Bannerlee, when I said, ‘I won’t need finger-nails.’”

“Incredible! That man was bulbous.” I pointed to the detective’s
hands, which were brown and lean. “Don’t tell me you owned the great
red wrists and fingers that fellow had.”

“Try a tightly-bound cuff or any other constriction around the wrist
and keep your arms down—see what happens. Your hands will look like
hams. The rest was just a matter of accessories, an inflated
chest-protector, some dowdy clothes, some black hair. A bad disguise,
on the whole.”

“On the contrary, your twin brother wouldn’t have recognized you.”

“No, but he would have had me arrested. Disguise should be
unobtrusive, but that one shouted all over the place. To tell the
truth, I used it more to give my friend Crofts Pendleton something to
worry about than for any other reason.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” said Crofts.

“Yes, old man. I didn’t realize the situation here might actually be
serious. I merely supposed some sneak-thief was snooping in the
neighbourhood. But it did seem a good chance to have a little sport
with you. You will let yourself in for it,” he accused our muttering
host. “I thought I’d make myself up into a figure of fun and have a
reconnaissance of the scene a couple of nights, just to assure myself
there was no cause for alarm. Then I’d be seen on purpose by some good
honest yokels and perhaps a village idiot or so, and pop in in a day
or two to see what the effect had been in the Vale. But matters turned
out differently from what I had expected, and by the time I met with
you, Mr. Bannerlee, the last thing on earth I wanted was to have it
known I was in the neighbourhood. So I improvised some unnatural
eccentricities and made up a line of desperate talk that I knew would
spoil the last chance of Crofts’ guessing it was me, in case you told
him of your experience, as I felt certain you would.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No, you didn’t. And it made no difference, for what I said about the
bothersome watch-dogs wouldn’t have made much impression, would it,
unless our friend knew where it came from? All those men you sent
out,” he told Crofts, “kept treading on my toes. I had to leg it twice
to slip away from them. And that was after I had made some very
material discoveries and would have given a year of my life not to be
seen.”

“How was I to know that?” said Crofts. “What discoveries do you mean?”

“I ran into a chap who must have been Sir Brooke Mortimer from what I
know now. He seemed to have lost his way, quite a distance up the
Vale. I set the gentleman going in the right direction and watched him
start back downstream. A bit unsteady, I thought he was—oh, nothing
wrong with him that way, but I could see his eyes weren’t too good. He
didn’t seem able to pick his footing, and he might have stepped into a
hole as big as a house without knowing what had happened to him.”

“And do you mean to say that he followed your directions
unhesitatingly when according to yourself you looked like something
out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” asked Lord Ludlow, who had been playing
finger-exercises on his knees.

“I don’t believe he quite took me in, my Lord. I’m telling you his
eyesight couldn’t have been good. He might have thought I was a
gentleman-farmer, for all I know—and he seemed like an unsuspicious,
trusting little chap.”

I saw that the subject was a painful one to be discussed in full
session this way, and I wanted to divert the course of conversation. I
nodded to Salt.

“The discovery of Mr. Heatheringham knocks one off the list of your
favourite suspects, eh, Superintendent?”

“Can’t say it does,” he rejoined, with that slow smoulder of humour
underneath the surface. “I’ve known about Mr. Heatheringham since he
arrived in our little community over a week ago.”

He had! More surprises were let loose. As a measure of sensible
precaution the detective had reported his presence to Salt as soon as
he arrived in New Aidenn. In the early dawn after meeting me, having
learned that there was something worth attention in the way of mystery
in the Vale, the young man discarded the crooked black beard of the
menagerie-keeper and glorified his chin with a rich red one, finely
adapted to his complexion. This emblem he had attached properly, using
separate hairs at the edges and trimming the whole to a nicety. He
commenced a campaign of deceit.

First Foggins’ driver was tempted from the path of duty with a
five-pound note, and reported sick. While Foggins the milkman was
tearing his hair, in walked the unblushing detective, and Foggins fell
victim to his wiles. That very noon the newly-employed had driven the
milk cart up the Vale. He had explained at the kitchen door, with a
certain amount of wit, though with his ready tongue all the time in
his cheek, why the service was so much delayed and how he had fallen
heir to the position. The listener to this merry tale was Rosa Clay.
It gained the young man a means of contact with affairs inside the
House which might have been extremely valuable had the storm not cut
off the Vale from Foggins’ circuit.

During the week Heatheringham formed with the Post Office attendant a
mushroom friendship that passeth all legality. So it came about that
Crofts’ impassioned letters were handed to their recipient direct,
without going to Worcester and back. It was, moreover, the detective
himself who had been on the Post Office end of the ’phone when Crofts
dictated his telegram Thursday afternoon with many maledictions on the
stumbling clerk who took the message.

The dinner-bell had rung and we were on our feet. Salt announced he
mustn’t stay, but would leave the field clear for the younger man. “Do
what he tells you,” he said. “He has an idea from time to time.”

Heatheringham drew me apart, until the rest were gone, even waving
Crofts ahead.

“You can do me a favour, Mr. Bannerlee, if you will,” he said with a
laugh in his voice, as if he might have something in the way of a
surprise to try on me.

“I suppose I owe you a month’s hard labour for battering you last
night—but, of course, I want to help you if I can. What shall it be?”

“You’re keeping a written record of events, aren’t you?”

“Crofts told you!” I exclaimed reproachfully—reproachfully in
reference to Crofts, that is.

“Not a bit of it—just my prowling. I’ve noticed your candles burning
until all hours, and last night I brought a small telescope with me
and had a squint at you from a tree way out by the Water. I could
hardly think that you wrote letters all night, could I?”

“Well, your guess is right, as it happens, but my penmanship is rather
free and easy, and I don’t think you’ll find much value—” I was
speaking slowly but thinking fast. Had I put down anything positively
libellous, anything I’d hesitate to sign my name to?

“Let me try, all the same. You and I are both detached onlookers in
this thing, Mr. Bannerlee, and I shouldn’t be surprised if we
supplement each other pretty fully. I’m quite frankly selfish, you
see,” he admitted easily. “I want to know all you know without telling
you what I know.”

“Oh, I’ll trust you to repay me, not later than noon to-morrow,” I
said. “Come along upstairs with me while I get the sheets for
you—unless you’ll wait until after dinner.”

“There’s no after dinner for me; I’m not taking dinner,” he answered,
and we went up the stairs together. “I had a snack in New Aidenn with
something like this in prospect. Time’s what counts. It will be dark
too soon to suit me.”


                Same day. 7 P.M.

Please God, the experiment is over. It was not long.

About five this afternoon Heatheringham came into the library where I
was writing about the events of the day. He had wrestled with my
script since I had left him to go down to dinner, and he seemed even
better-humoured than before.

“I want some tea,” he said. “I want some tea, and yet, while there’s
light, I want a little assistance from the people here.”

“Are you commandeering the servants, too?”

“No, I can do without the servants, except that one who brought the
hot water.”

“Soames?”

“Right.”

“Well, you’ll find the rest of us in the conservatory, waiting for
both tea and you. Since the tragedy outside the Hall, the venue of tea
has been shifted.”

“I suppose they could wait fifteen minutes for their feeding, if I
suffered with them?”

“We have been in training for martyrdom all week. But what on earth is
this rigmarole you’re going to put us through?”

“I want you to rehearse a little drama you have already performed
without rehearsal.”

It was just that.

“I’m sorry if this is painful to some of you,” he said later in the
conservatory. “But it’s vital. I need to check some observations, and
there’s no way else. I’m awfully sorry to trouble you; really I am,
but it’s my living, you know.” He gave a sly smile. “It’s my living,
and it will help you to escape from here to-morrow. Is it a bargain?”

From the time Cosgrove left the Hall until Miss Lebetwood found him
dying outside may have been an hour. We were asked to re-enact as
precisely as possible our movements during the last quarter of this
period.

“You would be asleep, sir, over by the gate-house, if I’m not
mistaken,” said Heatheringham to Oxford. “I’ll let you off the
sleeping. Just be on hand, if you don’t mind. You,” addressing
Belvoir, “would be coming toward the towers and meeting Miss Mertoun
and Lord Herbert. Presently you’d commence monkeying with the winch.”
He spoke to me. “You were returning from the Delambre cottage, weren’t
you? Doctor Aire and Mr. Maryvale must see you from the summer-house.
I think you’ll all work into it.”

“But how silly!” said Miss Lebetwood. “All I can do is to wander about
the strawberry trees looking for tennis balls I know won’t be there.”

“It’s all make-believe, you know,” answered Heatheringham. “And I
can’t change the parts around, can I?”

“I don’t see how my doing that can help.”

“Still,” insisted the detective deferentially, “it will assist me a
lot if you’ll just go through the motions. Now, is everybody clear
about what he’s to do?”

“Shall I fetch hot water for Mr. Bannerlee, sir?” asked Soames, who
had been admitted to our company.

“That’s hardly essential. But you might carry an empty pannikin to
give mental support. Now, shall we commence? Some of the ladies may
need coats. It’s beginning to blow a bit.”

“Not fair unless you tell us what you’re going to do yourself,”
protested Lib.

“I’m going to be here, there, and everywhere,” said Heatheringham.
“You may even hear me giving a few stage directions. Come on, people,
I want my tea. One, two, three, go.”

Little gusts of wind were stirring. Evening frost had caused a
marvellous change in the foliage, and the air was chromatic with
flying leaves. They blew in my face while I breasted my way to the
north end of the sycamore park, where I turned to retrace my steps.
Through the dim light of the wood, I saw the black forms of Maryvale
and Doctor Aire together on the porch of the abandoned summer-house.
They nodded when I came nearest them. I reached the bridge, the
cypresses, the lawn, the mansion itself. I saw people beyond the
gate-house.

Suddenly I remembered that to keep in character I must peer into the
Hall, and my flesh began to crawl at the thought of seeing the grim,
phantasmal bone. I would not see it, of course, but if I did—

Then I caught a glimpse of Heatheringham over a hundred yards south of
the House. He seemed to be waving me on, and I assumed that I must be
a little behind my schedule. Without a glance into any of the windows
I obediently rounded the library tower, entered the half-opened door,
not omitting to ring, since I had done so on the previous occasion.
The footman answered the bell with what would have been appalling
suddenness had I not known he had been waiting for me. He received my
instructions for hot water with the same obeisance and the same
perfunctory words in the identical tone as before. I climbed the empty
House to my room.

I was in a quandary, for it would do no manner of good to take off my
coat and repeat the little battle with myself whose result had been a
wounded finger. I certainly wouldn’t subject my digit to the
safety-razor’s mercies a second time. But for the sake of keeping in
the rhythm of the other day I might perform some of the milder
motions. First I must go out to the balcony, where I had picked up the
odd little scrap of rope.

I pressed through the window and, standing on the roof outside, saw
the forms of people anticking about the tower and heard the rasp of
the winch. Someone was on the lawn a little distance beyond the walk
that skirts the House—Heatheringham himself.

“Hello!” I called aloud in the high wind. “Everything working
smoothly?”

He must have seen me before, for he answered quickly, cupping his
hands. “Yes, I think they’re all in their places. You did come out
there the other day, didn’t you?”

“I did, and should go in again now if I keep in step.”

“Did you order that hot water?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“How did the servant behave?”

“Admirably; he didn’t turn a hair.”

“No, I should think not. Well, carry on. I’m bound this way.” He
shouted the last words in a bristling wind, and set off walking toward
the north.

“Good hunting,” I called after him.

I had now been on the roof for nearly five minutes and had equalled
the span of time I spent there before. I returned to my chamber.

I laid my watch on the table and timed my own part of the programme,
to make as near the proper _rapprochement_ with Soames as I could. I
allowed half a minute for divesting myself of coat and shirt, and as
long again for my struggle with the oak chest and my mishap with the
stool. (The handle of the chest was gone now; no use repeating that
fracas.) Thirty seconds more of searching for a place to attach my
strop, perhaps the remainder of the minute spent in that unhappy
stropping (for luck and devilment I gave the curlicued bracket a jerk
and a smash), fifteen seconds to stare like a fool at the place where
I had formerly cut my finger, a few moments for crossing to the door
and listening for Soames—

My heart missed a beat or two. Someone _was_ climbing the stairs!

It was silly of me, of course, to be taken aback by the very thing I
was waiting for, I had heard no one but Soames himself ascending at
his proper time.

But the slam of the door down below and the deep brawling laughter
which followed— Dear God! they, too, reverberated, and the sound of
that inhuman mirth now held a ghastly message which it had not on the
first occasion.

And early above the sound of the laughter had I heard a single sharp
explosion, like the report of a firearm?

I leaped across to the window. This time there was no fan of light
spreading from the Hall, but I saw indecipherable forms criss-crossing
on the lawn, and the sound of conflicting cries floated up in the
lapse of the wind.

To leave the chamber, to reach the stair-head, took but a second or
two. Again I saw Soames green as an old statue, a grotesque caricature
of Aquarius, stony-lipped with mortal fear, the little empty water-can
dangling from his hand.

I ignored him, but heard his feet pound down the stairs behind me.
Down at the front entrance, just outside the door, I caught sight of
Lib, still as wax. We looked at each other, mirroring the dread we
saw.

“Did you hear it?” I said at last.

Her voice was weak. “The shot, you mean?”

“Was there a shot?”

“There was if my ears are working.”

“Where?”

She shook her head miserably. “I—I don’t know. I think it was out on
the lawn.”

“Then why were you coming in?”

She clenched both little fists and shook them tremblingly. “I was only
doing what the detective told me to do. Besides, he—he came in first.”

“_He came in!_”

“He went in this door while I was quite a way from the House.”

“Then what’s become of him? He couldn’t have fired that shot outside!”

“Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about it. I got to
the door in time to hear the tail-end of that laugh—that was enough
for me. I don’t want to lead the searching-party. This is the last
time I officiate for any detective.”

“Come along with me, then. He must be here somewhere.”

“I think they’re trying to find him outside, sir,” said Soames, who
had stepped warily to the corner of the House.

“That’s because they don’t know he went in here. Come along, both of
you.”

We passed into the portrait-corridor, and I shouted Heatheringham’s
name a couple of times, without effect.

Several of the servants had emerged from their quarters and were
clustered about me while I stood at the door beneath the musicians’
gallery, scrutinizing the vast gloom of the Hall. Somehow, I was loath
to enter or to switch on the light ready to my hand.

“Nobody here,” said Lib beside me, in a tone of relief.

I still moved my glance through the spaces of the room. Feet were
pouring through the front door. I heard Crofts’ voice raised:

“Heatheringham’s missing. What in thunder are you up to?”

Then I saw something limned against the dark expanse of the central
window of the Hall: the shape of a man who leaned heavily against the
window-frame, looking out to the lawn. The moment my eyes had
distinguished him, I knew it was Heatheringham. But he was awfully
still! Why hadn’t he heard my shout?

“Heatheringham!” I called, and was shocked how strained the syllables
crept from my lips. “Heather—”

“Where is he? Do you see him?” demanded Crofts, pressing to the door.
“Why didn’t you light up—good God!”

He had switched on the electricity. From outside, beyond the window,
came cry upon excited cry when the form of the detective was revealed
by the blazing chandelier. But we who were behind Harry Heatheringham
could see why he did not answer us, why he did not move. There was a
gaping wound at the base of his brain, and the whole back of his trim
grey coat was black with blood.

“Lawks!” cried Soames, and seemed about to faint.

Persons were rushing in from outside now, through the french windows.
Doctor Aire took one look at the wound, and his face was filled with
the most complete astonishment. His little dark eyes came out of their
hiding-places, and even his tobacco-leaf complexion went several
shades wan.

“Keep the women away,” he snapped at Soames, “and don’t let Maryvale
come in here.”

“This is horrible, horrible,” Crofts kept saying.

“Is—is he dead?” asked Bob Cullen timidly, but no one smiled.

“He is,” answered the Doctor. “Men with holes in their heads like this
are dead as Pharaoh.”

I ventured to touch the left hand that hung with such dreadful
listlessness. “Why, he’s stiff!” I blurted, and a great shudder shook
me. “He’s stiff! He must have been dead a long time. But, Doctor, I
was talking to him less than five minutes ago!”

“You were!” exclaimed Crofts in an incredulous bull-voice.

“Quite so,” said Aire. “I noticed it the moment I saw the poor
fellow.” He, too, touched the left hand. “Stiff, yes, but not cold
yet.”

“What’s it all mean?” asked Belvoir.

“He could never be leaning there in that semi-lifelike manner if it
weren’t the case,” said Aire. “I observed it, as I said, when I had
the first glimpse of him. I have heard of it, but I’ve never seen a
case before.”

“A case of what?”

“Instant _rigor mortis_. It occurs sometimes, under certain
conditions, in sudden death.”

Ludlow, who stood near the body on the other side, was regarding it
with awe, but his sharp face quickened with discovery. “Have you
looked at his other hand? There’s a revolver in it.”

“Then he did fire the shot,” I cried.

“I’ll stake my life the shot was from somewhere outside,” avouched
Crofts.

“I’m sure it was,” said Belvoir quietly.

“The point I wish to make,” said Ludlow, “is that the revolver is
outside. He’s put his hand right through.”

It was so. Concealed by the fact that the body pressed close to the
window, the right arm half-way to the elbow had been thrust through
the glass and the wrist was supported by one of the cross-bars between
the small panes. The weapon was tightly clutched in the hand, and its
nose pointed upward!

“What in the name of reason could he have fired at up there?”

It was when we laid the dead detective, stiff in the original posture,
revolver clamped in hand, on the carpet spread over the _Brocade de
Lyons_ creation that we looked beyond that article of elegance and saw
what had been concealed behind it.

Splashes of blood from Heatheringham’s wound were on the floor at our
feet, between the body and the couch. Now we beheld more blood, a
trail of it across the floor in drops that led in a long, irregular,
parabolic curve from the couch to the open door by the clock-corner,
and so out into the corridor. There the track ceased abruptly.

“Hm,” said Aire, standing at the spot. “Here’s where the assailant
tucked his bludgeon away.” He looked up and down the gallery. “Friend
Crofts, why not have another search and see if one of these priceless
paintings doesn’t conceal a door?”

“There has never been, and is not any secret passage in the House,”
said Crofts decisively. “You can say amen to that.”

Aire shrugged his shoulders. Lord Ludlow shook his head several times,
though what at no one could tell. Belvoir stared at the last drop of
blood where it stained the blue-carpeted floor as if he were
fascinated by it. Bob Cullen pursed his lips and whistled a ditty of
no tone. Crofts kept putting his hands in his pockets and taking them
out again.

Insensibly, instinctively, we drew the tiniest bit closer to one
another. Spiritually, we huddled. We were all little men, badly
frightened, in the great House where murder stalked invisible.


If this is “the beginning of the end,” what will the end itself be
like?



CHAPTER XXIII

Miss Lebetwood and a Campstool

                October 9. Noon.

“No,” said Miss Lebetwood, “I certainly didn’t do what he wanted me
to. What good would that have been?”

Salt’s brow was very grave, but his eyes were narrowly upon her. “You
watched him, you say?”

“Yes, as long as he was in sight from the edge of the strawberry
trees.”

“What happened?”

She bit her lip. “Nothing that will really help you.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” said Salt gently. “What did you see?”

“By the time I reached the strawberry trees and looked back, the lawn
was empty. It was still empty when—”

“Excuse me, Miss; what about the gate-house?”

“I couldn’t see the towers from that spot; I was on the wrong side of
the knoll that overlooks the court.”

“Quite. Thank you, Miss.”

“So I watched the lawn and the House. I could almost see it growing
darker while I waited, the light changes so rapidly in the Vale. And I
hate the twilight—all the really terrible things here happen then.”
She broke off, and we knew that she must be thinking of that one
terrible thing in the gloaming of a week ago. Alberta made a movement
as if to check her from continuing. “No, it’s all right. I was just
realizing what a fool I am. The time of day can’t possibly make any
difference.”

“I don’t believe it does,” acquiesced Salt. “But go on, if you
please.”

“It was darkening so suddenly that I thought I shouldn’t be able to
recognize anyone who might appear. But when Mr. Bannerlee came out of
the park, I saw him quite plainly. He seemed to hesitate when he came
past the Hall, but then he went on faster and disappeared in the
direction of the front entrance.”

“Heatheringham beckoned me to hurry,” I put in.

“There was nobody in sight then, but I believe I heard the winch
working under the towers. A minute or two later Mr. Heatheringham
appeared from down below, looking this side and that, and occasionally
glancing upward.”

“Are you sure?” asked Salt.

“Yes, because he caught sight of Mr. Bannerlee, who had come out his
window and was standing on the roof. Mr. Bannerlee waved his hand, and
I could just hear the sound of his voice when he hailed Mr.
Heatheringham, the wind was rushing on so just then. After that I
heard nothing of their voices, but soon afterward Mr. Bannerlee went
in and Mr. Heatheringham commenced to walk quickly up toward the
cypresses. He was looking this side and that again; I thought he was
more intent than before. He broke into a run, but while he was running
he turned—”

“Turned!”

“Yes, and ran all the way back to the south end of the House. At the
library corner he slowed to a walk and went out of sight. Then Lib
came along from down the lawn, and she had almost disappeared beyond
the library tower—going toward the main entrance, you know—when I
heard the crack of the revolver. Lib rather tightened up then, and I
saw her look every way at once, but she apparently decided to
disbelieve her ears, for she went on out of sight.”

“And met Soames and me,” I said.

“Well, everybody seemed to have heard the shot, though nobody knew
where it had come from. Mr. Pendleton, Lord Ludlow, and the rest began
crossing the lawn this way and that, shouting directions at one
another that nobody heeded. I came on from the trees, but nobody
seemed to see me. After that—well, you know.”

Salt nodded. “Mr. Pendleton’s told me how they found the body. Just
one question more, Miss, and thank you very much. You couldn’t have
seen anything in the air that Heatheringham might have some reason to
take a shot at? No large bird of any description?”

“No, sir.”

“You didn’t hear something like a bird call—something that might have
attracted his attention?”

“I could hear nothing but the wind. Anyhow, Mr. Heatheringham was
inside the House.”

“Of course he was,” said Salt.

But he is no longer. The detective’s body was taken to New Aidenn in
the dead of night.

Salt’s laborious questions to each one of us went on until eleven, but
the problem of Harry Heatheringham’s taking off remains to-day more
cryptic than Cosgrove’s. The Superintendent acknowledged defeat, and
had the Chief Constable on the ’phone shortly after eleven. Scotland
Yard will be with us presently, although the lack of decent train
connections out of Worcester will prevent the Inspector from reaching
New Aidenn before late dinner time to-night.

Six burly constables, in pairs, were patrolling the grounds from nine
o’clock until morning, but I think most persons within the House kept
anxious vigil as well. For my own part, I flung myself on my ancient
four-poster and found sleep—sleep, but not rest, for I was visited by
tormenting dreams. The world was mist seethed, and through the long
black lanes between the billows swept a procession of the souls of
murdered ones. Down from the invisible above the swirl sounded a
terrible voice: “Let traitors beware,” and from time to time a blaze
of light burst through, throwing on the curtain of fog the gigantic
shadow of an arm.

I awoke, and lay awake in a world of real mist until I could endure
inactivity no longer. I dressed and went downstairs, earlier than ever
before, save on that morning when I tried to discover “lost content”
on the hills. It did not surprise me to find Salt already hard at
work; he was examining with almost microscopic care the gouted trail
of blood. But a surprise awaited me.

It was much too early for breakfast; yet Miss Lebetwood was standing
at the window of the dining-room. Attired in a navy blue sweater and
serge skirt and high laced boots, she appeared very alert and full of
business.

Seeing that I “took her in,” she smiled and said, “I’m going to follow
in your steps this morning. As soon as I’ve had some breakfast, I’m
off for the hills.”

“On account of—?”

“Yes.”

I simulated a groan. “I should never have let you have it if I thought
it would make you reckless.”

Now, the fact is that she struck me in a heap last evening by coming
straight up to me and asking to read this diary. How _she_ ever came
to hear of it I can’t imagine, and she was obdurate to my demands for
enlightenment. Only she told me very seriously that since no one else
seemed certain to grapple successfully with the many problems in the
Vale, she was going a step beyond “thinking” and would take an active
course.

“Somehow I’m sure I’ll be the best detective of the lot,” she said. “I
have kept my mind unprejudiced, you see. And really, Mr. Bannerlee,
I’m positive you have several facts locked away in your book that I
never knew.”

The end was that she marched away with the book, I may say entirely
against my sense of discretion, while I shuddered at the thought of
her perusing some of the personal comments I had included.

And now she was bound for the hills!

I looked through the window, and saw the landscape grey. A bank of fog
stood motionless about the base of Whimble.

“This is scarcely the day for it, is it? It’s easy to be lost up there
in the mist.”

She turned from the drear panorama and looked at me kindly. “I can
tell from your voice that you’re very much concerned about me, but
really you shouldn’t be. I’ve had harder climbs than this heaps of
times, and you can depend on me to be back early this afternoon. You
may begin to worry about two o’clock if I don’t appear then”—her chin
tilted with determination—“with what I want.”

I returned her kind look. “Really, Miss Lebetwood, I hope my, er,
jottings haven’t set you on some false lead.”

“There’s a lot more in your journal than jottings,” she said, with
serious lines of thought about the eyes. She gave me a glancing look.
“I see you are sceptical.”

“It’s hardly fair,” I laughed, “that because you’ve turned detective
in earnest, you should try to mystify me like the other sleuths.”

“What’s this? what’s this?” asked Salt, presenting himself.

She beckoned him in. “Mr. Salt, have you finished with that horrible
gore for now? Because I want you to ’phone a telegram for me when the
Post Office opens. Will you, please?”

“With pleasure, Miss. But why honour me with Mr. Bannerlee so handy?”

“I believe you’re fishing! But didn’t you appoint yourself censor and
want to know all the messages that go out of the Vale?”

“Not any more, Miss,” responded Salt, running his eye over a slip of
paper she had brought from a skirt pocket. He raised his brows. “To
the Welsh National Library, eh? Aberystwyth, of course.” Again, more
slowly, he perused the message. “H’m, very interestin’, Miss. I’ll
send it without delay, and you’ll know by the time you get back if the
bookworms have the information.”

“Show it to Mr. Bannerlee, please,” she said. “I don’t want him to
think I’m rude.”

“No, not for the world,” I smiled, with negative hand raised to
decline the proffered paper. “Since I’m to be denied the pleasure of
accompanying you this morning, I wash my hands of the whole affair.
You shall not have my invaluable advice.”

“If you went with me this morning,” said Miss Lebetwood, making a
small grimace, “I could promise you one thing: you’d be unutterly
bored. Well, thank goodness, at last here comes my breakfast.”

Now, a quarter of an hour later, when my own special breakfast had
arrived on a tray, hers had disappeared. We had been talking of tramps
and journeys, comparing experiences, but I noticed that for the last
few minutes her remarks had been very general and not wholly relevant.
It was obvious that she was preoccupied. At last, having built up a
little tower of sugar cubes and toppled it with her finger, she said:

“I was the man in the library.”

Naturally, this was too much for me to comprehend and adjust myself to
in a split-second, and I was still groping like a man stunned when she
continued:

“Yes, the cap was my own, and I had borrowed Bob’s tuxedo and come
down to get that book; it had a fascination for me, and I must say I
was surprised”—with a careful inclination of the head toward the
corridor—“that _he_ hadn’t kept it under lock and key.”

“Quite so.”

“So you see why I didn’t come out even when Millicent was wandering
again. I had gone back to my room the way I’d come—that was by the
outer stairs and through one of the french windows I’d undone the
catch of after Blenkinson had gone the rounds—and I was gobbling up
the book, still in borrowed plumage, when the commotion began. I
couldn’t have appeared without starting more fuss than ever; I suppose
I shouldn’t have much more than a rag of reputation left. They
wouldn’t be so surprised in America at a girl’s dressing like a
man—the movies have helped a lot there.”

“Well, you needn’t take the appalling risk again,” I promised her. “If
you should wish to gorge yourself clandestinely on the pages of Sylvan
Armitage, you may have my copy in perfect secrecy.”

“Oh, your copy came? Don’t get up, please, and please excuse me if I
don’t wait. Your breakfast will all get cold if I keep you talking.”

“Not at all. Yes, my copy came through.”

She had arisen and walked to the door. I had noticed a small campstool
folded and leaning against the wall, and now was surprised to see her
pick it up and tuck it beneath her arm.

“Are you taking that?”

She held it so that it opened, showing its green canvas seat. “Yes,
aren’t you in favour of it?”

“It’s æsthetic, if that’s what you mean. But how odd! If you want
something to sit on, why not take a blanket or an old coat?”

“Perhaps this isn’t to sit down on.”

I gaped. “What—what do you mean?”

She folded the stool and tucked it away again. Her smile was very
sweet and provoking, and it held that little token of wistfulness
which had never left it since Cosgrove’s death.

The skirt swung briskly out, and the sound of the little boots receded
and died away. On what wild search was she bound?

Then I stopped eating, while the idea that grew in my mind spread its
ugly branches. What might a stranger think? Not I, of course, who
would stake my life she is better than gold, but some newcomer from
the outside world, such as the Scotland Yard official due here this
evening? Might it not seem a pose? This resolve to play the rôle of
detective, this secret roaming through the House in man’s attire, this
interest in my diary, and this secretive hunting on the hills—would
they not appear parts of an assumed character? Ridiculous, of
course—unthinkable, in actuality—but might it not be thought? And what
trouble, even disaster, might not follow such a false impression?

Somehow I was not at all amused toward noon by an argument that
sprouted up in the library between Crofts and Aire in connection with
some phase of the Parson Lolly legend. Aire was devil’s advocate in
this discussion, and Crofts persisted in pooh-poohing the tale as all
nonsense, tommyrot, and rubbish.

“I thought you were a scientist,” bullied our host, but Aire contented
himself with a chuckle, and moved toward the Hall, whence the voice of
Lord Ludlow came in a kind of shrill moan:

“. . . fundamental decencies . . . civilized life.”

And I judged that Belvoir had just uttered some devastating platitude
about the geisha girls or the way women choose their husbands in
British Guiana. It occurred to me then a bit strongly that Belvoir
plays the fool, and that if he really thinks our British morality
unsuitable for a civilized temperament (_i. e._ his) he had better
emigrate to the bush or to Terra del Fuego, where he may be uncramped
among the broader and merrier folkways.

I have mentioned more than once, I believe, the sub-irritant effect
Mrs. Belvoir has upon me; her hazy personality, taken with the odd
remarks she lets fall, hint at something I can’t quite define, but
would like to very much.

When Aire went through the armoury door, only four of us were left in
the library: Mrs. Belvoir, Alberta, Crofts, and I (in the seclusion of
the tower). Mrs. Belvoir watched the Doctor’s departure, then turned
to Crofts with the promptitude of one who has at last the opportunity
she has been waiting for.

“I do hope you won’t mind to-night,” she said.

It would not have been surprising if Crofts had failed to extract a
meaning from this wish, but he seemed to grasp it. His cheek remained
at the same full flush it had reached during the Aire controversy,
while he turned his eyes slowly toward Mrs. Belvoir, and I thought
that the lady had not chosen the likeliest time for wooing his good
graces.

“You don’t mean to say—” he rumbled.

“But dear Alberta doesn’t mind—do you?” she asked in sudden appeal
that was answered with ardour rather less than half its own.

“I didn’t think it could do any harm,” said Alberta, divided between a
reassuring smile at her guest and a warning frown at her husband.
“Probably the Scotland Yard man—”

“But it’s for him I especially want to give a demonstration,” declared
Mrs. Belvoir with emphatic faintness. “I can help him so much. I think
that perhaps the real difficulty we have had all along is that we have
not looked beyond the visible. I do so wish Sir Brooke were here; he
was so sympathetic. There were always such things of _real value_
learned when he was present.”

“I have it!” I exclaimed from my obscurity, striking my thigh. “Mrs.
Belvoir, you are a spiritualistic medium!”

They all regarded me with amazement bold on their faces, and I turned
my blatancy into apologetic curiosity. “Sorry, but I didn’t know
before, you see. How frightfully interesting. I hope you do give us a
séance to-night, Mrs. Belvoir.”

“Oh, all right,” muttered Crofts. “But it’s the police you’ll have to
convince, really.”

“I’ll deal with the police,” said Mrs. Belvoir.

“As for Sir Brooke’s absence,” I remarked, “why may he not be present?
Perhaps we shall have a message from him, Mrs. Belvoir.”

I think she discerned levity in me. “Really, Mr. Bannerlee, you may be
surprised by having that very thing happen.” She glided from the room.

Crofts looked at me bitterly, as if he held me responsible for the
whole business, but instead of pouring out vials of wrath he said,
“How about a drink, Bannerlee? I need one.”

“Oh, Crofts,” reproached Alberta, “you know it’s still morning.”

“Well, I haven’t had one so far, have I?” he retorted, ringing, and
stared in oafish surprise when she departed promptly from the room.
“What have I done now, I’d like to know?”

“You _are_ getting peppered from all directions,” I laughed. “But
cheer up, old man,” I added, hearing a measured tread in the corridor.
“This staff of servants of yours certainly outdoes the crew of any
sinking ship I’ve ever heard of in devotion to duty. After last
night’s catastrophe—well, they deserve medals, platinum ones.”

Soames slid in and Crofts said, “Whiskey,” cocking an eye at me to see
if I approved.

“Yes, and by the way, Soames,” I called, while the servant turned on
his heel, “just tell us the truth, will you? Why aren’t you and Morgan
and the rest fifty miles away from here and running for your lives?”

His face was a flat mask, with expression ironed out of every feature.
“I—I beg your pardon, sir? I don’t understand.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Come on, man,” I rallied him. “What’s this hold
Blenkinson’s got over you?”

His countenance remained under rigid muscular control, but his legs
gave a little shiver. He looked at me, and his face was empty of
thought, but then his gaze met his master’s. He paled, for Crofts’
glare demanded rather than invited confession.

“It’s—it’s Mr. Blenkinson’s, er, theory, sir.”

“My God, has Blenkinson a theory too!” Crofts shouted. “A speculative
butler! What next? I don’t pay him to have theories.”

“No, sir,” agreed Soames. “We all ’ave the greatest confidence in Mr.
Blenkinson.”

“No doubt,” I said. “And Soames, ah, what is the nature of Mr.
Blenkinson’s theory?”

The servant had the look of a man ground between millstones. His neck
undulated in a series of gulps.

“Out with it,” I urged. “Confession is good for the soul.”

Soames turned an imploring look at me, his eyes like those of a wretch
_in extremis_.

“Oh, Blenkinson’s theory be damned,” growled Crofts impatiently; “but
don’t tell him I said so. Fetch the whiskey.”

The servant dashed for the door, and it was Toby who brought in the
decanter and glasses.


                It is now 2.30 P.M.

An hour ago it was clear and mild; then the mist redoubled and a chill
came into the air, something we have not experienced before by day.

She has not returned. I shall try to organize a searching party at
once, and if no one else regards the situation seriously, I’ll go
alone to find her.



CHAPTER XXIV

Bannerlee’s Secret

                2.45 P.M.

Salt shared my perturbation. Indeed, he adopted the idea of a
searching expedition with such alacrity and energy that one might
suppose Miss Lebetwood to be fleeing from justice!

There were some bitter things said of her, though, by those, even, who
volunteered readiest for the search. Repressed criticisms of her
seemingly callous behaviour since Cosgrove’s death outcropped now. I
stood by, a coward, for hot answers rose to my lips and I suppressed
them. I remembered that from these hostile thoughts, thoughts more
sinister might spring.

Just as they were going, I observed that Maryvale was not present.
(Aire, too, was not among us.) Tenney volunteered the information,
gained from Harmony, that Maryvale has again locked himself in his
room. Seeking admittance in her morning round of the bedrooms, she
found the door fastened and received a gruff intimation that she need
not trouble to knock again until further notice.

I am almost as unwilling to leave Maryvale to his own devices as to
leave Paula Lebetwood unsought for on the hills. But we _must_ find
her!


                7.45 P.M.

The last stragglers have not even yet returned from the uplands.

Hours of starved hope they were, while I stumbled along the half-blind
paths, often bewildered, once quite lost myself. It was dogged work. I
never should have struggled through without an inexorable motive and
the faintest glimmer of a clue, a clue offered me by Salt many days
ago. Had he not told how in his boyhood he had found “something like”
the oratory of St. Tarw? I had kept the directions he had given, and
now in a forlorn hazard I followed them, since they alone might lead
me to some definite place that she, too, might have sought.

In observing Salt’s tuition, I was obliged to keep for the most part
below the crown of the hills. The flanks were cut by gorges where
water had eaten its way. In these places I made but indifferent
progress. In a dusky dingle I did no better, and although I gasped in
relief at finding what seemed a path, it proved unfriendly, for it led
me into a covert of dogwood whose small green berries were turning
purple-black, and deserted me there. I got out somehow, although
spines clutched me. Before me, stretching into the upper fog, extended
a curtain of rock and gravel. I attacked it with feet and hands.

It seemed to go up and up forever. In that frantic climb, out of a
bottom soon invisible, up to a summit veiled in fog, I tore a
finger-nail and broke into the flesh of my left palm. I paused on a
splintery ledge to bind my handkerchief over the wound, and rested
there awhile. It was then that I thought of looking, not up or down,
but sidewise.

A brief cry escaped me. I could see further on the left, and what I
saw quickened my heart.

A few yards away the rock curtain ended somewhat abruptly, and beyond
appeared a brief slope full of stunted trees. Even further in the same
direction, the trees gave place to shorter, tangled growth intermixed
with grassy patches. Here and there a monolith thrust up from the
surface, which on the whole was fairly level, though a vague darkness
in the background showed that this clearing was not the summit of any
hill, but a platform more or less below the highest elevation.

Along the outer edge of the cleared space stood a regiment of trees,
whose ranks were quite dense enough to conceal what lay behind from
eyes in the hollow of the Vale. Having gained the grassy platform with
its curious black stones sprouting and littered about, I found that
while I continued in the same direction over the tumbled grass full of
small scarlet toadstools, the ground grew higher and the dark mass of
the hilltop closer, while the platform narrowed.

My hope caught fire and blazed. I kept peering ahead and slightly
upward, for the gentle slope persisted. Suddenly I saw Miss Lebetwood,
very dim in the mist.

She was seated close under the shadowy brow of the hill, with her face
away from me, and her head thrown back, leaning against something.

A lovely picture she had been that first night by the gate-house
tower; now again I paused, rapt by the grace of her languid, lissome
body, by the pale abstraction of her face—against the ancient gloom of
the oratory of St. Tarw!

There was not the slightest doubt that this had been the devotional
cell of the saint. Here stood the rude arch, still discernible though
one or two of its stones had been displaced and the rest were mantled
in moss and grass grown downward from above. The projection beside the
door, where her head leaned, had surely once upon a time been the
support of a holy shrine. These scattered rocky benches: on them had
sat the small, dark, half-savage hill-folk, the strange congregations
of the venerable man.

No, I would not rouse her from that mood of thought or vacancy; I
would be still until she turned and looked at me. So minutes passed,
while her image impressed itself in my mind, in my very heart of
hearts. While I stood there in the grass, awaiting the first movement
of her weary head, even breathing softly that she might not be
disturbed, for the first time I dared to say to myself, bold and
unafraid, “I love her.”

She did quicken from her inanimate pose, she did turn her head and see
me. She rose swiftly; already I had come very near to her.

When she attempted to speak, her voice faltered. “So—so you found me?”

“Yes, Paula,” I said.

“I was waiting. I heard—”

My own queer voice filled the pause. “You don’t mean that—you were
waiting—for me?”

“Yes.”

“You heard the others calling, and you waited for me?”

“Yes.”

Then—I cannot describe what was, only what must have been, for the
white-heat of those moments has annihilated the memory of them—she was
close within my arms, and my lips reached hers. Yes, for that
ineffable once, I must have kissed her, since I remember too well that
when I would have drawn her to me again, she put me away with a gentle
pressure of her hand against my arm.

She shook her head slowly, her gaze searching mine.
“You—misunderstood, I think. I—I let you because of what I saw in your
eyes. They were soft and wistful for a moment.”

“But—Paula—”

“Now I think that you must never do that again.”

My mind went cold and grey as the world about us. “I’m sorry, then.
Indeed, I must have misunderstood.”

I saw that some change had rushed over her. Her face became dull and
sad, as if the clammy gloaming that darkened about us had penetrated
to her heart. “Don’t misunderstand me all over again; please don’t.
Your kisses might be very sweet, and their meaning might be dear to
dream about. But you know that I have to set all the woman in me
aside. . . . I must forget dreams,” she said bitterly, and to my
astonishment she put both hands across her eyes and commenced to sob,
sinking down on the stone seat again. I stood by and felt the iron
grind into my soul.

But half a minute later she looked up with a rueful smile through her
tears. “How perfectly ridiculous of me. What must you think! Don’t
imagine for a minute that I was crying for any such preposterous
reason as I said. It’s just that I’m awfully, awfully tired, and I
_felt_ tired that moment. I was up nearly all last night over your
diary. Please, have you a handkerchief I can use? I’ve nothing but one
of these silly little women’s affairs.”

I handed over a fairly clean one. “Up all last night and in the hills
all day! You’re a Trojan. But at least you found what you were looking
for?”

She ceased dabbing for a moment to give me a half-moist look. “Here,
do you mean?”

“Why, of course.”

“I found what I wanted, but it wasn’t here. This was afterward. I
somehow had a feeling that you would come here and discover me sooner
or later. These _inane_ tears.”

I brooded on this for a while, while she removed the last traces of
them. “I suppose it’s no good asking where you found what you really
wanted?”

“Why, yes—up there on Mynydd Tarw.”

“But at least you aren’t bringing it back with you as you declared you
would, are you?”

She gave a strange laugh. “It was too big, a million times too big. So
I have to be satisfied with carrying it here.” She placed a finger
against her forehead. “Now I am ready, sir, if you’ll take me back
down with you. Please let’s go now. There is so much to be done
to-night.”

“You shall rest to-night, nothing else.”

“On the contrary—don’t think I’m rude—there’s everything else. Yes,
yes, really. Come, let’s go.”

She picked up the little campstool, but I took it from her. Slowly we
turned and went away from that place, and while we passed through a
huddling hazel wood where sheep had made a track before us, the sun at
last thridded the mist with hazy golden beams. While we descended the
glen, I looked at her face with the light playing upon its firm,
rounded surfaces and gleaming in her eyes. She was weary, indeed, with
what seemed more than physical exhaustion; I slipped my arm about her
when she appeared almost unable to pick her footing on the precarious
slope. But, “Oh, no, no,” she said, resisting so softly that I pitied
her, and took my arm away.

When we had discovered the path that led down to Aidenn Water and were
well on our slanting way to the valley bottom, she found more strength
in the smoother footing. Suddenly I felt that she was scrutinizing me,
and I turned my head to hear her ask:

“What did it remind you of—that place up there?”

“A graveyard,” I answered almost without thought.

“Just so. Tell me honestly; have you never been there before?”

“Before?—there?” I repeated, quite truly surprised.

“Don’t temporize, please. Confess that you were there before but
didn’t set it down when you wrote your journal. That was the place
where you fell when you escaped from the bull, and it was where you
took shelter from the storm the day you saw the rainbow. Wasn’t it?” I
did not answer but she insisted. “I suppose you had some foolish fear
that if you wrote about it and someone—like poor me—read of the
discovery before you had published it to the world, you might lose the
credit for it. Yes? For it _was_ your discovery, and I only followed
the hints you gave.”

“Yes,” I said promptly, since my secret was guessed. “It was my
discovery, and I wanted to preserve it for myself. I thought I had
written enough, without being explicit to the point of revelation, to
sustain any claim I might need to make afterward. I suppose you think
I was a very large and egregious idiot?”

For a little while she did not answer. When I turned to look at her,
her eyes seemed to dwell not on the present but on the past, and there
was the intention of a smile in her face. “No; I think you were
an—antiquarian. Ah, you scholars!”

“Well, in archæological circles you know—” I broke off.

“Archæological circles seem about as important as ant-hills to me,
just now. One thing, though, I really learned last night and today—a
platitude I never quite believed in.”

“A platitude—and not yet discredited?”

She gave a little laugh. “I mean the one about boxing up truth. You
can hammer down board after board, but the truth is like smoke: it
always finds a new chink in the cover to escape from. Don’t you
see”—she gave a smothered laugh—“the moment you began keeping your
archæological cat in the bag, you had to use all kinds of devices of
wire and rope to keep it there, and more often than not it was you and
not the cat who was tangled!”

I looked at her in comic dismay. “Well! If you’ve found that out from
the diary you must be a perfect demon of ratiocination!”

“Hardly; it was obvious. For instance, when Mr. Salt offered you his
suggestions for finding the oratory, you felt obliged to skid all
around the truth that you already knew where it was. You even said
that finding it seemed ‘superfluous.’ That was rather neat, I
thought.”

I grinned. “So do I. As a fact, I followed his route to the oratory
to-day. And now I have a gleam in my prophetic soul that you found
discrepancies in the rainbow section of the diary.”

She weighed her answer. “Well, I don’t know. I saw the discrepancies
readily enough. You never were on Whimble all that afternoon, were
you, in spite of the suggestions you scattered to that effect? I
always thought archæologists were profound people, but I had no idea
they were so sly.”

I mused. “Hm. You are perfectly right. ‘I headed straight for
Whimble. . . .’”

“Yes, and afterward, ‘It would take me some time to get from where I
was to the edge of Mynydd Tarw.’ That was so, no doubt, but I’d bet
a—a lot that you were on Mynydd Tarw all the while.”

“Naturally, but I wasn’t going to say so, when the oratory was under
the edge of that particular hill. Yes, you’re right: my secret
entailed quite a number of peccadilloes.”

I saw her smiling at me. “They became quite inveterate, didn’t they?
But the whole thing goes back to the platitude. Squeeze the truth in
one place and it sticks out in another. Because you _would_ have the
secret of the oratory all to yourself, you had to conceal the innocent
fact that you accidentally left a book there.”

I stared at her as at a miracle, which indeed she was. “Come, come;
this is on the thick side. You must have been shadowing me.”

“Only in brain-waves. It was your copy of the Book of Sylvan Armitage,
wasn’t it? How did you happen to leave it there? I can guess you had
it out of your knapsack and studied it for comparison with the place
you had fallen to. Then, perhaps, you laid it down—”

“I did, and leaned back to rest, just as I found you doing this
afternoon. The Book slipped off the stone and fell inside the shelter
of the oratory. I didn’t notice it when I started up and left the
place. But how on earth did you know?”

“You mustn’t think it was so wonderful for me to see a plain nose on a
plain face. To begin with, I was surprised to death when I learned
that you hadn’t brought your own copy of the Armitage with you, but
had to send for it from Balzing. Was it likely that you would leave
behind the one work which referred to the oratory of St. Tarw? Then
that evening in the library after the rainbow, some of Lib’s
remarks—‘Having the hump,’ and so forth—sounded as if you might be
concealing something that you had brought with you under your coat.
And finally—well this alone would have been enough to tell me—the day
you were supposed to receive it through the mail, you didn’t call at
the Post Office for it; when you came home from Old Aidenn, you gave
New Aidenn a wide berth and crossed the Smatcher.”

“Out of my own inkwell I stand condemned,” I laughed. “It’s uncanny,
that’s what it is, the way you get inside my cranium and read my
secret thoughts. Still, you haven’t told me what the fundamental
deduction was. It couldn’t have been a mere guess. How did you _know_
that I wasn’t on Whimble when I drew the map?”

“I think you are playing Doctor Watson on purpose. Why, that was the
essence of simplicity. Why, a _primitive_ mind could have told that.
What do you suppose I brought the campstool for? It was as simple
as—as rule of three. You’ll have to discover that for yourself.”

After silence:

“What was that you said—about the rapture you felt the first time you
wandered on the uplands? You never could feel the same freedom? You
never could be so happy again?”

“I think I never shall.”

“Nor I. I hate this place. It has robbed me of something—something
more than love or any little thing like that.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, appalled—and when she did not answer, I
asked again, with my hand clenched about her wrist and my eyes burning
into her face, “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure . . . but I suppose I mean . . . innocence. Since I came
here, something has happened that I never can forget. I think it will
make all my life worse.”

We went on. The sunlight was dying. The trees became spectral. In me,
who walked beside this wonderful, clear-spirited girl, a monstrous
horror welled.

I had a sense of vast, dark, insufferable wings hovering down. Was it
fated that I should need to protect her against herself? Long before
we reached the House, that I had sworn to do, at all costs, whatever
should betide.



CHAPTER XXV

The Flight of Parson Lolly

  (There ended my diary. Thenceforth I was to be like a man in a
  maelstrom. And now that circumstances have stayed my hand from its
  task for weeks on end, I have no confidence that I can record with
  due proportion and emphasis events which seem to have been fantastic
  and instantaneous as dreams. Frantic suspense, frozen horror, and
  the rest are now a whirling memory. But I hope, above all else, that
  whoever reads these lines may feel, as those who knew her did, the
  splendid nervous courage, the shrewd discernment, and the strange
  compassion and mercy, of Paula Lebetwood!)

Make no mistake. The weary, faltering girl at my side—never, never for
an instant did I suspect her.

Yet while we lagged through a ruined fairyland, past the wreck of Sir
Pharamond’s first hold, beneath branches where the rooks were
brawling, and between the ordered files of the summer-house park—all
the way my heart grew blacker, and the incubus weighed heavier on my
soul. I feared for her, and fear pressed cold fingers against my lips.

Blasphemous thoughts; they were not mine. I had no thoughts of her but
reverence.

They might have been the jangling voices of the birds themselves:
“Look! Here comes the foreign woman who was pledged to the Kingmaker,
but is going to marry his millions instead! Why has she never wept a
tear for the man in his shroud?” What if the trees had voices, these
grey and sombre sycamores? “We saw what happened in the two twilights.
We know where the golden-haired girl was when Cosgrove met his fate.
We know when she left the strawberry grove the day that Heatheringham
rushed toward death. We saw her slip across the shadowed lawn—”

No, no! If trees could speak, they would declare her innocence.

Not trees but men would be her judges, cunning men, who might weave
about her a web of suspicion with strands as fine and strong as silk.

Scotland Yard might be waiting for us when we returned; that is, a
brisk, clear-headed, observant, utterly unprejudiced investigator, a
person whose mind as nearly as might be resembled an inductive and
deductive machine. He would sweep the ground clear of the débris of
false starts and idle speculations, and construct anew.

The deaths: what would the lynx of justice discover immediately in
respect of them? He would hear of a motive, money. How should he know
better than to impute a sordid impulse to this high-minded girl? He
would hear of a quarrel on the afternoon of Cosgrove’s death. How
should he know that there had been more than mere anger in her mood
when she parted from us, that there had been dignity, aloofness, a
temper far above reprisal?

But there was worse, much worse. She may have been with Cosgrove the
moment he was struck down!

Belvoir, coming toward the towers, had seen the Irishman with canvas
lifted regarding the puny battle-axe. In the mixed light, Belvoir had
not been positive he _had_ seen Cosgrove, but the likelihood was that
he had attested to less rather than more than the truth. The American
girl might have been beyond the Irishman at that moment, concealed
partly by his bulk, partly by the darkness of her gown in the
twilight. I, of course, had come past the spot afterward and found the
lawn empty, but the two might easily have gone through one of the
entrances of the House and re-emerged shortly after I had made my
reconnaissance from the parapet. What brief, passionate scene could
then have taken place, such as would have ended by Cosgrove’s turning
away and her hammering him with a rough-and-ready chunk of rock
snatched up from the rim of the flower-bed, I left to the professional
imagination.

In Heatheringham’s death, we knew her insistence that she had
disobeyed his bidding, and her declaration of what she had seen. But,
again, there was not a tittle of proof of her assertion that she had
remained on the edge of the strawberry trees. Quite safely she could
have slipped back into the House. I wondered, in spite of the arm
thrust through the glass, if the detective might not have been outside
the House when he pressed the trigger, and that straightway he rushed
into the Hall (pursuing something?)—to meet his death. Who waited for
him there? No one could have, save Paula Lebetwood.

Black—it was black.

I tried to gain comfort from the obscurities that would confront
Scotland Yard if he tried to build up a theory in this wise. I
recalled the bone, the laugh, the pig’s gore, and other unsolved
conundrums. But Scotland Yard, being an experienced hand, would be
sure to fit them in somewhere. I was sick at heart.

Yes, I must protect her against the world, and, if need be, against
herself. The proof would be in action. I began wondering whom I could
trust.

When we came to the fringe of the sycamore park and passed alongside
the cypress trees, one first-storey window showed light in the
northern wall of the House, and we could see radiance from others down
the long façade.

“Miss Mertoun has returned.” It was the only speech either of us had
offered in two dark and desolate miles.

“Millicent?” The American girl halted in surprise. “Did they make her
go out, too?”

“She volunteered like the rest of the ladies for searching in the Vale
itself.”

“Darling Millicent. I love her better than anything else on earth. She
shouldn’t have tried to find me, Mr. Bannerlee. She isn’t strong, you
know, and this has been a terrible, tragic week for her. She should
never have come to Aidenn Vale, but I didn’t—understand then, as I do
now.”

Somehow we did not go straight on, but lingered there by the cypresses
with their low-hung darkness.

“But her week has not been as tragic as yours.”

Her voice was sombre. “More, much more.”

“What!” I came closer, peered into her face, where the dusk had
erected shadows. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t wondered, I see, about Millicent and Sean.”

“Wondered? Wondered what, in God’s name?”

She spoke wearily. “You didn’t know Sean, of course. Neither did I, I
suppose.”

“What do you mean?” I cried again, with an intolerable heaviness in
me, remembering Lib.

“Religion and sensuality: they go together often, don’t they? I
thought that if I recognized that—streak in Sean I might disregard it
and it would be like a thing that never was. If that had been
all. . . .”

I caught up the silence. “You can never make me believe—that Miss
Mertoun—”

“Oh, of course not. She wasn’t like the others. . . . She hasn’t
offended me; I’m the offender. . . .”

“Paula, you mustn’t stop. Tell me what you mean.”

“It’s beastly of me, I suppose . . . especially when someone
else . . . I wonder why it is we confide in people we half-know
instead of our closest friends. But it’s horrible to have a thing pent
up in your brain . . . like a deadly growth.”

“Tell me, Paula.”

“If I hadn’t come along, Millicent would be Mrs. Cosgrove now. It
sounds—almost grotesque, doesn’t it? But there it was, a fact that
months and even years couldn’t kill. I never had the least inkling of
it—oh, Millicent’s been a loyal friend to me—until we were all here
and it was—too late. Millicent came, you see, since if she didn’t—I
would never have had a Bidding Feast without Millicent, and she knew
it. But I never guessed . . . until she told me, after midnight, the
night you came.”

“She—loved him still?”

“No, hated him then. But the old heart-wound would break out during
sleep. His music, as she called it, came to her through her dreams.
Then she answered what she believed to be—his call.”

A little wind came winding down the Vale and wrapped its chilly arm
about us. She said, very low: “That was what I meant, partly, when I
spoke of lost innocence a little while ago. I have changed toward
people since I came here. I think I can never trust a person again.”
Then quickly, “We must go in. They’ll be wanting to know I’m safe.”

I followed where she made a road through the darkness.

We reached the House at seven-fifteen. At the bottom of the stairs she
turned. “Thank you—thank you more than I can say. May I have the
campstool? I must go up now, really. I—I—have to—think over to-night.”

I handed over the stool. “If ever—” I commenced, feeling my voice
shake in my throat.

The boy Toby, his hair all on end as usual, crossed the corridor from
the dinner-room to the Hall. She called his name, and the lad
reappeared, coming toward us bashfully. His eyes, turned on her, were
filled with something like awe, and I remembered how she had made this
seemingly lumpish lad her excellent and devoted scholar. He now
carried a few yards of insulated wire.

“Has Superintendent Salt returned?”

“Yes, from the hills, Miss. He came back early, but he’s gone away
again.”

“Did he leave any message?”

“He said you wasn’t to mind if he didn’t bring his friend
from—somewhere—”

“Scotland Yard?”

“Yes, that’s right. He wouldn’t bring him to-night. He said you was to
go ahead anyhow because the French womenfolks was coming with
Constable Pritchard.”

“French women!” I exclaimed in surprise and pleasure. “Does he mean
that the sisters Delambre have been brought back?”

“Sure to be,” said Toby.

“By George, I’ll be tickled to see what they look like. But what does
it all mean? No one could imagine—”

Miss Lebetwood silenced me with a gesture and an eager question. “He
was working here this afternoon, then, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, Miss, but it was a secret or somefing. He put the maids out of
the house at half-past three.”

“Three-thirty!” I exclaimed again, indignantly now. “He didn’t waste
much of his precious time in the search!” I asked the lad, “Why did he
make the women-servants leave the building? He did, didn’t he?”

“Yes, sir; he was going to use some gas from a little tank he had with
him all over the ground floor of the House. He said it was a deadly
poisonous gas, and unless they were looking for their deaths if they
got a whiff they had better go down to New Aidenn for the rest of the
afternoon. Wheeler was in the search; so I drove ’em all down to the
bridge in the big car,” Toby recited with pride.

“And did you come back for a whiff?” asked Miss Lebetwood, smiling
faintly.

“No, Miss; I went to my workroom in the stables and did some more on
my radio. I only remembered about a quarter past six that I had to fix
the lights in the Hall, and when I came to the House I met Mr. Salt
and the constable’s brother that wasn’t here before coming out with
the gas tank. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Tell ’em they can go
anywhere they like now. I’ve sucked the gas back into the respirator;
so there’s no danger for that matter of fact.’ And then he told me
what I told you.”

“I suppose most of our people have returned?”

“Yes, Miss. The ladies are all upstairs or somewhere. There’s them
back from New Aidenn, too, and Mr. Blenkinson and some of the others
from the hills. If you wasn’t found by nine o’clock, they was going to
’phone up Penybont and Bleddfa and maybe get a bloodhound and have a
grand search like they almost had for Sir Brooke Mortimer.”

“Thank you, Toby,” said the girl, “and thank you again, Mr. Bannerlee.
I _shall_ have to do a bit of thinking now.” She went quickly, almost
lightly, up the steps. Somehow, she had drawn comfort from Salt’s
strange behaviour.

I followed Toby into the Hall. Quite by chance I had found the person
I could trust, one whose allegiance to the American girl might be as
great as mine.

He was upon a lofty step-ladder planted beneath the chandelier which
hung some distance clear of the musicians’ gallery. Below him rested a
bushel basket partly filled with electric bulbs.

“Will you be there long, Toby?”

“Only to take out the rest of the bulbs, sir, and connect a bit of
wire with the wall-fixture in case they needs it. Only a minute or
two, sir.”

I drew close to the foot of the ladder and spoke very softly.
“Toby—can you get an hour off before very late to-night—to do
something for Miss Lebetwood?”

“For Miss Paula?” His funny hair seemed to be a forest of notes of
exclamation. “Of _course_ I can, sir, for Miss Paula.”

“Right! I knew you would. Come down here a minute, and I’ll give you
directions. This is very secret, mind. If you should meet even Miss
Paula herself, remember you’re not to show a sign you’re the wiser.”

I laid the trappings of mystery on very thick, enough to make the
souls of a dozen lads lick their lips. I explained how a message might
be delivered at the House later on to-night that would make it
necessary for Miss Lebetwood, and perhaps Miss Mertoun, to leave
without word or warning to anyone by the eleven o’clock train. Secrecy
and haste were the points I stressed. He fell into the plot with so
much spirit that I felt a little ashamed of the deception I was
practising. With eagerness that ran before my suggestions, he promised
to be at New Aidenn station when it opened for the 9.40 train, and to
purchase with money I gave him two tickets for London available by the
late express. He would leave the tickets for me _in the mail_. We went
into the armoury and agreed on a definite spot. He would also secrete
two ladies’ bicycles, property of the Clays, beneath the bush opposite
the third oak tree on the left-hand side of the drive after passing
the gate-house. We went over that complex direction again and again.

Yes, in these days of the many-tentacled police, the telegraph, and
the radio, I was planning for Paula Lebetwood an escape by flight.
With two hours’ clear start, for I would see that the telephone did
not function and that the shaky bridge should go down behind the
pursued, I could almost guarantee scot-freedom. For of course those
tickets would not be used for getting to London, not when the express
connected at Leominster with fast trains running both north and south.
To what destination I would direct the fugitives, I had better not
say, but it was one which would afford a refuge almost before the
wires were singing with the alarm for her capture.

At that moment Aire slipped in from the darkness through one of the
french windows. His head was bare, his clothing was somewhat
dishevelled, and he seemed to lack for breath. His mouth was set, with
its thin blue-whitish lips drawn back from the teeth. He stared at us
some time before speaking; then his voice, the first time I had known
it to be so, was instinct with fear.

“Bannerlee, seen Maryvale?”

“I’ve just returned with Miss Lebetwood. What makes you ask?”

“He’s—gone.”

“He’ll come back.”

“I’m sure he will. Come in here, Bannerlee.”

Quite astonished by his tone, I followed him toward the library,
turning at the door to give a pithy glance at the boy, whose hair now
looked like a forest of query-notes. When I entered the library, Aire
had thrown himself down in one of the big leather arm-chairs in a
posture of complete relaxation, and was breathing heavily. Again it
was some time before he spoke.

“He’s gone, God knows where. He left me an hour ago while we were
walking among the strawberry trees. Went snap off, like breaking a
stick, while I was in the middle of a sentence.”

“Why, Doctor,” I exclaimed, with a snort of assumed cheerfulness,
“surely you’re making too much of this.”

He sprang up, paced the breadth of the room, ugly wrinkles on his
brow. “I hope I am. I hope I am. But I’ve bitched the thing so. And
this afternoon he seemed in perfect possession of himself. I’ve been
so damned optimistic that now the reverse— He seemed perfectly normal
late this afternoon, you understand; in fact the two of us were
planning—no matter. I must go out again.”

“I’ll come along with you.”

“No, thanks. I’ll have to manage him alone. It will be ‘Horse and
Hattock in the Devil’s name,’ and I fancy I’m the only one who can
play up to him.”

“But you’ll be in danger.”

He gave a short laugh. “I think not. I’m more afraid of the things
that can’t hurt.” He looked out to the lawn. “Thank God for a clear
night, and moonlight. You know, the trees seem to have faces in their
trunks; they seem to be grinning and mowing in the wind. That’s the
sort of drivel this thing’s brought me to. Well, I’m off.”

He made toward the door, but paused with his hand on it. “Don’t say a
word of this to anyone, Bannerlee. I’ll need a free hand if I’m to
bring it off. Cheerio.”

He plunged into the night. I saw him cross the silver carpet of the
lawn and disappear between the gigantic jaws of the gate-house towers.

A moment later in the corridor I met Harmony carrying a tray up to
“the young ladies.” She told me that cold viands were laid out in the
dinner-room for those lagging in from the hills. But in spite of my
three hours’ struggle, I was in no humour for feeding, especially
since I was bound to encounter the others and would have to repeat my
adventures again and again.

I asked the girl if there had been any fresh development during my
absence.

“Did you hear about what they dug up this afternoon, sir?”

“Great Scott! You don’t mean another corpse?”

“Lor’, no, sir, not human. In the garden, it was, where the dogs were
scratching the place to pieces. Someone said get a spade and dig and
see what’s there, and they found it.”

“What did they find?”

“A little pig, sir. And it was wrapped in some black cloth they said
must be Parson Lolly’s gown, only it was all tore up and full of holes
and had some funny bits of red paper pinned to it. They do say that
Parson Lolly is too tall for a gown like that. We met Superintendent
Salt when we were coming back from the town, and he was carrying it
with him.”

“So,” I remarked. “It looks to me as if the Superintendent took
advantage of Miss Lebetwood’s absence to spend a busy afternoon down
here.”

“Lor’, yes, sir. He was using the gas-expirator and fair drove us out
of the house.”

“I’m glad he made such a thorough job of inspirating the gas again.”

“Yes, sir, or it wouldn’t be safe. It’s that wonderful, sir.”

“It is,” I agreed heartily, and cursed—to myself.

She with her tray went down the passage while I went up the second
flight, feeling not the shadow of a suspicion of my darling, but the
certainty that before the night was past, she would be accused. I
hurried past Maryvale’s portal with an aching heart.

Yet such was the settled habit of the week that when I reached my own
door, the turmoil of my mind was stilled. This lonely chamber, which
had such baneful associations for me a week ago, had become a harbour
of refuge. Whatever strife and doom might wait outside, here the
ceiling aslope, the candle-bracket askew, the oaken chest, and the
narrow window before my table invited me to my work.

I fell to. I wrote steadily. I forgot to be hungry. Once the sound of
a gong quivered through the House, but not until long after it had
died away did I consider what it meant. Then I set down my pen. Mrs.
Belvoir’s séance must be in progress, and Scotland Yard was doubtless
there. I must attend.

I secured my invaluable pocket light before setting out. Past
Maryvale’s door forbid, down the long stairs, through the corridor of
faces—until a murmurous voice reached me from the Hall of the Moth, a
voice whose tone I recognized though the words were indistinct. Yes,
Mrs. Belvoir was probing beyond the visible.

Softly I opened the door behind the musicians’ stair, tiptoed over the
threshold, and stood concealed within. Great curtains shut out the
moonlight from the Hall, which was dark indeed, save for the circle of
bulbs on the circumference of the chandelier. These, cased by Toby in
paper, gave very little illumination, and that of a mysterious tinge.
At the other end of the room wavered a lazy fire, composed for the
most part of bluish flame.

The people seated around the table, which had been placed not far from
the musicians’ stairs, were so vague that I could not tell their
attitude toward the proceedings. I observed at once that Mrs. Belvoir
was not going to “bring the spirits and all,” not yet, at any rate.
For on the table was spread some dark cloth above which I caught the
faint glimmer of glass: a crystal sphere. The woman seated deep in her
chair before the ball must be the pythoness herself.

Her voice had lapsed when I entered, and a long silence ensued. Then
she said: “It’s no use. I’ve lost it again,” and I saw a white arm
reach up. Instantly a dazzling light shone above her head, from a
special globe connected with the wall-fixture, and Mrs. Belvoir was
gazing intently into the crystal ball. I now saw that the sphere was
erected on a small tripod with legs of different-coloured metals, and
that this structure stood upon a square yellow velvet cloth laid over
a cloth of blue. A mouldy, triangular crust of bread was placed
underneath the crystal, and some statement I had once heard or read,
that “bread possesses a potent protective magic against evil forces,”
occurred to me to explain its presence.

Neither Salt nor any stranger was there. Mrs. Belvoir, attired in pale
mauve ninon, a heliotrope band above her forehead, and an amethyst pin
at her breast, was brooding over the crystal with eyes that widened
and narrowed with the phase of her thought. Those pale sapphire eyes
were darkened with intensity, and the customary indistinctness of her
face—a mermaid-under-water look—was quite gone. Sometimes her hands
clasped or slid about the sphere; sometimes her fingers rested on her
temples or tapped them gently. Beyond a doubt, she was sincere.

The assisting parties were either slightly embarrassed or strongly
impressed, all save Belvoir, who sat opposite her; on his face lived a
smile of scepticism. Up went the arm and the Hall was dim once more.

“I have it now,” said the seeress: “I am in fog, deep fog.”

“Good,” came a _sotto voce_ from the other end of the table, but the
word was drowned in the current of her speech. Leaning back, but
apparently still gazing at the sphere, in trance-life passivity, she
seemed not so much to utter words as to let the words flow from her
mouth.

“I am in fog, thick fog; it clings about me.” Her hands made dim
outward movements, as if pressing away the mist that enveloped her. “I
am lost, and there is a malignant spirit nearby, but I am not sure I
know that—yet. I sit down—on a rock. I am not very hungry, but since
there is nothing else to do, I eat what I have brought with me. I wait
for light to penetrate the fog. I wish to find something; perhaps I
fear the malignant spirit that is near. I wish to find the ancient
hermit’s cell. It is a place hallowed by good works and piety. The
malignant spirit will not dare come near me there. I eat and wait. The
mist clears partly away at last. I go on. The sun shines on me; I am
glorified. . . .”

I suddenly realized it was my story she told. There was nothing
wonderful in this, to be sure, for the narrative of my afternoon on
the hills had long been common property. I listened with care, to see
if she included some detail proving her version to be a brain-picture
really evoked by the crystal and having objective authority. But all
she added to the fable was the “malignant spirit” hovering near me all
the while, a presence which I certainly had no idea was dogging me on
the hilltops.

It became apparent that the seeress was not interested in me but in
the spirit, and some time before the dénouement I had an inkling of
how the story would end.

“I am fleeing from the malignant spirit in its carnal shape. I allow
it to overtake me—so far, no farther. We are approaching the brink of
the cliff. I leap aside, and the animal plunges into the gulf. I am
saved, and I hear the carnal shape of the spirit go thundering down,
down, down. I am saved, and the bull is dead.”

Silence. . . . When Mrs. Belvoir spoke again, her voice had lost its
dreaminess and become positive. But she spoke with effort; the phrases
seemed wrung out of her.

“The bull is dead. . . . But spiritual force . . . is never
destroyed. . . . The bull is dead. . . . The malignant spirit is
living still. . . . It never ceases to operate. . . . It is
localized. . . .”

A small sound shattered the tension of that moment: merely the opening
of one of the french windows.

“My God, what’s that?” cried Eve Bartholomew, before someone reached
above Mrs. Belvoir’s head and lit the bright globe once more. Mrs.
Belvoir turned, intending angry remonstrance, but her voice was
stilled by one look at Doctor Aire.

He was coatless and collarless, and his shirt and trousers were miry.
His small yellow head seemed to have turned almost white, save for a
ragged cut across his forehead, and while he spoke the man leaned hard
on the back of the _Brocade de Lyons_ couch as if in the last throes
of exhaustion.

Everyone was standing up; my presence excited no surprise.

“Maryvale’s—somewhere near.”

“Doctor! What’s happened to you?” cried Crofts.

“I’ve had a bout with him on the tennis court. He was a few stone too
heavy for me. I saw him heading for the House—probably wants something
that’s in his room. I’m afraid—he’s insane.”

“What shall we do, then?” asked Crofts, become very cool in the
crisis.

“Keep a watch at every entrance, enough of us at each place to tackle
him safely.”

“Stephen, you mustn’t go out again. You’ve done too much already,”
said Alberta.

But Aire, though he swayed, hung on grittily, and shook his head. “No,
thanks. A stiff drink will put me right. Just have the men-servants in
here, Crofts, and—”

Miss Mertoun gave a shrill scream. A creature was looking at us
through the open entrance behind Aire—a strange creature.

The thing that looked at us was using Maryvale’s face, but it was not
Maryvale any longer. The countenance, blank of any jot of humanity,
had become a mere bag with features. It lingered there only for a
moment, staring at us with incomprehension so complete that a pang of
pity thrilled through me. A woman sobbed. The face was gone.

Pell-mell the men were gone, too, in a wild chase scattering across
the lawn, and I among them. Yet sorry as I was for Maryvale, he did
not concern me now. I had sterner work even than trammelling a
moonlight madman.

I determined to risk the notice of my absence in order to make certain
that the bicycles were properly waiting where Toby had promised to
conceal them. Keeping under the shadow of trees where I could, I
hastened across the southern lawn toward the oaks that guard the drive
below the gate-house towers. I was just in time to see someone drag
one of the bicycles from its bushy covert into the full moonlight and
bend over the front tyre with a gleaming blade ready to slash. I
sprang upon this man, mastered him more by the surprise of my leap
than by main strength. He fell face upward, groaning. His knife lay on
the grass ten feet away.

“Morgan! What crazy work is this?”

He thrashed about in my inexorable grip, and blurted out his words in
speech that reverted toward the primitive. “The killers, the killers!
They bikes was for them. I saw the lad fetch ’em and hide ’em, aye I
did. ’E’s sweet on ’er since she took notice of ’im.”

“What are you talking about?” I blustered. “What do you know about the
murderers?”

He struggled to rise, but I let my weight bear down, and he relapsed
with another groan, though certainly not hurt. “I know who did the
killin’. I’ve known all along.”

I shook him roughly by the shoulders. “Don’t lie to me. Come, out with
it, now, or I’ll throttle you.”

“Mr. Blenkinson told us. It’s the sure truth.”

“_Blenkinson!_” I bawled. “By God, Blenkinson’s got something to
answer for to me. What lies has he been spreading?”

“He has the proofs. It’s sure as if ’e saw ’em with ’is own eyes.”

“Saw _what_? Saw _who_?”

“Saw the killin’s. The three Americans did ’em, and they’ll make
shares of Mr. Cosgrove’s money.”

My fingers itched for his throat, but black fear blazed in my heart.
“Liar!” I screamed. “They’ll hang you sooner than _her_! Don’t you
know she won’t touch a penny of it until the killer’s found!”

The man on the ground maintained a sullen obstinacy. “Sometimes them
hangs as isn’t guilty, and them suffers as finds out. The milkman knew
it was ’er, and look what ’appened to ’im.”

“You poor, blind fool,” I exclaimed bitterly. “There’s jealousy and
hatred in this somewhere. Damn Blenkinson. Why, there isn’t a particle
of evidence—”

“There is, there is,” he gasped. “There’s court evidence to ’ang ’er
when Mr. Blenkinson comes out with it.”

“What evidence? Tell me!”

He writhed in my clutch. “The beetle-stone as she lost from ’er ring
that day. She tried to keep it secret, but it got about. Mr.
Blenkinson found it right in the same place as the stone she did the
killin’ with. There wasn’t a foot between ’em.”

I pressed my fists against his chest, with a downward thrust now and
then for emphasis. “Your fine Blenkinson’s a liar, do you hear? His
evidence, as you call it, isn’t worth a pin. And if he whispers a word
of his slander, and it comes to my ears, I’ll thrash him within an
inch of his life, do you hear? And the same applies to you—you
contemptible—”

I stood up quickly. Men were crowding out of the plantation near
Whimble-foot and clamouring toward the House. Had the quarry turned? I
must be present now at any cost.

This man was cowed sufficiently. He still lay supine; I prodded him
with my foot. “Remember!” I warned him darkly, and commenced running
toward the mansion, stooping to seize the knife where it glittered on
the turf.

Once only I paused for a moment and looked back. Was there
something—someone—moving stealthily toward the man, who was sitting up
now and feeling himself for bruises? A moment later the figure of a
woman emerged from the shadows, crossed quickly to Morgan, and seemed
to lift him bodily from the ground. I did not immediately grasp that
she had lugged him up by the ear. Now they were arguing,
gesticulating, and though I had heard it seldom, I knew the prim voice
of Miss Ardelia Lacy.

Smiling to myself, I pressed on.

The half-dozen men who reached the corner of the House more or less in
a pack were in the nick of time to see the wretched Maryvale, driven
from cover to cover like a hunted beast, drag his body, which had
never before seemed ponderous, to the base of one of the gate-house
towers. He carried what seemed a club with an enormous broadened head.

He turned there at bay while we closed in upon him, and the awful
wreck of his face with its glaring eyes and bared teeth in the
moonlight will haunt me to my death. He was a beast. While we stood
speechless, he began to climb.

One hand gripped the queer-looking club, but grasping the ivy with one
hand alone, he raised himself steadily. It was agony to watch this
man-turned-ape mounting where none of us dared to follow. In the thick
wavering growth that clung to the tower sometimes he swung
pendulum-wise, sometimes was almost buried in the foliage, but his
ascent was sure as if he climbed the stairs within. We cried out to
him appeals and abuse; I do not think he heard us. Someone ran to the
stables, shouting for a ladder.

Maryvale reached the angle where the covered bridge meets the wall of
the tower. Here the ivy thins, and the man made a wide stop to the
roof of the bridge. Then, surely, I felt the supreme horror, when
Maryvale, using the base of a window-slit for foot-rest, lifted
himself over the edge of the turret-roof and carefully but
expeditiously crawled up the slope of stone toward the pointed top.

We held on shouting, some of us, in sheer desperation. Pendleton made
a frenzied effort to climb the ivy, failed. Maryvale crept on, his
whole body flat against the roof, save for the arm which held the
club-like mass. He reached the pinnacle and lifted himself to a
precarious standing posture, one foot firm on the very apex, the side
of the other foot pressed against the slope.

For a few moments he bent over the object he had carried; then when he
straightened his body, his arm above his head brandished a flaming,
sizzling torch, and he uttered the only words I had heard him speak
that day. He called out to the night at large:

“Lolly, Lolly, Parson Lolly!” His voice gloated above the hiss of the
torch. “Who’s the Parson? I’M THE PARSON! AND NOW I’M GOING OVER THE
HILLS: PARSON LOLLY FLIES!”

The torchlight danced in his face while he laughed shrilly. Then he
launched himself into the air in an enormous leap.

He fell almost but not quite clear of the sloping roof. Striking it
all awry, he dashed against the roof of the bridge and on down.
Mercifully, he was hurled toward the wall of the tower, and his foot
caught for a second in some loop of the ivy-twine twenty feet from the
ground. His swinging body struck the wall a terrific blow, and he hung
head downward for a moment; his torch, which had drawn a flaming mark
across the night, now blazed upward enveloping him with its flames.
Only for an instant, however. The impact of the collision with the
wall had stunned him, and the torch fell from his hand. The ivy gave
way, and the madman, part of his clothing afire, fell insensible to
the ground at our feet.



CHAPTER XXVI

Blood on the Portrait

We had carried Maryvale down to the bridge, and the ambulance from the
Cottage Hospital at Kington had been waiting to take the unfortunate
man away. We did not know until later, of course, that Maryvale would
never walk again, though the delusion which had unhinged his mind no
longer held him in thrall.

Now we were returning to the House, I and the remnant of the men of
the Bidding Feast. We were a straggling squad. The sense of Fate, of
dark wings closing down, of stern gates clashing, swept over me again
while I wondered which of us would be the next to suffer. One by one
our little group reassembled in the library. There the women were
waiting; there, too, stood Maryvale’s picture of the headless Parson,
more enigmatic than before. Yes, even with the madman’s words ringing
in our ears, none of us could believe that he had indeed been the
arch-lord of disorder who may have destroyed two men.

Mrs. Belvoir, purpureal priestess, was making agitated efforts to
reassemble her devotees that she might reveal the further activities
of the “malignant spirit”; but the devotees were very slippery.
Indeed, it was natural that after the catastrophe of Maryvale, other
things should disintegrate, and although the terror spread through the
House tightened the little knot of us, soon we might have wandered off
to bed, unless a sudden loud knocking had been audible.

“The front door, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lebetwood.

Our host said it was, and added he wondered what the devil—

“It is a sign for me, I think.” Addressing Mrs. Belvoir: “Marvel, you
must let me take charge now.”

“Why, what do you mean?” demanded the seeress.

“We shall see in a moment.”

Alberta’s firm hand had restrained Crofts from jumping into the
corridor to answer the knock himself. Presently Soames sidled into the
room with a salver which he presented to Miss Lebetwood. Regarding him
closely, I thought he gave her a slanting, snake-like look of mingled
fear and malevolence—and yet on the surface his countenance remained
perfectly respectful.

“A telegram for you, Miss.”

“Thank you.”

Lib gurgled, “Why, Paula, someone’s had the cheek to open it!”

“I know,” answered Miss Lebetwood, withdrawing two closely-filled
sheets from the envelope already slit. “Those were my instructions.”

Crofts asked sharply, “Don’t they know those should be ’phoned here?”

“My directions again,” said the American girl evenly, without glancing
up from the sheet in her hand. Her brief, self-possessed words made us
realize of a sudden that she had assumed leadership quietly and
confidently. “There will be no answer, Soames,” she remarked, and the
man slid out shadow-wise.

A silence supervened, while we stared at her and she read the message
to the very end. When she was through, her clear blue eyes were bright
with exultation.

“Yes, it’s what I expected! I think, people, that we will see the end
of our ghastly bewilderment to-night. Won’t you be glad? Oh, I will!”

Mrs. Belvoir, aware that she was likely to lose the post of cynosure,
countered vaguely. “What do you mean?” she repeated. “I haven’t
finished—”

“You won’t need to, Marvel dear. I have found a better way to deal
with the malignant spirit you spoke of. I have Mr. Salt’s approval for
what I do. In fact”—she smiled slightly—“I am his deputy.”

Lord Ludlow’s eyebrows gave a jerk. “His deputy?”

“Yes, and I believe I am to have a Police-Constable to enforce my
authority. And the—the Frenchwomen from the farm, the Delambres, have
kindly consented to be present here to-night as witnesses.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Crofts. “Will people be coming in here
all night? Who owns this place, anyhow?”

Alberta struck a counter-blow. “Of course, Paula dearest, we shall do
anything you like. Shall we have to wait long for those queer old
women?”

“_They_ are waiting for _you_,” said the American girl, standing by
the door which led through the armoury into the Hall. “Will you enter,
please, and take your seats as before?”

“I don’t like this,” objected Crofts, blocking our way. “In my opinion
there should be no jiggery-pokery without Salt or this Scotland Yard
man he was supposed to bring. Why doesn’t he do as he intended?”

“Hush, dear,” said Alberta, “or Paula will have her Constable arrest
you and lock you up in the gate-house.”

“He may appear later on, of course,” the American girl suggested, not
very hopefully. “You can trust me, though, to—”

“Later? Later?” Crofts grumbled. “Are we going to be kept up all
night?”

But now Paula Lebetwood ignored him. “Please follow me,” she said,
brushing past, and Crofts gave way.

Like creatures under a spell we moved into the Hall, a place still
obscured from the moon and illumined now only by the pale ring of
lights from the chandelier by the gallery. I offered to switch on the
other chandelier, which hung near the chimney-piece, but she said she
wished it to remain dark for the present. While she spoke, she lit the
one bright globe beneath which Mrs. Belvoir had sat, and took her own
place beneath it.

“Please interrupt me as little as possible,” she requested,
“especially in this early part where I know my way. I’ll try not to
waste time, though I don’t expect this to be a really short meeting.
No, don’t say anything, yet.”

It was hard to repress some exclamation of wonder when I saw the two
women who sat in semi-darkness near the great expanse of the
chimney-piece. Very quiet they had been, and took no notice of us
while we entered. They seemed to be absorbed in the embers of the
fire, from which only an occasional blue flame winked like an eye. One
of them, the squatter of the two, seemed particularly aloof, and only
her flattish nose and broad forehead peeped beyond the queer
old-fashioned hood still drawn over her head. The other, who wore an
expansive coverchief, was taller and more stalwart, with a strong
face, large chin, and eyes which shone even in the gloom. She appeared
from time to time to take some interest in us and our proceedings. But
on the whole the presence of these foreign sisters was eerie and
evasive.

More stolid than either of these appeared the bovine Constable who sat
near them and seemed to have them in charge.

“Geewhilikins!” emitted Bob, and the state of Lib could be imagined
from the fact that she brazenly allowed him to clutch her hand and
keep it.

Paula Lebetwood indicated the sisters Delambre with a gesture.
“These—gentlewomen: you know who they are, of course. Before to-night
is over we shall all be grateful to them for coming here. But it’s
late, I know, and you are all anxious to hear my—revelation; so I’ll
commence at once.”

Her revelation! God grant that no prank of fate should cause _her_ to
be snared in whatever trap she was setting!

“Don’t think, please, that I am certain myself what to-night’s result
is going to be,” she went on while we settled into our seats around
the shadowy board. “If I did, I wouldn’t waste your time. But I
think—yes, I am almost certain—that you will find out before you leave
your places. And perhaps I had better put this in evidence first.”

She picked up the creased sheets of the telegram which lay on the
table before her and handed them to Charlton Oxford. “It’s the answer
to a wire Mr. Salt sent for me this morning. As you see, it’s from the
Welsh National Library at Aberystwyth.”

“That is surely far afield,” remarked Ludlow.

“It may seem so. But I believe that when Mr. Salt hears of it, he’ll
agree with me that it’s an important item in our list. In fact, my
Lord, it’s the keystone of my arch.”

While his eyes travelled along the lines, Oxford’s face was blank.
Obviously he did not perceive the slightest link between the matter of
the telegram and the matter in hand. He was not even puzzled; he was
irretrievably befogged.

“Will someone repeat it aloud, please? It will save so much time.”

Crofts snatched the sheets from Oxford’s fingers and commenced to
read. The eagerness in his voice subsided while he went on to an
uncomfortable conclusion with an air that he was being made a fool.
Our confusion increased with rapt attention, but the sisters Delambre
seemed utterly uninterested, and I believe that the Constable had
already dropped into a doze. The message ran about as follows:¹

     ¹ The original has been supplied. (V. Markham.)

  ADEQUATE DESCRIPTION MANUSCRIPT IN CATALOGUE MOSTYN COLLECTION TO
  WHICH IT FORMERLY BELONGED STOP ORIGINAL NOW IN CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
  LIBRARY STOP COPIES MAY EXIST STOP MOSTYN SAYS ELIS GRUFFYDD SELF
  STYLED SOLDIER OF CALAIS WAS NATIVE GRONNANT UCHA IN PARISH LLANASSA
  FLINTSHIRE LIVED ABOUT 1490–1560 STOP CUSTODIAN WINGFIELD PALACE
  SEVEN YEARS BEFORE JOINING RETINUE AT CALAIS STOP BEST KNOWN AS
  AUTHOR AND SCRIBE OF LARGE POLYCHRONICON IN WELSH IN TWO MANUSCRIPT
  VOLUMES STOP FIRST BEGINS CREATION ENDING BATTLE OF HASTINGS STOP
  SECOND CONTINUES TO 1552 STOP FOLIOS 365–657 CONTAIN EYE WITNESS
  ACCOUNTS MANY TRANSACTIONS INCLUDING TRIALS IN STAR CHAMBER STOP NO
  MENTION IN MOSTYN OF REFERENCE TO CWM MELIN OR AIDENN VALE STOP CAN
  ASSURE YOU NO PASSAGE OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED STOP.

“May I have it back? Thank you. And now straight to the point. People,
I suppose you think that if we could only put our fingers down tight
on one person, our troubles would be over. I mean Parson Lolly—not the
Parson of Mr. Maryvale’s sad delusion, but the real one.”

“I should say so,” remarked Crofts.

“Well,” she said very quietly, “if there is one part of these
mysteries I know I hold the clue of, it’s the Parson. I _know_ who the
Parson is.”

The tableful of us stiffened as if we had been plunged in an electric
bath.

“Then who, who, who?” Crofts burst out.

“You mustn’t excite yourself. There never was any reason to be excited
about Parson Lolly. Parson Lolly is a dud.”

“Yes, he is!” hooted Bob incredulously.

“Yes, he is, I tell you. I can’t believe for a minute that he has any
unusual power. You can hardly say that he has any power at all; at
least, it’s delusive rather than formidable. Why, he’s done nothing
but deliver threats and make gestures, and some of us have been
imagining we’re the victims of supernatural pranks.”

“Supernatural or not,” growled Crofts, “I’ll give him a fine quarter
of an hour when I lay hands on him. Who is he?”

The American girl looked him straight in the eye, severely, and he
subsided with vague rumblings. “Now, I stipulate that you shall do
nothing of the sort. If you intend to make this the excuse for working
off your surplus bad temper, I won’t go any further.”

“I’ll go bail for him,” promised Alberta.

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me,” said Crofts.

The American girl leaned her chin in her hand and studied the table
with thoughtful eyes. She spoke slowly, tentatively. “Suppose I set
the evidence before you and see if your conclusion isn’t the same as
mine. Beginning, perhaps, with that night Millicent wandered out on
the lawn, and I with her. It was the clock in the corner there that
started all the trouble; neither the Parson nor any human being here
could have foreseen the effect that melody would have on Millicent
when she heard it through her dreams. But somewhere on the lawn we two
collided, you might say, with a separate series of events. First of
all it was the devilish, goggling face that glared down at us from an
instant from the air. And let me remind you that it was not only an
enormous face—I was frightened, but I’m not exaggerating—it was also
high up in the air. We know the Parson is tall when he stands full
length, but even he can’t extend indefinitely. Well, we saw this
perfectly hellish face, just for an instant, and it hasn’t been seen
again—that way. Mr. Salt took most of it away with him when he left
the Vale this evening.”

“What’s that?” jogged in Crofts.

“Let me go on, please. The head was one thing. Then there was the
placard: ‘Parson Lolly sends regards. Look out for Parson Lolly.’ That
was the first of a number of such messages that have been found all
about the place, and why _this_ one, at any rate, should have caused
us such great alarm, I can only account for by supposing that we’d
caught the spirit of panic from the servants. On sober reflection, I
should think that that placard demonstrated a sort of ingenuousness in
Parson Lolly.”

“A damned funny sort of ingenuousness,” remarked our host. “What about
the axe and the blood we found?”

“I was just going to remind you of them. The blood, as you know, we
learned to be that of one of a batch of little pigs, and its carcass
was found this afternoon along with the head. As for the axe, you
remember that Doctor Aire pointed out how light and impracticable it
was, and how it had been removed from low down on the armoury wall.
The final thing was that Mr. Bannerlee’s hat had been deposited on the
lawn. The rest was merely excitement. I am able, though, to add a
point or two borrowed from Mr. Bannerlee.”

I received a burning glance from Crofts. “From you? Have you been
holding something back all this time?”

The American girl swiftly continued. “These are notes from the diary
Mr. Bannerlee commenced that night.”

They all exclaimed, “Diary!”

“Yes, yes; don’t be so surprised at everything, or we shan’t get
through. Don’t let them bother you, Mr. Bannerlee. A little later I’ll
say something more general about the diary, but now I confine myself
to a pair of small points. One is that while he came down the path
from the uplands to the Vale, he heard a voice somewhere in the fog
below, shouting—an indeterminate sort of voice with a quality he
couldn’t quite describe. Now, I believe that was Parson Lolly’s voice,
the same queer voice we heard the night before Mr. Bannerlee came. And
the second point is this. Late in the afternoon before Sean met his
death, Mr. Bannerlee was standing on the roof outside his window.
Crofts had told him how the sun strikes the tumulus in Great Rhos at
sunset. Mr. Bannerlee looked down, as it chanced, and saw a tiny piece
of rope beneath the parapet that runs along there. It was lying at the
edge of one of the merlons, which have been scraped fairly smooth and
have their corners sharp. It is my belief that this scrap was part of
the clothes-line rope and that it had something to do with Parson
Lolly’s visit the night the conservatory window was smashed, also on
the night previous to Mr. Bannerlee’s advent.”

“Look here,” Crofts broke in. He had gradually been sliding to the
edge of his chair again. “Why can’t you give up beating about the bush
and tell us out and out?”

“I’d have to go over it all anyhow,” returned Miss Lebetwood. “I’m
wondering if these straws seem to you to point the way I think they
do. You must let me tell this in my own way. There isn’t much more,
and for that I have to thank Mr. Bannerlee also.”

“You mean my visit to the tower?” I asked. “The Superintendent could
help you there. He must have scoured the place long before me.”

“He did, as it happens. But he left matters there as he found them,
and it was through reading your diary that I heard of the variegated
lot of objects which probably belonged to the Parson. For instance,
you found shavings from the pencil which had written the placards. You
also saw some splashes, unquestionably the blood of the little pig.
Then there were fragments of wood and scraps of crêpe, left over from
the construction of the head. Another thing was a pungent smell that
you couldn’t identify. I think that was all except a torn-off corner
of the title-page of a book; something ending in ‘CATTI.’ I would have
telegraphed for information about that, too, this morning, but when I
asked the Superintendent, he was able to tell me right away what the
book is. It’s been quite a common one in Wales for generations: ‘The
Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti,’ who is described as a wild
wag of Wales. He was a real person two hundred years ago, Mr. Salt
told me, and a great many legends have sprung up about him, so that
his exploits as a highwayman and a hero and a man of chivalry make up
quite a readable book. It was borrowed from your library, Crofts, but
I noticed this morning that it was back in its place.”

Our host now seemed sunk in meditative gloom. “What of it?”

“Well, suppose I recapitulate. As I see it, the night before Mr.
Bannerlee came, the Parson intended to invade the House, but his plans
were awry. Although the head was made, he didn’t bring it with him;
this was to be an experimental sortie. He came by way of the kitchen
yard, and took down the clothes-line that was hanging there and
brought it with him. He made a loop, a lasso, with one end of the rope
and flung it up the side of the House until he succeeded in drawing it
tight about one of the merlons of the battlement. Then he began
shouting through a megaphone, and even if you had heard his voice
previously you wouldn’t have recognized it then. And he was still
shouting while he commenced to walk up the wall of the House.”

I thought Crofts was going to levitate from his chair. “A megaphone!”

“But, my dear young lady,” objected Aire, “the man must have had a
hand too many. I grant you, he might have hauled himself up the
outside of the House, but he’d need both hands for it; where does the
megaphone come in?”

“You people will interrupt,” said the American girl. “The explanation
is simple. The megaphone came from old Watts’ storeroom, of course.
Don’t you remember that there are relics in there of early days of
sport—even some oars and a sliding seat from a shell? A rowing
coxswain uses a megaphone, doesn’t he, and there’s an attachment for
keeping it tight against his mouth while both hands are occupied with
the rudder chains. Parson Lolly, I imagine, can manage as well as most
coxswains. Anyhow, he _was_ climbing, and he _was_ shouting when his
foot slipped and there he dangled. Instead of letting go the rope, he
held on, and the result was that he began to sway back and forth. Of
course he tried to steady himself by reaching one foot out to the
wall, but instead of checking his momentum he kicked away from the
wall, and his pendulum swing carried him neatly through the window of
the conservatory. He wasn’t as much as scratched.”

“Unbelievable,” declared Crofts. “And supposing by a miracle he wasn’t
cut to pieces, what became of him?”

The American girl went on quietly. “When my brother was a high-school
lad, he had a soccer ball at home. One evening in an unlit hall he
stepped on it accidentally and it sent him clean through a glass door
without his losing a drop of blood. It isn’t an unusual thing, after
all. As for how the Parson got away, he really didn’t—then. You see,
the swing of the rope had gradually ground it to bits where it rubbed
against the sharpened merlon. When the Parson swung through the
window, the rope broke and he came down on his feet inside the
conservatory. Lucky for him, perhaps, that he did, if he wanted to
evade us, for all he had to do was to draw the rope in after him and
wait until we had spent our patience looking for him in the grounds.
None of us had a thought of searching inside.”

“Well, I’m—” Crofts muttered, breaking off into stupefaction. No one
else said a word, only stared at the American girl, and waited.

“That night we may assume Parson Lolly escaped as soon as the coast
was clear. But he escaped only to plan new mischief for the next
evening. And again his schemes miscarried. I think it is easier to
reconstruct what happened this time. For one thing, he brought the
head with him.” Crofts seemed about to break in, but desisted. “He was
carrying the blood as well; he must have slaughtered the piglet a
little while before he set out from the tower, for the blood had not
begun to clot. Earlier, he had been prowling inside the House and had
pilfered the little battle-axe and the cap belonging to Mr.
Bannerlee.”

“But, dearest, you aren’t making it a bit clearer,” said Alberta.
“What could it have all been for?”

“It was to give us the scare of our lives.”

“And didn’t it?” muttered Oxford. “Dash him!”

“But not as planned. Sean pointed that out at once, I believe. The
Parson’s intention that night was to stage a fictitious murder. There
were the weapon, the gore, and the hat which was to be discovered
reeking with blood. We were to find these things, and in the midst of
our excitement we were to be thrown into a panic when the head—went
off—probably somewhere on the battlement, or even above.”

“The head, the infernal head!”

“Yes, Crofts; it appeared when they dug it up this afternoon—Harmony
told me—that it had been constructed somewhat like a kite and could
have been flown quite easily. That occurred, in fact. When Millicent
and I inadvertently crossed the Parson’s path and he dropped
everything and legged it, the kite did fly up a little way, and
then—went off.” She addressed me. “When it crashed to the ground, Mr.
Bannerlee, the Parson still held the cord, and you distinguished the
head as a black mass sliding across the lawn.”

“I grant you the kite and the rest of the fol-de-rol,” cut in Lord
Ludlow, in a voice like the broken edge of a cake of ice. “I fancy,
however, that this ‘going off,’ as you call it, needs more explanation
than you’ll readily find.”

“The hellish thing couldn’t have been lit with a match like a
Hallowe’en turnip,” added Crofts.

The American girl slowly shook her head and smiled. “On the contrary,
for me that was about the easiest guess of all as soon as I read how
Mr. Bannerlee smelt powder in the tower. Don’t you see, the Parson
must have carried a small dry battery connected by a length of wire
with the magnesium charge in the head? It was an ordinary flash-light
powder such as is used for taking photographs.”

There was a long interval of sagging silence. I cannot speak for
others, but my own mind struggled with an obstacle it could not grasp.
There must be some egregious contradiction involved in this idea.
Flashlight! Who had owned a flashlight?

“But, Miss Lebetwood, you yourself—it can’t be—you’re the photography
expert here. You didn’t—yourself—”

“Wait a moment! I’ve got it!” Aire whistled. “Someone told me other
other day—you’d been teaching Toby how to take flashlight photographs.
Didn’t you bring down some old apparatus of yours and give it to him
last week?”

“Quite right,” said the American girl. “It’s been Toby all along, of
course.”

“Toby!” Crofts was only beginning to see the light.

“Toby, who else?”

“God!” Crofts seemed to choke for breath. “Do you mean to say that lad
killed Cosgrove—killed Heatheringham? I can’t believe it.”

“He never killed anybody. Don’t you see, Parson Lolly has no
connection with these murders?”

“Eh, what?”

“Well, what do you know about that?”

“I’ll be switched!”

“I’ll be damned!”

The American girl gave Ludlow a particular look. “It hardly needed the
new psychology to give us the right lead. I’m amazed, really I am,
that no one has thought of it before. Why, what activities did the
Parson engage in? His plots were just the sort of thing that an
artless—and artful—child would plan to frighten a grown person.”

“Or a grown person to frighten a child,” appended Aire.

“Yes, I think so, but there could be no such intention here, of
course. As soon as I got my wits about me the night Mr. Bannerlee
arrived, I suspected some juvenile escapade. The details unfolded to
fit the theory. There was the little battle-axe from low on the wall,
whereas the big ones hung out of reach. That later night, who but a
small boy could have crawled underneath the arch of the bridge in the
park when the Doctor and Mr. Bannerlee were so brisk on his trail?
Then there was the book: hardly anyone but a lad nowadays would take
much interest in a work as naïve as ‘Twm Shon Catti.’ A boy, however,
might be much struck with it, and it probably fired Toby to emulation
of Twm—a bloodyish emulation. There was his cloak, too—that was rather
puerile, although it was a neat dodge all the same.”

“Where does the neat dodge come in?” I asked.

“Why, to add to his stature. A tiny Parson Lolly would be in danger of
being identified with a boy, if there happened to be a boy in the
neighbourhood. That was the reason for the exceedingly large and
flowing garb. He must have had strapped to his shoulders one of those
contrivances that magicians use to ‘produce’ objects, an apparatus
that could be folded or extended by pressure on some spring. No wonder
Millicent and I saw no head on him! That sort of stunt is as old as
conjuring, I believe, and the appliance probably came from the
exhaustless variety of old Watts’ attics.”

The American girl leaned back in her chair, settling her head against
the leather and closing her eyes, as if grateful for a chance to rest.
The accumulation of details which she had picked out left no doubt
whatever that the houseful of us had been hoaxed and flummoxed by a
child, that Aidenn Vale was Cock Lane repeated on a twentieth century
scale.

_But it could not be!_

There were facts, cold, stony facts, that loomed mountain high,
cutting off this path. These facts could not be avoided.

“But, Miss Lebetwood!” I cried hoarsely, “it won’t do.”

“Won’t do!” resounded the voice of our host, a man of imponderable
mind.

“The placards!” I insisted. “Why, I remember clearly the one in
Cosgrove’s room had been left after Toby had gone to wherever-it-was
to fetch my bag—absolutely no question about that. That afternoon,
too, the one Mrs. Bartholomew picked up by the library tower: I’ll
swear by the beard of the Prophet it wasn’t there when I went past a
few minutes before the tragedy occurred. And Toby was peeling potatoes
then. It’s inconceivable—absolutely inconceivable—that he could have
had anything to do with them.”

Her eyes still shut, Miss Lebetwood said quietly, “I think I can tell
who it was. Not Toby, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t alter the rest of
what I’ve said about him. Toby didn’t write those placards, or leave
them, and I am sure he knows no more about them than he knows
about—that one there!”

The hair at the back of my neck prickled, and my spine seemed to be
wriggling in convulsions. A dozen cries, loud or stunned, sounded as
if from one multi-vocal throat. For the American girl’s eyes were open
now, and her arm pointed to the musicians’ gallery. Indistinct,
hanging outside the bright zone of the globe, but unmistakable, a
fifth placard was suspended from the rail of the balustrade.

“My God!”

“I’ll take oath that wasn’t there when we came in,” declared Crofts,
and many voices supported him.

It was I who rose like a brisk automaton, kicked my chair back against
the wall, and sped up the stairs to the gallery, where I had never set
foot before. The placard hung by a black thread attached to a pin. I
seized it, carried it down to the light. Now we might have been some
multi-headed creature studying the inscription:

   T O n i g H T  m y  L A s t  N i G H t    B e S t  R E G a r d s
                        P A R S O N  L O L L Y

Only the American girl remained limp in her chair, not bending forward
for a sight of the words. While my gaze, as it must, fell on her and
lingered there, ever such a shadowy smile crept from her lips to her
eyes.

“Good people, good, good people, please don’t misjudge me. That
placard has been hanging there since long before you came in. You
didn’t see it because you weren’t on the look-out for it.”

“You knew it was there?” Crofts boomed. “And you didn’t warn us?”

“Warn you? Against myself?”

“Against yourself, dearest?” cried Millicent Mertoun, her face
suddenly worn with anxiety.

Miss Lebetwood said, “I wrote that placard. I wrote it this evening
and put it up there after Marvel’s crystal-gazing to-night. I did it
just to show you that anybody could make a placard like that. This is
the fifth, and perhaps the four others were done by four different
persons.”

Accompanying the last words of her speech, the first strokes of twelve
began to sound from the clock in the corner. There was a spell in the
sound of its old music. We were hushed.

For the only time I saw Lord Ludlow’s face absolutely grey with fear.
“There’s something moving in the wall!”

“Not in the wall—on the wall!”

Indeed, high up, above our solitary light, something rubbed and
scraped near the portrait of Sir Pharamond. From somewhere else in the
room came a soft murmur, as of a smooth-running reel. Belvoir caught
hold of the bulb by its brass top and raised it overhead. Within the
brightness now, the colours of the portrait were sharper and more
brilliant than they had appeared in the austere dimness of the Hall.

But Sir Pharamond was not still; he writhed and rocked, and a loud
outcry was evidence we saw the blood oozing from the wound upon his
cheek.

A moment later down fell Sir Pharamond with a sound of splintering
wood and ripping canvas. The wall where the portrait had been was
quite smooth and blank.

The quiet chime of the old clock had not ceased to ring.



CHAPTER XXVII

The Purr of the Cat!

Blood on the pallid cheek of Sir Pharamond, and his downfall, as had
been prophesied in the olden time! I saw no one else, heard no one
else, only gaped at the ruined portrait and was conscious of the
clock’s melodious voice. An epoch seemed to pass before my senses
ceased to dance, and I found myself one of the faltering semicircle
which closed about the shattered portrait.

But beyond the area of brightness I made out indistinctly the most
amazing thing of all. The sisters Delambre sat by the fireplace
precisely as they had been since we entered the Hall. The short,
stodgy one seemed quite absorbed in the flickering embers; the taller
of the two had merely turned her head in our direction. Even the
Constable seemed bereft of reflexes. This lack of surprise, this
apathy, this uncanny silence impressed me just then as a thing more
incredible than the disaster close at hand.

I still stared at the strange pair, while conscious that Aire had
slipped before us, standing over the wreck of the portrait. He turned
and faced us, and the small voice of the man seemed charged with a
booming importance.

I heard him vaguely. “I told Salt,” came in somewhere, and then,
“Crofts put me up to it, really.”

“You’re crazy, crazy,” claimed Crofts.

“I tell you it never would have happened if you hadn’t been so
fractious this morning. I said this sort of thing might conceivably
take place. Well, it has, that’s all.”

Eve Bartholomew ventured. “You mean that you—you—”

“Very simply indeed.” Aire hunched his shoulders appreciatively. “A
matter of two spools and a bit of string connected with the mechanism
of the chimes. A scurvy conjurer’s trick; that’s all. I apologize.”

“But the blood!” I cried in a sudden access of emotion. “Spools and
strings don’t produce blood. I saw it oozing from the cheek!”

Aire smiled, shook his head slightly. “No, they don’t. But then, you
didn’t see blood oozing from the cheek.”

Half a dozen hot affirmatives contradicted him.

“I tell you no. You’re all acquainted with the prophecy of the bloody
cheek, and you were all hypnotized.”

“Don’t try to tell me,” bullied Crofts, brushing the little man aside
and bending to the wreckage.

Aire smiled dryly. “That’s not blood, you see; it’s painted blood.”

“Wh-at!” cried Crofts, holding up a portion of the canvas. “You daubed
this stuff on my painting?”

“Not I; Maryvale. And that’s not your painting, by the way.”

Crofts could only mutter.

“Don’t be disturbed, my friend. This portrait is a rush order, as they
say in America, a copy done for me this afternoon by Maryvale. You’ll
find the original under his mattress, poor chap.”

“Well, of all—” Crofts relapsed into dumb glowering.

Aire made a slight movement of disdain. “Why be so upset? It was only
a trick—a cheap trick, I admit—and I take the full responsibility,
ladies and gentlemen. I almost wish it hadn’t occurred, but dogmatic
people sometimes get on my nerves. And now let’s forget about it and
get back to the table; we were really learning something there. Paula,
I hope this hasn’t too awfully disconcerted you? You can go on with
it?”

She forced a smile. “Yes, certainly. Do come on, people; it’s getting
awfully late.”

We returned to our places not much more comforted than when we had
sprung from them a few minutes before. It was all very well to speak
of parlour tricks, but there was no ease in sitting around the table
in that darkened room with those images of lethargy dwelling by the
fire, and no cheer in waiting through the lonesome night, wondering
from what direction some new terror might leap upon us. But there we
were.

“. . . bearings of Sean’s death,” Paula Lebetwood was saying. She went
on in a strange voice: “He was struck and fell dying where I found him
by the tower. Then the weapon, as we now know, was hurled down there,
too. But we have to admit that as far as we can tell none of us could
have been at the tower at that time. Nobody except Wheeler met Sean—or
will admit he did—after our quarrel in the Hall. So, stated in those
terms, there is an irreconcilable contradiction in Sean’s death. Only
there is no contradiction save in words; for we know, well enough,
that somebody _must_ have struck him, and therefore somebody must have
been there.

“In Mr. Heatheringham’s death there were differences, though in some
respects it was much the same. In the first place, he must have seen
something hostile or there would have been no revolver shot. The trail
of blood across the floor, too, showed what had been the murderer’s
line of retreat. But the most unusual thing, surely, is one that
Doctor Aire can explain better than I. Will you, Doctor?”

Aire looked at her inquiringly. “I suppose you mean the
rigidity—cadaveric spasm, as we call it? What do you want me to—?”

“It shows something about the way he was killed, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does. The topic is of great interest to one of my profession;
we come across it so seldom, save on the battlefield. We know
something about it, though, enough to be sure that there are certain
definite predisposing factors.”

She nodded. “Yes, I meant that. Please go on.”

“_Sudden_ death is one, and death due to violent disturbance of
nervous system. Then the last contraction of the muscles during life
persists with more rigidity even than in the usual _rigor_.”

“I’m sure you people see what I mean by harping on these gruesome
things,” said the girl. “Thank you, Doctor. This abnormal state of
things taken with the shot through the broken window proves that Mr.
Heatheringham was killed right where we found him. I mean he couldn’t
have been bludgeoned outside—say where I found Sean lying—and have
crawled back into the Hall and raised himself to the window to fire at
whoever might have been there. So far, we have no idea who was with
him; yet I think it must have been one of the servants or one of
us—more likely one of us.”

No one chose to say anything in the brief silence she left. Presently,
in a fresher tone, she resumed.

“That’s how the problem stood yesterday: just death, simple and
inexplicable—violent death without a real motive—violent death without
an agent, apparently. Even the discovery of the stone has been no help
in finding the agent; anybody could have grabbed a stone from the
rockery.”

Crofts muttered, “Why go over all that again? We’ve known it from the
start.”

“I apologize. I only mentioned those things to go on to say that it’s
useless to think about them any longer. We could continue for weeks
and months mulling over motive and method—mulling over time and place
and all the rest of it that makes an endless circle. Last night,
though, I thought of a new way.”

“New?” the words sprang from Belvoir’s lips.

She paused and looked about the table. “I—I’m a little nervous about
telling you my idea. The thing was, I suddenly thought of Mr.
Bannerlee’s diary.”

“That’s a fine one!” I put in ironically. “You thought of it when
nobody but Crofts and Heatheringham had ever heard of it—unless
Heatheringham told Salt!”

“As it happens, I’ve known about it all along. A few minutes before
luncheon the day of Sean’s death, you and Crofts came upstairs to the
first-storey landing together. I had changed after playing tennis and
was just going downstairs. Although the two of you suddenly lowered
your voices when you saw me, I had already heard you, Mr. Bannerlee,
say that you had been up till nearly morning and had done more than
five thousand words. Crofts said he hoped you had got it straight, and
that left no doubt what you had been writing. But I was much too
polite, then, to let you know I guessed what you were doing. . . . And
before I go on, people, let me say that as far as I can tell, no
record has ever been written with fewer mistakes.”

“Thank you,” I acknowledged.

“Humanly and”—here she slipped in a smile—“archæologically speaking,
that is. You can’t expect one person to write a story that would
satisfy every question that flits through another person’s mind. I’m
not sure that I like his style, either,” she remarked, rather
abstractedly, “though you couldn’t judge it very well in that
fragmentary state—except, I think, he fancies his power of description
and likes to make a passage effective now and then. But while I read,
I began to feel the diary was just suited to the purpose I had in
mind.”

“Which was—?” said Lord Ludlow, who gave the impression of
long-suffering patience.

“I wanted to find the killer without bothering how he killed. I
expected the diary would help me to look on all you people divested of
my own prejudices. Through the diary I could judge you more fairly,
and more strictly than I could in my own mind. Meeting you there would
be like meeting new persons, all of you except Crofts and Alberta
being new to Mr. Bannerlee. The diary is really full of side-lights on
people and little bits of character. Maybe, though, I was expecting
too much from Mr. Bannerlee. How could he come to know us in a day, or
a week? He couldn’t. He saw us only from the outside and the diary
reveals only the outside of us. Without being disrespectful either to
you or to Mr. Bannerlee, I must say I was reminded of clowns in a
circus. Most of us seemed to be doing the same thing over and over
again. Ted Belvoir and Lord Ludlow were eternally carrying on a silly
debate; Eve was making a fresh prophecy every day, and not one of them
came true; Crofts seemed to be growing grouchier every time he was
mentioned; Gilbert Maryvale spent most of his afternoons leaving
cryptic remarks about, so to speak; Lib’s mission in life was talking
gibberish to Mr. Bannerlee. Everyone seemed to be posing as an idiot,
quite an innocent idiot. Well, it turned out that my most important
discovery in the diary wasn’t a character after all, but a fact.”

“A fact you didn’t know before?” asked Belvoir.

The American girl smiled faintly. “First of all, though, if Mr.
Bannerlee doesn’t mind, I want to tell you the big secret he’s been
keeping from us. Do you mind, Mr. Bannerlee?”

I bowed the responsibility on to her shoulders with a smile. “I think
you should tell us beforehand how you found out—what you did. I’d like
to know myself.”

“I was going to. People, you remember the other day, Mr. Bannerlee
went on the hilltops again, and he was so taken with the view of
distant mountains that he drew sighting lines on his map to show which
ones were visible. The sighting lines, of course, were drawn from the
same spot, and that spot was on Whimble. After orienting his map, he
squinted across it, looking toward the Malvern Hills and the Black
Mountain and elsewhere to establish lines of vision. He could even see
to Plinlimon; that’s about thirty miles away. You did see Plinlimon
that day, didn’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, that was how I knew you hadn’t been on Whimble, whose highest
point has an elevation of about 1950 feet. The highest point on
Plinlimon is less than 2500. Thirty miles apart and only five hundred
feet difference. Now, if Mr. Bannerlee stood anywhere on Whimble and
he looked toward Plinlimon, Great Rhos, just across the Vale, would be
between him and the mountain. Great Rhos is a flattish sort of hill,
and its elevation is 2166. Think that over.”

“How idiotically, infernally stupid of me!” I cried.

“But I don’t see—” said Eve Bartholomew blankly.

Others about the table uttered exclamations that showed their
understanding or betrayed their confusion.

The American girl turned to Mrs. Bartholomew. “You see, dear, if you
were nineteen feet high and wanted to see something ten yards away
that was five feet higher than you, you couldn’t do it if there was a
wall a foot higher than you less than a yard away.”

To give her credit, Mrs. Bartholomew grasped the point instantly. But
she still was dubious. “Then how did Mr. Bannerlee see the mountain?”

“He must have been somewhere else.”

“But you said he _said_ he was on Whimble.”

I laughed. “No, I didn’t say so, Mrs. Bartholomew. I was satisfied to
let people think so, though.”

“Why was that?” interjected Lord Ludlow sharply.

The American girl turned to him. “He wanted to reserve a little share
of glory for himself. Why should he have told us his special secret,
or even write it down in the House, before he knew what kind of people
we were? I think Mr. Bannerlee was very sensible.”

I smiled, recalling a somewhat different reaction to my
“antiquarianism” that afternoon.

“But what does it all mean?” Mrs. Bartholomew came in plaintively.

“That’s what I wondered this morning,” answered the American girl.
“Mr. Bannerlee, I suppose by this time you know the reason why I took
that campstool; in fact, you had written the reason yourself
somewhere. ‘What a difference a few feet make in the prospect!’ You
are a bit taller than I am, and there was just that barest risk that
you could see further from Whimble than I could. But when I reached
the tippy-top of the hill and set my campstool there and stood on it,
I knew I had as good a chance as you of peeping over Great Rhos. But I
couldn’t. So I knew you must have been somewhere else when you saw
Plinlimon, and I could only suppose that the reason you’d hidden your
whereabouts was your discovery of the oratory, after three hundred
years.”

“The oratory!” Doctor Aire reached out a hand to me. “My
congratulations, Bannerlee!”

“And mine!” said Belvoir.

“After three hundred years!”

“The oratory!” cried Lib. “Bannerlee, you’ve been false to me.
Couldn’t you trust lil’ Lib?”

“So that was it,” muttered Crofts. “You needn’t have been so close
about it.”

“Really a downy bird,” giggled Alberta.

I faced the American girl. “This is almost—gratuitous, you know. These
unfortunate people are waiting for you to cast some light upon their
darkness, not to herald any trifling discovery of mine.”

“Yes, I _had_ better be getting on toward solving the mystery, if
we’re ever to be done to-night. The queer thing is that guessing about
Mr. Bannerlee’s discovery is what put me on some sort of a track. In
fact, if Mr. Bannerlee’s matches hadn’t given out that afternoon he
saw the rainbow, I never, never would have seen the path—that sounds
like a figure of speech almost, and a paradox, but I mean just that.”

“Matches!”

“Yes, Mr. Bannerlee, by the time you had reached the House you might
have been excused for thinking Fate was playing with you. And, by the
way, people, a little while ago Mr. Bannerlee explained to me how he
had brought his quarto of Sylvan Armitage to Radnorshire with him
after all. Naturally, when he left it in the oratory by chance, he did
not care to tell us about it, on account of his precious secret. So he
had just recovered his copy and was bringing it down the Vale with him
that afternoon.”

“Aren’t you going to get out of the sixteenth century?” inquired
Ludlow. “It seems to me that you are leading this discussion along the
lines of a wranglers’ tea-party.”

“Do forgive me for wasting so much time. The Book of Sylvan Armitage
interests me so much; indeed, it helped me tremendously. Mr. Bannerlee
caught me reading it the other night; did he tell you?”

“Nothing criminal in that,” said Belvoir.

“N-no, but it was slightly—unconventional. The passage where Armitage
happened upon the oratory was an admirable parallel to Mr. Bannerlee’s
account in his diary, as I learned later. Yes, I came to be very glad
indeed that I had stolen down at midnight to get the Book. . . . Now,
people, I can’t go any further without telling you another secret
about Mr. Bannerlee. He won’t forgive me for this, I’m afraid. But
he’s not only a gentleman and a scholar”—I suppressed my indignation
at this outrageous statement—“not only a discoverer of things so old
that they are new—he is also an altruist!”

I bowed my head giddily under this monstrous charge, and heard her go
on to say: “He is defending one of us, one, I think, whom he had never
seen before!”

If dismay were a sign of guilt, there was not an innocent one among
them. Their alarm testified, I think, to the fact that they had hoped,
and hope begot belief, that the crime would be traced at last to
someone outside the Vale. They had all been innocent to each other
before; now to suppose the murderer sat among them was a shock as
great as murder itself.

“Someone in this room?” whispered Crofts in a voice far different from
his bullying voice.

“Someone at this table?” asked Eve Bartholomew.

“Someone at this table.”

Belvoir made a show of pulling himself together. “See here, Bannerlee,
is this true?”

“That’s not a fair question, is it?” said the American girl. “Mr.
Bannerlee cannot know how much I know about—”

I said, “Frankly, Miss Lebetwood, you are not being as direct as you
promised to be. I am at a loss as to the ‘altruism’ you refer to. Tell
us plainly what you mean, and perhaps I can be of some assistance. You
are mistaken if you believe that I would shield anyone for a moment
who had deliberate murder at his door.”

“That’s fair. Well, my trump-card is that I know who burned the
evidence that incriminated one of us; no matter how I know. You burnt
it, Mr. Bannerlee, you yourself.”

Their haggard white faces were turned on me. I felt my cheeks flush.
“I think you are alarming our fellow-guests without good reason. Why,
granting, as you believe, I _did_ drop the paper in the fire, and
supposing there were the least connection between the writer and the
crime—which seems improbable—the mere fact that the Book at this
moment belongs to Crofts’ library doesn’t indicate that one of you
discovered the parchment during some visit here and filled an idle
hour doing its contents into an obsolete style of English. None of
you, as far as I know, are Celtic experts.”

“Emphatically!” declared Lord Ludlow, fixing a reproachful gaze on the
American girl. “Miss, you are confusing a wild shot in the dark with
the reasoning process. This piece of translator’s work, probably done
by someone outside this Valley and quite unknown to us, can have no
connection with any atrocity committed here. You are far afield, and I
do not think you will help us much unless, as I said, you lift us from
the plane of a wranglers’ tea-party.”

“You may be right,” she confessed. “I shan’t try to convince you. But
it was a tempting lead. And surely it’s not true to say there’s no
connection between the parchment story and events which have occurred
this week.” Elbows on table, she rested her head on her hands,
speaking very thoughtfully. “For instance, in the old story Hughes
related after lunch that day he called this place the castle on the
mill-site. An old, old map in the library gives Aidenn Vale as ‘Cwm
Melin,’ which means ‘Mill Valley,’ I’ve learned, and that is what the
Vale was called in the manuscript; do you remember? The parchment
explains, too, what was meant by the ‘spanning and roofing of the
waters,’ one of Mr. Maryvale’s mystifying utterances. It referred
simply to the fact that when Sir Pharamond built his second castle
here, he roofed in the Water; I suppose the present stream beyond the
towers is a deflected one and the channel where Sir Brooke was found
is the original course. That may seem far-fetched, but the proof is
that Doctor Aire took from Sir Brooke’s forehead a splinter of the
petrified wood of the mill-wheel itself. When Sir Brooke was carried
down the subterranean stream, his body must have collided with the
edge of the mill-wheel, and passed on. Mr. Bannerlee, in his
expedition to the cellar, must have actually seen the casing of the
wheel, all overgrown with hideous fungi. So there _are_ connections,
of a sort.”

“Quite interesting in the abstract,” said Ludlow tartly. “We are
looking for something, however, which has a tangible link with a crime
of violence. May I suggest that if you have nothing more to offer us,
this meeting adjourns?”

She had not lifted her head; her fists ground into her forehead. “I
shall try to satisfy you, sir, again with Mr. Bannerlee’s assistance.
I think you will recall that there was a sentence in the parchment to
the effect that Sir Pharamond disposed of his enemies ‘with no more
trouble than snuffing a night-light.’ Now, within five minutes after
reaching the House, Mr. Bannerlee discovered a curious thing. Looking
through the armoury window, he saw _you_, Ludlow. _And what were you
doing there? You were snuffing a candle that stood in the old bracket
on the wall!_”

Ludlow’s chair was flung back. He was on his feet, putty-faced,
staring at her in utter consternation.

“Are you accusing me?”

Before she could answer, our attention swung to the other end of the
Hall. From somewhere in that semi-darkness came a muffled rasping
sound, as of some huge beast that purred.

Crofts was on his feet now, with eyes that strained to overcome the
gloom. He called, “What’s that?”

Aire strode half-way to the fireplace, turning his head this way and
that. “There _is_ something moving in the wall this time. Only where?”

“No!” I shouted, above the increasing hubbub. “IT’S THE PURR OF THE
CAT! The purr of the cat means death! Clear the Hall!”

But I was too late. A glaring light leaped from nowhere, light so
intense it pierced the brain. The walls and roof blazed with white
fire. The persons in the Hall were like figures of clay, presented and
fixed for all eternity in one or another cast of horror. Some had
cowered back beneath the gallery, some had their hands before their
faces, some were forever fleeing, foot lifted, toward the door.

The Constable and one of the sisters had retreated from the
chimney-piece, while the other woman stooped low before the fireplace.
A thing with the size and form of a man had been lying there at their
feet, unseen. In this white instant I saw the woman grasp this figure,
raising it above her head.

The collapse of the mantelshelf—a black projectile flying toward me
and veering away—a stunning crash—a long greedy laughter rising from
below, clutching us, tearing us, subsiding in a sudden burst of
silence.

Darkness succeeded light. The strong arm of the Delambre woman still
held the man upright: a headless body.



CHAPTER XXVIII

The Crash

Again I smelt powder.

In tingling silence some of us crossed the Hall and regarded the
headless thing. Belvoir lit the other chandelier, and in its sparkle,
to my immeasurable relief, the figure proved to be the scarecrow which
had served in the sisters’ field. The woman who had stooped in the
fireplace and held the effigy in the path of the leaping, swinging bar
sat in her chair, again impassive. I noted her admirable hands, strong
and hairy like a man’s, her face, broad and full of flesh, but firm
and capable. The bumpkinish policeman touched me on the sleeve and
pointed to the table, a sign we should keep to our own end of the
Hall.

I noted a disturbance there. Crofts, towering over the American girl,
shook her with rude fingers clamped into her shoulders.

“You—you—”

While I returned to our group, I was struck with the curious feeling
that someone was missing there. Someone had slipped out. Vaguely I
wondered who it had been, and whether his absence would be revealed
when we took our places once more. But we were not to sit down
together again that night.

The American girl had drawn away from Crofts and stood looking at him,
not angrily, but with a certain speculation in her gaze. My blood
rushed up when I saw her white skin bruised by the marks his fingers
had made. She said, “You think I—?”

“Murderess!” That was like Crofts.

Several of us protested at his folly; the rest were horrified into
dumbness.

Her steady gaze did not fail. “You do suspect me. So did Mr.
Heatheringham—and Mr. Blenkinson has done me the honour also. But I
didn’t do it, people, and—sometimes—I wonder if anybody did . . . at
least in the sense we’ve been thinking.”

“Nobody did! with that damned engine—that thunderbolt! Nobody did!”

“Don’t shout so. That engine, as you call it, was Mr. Salt’s discovery
this afternoon while the House was cleared. I had nothing to do with
it just now.”

Crofts’ jaw fell. “Cleared? The House cleared? There wasn’t anything
in this ‘lost’ business?”

“Very little. I did want to find Mr. Bannerlee’s oratory, but
principally I hoped to draw you kind people out of the Vale. Mr. Salt
and I have been associated in a lawful conspiracy. He and the Scotland
Yard Inspector—”

“Who?”

“The Scotland Yard man. He was to arrive at New Aidenn by motor early
in the afternoon since the trains were slow. While the House was
empty, they investigated, and found this machine. Mr. Salt expected
something like it. This was the real weapon, of course; that stone
half buried in the loam was a blind.”

“You’ve known this—long?”

“How could I? I had a hint of it when I kept finding in so many places
how the old castle here was built on a mill-site: Cwm Melin, you know.
It even happened that Mr. Bannerlee knew that name and that name only
for this place. He had never heard of Aidenn Vale.”

“The devil with Bannerlee. What’s a mill got to do with it?”

“The mill-wheel, don’t you see, winds up the spring of the machine. It
must be quite automatic, and I dare say at this moment the cat’s
claw—I suppose that’s what it is—the long heavy arm of iron, is ready
to leap out again.”

Doctor Aire’s face revealed a ferment within. “By jingo—I think I have
it. That mocking roar—hideous—was the sound of water tumbling into a
cistern, or a heavy cask. Then if the cistern discharged over the
wheel, the gear actuating the arm would wind until—yes, by thunder,
that’s it!”

“What’s what?”

“We heard the purr. That was the gear winding against the resistance
of the spring—a sword-spring, perhaps. When the tension exceeded the
strength of the spring, the accursed thing let fly. There must be a
shaft. . . .” The Doctor lapsed into mumbling.

“Beneath the perfidious tree!” screamed Mrs. Bartholomew so suddenly
that we all jumped. “What does that mean?”

Miss Lebetwood answered, “There was once a cross—see the traces—carved
on the chimney.”

Aire had his eye shrewdly on her. “We can credit you with the
flashlight, can’t we?”

She nodded. “Yes; the camera’s in the gallery, and there were powders
attached to several places on the wall. Constable Pritchard
manipulated the electric button that ignited them. I hope we have
obtained a decent picture of the claw in mid-air.”

“But who—who’s responsible?” asked Mrs. Bartholomew plaintively, with
outspread hands.

“Dead too long to make any difference,” said Aire.

“Could this, er, machine last for centuries?” Crofts demanded,
shouldering his way to the Doctor.

“For millenniums, without oiling,” returned Aire. “Why not? The really
important thing is—”

“I’ve got it!” I cried. “About your question, Mrs. Bartholomew.
Remember, Miss Lebetwood, what Maryvale told me the day he finished
his picture? Someone, he said, of the house of Kay. And, by heaven, he
was right!”

“The really necessary thing,” persisted Aire, “is to dismantle this
machine without getting killed. It will be ticklish work, though,
since it’s automatically prepared to lunge out with its claw on five
seconds’ notice. We’ll have to make a start with the cistern and the
wheel.”

“That’s not the first thing, Doctor,” said the American girl.

Aire turned toward her in surprise. “Nothing can be more urgent. You
wouldn’t leave this thing for a night or for an hour, would you, like
a gun primed and cocked? Why, at any moment, sooner or later, the
equilibrium—”

“I think not, and if we hear the purr again we can keep our distance.
Something needs to be done, however, before you take the machine
apart. We must find the real murderer.”

We gave vent to all kinds of sounds, mainly incredulous.

“Listen! We have _not_ discovered yet the person here who knows Welsh
and whom Mr. Bannerlee is shielding.”

I commenced a vain “I haven’t admitted—” but my speech was charged
down.

“I can prove you are!” she cried. “Yes, sir! I want to know why you
are shielding him, or her. All day long I haven’t got my mind off
those matches you wanted so badly after recovering your own copy of
the Book. Do you know, it’s my belief you knew you were carrying
evidence dangerous to someone, and you wanted to destroy it before you
reached the House. I think it was the translation you actually did
destroy later on.”

“Look here—” put in Crofts, reaching out a hand. His face might have
been that of a man sinking under water for the third time. “Look
here—”

“Crofts!” cried Alberta, her eyes bright with agony.

“The parchment and translation were in old Watts’ copy,” Belvoir
snapped.

I doubt if she heard them, intent as she was on the molten stream of
her thought. “This translation, done off-hand, betrayed someone of us
who had a competent knowledge of Welsh and consequently a head-start,
at any rate, in knowledge of the cat’s claw.”

“It was in old Watts’ copy,” muttered Belvoir.

“When you came into the library, Mr. Bannerlee, you were about
satiated with your attempts to burn the paper. But even if you
couldn’t destroy it, you could get it off your person, and you did
that. You told how you ‘reached your hand up into a dark corner,’ and
you might have added ‘and changed my quarto with the one on the
shelf.’ What happened a few minutes later when you and Lib were
looking over your copy? A flake of moss fell to the floor; Lib must
have noticed it, for you were scrupulous to mention it in the diary,
and you passed it off with some remark about careless dusting. But I
read in Armitage about moss, and I read about mossy stones in the
diary, and I’ve seen plenty of mossy ones around the oratory, and you
can’t tell me that the copy with the parchment in it wasn’t the one
you’d left up there last week. So I imagine you knew well enough what
Lib had found when she called out to you while you were leaving the
library.”

“How absurd!” I cried.

“‘Imagine’ is a well-chosen word,” said Lord Ludlow crisply. “I am not
much edified by this botanical excursion. You can’t accuse a man of
being accessory to murder because of the way he turns a phrase.”

“Thanks, Ludlow,” I nodded. “There’s no need, really—”

“The thing I am driving at,” said the American girl in a quiet little
voice that drilled its way into our brains, “is that you, Mr.
Bannerlee, wrote the translation yourself. There is no other
conclusion, is there?”

“Wilder and wilder!” I exclaimed. “This is too bad, Miss Lebetwood,
when you’ve realized all along that I have no knowledge of Welsh.”

Our speech had settled into a duel with unmerciful give-and-take. “Are
you sure? Consider this: In the diary your early references to the
Welsh language were all natural and ambiguous, which puzzled me
mightily when I came to other things later on. Then I saw that you
must be taking advantage of those early references to conceal the fact
that you are really quite adept in Welsh.”

“Took advantage? That’s rather strong, isn’t it?”

“Well, just think. You made a pun on the name of St. Tarw, which means
‘bull.’ You even went out of your way to use an American expression,
that it was a ‘bully name.’ A little later, when the man you call the
gorilla-man shouted at you in Irish, you knew quite definitely that he
did _not_ shout in Welsh, although Welsh and Irish belong to the same
race of languages, and that particular expression must sound about the
same in one language as in the other.

“But these were trivial compared with the point they hinted at, and
that telegram there clinches the point. You told Lib all about how you
read Ellis Griffiths’ history, and now we know the manuscript has
never been printed, let alone translated.”

She came close to me, still speaking, and I yielded a step before the
accusations she flung out like weapons. “You destroyed the manuscript
you yourself had made. You hurled the stone from the rockery into the
earth from the balcony outside your room. And at the same time you
dropped the placard the wind carried down to the corner of the House,
and it was you who left the earlier placard in Sean’s room that
morning when everyone else was downstairs.”

My voice sounded horribly ineffective in its attempt at surprise. “You
accuse _me_! You accuse _me_—of—?”

“I do, I do! Haven’t I been putting you on your guard all morning and
all afternoon—ever since I showed you the campstool? Haven’t I been
telling you what I know and hinting what I’ve guessed? Haven’t I done
enough—?”

My laugh, to show contempt, was also a failure. “Preposterous. It’s
a—vertebrate without a skeleton: your theory. I didn’t want to kill
your lover. What motive could I have had?”

Those blue eyes could be as sharp as steel. She seemed to be the
embodiment of intellect become passionate. “Motive? Something
overwhelmed you stronger than any motive: impulse. If you had thought
two minutes, Sean would be alive to-day. You had motive, yes, though
I’m ashamed to describe it, but the impulse dwarfed the cause behind
it, for once. You had been thinking about it, hadn’t you, ever since
the night before, and all day long, or there would have been no
threatening message in Sean’s room—but it was that chance, that chance
in a thousand that settled it. I understand now what has always seemed
to me the greatest mystery of all: the motive you had for the diary
and the tremendous trouble you took in writing five thousand words
overnight.”

“I set down the reason plainly: I wanted to clear up the muddle we all
were in.”

“That may have been so when you took up your pen, but before you laid
it down the diary had become a greater thing than any mere alignment
of facts; it had become your defence! You were someone else, Mr.
Bannerlee; the bright and cheery, affable, not-too-scholarly,
antiquarian and athlete—all that part of you subservient now to
something else: Iago!”

“Who was Iago?” asked Mrs. Bartholomew with troubled mouth. “Something
in Shakes—”

“The spider spins its web with all its cunning bound up in instinct.
While you spun your web, Mr. Bannerlee, all your cunning was bound up
in intellect, and you loved each shrewd knot and strand. Yes, that was
it; you came to be in love with artifice, you laughed in your sleeve
at Salt and Doctor Aire and Heatheringham and me—all people who were
trying to break through your web.”

I had hold of myself now, in spite of the tumult of my heart, and
could return blow for blow. “What nonsense! What a fool I’d be if I
killed a man to preen myself for intellectual superiority. I tell you
again, I never wanted to kill your lover. What reason had I?”

Her eyes fell for a moment before mine, and a little storm of wrinkles
crossed her brow. “Impulse, impulse, I said, didn’t I? I think you
wrote of it, three times at least. That first night by the tower—when
I and the Parson’s sign were together inside the circle your torch had
cast? Again, after Sean and I had quarrelled, and yet again as you
walked up the Vale in the twilight and could not forget the quarrel.
Afterward too, when you were so depressed on learning that I was to be
immensely rich. You covered it well, oh, yes! But could I fail to know
what was tugging at you all the while?” She raised her eyes to mine
for a long, grave look. “I suppose you would call it being in love
with me, wouldn’t you?”

I fought down the thing in my throat. “And suppose I was—suppose I
am—what difference does it make? Must I plead guilty to a crime I
never dreamed of because I had the bad luck to take a fancy to the
face of a woman who’s denied to me? I was well enough when I walked on
the mountain and felt as if I could move the earth. I wish to God I
had stayed up there, and not come down into this place where Fate
takes the strings and plays her hellish tricks!”

She gave me the most mournful look I have ever seen on any face.
“That’s why I can’t despise you, you know, though I’ve tried. I can’t
look on you as a—a thing of horror. You’ve played the game right
through: you put down every prevarication and evasion you had made,
and then you let me read the diary. You just—gave yourself away, and
did it without a murmur. When you were up there alone on the Forest
and exulted in your loneliness, you were a man any woman would have
given a lot to march beside. And then you came down here among us—and
how quickly you proved that all our gods have feet of clay.”

My indignation howled at highest pitch. “I tell you for the last time
that I deny absolutely the trumped-up charge you keep senselessly
repeating.”

She shook her head. “Denial’s no good. Do you think, as everyone seems
to believe, that terrible machine worked by chance just now, by some
overplus of pressure or loss of equilibrium? No, Mr. Bannerlee; a man
set the cat purring and the claw lunging. Do you know where he is?”

Silence. . . .

“A man did it?” I repeated, my voice parched and scraping, my body
numb as a block of wood. “A man—did it?” I remembered I had felt that
one of us had secretly left the Hall. But no—that had been after the
deviltry of the machine.

“A man in this House—in your room, Mr. Bannerlee. Twelve-fifteen was
the time set.”

I saw faces leaping and jigging around me, one of them with great blue
eyes and crown of golden hair swinging enormous toward me and swinging
giddily away again. The door into the corridor, which I had not seen
opened, was suddenly closed from outside. I heard a sea of voices, and
above them shot out the voice of Crofts, booming like a huge wave:

“But my God, how was it done?”

“They found out this afternoon,” said the American girl, “and Mr. Salt
scratched off a few details for me. The mantelpiece is as old as the
castle, and looks and feels sound enough, but it swings down by means
of an invisible hinge. The claw operates it. The claw must be
articulated in some way with a shaft driven from a water-wheel in the
wall below. The purring sound from the clash of the teeth would draw
anyone toward the fireplace, just in the path of the flying bar as he
stooped to find where the noise came from. The blow was so terrific it
drove Sean through the opening of the french windows, to crawl a yard
or two—and die. Heatheringham was already dead when he was hurled
against the glass, and his arm striking upward and through the pane
that way caused the revolver he was carrying cocked to explode. I
think—that’s all.”

She had recited all this with the most studied coolness and precision,
this account of the machine—a device surely the creation of a haunted
and tortuous brain. The account completed, the driving-force which had
sustained her was gone, and she looked weary almost to haggardness.
Pity and shame and grief wrenched me for the part I had played in the
fatal story. When Mrs. Belvoir ended her close-lipped listening of an
hour with a querulous question, I heard someone, Alfred Bannerlee,
speaking as if from far away.

“I’ll tell you about that. It was the cats’ heads stuck everywhere
about here that made me wonder if I hadn’t dropped into Cwm Melin, as
it was called in the parchment account. ‘Hear the cat purring under
the perfidious tree’ was fresh in my mind. There was a cat’s head on
the firearch, and there had been a cross above. I can’t say that, er,
gave the show away, but it stirred me up a bit. Upstairs, though, when
I saw the bracket on the wall and thought of ‘no more trouble than
snuffing a night-light,’ an idea seemed spread out as plain as an open
book. I never thought of the mechanism as a certainty, only as a
possibility—barely that. I swear that when I tugged with my razor
strop and brought the wretched bracket down, I had no idea what might
happen. From what I hear, there must be some sort of weighted valve
controlling the flow from the cistern to the water-wheel. A chain from
the bracket operates the valve and sets the whole damned business in
motion. But I didn’t understand that then. It was all like a
dream—what happened—”

The faces passed into a blur again, jerking up and down. Voices roared
and voices were thin echoes shivering into silence. Everything was
moving, even the sisters Delambre. One strode across the room like a
tempest, tossing her garments this way and that. The other came
waddling after, and was engaged in a mighty struggle with her hood.
The hood came away, revealing a goodly beard.

A comic-opera transformation had taken place. Suddenly it was Salt who
was standing before me, Salt and a giant of a man with beefy face.
Salt’s expression was ridiculous, for he was doing his best to make it
stern and menacing. The words in the air seemed to come from his lips:

“Quietly, Mr. Bannerlee.”

Then I thought that I had fainted. But I had not; instantaneous, utter
darkness had swept into the Hall.



CHAPTER XXIX

Rescue

Like an imbecile, I waited stock-still in the darkness for the light
to return. The sudden eclipse, however, had checked my foes as well. I
heard their footsteps cease like those of men who had walked over a
cliff.

Not a gleam penetrated the murk. There were cries for light, and
someone tried to scratch a match, ineffectually. I began to move.

I partly lost my balance, lurched against a man, and heard his
Lordship’s bitter plaint from the level of my knees. I blundered into
the passage without disabling anyone else. Intuition kept me from
blundering toward the front entrance; later I realized that would have
been too obvious a way. I groped to the left, feeling along the
right-hand wall.

I seemed to wake up in the dinner-room.

Someone else was in there. I heard an anxious whisper: “Bannerlee
. . . Bannerlee . . . that you?”

I recognized a friend. “Yes.”

From the invisible a small, damp, clutching paw clasped my hand. “You
gotta get out of this. Out the window. Snap into it.”

We were together on the east lawn, running. Thank God the moon had
gone down. Thank God the servants were asleep.

“It’s a—wise egg that knows—its own rooster. Bannerlee, your
offsprings—couldn’t spot you—as the bloke that finished Cosgrove. Step
on it! I can—keep up.”

“What happened to the lights?”

“I happened to ’em—that’s all.”

We approached a black smudge across the greater dark: a band of trees.
We entered into their depths. I stopped, held her back.

She whispered frantically, “Step on it! You can’t stay here!”

“No, but I have to decide what comes next. Steady on! Don’t worry
about me; I’ll come clear. What did you do? Are the lights finished
for good?”

“Did you notice I’d sneaked out? I was afraid the lid ’ud blow off,
soon and I wanted to do my bit. I had the dickens of a time finding
the fuse-box in the kitchen. I pulled off the handle of the big switch
com_pletely_, and gave the rest of the works a kick so a lot of stuff
fell down to the floor. I also cut the telephone connection into bits
to round off a good night’s effort.”

“Wonderful. I’m surprised you weren’t killed by the current.”

“Never mind wonderful. I know my electricity. All in the good cause.
Only step on the gas!”

“By Jove, I will!” I cried, divining the sense of this saying. “I must
get a tin of petrol—no, two tins. First, though, listen. Will you do
something more for me?”

“Yes, yes—anything. But make it snappy.”

“I want my diary. Get hold of it and wait for word from me. Where can
I write you safely?”

“You’re crazy. They’ll trace you sure as—”

“Not if you do this right. The book is in the desk drawer in my room.
It’s not locked. It’s your part to conceal the thing, here, until the
wind blows over a bit. The police will believe I have it, and I want
it—for a good reason. Eventually you can recover it and mail it to the
name and address I write you. Where can a letter reach you safely?”

“I don’t know. American Express, London.”

“No good. Are you going to be in the Continent this winter?”

“I think so. Mummy’s hipped on Nice.”

“American Express, Nice, then. You can send for my letter if you don’t
go there after all. By the way, it will be addressed to Miss, er,
Sarah Vale. Can you remember?”

“Yes, yes; I’ll write it down when I get in.” She hung on my arm
imploringly. “Step on it now! You’ll get caught if you keep hanging
around with these by-the-ways and can-you-remembers. My God, you’ve
only a couple o’ minutes’ leeway. I don’t see how you’ll make it.”

I laughed and patted her shoulder. “My dear Lib, I have a start of at
least two hours, probably more. But I shan’t be foolhardy and lessen
the time I have. Goodbye, Lib. I can never thank you for what you’ve
done.”

“Good-bye forever, Bannerlee.” Dim white arms reached around my neck,
and her lips touched mine in a brisk little kiss. “I’m awful sorry
Paula had to spill the beans. She took the line Cosgrove was her man,
and—and all that sort of rot. Say you aren’t mad at me, or anything.
’Cause I’m to blame for all this trouble, I guess.”

“No! How could you be?”

“I saw you drop the translation in the fire that night, and like an
ass I let Paula find it out. But I didn’t mean any harm; honest I
didn’t.”

I touched her cheek with my fingers. “You’re absolved, little Lib. It
could have made no difference, eventually. You’re going to be Mrs.
Cullen some day, aren’t you?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. I s’pose I’ll have to be, to get some peace
and quiet.”

“I shall send you a beautiful present from Central Africa or Siam or
elsewhere. May I kiss the bride again?”

I might. And yet again.

I turned away, but swung back. “Tell her—I’ll never forget her. And
I’ll always be sorry for the pain I’ve caused her. That’s all.”

“I will; sure I will. But, Bannerlee, I want to say something. I think
it’s the limit a real man like you has to light out because something
happened to that doggone Irishman. I think it’s a goldarn pity Paula
couldn’t have fallen for you—hard. Then she would have kept quiet if
they’d torn out her finger-nails, instead of seeing her duty and doing
it to-night, like a fool. I’m awful sorry. _Now step on it!_”

She glided and glimmered away. I was a lone outlaw against the world.

Not a moment squandered now. I dashed for the stables, with which I
was fairly familiar. Cautiously using my torch, I penetrated the
section transformed into the garage. A minute later, with two petrol
tins hugged to my breast, I fled down the Vale for life. There had not
been a single shout from the environs of the House.

I carried the tins across Aidenn Water and set one down, returning
with the other to the temporary log bridge, which I must burn behind
me. It must have made a comfortable blaze, soaked as it was with
petrol, but I could not stop to witness this holocaust to Mercury.

Salt’s car was waiting there. I deposited the emergency tin of petrol
in the rear, jumped in, and had no difficulty in starting the engine.
The key had been left on the dashboard, as I knew it would be. With
the fire rising behind me, merrily I rolled out of the mouth of the
Vale to the main road and toward New Aidenn, embarking on a brief
career of constructive vandalism.

My object was to cut off for as long as might be the communications of
my enemies, the inhabitants of the earth. The torch revealed that
along the edge of the road eight or ten telephone wires were strung,
but shortly before entering the town I jumped out of the car,
clambered up the short pole, and with the aid of gloves and other
things in the tool-box snipped both right and left.

There were no street lamps in New Aidenn, I had heard, and I thought
it safe to assume that no constable would venture out of doors there
as late as one o’clock in the morning to recognize my borrowed motor.
Not a soul was stirring; the Police Station was dark. I passed through
safely, and halted the car on the other side of the town to give some
attention to the wires running that way.

My destination was Hereford, but I had until nearly three o’clock to
reach there, and no danger of my losing my road. So I often halted in
my journey when I had passed a village which might contain a
telephone, in order to secure it from business too early in the
morning. Thus I reached Hereford about ten minutes before the
north-to-west express was due.

I left the useful car in an alley near the station, hoping it would be
recognized about dawn and not until then. When the train was puffing
beside the platform, I boldly applied at the window for a first-class
ticket to Exeter (I had been about to say “Bristol,” when I happened
to think “Don’t be so childishly obvious, like an ordinary criminal.
Let Salt think he’s up against a real antagonist.”) I explained that I
had intended to drop off at Hereford, but would not break my journey
until further on because a person I had met on the train told me there
wasn’t a decent hotel in the place. I needed some excuse, of course,
for the fact that I was not wearing hat and coat. The booking-clerk
seemed rather sleepy, and I remained a little longer talking to him,
to insure that he would remember me.

Then I boarded the train and entered a first-class compartment where a
gentleman was sleeping. His hat and coat, however, would not fit me. I
merely scraped some of the mud (quite distinctive mud that said
“Aidenn Vale” as plainly as words) on the floor there. I thought of
leaving more “clues,” but decided not to butter the bread too thick. I
passed on to another compartment in search of vestments. From a
gentleman who was slumbering with his head hanging off the seat I
obtained not only hat and coat, but a mackintosh which from a distance
would look just as well inside-out.

I then found an empty compartment and sat there, wearing my new-found
raiment, until the engine snorted and hunched its shoulders and
commenced crawling southward. When the train had left the platform, I
glanced from the off window to insure that the station yard was dark,
then unlatched the door and dropped safely to the ground.

All immediately required was to keep out of sight until the
corresponding express from west to north should come in. It should
have arrived a quarter of an hour afterward, but to my disgust it was
late, and I had a worried thirty minutes among some coals. I devoted
the time to cleaning my boots with my handkerchief, which I stuffed in
my pocket, to be burned later. At length the express pulled in, and
when all appeared ready for departure, I walked quickly up the track
beside it. The south-bound platform was deserted now. This fact
enabled me to choose an empty compartment and enter it by the off
door.

Suddenly remembering my plans for the morrow, however, I stepped out
on the platform and bought some fruit from a yawning lad who conducted
a buffet on wheels. I had thought at first of stealing the stuff, but
buying it would be less ostentatious. When I had paid for what I had
chosen, I took the first opportunity to steal quite a bit more.

I had really been very lucky. During my absence from the compartment,
tickets had been inspected and doors locked. Lacking a ticket for this
particular train, I might have been embarrassed. Now I walked
hurriedly toward the end of the train, past the ticket-inspector,
around the rear coach, and along to the off door of my empty
compartment again.

I rode north.

At Shrewsbury I alighted for precaution just before the train drew
into the platform, and re-entered my compartment when the engine had
been changed. Near Crewe I definitely abandoned the train, climbed the
bank of a shallow cutting, and got over the hedge. It was still rather
dark, but I had no difficulty in finding a satisfactory bit of
woodland where I might lie hidden all day.

I was staking everything on one chance, that Paula Lebetwood had
remembered the references to the Bonnet yacht and that my
ticket-taking and perhaps the mud from my boots would serve to
concentrate the attention of the authorities upon Bristol. If Jack and
Mary hadn’t altered their plans, they would be slipping out of harbour
this morning with the tide, probably five hours before the dogs of
righteousness would arrive hungry at the docks. It seemed reasonable
that the authorities should assume that I was aboard the barque. I
knew for certain that she carried no wireless, and that barring an
unexpected encounter there was no chance of police disillusionment
until she put in in Norway—or Africa.

I intended never to be seen unless for urgent cause, and then, if
possible, by the under-intelligent. Empty compartments on fast trains
by night were to be had for the taking, and even if the expresses
should be crowded, the stopping trains were available, though on them
it would be necessary to turn out at every station. In the barely
credible contingency of my being nipped and made to pay my fare, I had
plenty of money, for I had cashed a fairly large cheque before setting
out for Aidenn Forest, and I had not stopped to tip the servants
before leaving Highglen House. The train by night and secluded slumber
by day; these were indicated for my recovery.

I shall not detail my week-long, decidedly boring expedition to Hull.
After a couple of days my personal appearance became run-down, and I
dropped into a small market town on market day, asked a constable
directing traffic to assist me to a hairdresser’s, found the place
down a dark dead-end and up a shaky stair, and enjoyed a haircutting,
shampoo, and shave. I told the attendant that I looked and felt a new
man, bought a packet of safety-razor blades, tipped him enough but not
too much, chatted pleasantly about the price of heifers, and departed.

About nine that evening, in a restaurant in a larger town, I expressed
a predilection for pickled walnuts.

Not long afterwards I stepped out of a station wash-room, an
unobtrusive dark gentleman to the roots of my hair, with eyebrows that
gave a special appearance to my face.

I carried a passport, thanks to Jack and Mary. From Hull one Albert
Barrerdale sailed eight days after Alfred Bannerlee had stumbled out
of the Hall of the Moth. Praises be for the men who are supposed to
scrutinize the details on passports, and don’t.


Now on my Mediterranean island (whose name, pardon me, I do not mean
to give) I enjoy perpetual sun and the fruits of never-ceasing summer.
I might rest here secure for the term of my natural life, and I might
achieve a sort of happiness, for here no sensuous pleasure is withheld
from man. Air, sea, and land conspire to lull the soul, and at night
from the village creep up strains of music sweet and spicy. I might
remain—but I think I shall move on.

The Bonnets saved me; no doubt of that. Overweening sleuth-hounds met
a sharp rebuff three months later when the Bonnet barque, not having
touched at any port, returned to Bristol dock. The emphatic statement
of Jack and Mary that I had not been on board, a statement which they
later attested in order to dispel public mutterings against their
veracity, stunned the police, who had been sitting back and waiting
for me to be delivered up to them from India or Madagascar. The hounds
then were willing, but found no scent. Moreover, since I had not been
aboard the barque, they _knew_ that I could not have escaped from
England, knowledge that must have proved rather a hindrance than a
help.

The diary reached me in a picturesque village in a small Balkan
country. Its disappearance that night, by the way, gave rise to the
amazing belief among several of my fellow-guests that I had secreted
myself within the House, and the consequence was a general desertion
next day. After receiving the pages, I carried them with me for weeks
before lighting on my isle and commencing my work anew. Now the
manuscript is ready to return, rounded, coherent, and decked with
proper ornament.

My purpose? I have done it for _her_ sake. I don’t care a penny for
the gaping world; all I ask is, let this book stand as the monument of
an ardour which exceeded the orthodox. Let it be a fantastic tribute
to a mistress who never can be mine. Let it take the place of a sigh
and a sob for love’s labours lost. While I handled and recast this
matter, I lived near her again in Highglen House, shared hours that
held all life’s sweetness, and remembered that she did not despise me!

If I may offer a suggestion to you who are to receive this manuscript,
I advise that you present it unaltered to the public as a piece of
fiction, with the name of some obscure but ambitious author upon the
title-page. And if he will be so generous, I trust that Lord Ludlow
will write a foreword to give the thing the stamp of reality.

I trust, finally, that I may be forgiven if I remark that this is the
_last_ that will ever be heard of me.

Paula!



THE COMMUNICATION OF APRIL 17, 1926

No matter where I am. It is a different place from where you think,
and it will be no good tracing this letter, for you’ll find only that
you are mistaken. The man who is going to take it to Rangoon and mail
it two months hence, is an outcast like myself and will certainly keep
faith.

Occasionally a paper gets through to me from England, and I read it
with more or less amusement. Bloodthirsty wretches, the English, who
would like nothing better than to see me suspended between time and
eternity. But it shall not be.

There has been some discussion as to what “really” happened the
evening Maryvale attempted to shoot the cat. One copy of a newspaper I
came across contained a sort of symposium on the subject. One or two
letters came near the simple truth, which was that, being afraid of
Maryvale’s revolver, I took the chance which was offered to remove the
bullets from as many cartridges as I could, managing to insure that
his first three shots would be ineffective. Hints that I deliberately
intended to craze the poor fellow, for whom I had a sincere liking,
are false.

Through Lord Ludlow my diary has reached the authorities upon
guarantee that it will not be confiscated, and from official
announcements it seems they believe it to be an equal mixture of
necessary truth and designing falsehood. To my astonishment, moreover,
they have reported that it is a masterpiece of indiscretion—which is
nonsense. About myself, to be sure, I have perhaps written a thing or
two that most men would not care to have known of them during life.
But I am dead. Yes, in all that concerns life as I knew it, my
friends, my studies, my pleasures—in all that matters—I am dead. The
authorities, however, scoff at the diary, and adduce the “mystic
bone.”

Fools! The episode of the bone hanging white in the gloom was not
invention, or delusion either. It was the white patch on Cosgrove’s
head while he waited in the darkness and surveyed the Hall, planning
Noah’s Flood and the crisis which would arise when Sir Brooke met the
gorilla-man. The close-cropped nape of his neck between his black hair
and the black collar of his sportsman’s coat, and the knobs that were
his ears—I did not comprehend at first that these were what I saw.
When my amazement and alarm had subsided, and I realized that Cosgrove
was in there—I think I hated him then. His odious behaviour toward his
intended wife and the sinister hint beneath Bob’s bitter outbreak had
rankled. My survey from outside my window a minute later happened to
prove that no one was in the immediate vicinity of the Hall. Otherwise
I should hardly have felt the sense of satisfaction snug at the heart
of my shivering soul when—after the bracket had given way—I realized
that _something had happened_! But not until I reached the lawn did I
know that it had happened to Cosgrove. I shall never be sure in my
inmost soul whether or not I was quite aware that this trivial act
might loose some destructive force—whether I am a murderer or the toy
of Fate.

They say, however, that the placards I left and the stone I cast down
from the balcony convince me of malice prepense. They do not, though
they seem to do so.

The placard I left in Cosgrove’s chamber that morning (the bottom of a
cardboard box I found in the store-rooms) meant no more than what it
said: mischief. I never had any delusion about the supernatural aspect
of Parson Lolly; indeed, the stressing of that element had made
me a little suspicious of Cosgrove himself. Celts do odd things. I
believed that for some clandestine reason he might be behind the
manifestations, and I thought it would be good sport to play his own
game against him. I merely proved to be wrong.

The second placard was a flash of inspiration, after the bracket had
given way and pandemonium burst out below me. There might be a way of
shifting the onus, if anything actually catastrophic had taken
place!—if there _had_ been a cat’s claw, and—! Parson Lolly again! It
did not take twenty seconds to dash into the storeroom, find the cover
of the same box, scrawl the words, and fling the placard out of the
window for the wind to carry. Later I destroyed every scrap of the
box.

The stone I pitched down late that night. It was an obvious
afterthought, and a good one.

As for Heatheringham’s death, it was black misfortune and nothing
else. It appears that on account of Cosgrove’s Will he looked askance
on Paula Lebetwood, but even had he suspected me, I do not think I
could have been so callous as to wipe him from the earth in a bloody
smear. I was doubtful that minute in my room, which was the more
prudent course for me: to dash the bracket down, creating a new
disturbance, or to leave it untouched. Prudence certainly decided to
let the accursed thing alone, but one moment’s recklessness defied
prudence. I solemnly assert that I believed the Hall was empty and
Heatheringham somewhere in the twilight north of the House.

Salt, it seems, was a shrewder fellow than his appearance betokened.
He had suspected me from the first night he came to the House. “The
way he looked at Miss Lebetwood, or rather the way he avoided looking
at her, set me thinking”; such are the words which commence an
interview given to one of the more lurid newspapers. Salt’s homely yet
somehow handsome face, accompanied by well-combed beard, adorns this
report, which concludes with an irony I suppose must be accidental: “I
am glad Mr. Bannerlee didn’t injure my car.”

While irony is fresh in mind, irony was never more dramatic than in
that business of the water-wheel, facts they found when the claw was
dismantled and the channel investigated. That the Knight’s dead body,
blundering down the channel, should have dislodged the obstruction
which otherwise would have prevented the wheel from turning and the
claw from darting out! So Sir Brooke, elderly and infirm, stumbling to
his death, fulfilled his mission after all.

I have received a message from Lib, and I may as well close with that.
It was transmitted to me through an American newspaper, by means of a
simple “dictionary” cipher code I explained to her in a farewell
letter from that Mediterranean isle of mine:

  “Dear Bannerlee Paula’s going to marry a guy named Frank Andrews she
  knew here in the States before she bumped into Cosgrove Bobby and I
  too as soon as Bobby is twenty one the first boy will be named after
  you why not I hope you are not too sad in that place wherever you
  are and I wish you could come and see us sometime but I guess you’d
  better not a plain-clothes policeman says good morning to me every
  day when I go round the corner so it wouldn’t be healthy for you
  here I sure wish Paula had met you before this Andrews or Cosgrove
  there would have been nothing to it and everything would be rosy
  Paula is terribly sorry but she doesn’t hate you Love Lib.”

Well, some day in the forties, when the Radnorshire riddles are buried
in oblivion beneath the ashes of a hundred other mysteries—I shall
return! I shall visit little Lib, and find it difficult to recognize
in her matronly staidness a trace of the dash and frankness of her
liking for me. Perhaps, too, I shall pat that “first boy” on the head.

Shall I dare to see _her_? Or, shall I stand outside her lighted
window, remembering. That would be better, I believe. I can be nothing
to her then, but once—

After all, she did not despise me!



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

This transcription follows the text of the Jacobsen Publishing Company
edition published in 1928. However, the following alterations have
been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the
text:

 * “Pharmond” has been changed to “Pharamond” (Preface).
 * “morsal” has been changed to “morsel” (Chapter IV).
 * “catridge-belt” has been changed to “cartridge-belt” (Chapter VII).
 * “rerespectively” has been changed to “respectively” (Chapter X).
 * “rcok” has been changed to “rock” (Chapter XV).
 * “scyamores” has been changed to “sycamores” (Chapter XXI).
 * “criss-crosing” has been changed to “criss-crossing”
   (Chapter XXII).
 * “mose” has been changed to “most” (Chapter XXIII).
 * “Mrs Belvoir” has been changed to “Mrs. Belvoir” (Chapter XXIII).
 * “Whimple” has been changed to “Whimble” (Chapter XXIV).
 * “had same funny bits” has been changed to “had some funny bits”
   (Chapter XXV).
 * Five occurrences of mismatched quotation marks has been repaired.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75273 ***