CHAPTER XXIV
The End
“Hush!” panted Mrs. Walsh, and Pam was immediately ashamed of having made such a noise.
“Will you come, Mrs. Walsh?” asked the voice of Don again from below. But Mrs. Walsh trembled so badly that Pam pulled her back from the top of the ladder.
“Stay here, Mother, I will go. Strike another match, will you, Don? That is right, I can see now!” Pam went steadily down as she spoke. She had screwed her courage to the ordeal because of the manifest unfitness of her mother. Down, down, down she went, until she stood on the floor of the cellar, felt her arm grasped by Don, and heard the loud breathing of Jack.
“Where?” she breathed, and felt a sudden rush of courage because Don gripped her hand so hard.
“There!” As he spoke, Don struck another match, and by its light Pam saw a small iron safe standing on a sort of table, and in a deep, hide-covered chair beside it, a huddled something that looked like a heap of clothes surmounted by an old hat. In the dim light she could make out a gun leaning against the chair, but at that moment the match went out, and Don’s voice sounded in her ear:
“Go up now,” he commanded, “you can’t do any good here.”
Pam climbed up the ladder dazed and wondering. She heard the sobs of her mother, and wondered at it. Then she suddenly felt so faint and queer that she was glad to stumble across to the door, and put her head out to the sunshine, where the horse still munched in contentment, and the blue butterflies hovered over the white cups of the bindweed, as if there were no such thing as death in the world.
Jack came up from the cellar, still breathing heavily as if he had been running. He was immediately followed by Don, who started to turn the table upside down over the broken trap-door.
“Why are you doing that?” asked Pam.
Don carefully let the table drop over the broken door before he spoke, and then he said gravely:
“From what I could see by the light of the matches, the old man must have been in the habit of keeping his valuables there. I expect he thought it was safer than Ripple, and I daresay he was right, though how he got that safe there alone is more than I can imagine. We don’t want anyone going down there until Father and the police have made their examination. If anyone came along when we have gone, he might go down there in all innocence of what there is to find. So it seemed best to cover the hole. Now I will drive you and your mother back to Ripple, then Jack and I will go and fetch the police.”
“We can walk by the narrow trail, and that will save time for you,” said Pam; but Don would not hear of it, and he drove them back to Ripple. Scarcely a word was spoken by any of them. What Mrs. Walsh was thinking of was the last time she had seen her father, before she ran away to get married. The thoughts of the three who had been in the cellar were busy with the huddled heap of garments resting in the old hide-covered chair.
It was Reggie Furness who had last seen the old man alive, and he identified the remains by the hat and the coat, which had a green patch on one shoulder. The cause of death was not clear, but was supposed to be heart trouble. Wrack Peveril had more than once complained to his neighbours of pain in his side, which might easily have been disease of the heart. Someone suggested that he had shot himself either by accident or intention, but this theory was at once set aside by the fact of the gun being found loaded in every chamber. It was Pam who testified to the fact of the old man having been there at any rate ever since the first snow of the previous fall, as the yellow rag which Mose Paget had tied on the door had never been removed until the day when Don discovered the cellar. This was proof enough that Cassidy O’Brien was either mistaken in stating that he had seen the old man working at the lumber camp, or else he had made the story up to suit his own ends.
From the evidence before them it was fairly easy to understand that the old man, warned by Reggie of the coming of the surprise party, had gone across the forest to his hiding-place in the cellar, intending that his unwanted visitors should not find him at home. He had probably forgotten that his granddaughter was expected that day. Death must have come to him in a very kindly guise, for there was nothing in the position of the body to show that he had suffered. Indeed, the peace of repose lay upon the huddled remains, and on the table by the safe there was an end of candle not burned out, and a box of matches was found in one of the pockets.
All the long apprehension and the fierce anxiety were now over. The lifting of the burden was so great that at first Pam could not realize that there was no longer anything to dread. It was Don who emphasized the fact for her, when he came to see her the week after the funeral, and insisted, in the most masterful fashion possible, that their engagement should be announced.
“There is noth to wait for now, and I have been patient long enough,” he said, standing drawn up to his full height, and looking down at Pam, who was resting in a rocking-chair.
“I don’t think that you have been patient at all,” she said, with a low laugh, and her eyes sparkled with fun as they used to do before the burden of her care dulled their light somewhat.
“Opinions differ,” he said calmly, and then he sat down on a little wooden stool by her chair, and told her that old, old story, which, however it may be varied by circumstances in the telling, always amounts to the same thing in the end. He must have told it well too, for Pam had no more excuses to bring against Don’s desire for an engagement between them.
It was not until later, when the contents of the safe were examined, that it was found Wrack Peveril had been quite a wealthy man. He had made no will, and so Mrs. Walsh inherited all he had to leave. Her future would be assured now, and there would be no poverty to fear in her old age; but it might all have been very different, and her interests must have suffered greatly, had it not been for the enterprise and courage of Pam in acting as Pioneer.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Obvious printer errors have been corrected including missing periods, apostrophes and closing quotations necessary to the dialogue.
The use of hyphenated words has been retained as written. Where two spellings of the same word appear, the spelling with the highest frequency was adopted.
[The end of A Canadian Farm Mystery, by Bessie Marchant.]