Mystery of the inn by the shore

by Florence Warden

CHAPTER XXI.

In the meantime Clifford was proceeding slowly on his way to Shingle End. It was dark by this time, and the way seemed even longer than it had done when he was on his way to Courtstairs that afternoon. There was a faint light over the gray sea, but on the right, over the marsh, and away as far as the ridge of hill on which old Fleet Castle stood, there was inky blackness. It was a lonely road at night, this long, dreary stretch of straight, hedgeless highway, with only an occasional bit of ragged bush or a still more infrequent wayside cottage, to break up its wearisome monotony.

Even the cry of the sea-birds was startling, as it came to Clifford’s ears on the clear air. An ugly fancy took possession of him, too, as he drew near to Shingle End at last, that the cries he heard were not all those of the sea-birds; that it was a human cry, shrill and weird, which came to him over the flat meadow land by the sea.

He stopped. He heard the sound again. And, forgetting his promise not to hurry, he went on toward Colonel Bostal’s house as fast as his tired feet could carry him. He was sure now that the cries had not been those of the birds; sure, too, that they had proceeded from the direction of the spot to which he was hastening.

There was a ragged plantation of untrimmed trees and thorn-bushes on the right side of the road before he came to Shingle End. Just as he approached this, the darkest part of the whole road, a man sprang out upon him from the shade of the overhanging trees, and seized him from behind. Clifford shouted, struggled, trying in vain to turn, so that he might see the man’s face. But his assailant, who did not utter a word, frustrated all his efforts, and held him fast.

Clifford’s cries, however, soon brought help and deliverance.

From out of the darkness there appeared a figure which Clifford thought he knew; and a voice which he recognized called out, in authoritative tones:

“Now, then, stop that!”

Clifford’s assailant obeyed this rough command without a moment’s hesitation; and when Clifford, feeling himself suddenly released, turned round, he only saw a glimpse of a man’s figure as it plunged into the darkness again.

“Who was that?” asked the young man in astonishment, as he perceived that his rescuer made no attempt to follow him.

It was Hemming, the London detective, who stood before him, and he only shrugged his shoulders.

“Only a man I’ve got to help me in this business,” answered he, with a gesture in the direction of the Colonel’s house. “He made a mistake, that was all.”

“What business do you mean?” asked Clifford, uneasily.

“Well, sir, I think you ought to know by this time,” replied Hemming, evasively.

Clifford pondered for a few moments. Then he asked:

“Have you been to the house?”

“No, sir. I’m waiting for further instructions first.”

Clifford looked at the little weather-beaten dwelling, which had lights in two of the upper windows. He fancied he could detect a watching figure behind the narrow curtain of one of them.

“I suppose it was your man,” he said suddenly, “who has alarmed the poor lady so much by his knocks and thumps at the doors and windows?”

Hemming’s face could not be seen distinctly in the darkness; but Clifford had a fancy that he was smiling as he answered:

“Very likely, sir.”

Clifford, who was growing more puzzled, more curious, every minute, turned abruptly away and walked round to the back door of the house, by which he had been admitted that morning.

He knocked two or three times with his stick against the door before he heard a window above his head softly opened. Looking up, he heard a whisper in Miss Theodora’s voice:

“Is that you, Mr. King?”

“Yes.”

“You are alone?”

“Why, yes, of course. I have just seen Nell.”

As he had expected, this answer brought the little lady down in the twinkling of an eye. He heard the bolts drawn, and a minute later he found himself dragged inside the door, while Miss Theodora, panting with her exertions, hurriedly fastened the door again.

“I have seen your bogy,” said Clifford, “the man who torments you at night. He attacked me just before I came to the corner.”

“Ah!” cried Miss Bostal, with a shake of her head. “I have found out who he is now. He is the man who is at the bottom of all these robberies and of the murder of poor Jem.”

“Indeed!” said Clifford, politely, but without deep excitement.

For he rather looked down upon the little lady’s intelligence, which he thought was by no means so strong as her kindness of heart.

“Yes,” she said, “he is the man who got such a hold upon poor Nell that he got her to do whatever he pleased.”

The notion was so shocking that, improbable as it appeared, it made Clifford shudder.

“But why,” he asked, impulsively, “should Hemming let him come here and worry you?”

“Hemming!” echoed Miss Bostal.

Then she was silent. They remained in the little stone passage for a few seconds, unable to see each other’s face. Then she passed him, and running quickly to the dining-room door, threw it open and entered, beckoning to Clifford to follow.

“Papa,” said she, breathlessly, and in a little flutter of excitement, patting her little hands softly and rapidly the one against the other, “it is the detective Hemming who is sending this wretch to annoy us. Mr. King says so.”

The Colonel, who, as it seemed to Clifford, had aged since the morning, got up slowly from his chair and stared at Clifford with haggard eyes.

“Hemming!” said he in a broken voice. “The detective! Wha-a-t is he here for?”

“You don’t understand, papa,” piped Miss Theodora’s bright, shrill voice. “I didn’t say he was here. But Mr. King tells me it is he who sends the man to knock at our doors and windows at night. Didn’t you, Mr. King?”

Clifford did not immediately answer. He saw that he was upon the threshold of a mystery, to which the staring eyes and trembling limbs of the unhappy old man before him seemed already to give him the clue. Without waiting for Clifford’s answer to her question, Miss Theodora suddenly went on again:

“You said you had just left Nell, Mr. King. Where was that?”

He hesitated. He was overwhelmed with a feeling of pity for these two forlorn people, shut up and barricaded within their poor tumbledown house. So that, although he certainly had a vague belief that the old Colonel was in some unknown way involved in the crimes which had made so great a stir, yet he longed for his escape as much, or almost as much, as he longed for Nell’s. So he answered in a troubled voice:

“I left her—in the hands of the police.”

There was the warning, if the Colonel needed it. The old man shook so much, as he heard the announcement, that Clifford began to fear the “stroke” which the police-sergeant had predicted.

Miss Theodora turned pale, and clasped her hands.

“The police!” she exclaimed, as if scarcely able to grasp the dreadful fact. And she twirled round, as if moved by a spring, to her father: “Papa!” she almost screamed, “if the police have arrested Nell, I shall be called to give evidence against her! I will never do it—never! I would die first!”

Clifford was touched. It was only of Nell the poor little lady thought. Then surely Miss Theodora could not have the slightest suspicion that her own father had anything to do with the crimes!

The Colonel, meanwhile, had recovered much of his self-possession.

“Calm yourself, my dear,” he said to his daughter, but in such a hard tone of despair that Clifford began to feel that he was an intruder upon grief so deep. “If Nell is arrested—”

He stopped.

For in the middle of his speech there was a knock at the front door. Miss Theodora, Clifford noticed, drew herself up in an attitude of rigid attention. There was dead silence in the little dining-room, until the knock was repeated louder than before.

“I shall go upstairs,” said Miss Theodora, softly, “and see from the window who it is. But if it is the police, come for my evidence, I will be put in prison rather than give it.”

She had scarcely uttered the words when a third knock was heard at the front door. Miss Bostal glided out of the room and ran upstairs without another word.

Then again there was a pause. The two men looked at each other by the light of the lamp, which gave but a dim illumination through its smoky glass. In the old Colonel’s face Clifford became conscious that there was written a most pitiful history, the history of a life-long shame, of an indelible disgrace. Still only groping towards the truth as he was, the young man stood silent, reverent, wondering what awful thing he was next to learn.

For the fourth time the knock, louder and more imperative than before, echoed through the house. Then the Colonel drew a deep sigh and went slowly towards the door.

“I am sorry you are here,” he said with calm courtesy. “Whatever errand brings these people, and whoever they are, you, being here, will be subjected to some annoying interrogatories. Perhaps there may still be time for you to get out by the garden way before I have to let them in.”

The old man was talking, it suddenly occurred to Clifford, to fill up the time, for he made no movement in the direction of the garden way of which he spoke, but stood in an attitude which showed that he was listening intently.

“Hark! What was that?” he asked abruptly.

Clifford had heard nothing. A doubt, born of hope rather than fear, of the Colonel’s complete sanity crossed his mind.

“Upstairs—upstairs!” went on the old man, impatiently, as he at last moved, in a shuffling step, toward the door. “I think I heard a window open.”

“Shall I go upstairs and see?” asked Clifford. “What are you afraid of?”

“My daughter—is very determined. She has made up her mind—that she will not—give evidence,” answered Colonel Bostal, in a shaking voice. “Yes, you can go up and see.”

Clifford went up the narrow staircase, and called gently:

“Miss Bostal!”

No answer. But he heard some one moving about softly in the room on his right. He went close to the door, and said, with his mouth so near to the keyhole that she could not fail to hear him:

“Miss Theodora! Your father has sent me.”

Then he heard something—a little, weak cry, followed by silence. He drew back a step, and he saw the Colonel standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Shall I go in?” Clifford asked.

The Colonel hesitated.

“Is the door locked?” he asked.

Clifford tried it, and found that it was.

“Then come away,” said Colonel Bostal, quickly.

At that moment there was a thundering knock at the front door, which threatened to split the old wood into fragments. The Colonel walked slowly along the passage, and, with as much delay as possible, drew the bolts and opened the door.

Clifford, still on the upper floor, knew that the voices were those of the police-sergeant and of another constable belonging to Stroan.

“You’ve been a long time opening the door, sir,” began the sergeant, dryly.

But the master of the house had not waited to inquire his visitor’s business; he had already retreated into the dining-room.

The two policemen held a short and hurried consultation, in very low tones. Then the sergeant entered the dining-room, and reappeared quickly.

“He’s all by himself. He takes it quite quiet,” said he.

The other man had already looked into the kitchen, and they now proceeded to search the shut-up drawing-room. Clifford heard them as they moved about—heard the noise of the piled-up furniture being displaced. And then, a moment later, one of the policemen ran up the stairs and passed Clifford as the latter hastily came down.

As he reached the foot of the staircase, Clifford, whom the man had saluted in silence, heard a sharp rap at the door of the closed room. Then the policeman who was upstairs called quickly to his companion downstairs:

“Bill, go outside and wait under the window. This side of the house—quick!”

The police-sergeant dashed out by the front door without a second’s delay, while the man who had given the direction burst open the bedroom door with a couple of blows of his truncheon. Clifford, in perplexity and alarm, rushed out after the sergeant. He arrived nearly as soon as the man he was following, whom he found groping among the evergreen bushes which grew thickly under the wall of the old house.

A succession of feeble moans, as of a weak creature in great agony, broke upon his ear as he turned the corner of the house.

And at the same moment he saw the constable who had burst open the bedroom door leaning out of the window of Miss Theodora’s room.

“What? She has not fallen—thrown herself—” stammered Clifford.

But even as he spoke, the sergeant parted the bushes with his arms, and turning the full light of the lantern he carried upon the ground beneath them, showed the little figure of poor Miss Theodora lying in a shapeless heap.

“Oh, don’t! Don’t touch me!” she whispered, faintly, as she felt the strong light thrown on her face. “Don’t touch me! My leg is broken and—something here.”

Her right hand moved feebly up to her chest, and then her head fell back.

“She’s fainted,” said Clifford. “Poor little woman! What shall we do? Shall I fetch a doctor?”

“No, sir; leave me to do that,” replied the police-sergeant, promptly. “You stay here while I send for help. There’s some one close by will go for me.”

He went away quickly, leaving his lantern. Clifford looked down at the little withered face, and he fancied he detected a flicker of the eyelids. As he bent his head to look closer, he was surprised by her faint whisper in his ear.

“I am glad, oh, so glad,” she murmured, still without opening her eyes, “that this has happened. For now they cannot make me give evidence against poor Nell.”

“My dear lady,” said Clifford, in the same low voice, “pray don’t trouble your head about that now. Nell will be all right. I am sure of it.”

The policeman in the room above, hearing the voices, looked out.

“Has she come to?” he asked.

“Ye-es,” answered Clifford, doubtfully.

For again she lay with immovable lips. But as he spoke an expression of intense agony came over the pinched, thin feature, and he saw that with the return of full consciousness had come also the full sensitiveness to pain.

“Go down and ask the Colonel for some brandy,” called out Clifford.

But the constable did not seem to hear. He still stood at the window, looking down.

Clifford repeated his words, and the man, with evident reluctance, moved from the window. Miss Bostal glanced up and turned her head with a quick, bird-like motion to Clifford.

“Are any of the policemen still about?” she asked, rapidly.

Clifford was about to answer in the negative, when the constable whom he had sent for the brandy, having delivered his message with astonishing celerity, appeared at the corner of the house.

“Here he comes with the brandy,” said Clifford.

But Miss Bostal’s expression of pain gave place at once to one of disgust.

“Brandy!” she exclaimed. “I wouldn’t touch it on any account. I have been a teetotaller all my life.”

Her sudden burst of energy rather disconcerted Clifford, who was much relieved when he saw that the Colonel was close behind the constable. The old man came very slowly to the place where his daughter lay, and peered over the bushes at her.

“Theodora! Are you hurt? Really hurt?” he asked, in a dull tone, as if still too much overwhelmed by threatening misfortune to be greatly troubled about anything else.

“Hurt!” she exclaimed, pettishly. “Of course I am hurt. I overbalanced myself while leaning out of the window, and I fell out, and have broken my leg and one of my ribs, too, I think.”

“Shall we take you indoors?”

“No. Oh, no!” with energy. “You would hurt me too much. Leave me here till the doctor comes.”

The Colonel turned, and so did Clifford and the constable. For they all heard sounds as of an altercation in two men’s voices, and they presently caught sight of two men, the one apparently struggling to get away from the other, and the second endeavoring to hold his companion back. In the darkness, little more than this was visible to the three men in the garden; but the newcomers were near enough for their voices to be recognized.

“Let me go, let me go, or, by—”

Before he had heard more than this, Clifford was straining his eyes to pierce the gloom, full of interest, full of excitement.

“Why, surely,” cried he, “that’s George Claris’s voice!”

The two men were now near enough for Clifford to distinguish the man who was holding his companion back, and to recognize him as Hemming. The second constable went forward, as the struggling pair came within the garden gate, to the assistance of his fellow. At the same moment Colonel Bostal thrust his hand through Clifford’s arm, as if for support. The young man hardly noticed his action, so deeply absorbed was he in the problem presented by the sight of the struggling men. For the man whom both the policemen now held was, indeed, no other than George Claris, wild-eyed, fierce, crazy-looking, with straggling beard and unkempt hair.

And he was crying out still, with all the force of his lungs:

“Where is she? Where is she? Let me see her, I say! Let me see her!”

“Why, the poor fellow thinks you’ve got his niece here!” cried Clifford, who seemed to understand in a moment the mystery of the nocturnal knockings and disturbances of which the Colonel and his daughter had complained.

Colonel Bostal made no answer, but he threw one rapid glance behind him. Clifford followed his example instinctively, and an involuntary exclamation escaped his lips.

For Miss Theodora had disappeared.