CHAPTER XXIII.
It was the police-sergeant who had taken Nell Claris to Sir Neville Bax who had brought to Shingle End the warrant for Miss Bostal’s arrest. This warrant he had not, so far, had an opportunity of showing to the Colonel. Now, however, that the lady had disappeared, and it had become necessary to search the place, and more thoroughly, the sergeant respectfully turned to the old gentleman, to inform the latter of the authority by which he acted.
Colonel Bostal, divining the man’s intention, made a gesture of horror, and without staying either to hear the man’s explanation or to look at the warrant, retreated hastily into the house.
Clifford, however, caught sight of the paper in the officer’s hands, and something of the truth was suddenly revealed to him. It flashed upon him so abruptly, this knowledge, that the shock turned him sick and giddy. It was some minutes before he could ask, in a hoarse and tremulous voice:
“Is that a warrant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For whom?”
“Miss Bostal.”
And the policeman continued his search about the garden and the house for the lady who had so mysteriously disappeared.
“Then it is—Miss Bostal—whom George Claris wants to see?”
The innkeeper, who had now subsided into a stolid silence and tranquility, was watching the front door of the house. It was Hemming who answered:
“Yes, sir. He’s not quite himself yet, but he’s not too far off it to have been of use to us. We’ve had him under our eye these last few days, and whenever he gets the chance he makes straight for this house, and clamors to see the woman who robbed him. So we brought him with us to-night to confront her. She wouldn’t give us the chance till we got the warrant.”
“She doesn’t seem to mean to give you a chance now,” observed Clifford.
Hemming affected to think that her capture was only a matter of minutes, as he kept to his post, watching the front of the house, while the other men searched the premises at the back. But he hardly looked so confident as might have been expected from his words.
Indeed, he had cause for uneasiness. It was he who had first conceived suspicions of Miss Theodora, and it had taken all the ingenuity of which he was master to get together enough evidence against her to justify him in asking for a warrant. The sight of an old scar on one of her little hands, on the occasion of one of his visits to Shingle End, had suggested to him that she might have been the woman whose hand he had burned with the fuse at the inn.
But it had been a long time before he could make out a case—not, indeed, until he had thought of using the now half-witted George Claris, whom he had got out of the hands of simple Nell under a promise, which had been faithfully kept, that he should be well taken care of, and that he should return to her very shortly. Even then the difficulties in the way of the police had been great. At first Claris was sullen and taciturn. No questions would obtain from him a clear answer as to the events of the night which had turned his brain. It was not until that very afternoon that he had accused Miss Bostal by name of the thefts, and thus furnished the police with enough data for further proceedings.
Clifford listened in dumb bewilderment.
“What can she have done it for? Is she mad?” asked he, presently.
Hemming shrugged his shoulders.
“Doesn’t look much like madness to have shot the man who was going to inform against her,” said he, dryly.
“Good gracious! Then you think she—”
It was hardly conceivable to him even yet that the prim, rigorous little old maid, who had been so much shocked at his walking along a country road on Sunday in a light suit, could have been guilty of the systematic crimes now laid to her charge. In the silence which followed his words one of the two Stroan policemen came up.
“She’s got away,” said he, in a low voice. “We’ve hunted all over the place. There’s no way by which she could have got back into the house.”
“How could she have got far with that short start of you?” asked Hemming, incredulously.
“I don’t know, but she’s done it. I’m going to search the house, so you keep your eyes open.”
The front door had been left open by the Colonel, whom the sergeant found in the dining-room, sitting with head bent over the dying embers of the fire. The man felt sorry for him and spoke in a subdued voice.
“Beg pardon, sir, but I shall have to search the house again.”
The old man acquiesced by a nod, and the officer withdrew. From the ground floor to the first floor, from the first floor to the attics, he hunted in every corner. Hardly in vain. For although he did not find Miss Bostal, he found evidence enough of her predatory habits to convince any jury of her guilt of the minor crime of theft at least.
Under the boards of the attics, sewn up in the mattress of the lady’s own bed, hidden away in holes in the disused chimneys, the officer found a hoard as varied as it was incriminating. Money, in notes and silver and gold; jewelry, of little value for the most part and apparently taken new from shops; half a dozen men’s watches, pencil-cases, purses, pieces of stuff, scraps of lace, card-cases, silver spoons and forks. These were a part only of what he found.
Covered with the dust of years most of them were; the gold and silver tarnished and discolored with age and damp. On the whole a fine collection, and amounting in value to some hundreds of pounds.
Nothing less than a sheet was of any use to hold the collection; and even when the sergeant made his way down the stairs with a huge bundle on his back he felt by no means certain that there was not more behind.
A bent figure stood in front of him at the opening of the dining-room door.
“Am I under arrest, too?” asked the Colonel, in tranquil tones.
“No, sir. But we’ve got to watch the house.”
“And what have you got there?”
The policeman, by the dim light of the lamp in the passage, displayed his find in silence. In silence, also, the Colonel looked, and immediately withdrew into the room. The sergeant left the house and met Clifford on the little path leading to the gate. He jerked his head back in the direction of the house.
“Sorry for the old gentleman!” said he, in a low voice. “It’s about broke him up, has this. He’s moping there, all by himself.”
“I’ll go and sit with him, if he’ll have me,” said Clifford, who was remorseful, knowing that he had had suspicions of the father, and not of the daughter.
“Do, sir,” said the sergeant, who wanted a watch kept upon Miss Bostal’s father, and was quite willing that it should be a friendly one.
So Clifford, not without diffidence, entered the house, as the sergeant carried his bundle to the gig which was waiting for him at the old turnpike.
The Colonel heard the slow footsteps outside the dining-room door, and called out:
“Who’s that?”
Clifford stood in the doorway.
“It’s I, Colonel. May I come in?”
The old man raised his head quickly, and gave him a little wan smile, as he held out his hand.
“Come in, come in; yes.”
Then, having held the young man’s warm hand in his own cold one for a few moments, he let it fall, and, inviting him, with a gesture, to be seated, relapsed into silence. Clifford asked him if he should make up the fire. It was a cold evening, and the draughts had been allowed to sweep through the house from open window to open door.
“Yes, yes, my lad; warm yourself if you can. It would take more fire than there is on earth to warm my old bones to-night.”
The stern sadness of his tone sent a shiver through Clifford, who, indeed, had little comfort to give him. He had some difficulty in getting the fire to burn up, and when at last he succeeded, he found that the coal-scuttle was empty.
“I will fetch you some coal,” said the Colonel, who was proceeding to rise from his chair, when Clifford stopped him.
“No. Tell me where to get it,” said he quickly, snatching up the scuttle.
“Oh, well, if you will, you will find the lid of the water-butt on the ground outside, at the back. If you lift it—but really I don’t like to trouble you—you will find the entrance to the cellar underneath.”
Following this rather curious direction, Clifford went out by the back door of the house, lifted the lid, admiring the ingenuity by which the cellar was concealed, and began to descend the wooden steps into the darkness below. The Colonel had provided him with a candle, but this was suddenly extinguished as he reached the bottom step, and at the same moment he became aware that he was not alone.
Involuntarily he uttered a little cry. A hand, the little, soft and slender hand which he remembered so vividly, but which he had never before identified, was placed quickly on his mouth.
“Hello!” they heard a rough man’s voice cry, muffled as it came down into the earth from the garden above.
And Clifford heard a soft whisper in his own ear:
“The policeman! Send him away on some pretext. I only want a moment, just one moment!”
The young man shuddered. Although he had no fear that Miss Bostal would do him any harm, there was something uncanny about the idea of being left alone with a murderess, deep down in the bowels of the earth, in the grasp of the little hands that had done such deadly work.
The policeman’s voice startled them both. He flashed his lantern down into the cellar, but already Miss Bostal had released Clifford and hidden herself in the corner behind the steps.
“Hello! Who’s that down there? Is it you, Mr. King?”
“Yes,” said Clifford. “I’m getting some coal. Would you ask the Colonel for a scoop, or a shovel, or something to get it up by?”
The man flashed his lantern round the cellar once more, and answered:
“Well, sir, I can’t go in. But I’ll call him.”
He drew back, and the moment he did so, Miss Bostal, with amazing boldness and celerity, crept up the steps and out behind his back, as he called to Colonel Bostal from the back doorway.
Clifford stood still, with his heart in his mouth. He was intensely excited; he was listening with all his power. But he did not know whether he wanted the woman to escape or whether he wanted her to pay the penalty she so well deserved. All he knew was that the few moments of suspense seemed never-ending. Then the voice of the policeman, measured and calm, was heard again:
“All right, sir. He’s coming.”
She had got away, then! After all, it was no more than was to be expected of her superhuman cunning. And, in spite of himself, he felt an immense relief that he had helped her to escape. He could meet, if not the policeman, at least the Colonel, with a lighter heart. He took the shovel which was handed to him, and reappeared in the dining-room with the coal.
The Colonel looked at him keenly and shut the door.
“Did you see—her?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes. She got away,” answered Clifford.
The Colonel gave a sigh of relief.
“I knew, when you got the policeman to call me, that it was some ruse of hers,” he said. “You see, Mr. King,” he went on, as the young man reddened with surprise, “I know her tricks. I—I have waited—for some such end as this—for twenty-five years.”
An exclamation, in which astonishment and sympathy were blended, escaped from Clifford’s lips. Colonel Bostal rose from his chair, and unlocking a cupboard in the corner of the room, took from it an old desk, which he unlocked; and taking from it a bundle of cuttings from old newspapers, put them into Clifford’s hands.
They all referred to cases of “kleptomania” which had come before the West End magistrates from twenty-three to twenty-five years before, in which a “ladylike young woman, of superior manner and address,” had been charged with shoplifting.
“They all refer to my daughter,” said the Colonel, quietly. “And in all we managed to get her off, on the plea that she had suffered from hysteria. And that was true.”
“Then she is not responsible for her actions?” suggested Clifford in a tone of relief.
The Colonel hesitated, and then said:
“Frankly, my own belief is that she is fully responsible. She is a highly intelligent woman, and her astuteness and cunning are unsurpassable. There is some moral twist in her nature which causes her to love the excitement of crime. That is my own opinion. I took her away from London, but wherever we went, she threatened to get herself and me into trouble, and at last I brought her here, where it seemed that she must be honest for want of opportunity to be anything else. And I thought, until a few weeks ago, that I had succeeded. I swear to you I never had a suspicion that she was mixed up with the thefts at the Blue Lion, until the inquest on young Stickels. Then, when I saw that it lay between her and poor little Nell Claris, I knew who was the—the culprit. But how could I confess it? My heart bled for the poor girl, but I knew the truth must come out, and I had not the courage to hasten its coming.”
For a long time there was silence in the little room. Then Clifford ventured to ask:
“Do you know where she has gone?”
The Colonel shook his head.
“All I know is that whatever she has done is the best possible thing for her own safety. I can trust her for that.”
Clifford was shocked. That the little, faded woman was a monster, an unnatural and depraved creature without moral sense, was clear. The Colonel rose again, locked up his desk and held out his hand to the young man.
“Go,” said he, gravely, but kindly. “You have done all you could for me, for us, and I thank you. Now you must leave us to take our chance. And remember what I have said: There is very little cause to fear on my daughter’s account.”
Thus dismissed, Clifford took leave of the old man reluctantly and started for Courtstairs, where he easily found a lodging for the night.
On the following morning, at daybreak, there arrived at the County Lunatic Asylum, sixteen miles from Stroan, a weird, wan object, shoeless, wild-eyed, voiceless with cold and with terror.
The creature cried when the porter came to her summons:
“Take me in, or I shall do myself some harm. Take me in! Take me in!”
It was Miss Theodora.
No lunatic who had ever been admitted within the walls of the asylum had looked half so mad as she did. The doctors saw her, and advised her detention. And when the storm broke over her, and the hue and cry reached the asylum, there was no doubt expressed by any of the doctors as to her insanity. She was duly brought up before the magistrates, remanded, brought up again; always with the same result. She smiled, she chatted; she appeared wholly unconscious of her position, wholly irresponsible. And at the last her trial for murder was avoided, the doctors all certifying that she was unfit to plead.
And when it was announced that Miss Theodora would be confined during Her Majesty’s pleasure, every one concurred in the justice of the decision except Colonel Bostal, who said to Clifford, when they were alone:
“I told you she would get off! She is so clever.”
Clifford himself did not know what to think. But then he had something so much pleasanter to think about. For Nell Claris was no longer able to say “No” to him. Instead of being a suspected criminal, she was now a heroine. It was honor and not disgrace that she could now bring to her husband.
One thing only Clifford had to wait for. Nell would not leave her uncle until his mind was quite restored. For months she watched the reawakening of his reason, tending him with loving care.
And when he was able to return to the Blue Lion, in full possession of his reason, when the autumn tints were on the trees, Clifford took his pretty and gentle bride away from the inn by the shore.
THE END.
A Woman’s Book.
The House by the River.
BY
Barbara Kent.
With Illustrations by Warren B. Davis.
12mo. 328 Pages. Handsomely Bound in Cloth. Price, $1.00.
Paper Cover, 50 Cents.
“The House by the River” is a woman’s book from beginning to end. It is an interesting novel, with the principal scenes in the city of New York and in familiar localities. In the opening of the story there is a strong dramatic recital of events upon which the plot hinges, and which give a deep and thrilling interest to the development of the romance of two young lives. The vindictiveness of a man who has been compelled to do right under humiliating circumstances gives a strong motive to the whole action of the story. Every reader will be gratified by the way in which the conclusion is reached.
For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers,
ROBERT BONNER’S SONS,
Cor. William and Spruce Streets, New York.
A Novel of Strange Adventures.
A Treasure Found—A Bride Won
BY
George E. Gardner.
With illustrations by Warren B. Davis.
12mo. 407 Pages. Handsomely Bound in Cloth. Price, $1.00.
Paper Cover, 50 Cents.
This novel is a record of adventure in the Eastern seas, full of strange incidents and dangers, exciting profound interest. There is good descriptive work in the story, and it well repays perusal for the pictures of the life and scenery of the ocean. There is a story in it which grips attention at the start, and never relaxes its hold upon the reader until the end. The author has made good in this work his right to be numbered among the popular authors who introduce us to new and captivating fields of action. The world is becoming so narrow and well-travelled that our best writers enlarge its borders by the aid of imagination, and this faculty is the secret of their charm.
For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers,
ROBERT BONNER’S SONS,
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.