CHAPTER XLIV.
The Search.—The Confession.—The Strange Report.—An Awful Dilemma.
Jacob Gray’s first care, when he left Ada, was to repair to the room in which he concealed his money. Hastily collecting together the really large sum he had from time to time wrung from the guilty fears of Learmont, he bestowed it about his person, and then carefully placing his written confession, with its dangerous address, in his breast, he hurried to the street-door, upon the back of which he wrote with a piece of chalk, ”J.G. and A. left here June 2nd,” thus endeavouring to paralyse the magistrate’s exertions in the way of search by inducing him to think that the house had been deserted by Jacob Gray for some time.
He then with wild haste ran through the house concealing everything in the shape of provisions which would undeniably indicate a recent occupancy of it. Ada’s bed and his own he cast into a dusty cupboard, and altogether succeeded in producing a general appearance of litter and desertion.
Then, without daring to cast another look from the windows, for fear he should be seen, he rushed to the room in which he had left Ada, and getting through the opening in the wall, he closed the panel and stood trembling so exceedingly on the ladder, that had he wished he could scarcely have commanded physical energy sufficient to descend. His object, however, was to remain there, and listen to what was passing, which he could not do below.
“Ada, Ada,” he said, in a low tone, “you—you are safe?”
“I am here,” said Ada.
“Hush! Hush! Not another word, not even a whisper; hush, for your life, hush!”
A heavy knock at the outer door now echoed fearfully through the spacious passages and empty rooms of the house. To Gray that knock could not have been more agonising had it been against his own heart.
By an impulse that he could not restrain, he kept on saying in a half-choked whisper, “Hush—hush—hush!” while he clutched the sides of the ladder till his nails dug painfully into the palms of his hands, and a cold perspiration hung in massive drops upon his brow. Ada meanwhile was getting a little used to the darkness of the place, and feeling cautiously about, she found one of the baskets she recollected to have seen there before. This she sat down upon, and burying her face in her hands, she gave herself up to gloomy reflections, while tears, which she would not let Jacob Gray see for worlds slowly and noiselessly trickled through her small fingers.
In a few moments the knock at the door again sounded through the house, and Gray, although he was expecting it, nearly fell from the ladder in the nervous start that he gave.
Then followed a long silence, after which a voice came to his ears in indistinct tones, saying something which terminated with the words,—“In the King’s name.”
There was then a slight pause, followed in a moment by a crash; and Jacob Gray knew that the doors were burst open.
A sensation of awful thirst now came over Gray—such thirst as he had read of only as being endured by adventurous travellers in crossing hundreds of miles of sandy desert. His tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth, and his parched lips were like fire to his touch. Still he clutched by the ladder, and each slight noise that met his overstrained attention added fearfully to the pangs of apprehension that tortured him thus physically and mentally.
He could hear the sound of heavy footsteps through the house, and occasionally the low murmur of voices came upon his ears, although he could not detect what was said. That they would, however, come to the room from which he was only separated by a thin piece of wainscotting he knew; and if his dread and agitation were great now, he thought with a shudder what would be his feelings when each moment might produce his discovery and capture.
Then he strained his ear to listen if he could hear Ada moaning, and a low stifled sigh ascended from the gloomy vault.
“Yes, yes,” he thought. “She will be still—she will be still. The fear of a sudden and violent death is upon her young heart. ’Tis well, ’tis very well, now she thinks me the unscrupulous man—the—the murderer that she taunts me with being. She—she does not suspect that if I were taken, my only hope of mercy would be in having preserved her life—and, and my only plea would be that not a hair of her head was injured. No, no, she guesses not the value of her life. I—I have been cunning, very, very cunning. Besides, if they find me, what evidence—”
Jacob Gray very nearly uttered a cry of terror as this thought passed through his mind, for he immediately then recollected his own written confession that he had in the breast pocket of his coat, and which, if he were taken, would be his destruction.
He struck his forehead with his clenched hand, and uttered a deep groan. What means had he there, situated as he was, of destroying the damning evidence of a guilt which otherwise would only rest on conjecture and surmise, and from the consequences of which, it not being distinctly proved, the money and influence of Learmont, exerted for his own sake, might actually free him. The written confession was an admirable weapon against Learmont, so long as he, Jacob Gray, had the control of it, and lived; but now, when there was a fearful chance of his own apprehension, it was at once converted into a fearful weapon against himself, and a damning evidence of his guilt.
For some moments he was incapable of anything resembling rational thought, and his reason seemed tottering to its base. This state of mind, however, passed away, and how to destroy his confession became the one great question that agitated and occupied his throbbing and intensely labouring brain.
If he attempted to tear it into fragments, he must either cast these fragments on the door of the vault, from whence they would easily be recovered, or he must keep them in his possession, which would avail him nothing.
He thought of descending the ladder, and digging a hole with his hands, in which to bury the dangerous document, but then Ada was there, and would by the dim light of that place see what he was about, and it was not to be supposed that she would keep a secret she was so strongly and personally interested in revealing.
There was but one other resource that occurred to the maddened brain of Jacob Gray, and that was one which, in his present state, nothing but the abject, awful fear of death by the hands of the executioner could have brought him to—it was to tear the confession into small pieces, and eat it.
With trembling hands, while he stood upon the ladder as well as he could, he drew the paper from his breast, and notwithstanding his awful and intense thirst, he began tearing off piece by piece from it, and forcing himself to swallow it.
Thus had this written confession—this master-stroke of policy, upon which he had so much prided himself, become to him a source of torment and pain.
Occasionally he could hear a door shut in the house, as Sir Francis Hartleton and his two officers pursued their search, and he went on with frantic eagerness devouring the paper.
Now, by the distinctness of the sounds, he felt sure those who sought him were in the next apartment. In a few short moments they would be there, his danger was thickening, and the confession was not half disposed of. With trembling fingers, that impeded themselves, he tore off large pieces, and forced them into his mouth, to the danger of choking himself.
Now he really heard the door of the room open, and the heavy tread of men upon the floor. In a few moments there was a death-like stillness, and Jacob Gray stood in the act of suspending mastication, with a large piece of the confession fixed in his teeth.
Then Sir Francis Hartleton’s voice, or what he guessed to be his, from the tone of authority in which he spoke, came upon Gray’s ears.
“This is very strange,” he said. “To my thinking, there are evident indications of recent inhabitants in this house. Go down to the door, and ask your comrade if he has heard anything.”
“Yes, Sir Francis,” replied another voice, and the door closed, indicative of the man proceeding on his errand.
“Now—now,” thought Gray, “if we were alone—if there were no other, a pistol would rid me for ever of his troublesome and most unwelcome visit.”
Sir Francis spoke, as if communing with himself, in a low voice—but in the breathless stillness around, Gray heard distinctly what he said.
“Is it possible that the man Gray has left here?” he said. “Are we, after all, as far off the secret as ever? And yet I cannot think so. What could be the motive of such an inscription on the door as that which states his departure more than a month since. It is some trick merely. By Heavens, that must have been Gray who left the King’s Bounty so soon before me. The fates seem to be propitious to the rascal, and to aid him in every way. I made sure the information was good, and that I had him here safe for the fetching merely.”
Sir Francis now walked to and fro in the room for some minutes; then he paused and said,—
“He can’t be hiding here anywhere. The old house is full of cupboards and closets, but they are very easily searched. Learmont, Learmont! Are you still to triumph in your villany for a time? I could stake my life upon the fact that some crime of black hue was committed that night of the storm at the Old Smithy at yonder village. The issues of the crime are still at work, but they are not revealed. Humph! It’s of no use apprehending Britton on mere vague suspicion. No, that would be very foolish, for it would set the whole party on their guard, and that which is difficult now might become impossible.”
“Please your worship, he ain’t heard nothing,” said the man, at this moment entering the room again.
“No noise of any kind?”
“No, nothing, your worship.”
“No one has crossed the fields within view since he has stood guard?”
“Not a mouse, your worship.”
“Very well. Now go and search the lower rooms thoroughly, and then come back to me here. I shall rest on this chair awhile.”
So saying, Sir Francis Hartleton sat down on the chair which Ada had stood upon to enable her to reach the panel that opened to the vault.
How little the poor, persecuted Ada imagined that a powerful friend was very near to her.
Jacob Gray was now almost afraid to breathe, so close was the magistrate to him. Had the wainscotting not intervened, Gray could, had he been so minded, have touched Sir Francis’s head without moving from where he stood.
At length he spoke again.
“I wonder,” he said, “if this girl that the Seytons speak of, and yon poor creature, Maud, raves of as an angel, be really the child that was saved from the Smithy on the night of the storm and the murder? I have only one very substantial reason for thinking so, and that is, that the name of Britton is mixed up with the business. To be sure, the dates correspond pretty well with what the young man, Seyton, says he thinks is her age. It’s rather strange though, that no one except Maud mentions Learmont at all in the matter, and her mention of him is nothing new. ’Tis a mysterious affair, and, at all events, this man, Gray, is at hide and seek for some very special reason indeed.”
The man who had been sent to examine the lower rooms now returned.
“Well,” said Sir Francis.
“There ain’t not nothing, your worship, by no means,” he said.
“You have searched carefully?”
“Yes, your worship. I’d take my solemn davy as there’s nothing here.”
“I know I can rely upon you,” said Sir Francis, in a tone of disappointment.
“Ex—actly, your worship.”
“Do you think there are any hiding places about this house?”
“Can’t say as I does. Your worship sees as it’s a house a standing all alone, and there ain’t no great opportunity to make hiding-places, you see.”
“I will make one more effort,” said Sir Francis; “it is a forlorn hope; but if the girl be hiding anywhere in this house under the impression that I am an enemy, she may hear me and put faith in my words. I will call to her.”
Sir Francis rose as he spoke; and Jacob Gray, upon whom this determination came like a thunder-clap, dropped from his trembling hands the remnant of the confession he had been eating, and curling his feet round the ladder, he slid in a moment to the damp floor of the vault. His great dread was, that on the impulse of a moment, Ada might answer any call to her by name; and he knew that, close as Sir Hartleton was, the least shrill cry of hers must inevitably reach his ears, when instant discovery and capture would be certain to follow.
Drawing then his pistol from his pocket, he felt about for Ada.
“Ada, Ada,” he said, in the faintest whisper.
“Here,” said Ada.
“Hush,” said Gray, as he grasped her arm; “speak above the tone I use, and you seal your own destruction.”
He placed, as he spoke, the cold muzzle of a pistol against her forehead, Ada shuddered as she said—
“What is that?”
“A pistol! Make the least noise—raise the faintest cry, and I will pull the trigger. You will be a mangled corpse in a moment. Hush, hush, hush!”
A voice now reached the ears of Ada, and thrilled through the very heart of Jacob Gray. It was the voice of Sir Francis Hartleton, which, now that he raised it to a high key, was quite audible to Ada, while before, from the low position she occupied at the bottom of the vault, she had only heard a confused murmuring of voices, without being able to detect what was said.
“Ada!” cried the magistrate; “Ada!”
The girl clasped her hands, and an answering cry was on her lips, but the cold barrel of the pistol pressed heavily and painfully against her brow, and Gray, with his lips close to her ear, said,—
“Hush, hush!” prolonging the sound till it resembled the hissing of some loathsome snake.
“Ada!” again cried Sir Francis, “Ada! If you are concealed within, hearing of my voice, be assured it is a friend who addresses you.”
A low gasping sob burst from Ada, and Gray again hissed in her ear,—
“A word, and you die. You are a corpse if you speak; and all hope of seeing Albert Seyton in this world will be past!”
“Ada!” again cried Sir Francis. “Speak if you be here. A friend addresses you, I am Sir Francis Hartleton, the magistrate.”
Ada made a slight movement and Gray pressed her quite back with the violence with which he held the pistol against her temple.
There was a dead silence now. Sir Francis said no more, Ada’s hope was past. Still, however, Gray stood close to her with the pistol; and as the murderer and the innocent Ada remained thus strangely situated, it would have been difficult to say which suffered the most mental agony of the two. Ada to know that relief had been so near without the power to grasp at it—or Gray to know that one word from her would have consigned him to a prison, from whence he would never have emerged but to ascend the scaffold to die a death of ignominy and shame.