CHAPTER XXIX.
BRANDED.
The baronet lifted his hands to the light, and gazed at their crimson hue with wild, dilated eyes and ghastly face.
"Blood!" he said, in an awful whisper—"blood—Good God, it is hers!
She is murdered!"
The three listeners recoiled still further, paralyzed at the sight, at the words, at the awful thought that a murderer, red-handed, stood before them.
"A horrible deed has been done this night!" he cried, in a voice that rang down the long hall like a bugle blast. "A murder has been committed! Rouse the house, fetch lights, and follow me!"
Edwards rose up, trembling in every limb.
"Quick!" his master thundered. "Is this a time to stand agape?
Sybilla, sound the alarm! Let all rise and join in the search."
In a moment all was confusion. Claudine, of a highly excitable temperament, no sooner recovered from her stupor of dismay, then, with a piercing shriek, she fainted and tumbled over in a heap.
But no one heeded her. Bells rang, lights flashed, servants, white and wild, rushed to and fro, and over all the voice of the master rang, giving his orders.
"Lights, lights!" he shouted. "Men, why do you linger and stare?
Lights! and follow me to the stone terrace."
He led the way. There was a general rush from the house. The men bore lanterns; the women clung to the men, terror and curiosity struggling, but curiosity getting the better of it. In dead silence all made their way to the stone terrace—all but one.
Sybilla Silver saw them depart, stood a moment, irresolute, then turned and sped away to Sir Everard's dressing-room. She drew the compact bundle of clothes from their corner, removed the dagger, tied up the bundle again with the weight inside, and hurriedly left the house.
"These blood-stained garments are not needed to fix the guilt upon him," she said to herself: "that is done already. The appearance of these would only create confusion and perplexity—perhaps help his cause. I'll destroy these and fling away the dagger in the wood. They'll he sure to find it in a day or two. They will make such a search that if a needle were lost it would be found."
There was an old sunken well, half filled with slimy, green water, mud, and filth, in a remote end of the plantation. Thither, unobserved, Sybilla made her way in the ghostly moonlight and flung her blood-stained bundle into its vile, poisonous depths.
"Lie there!" she muttered. "You have done your work, and I fling you away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure. There, in the green muck and slimy filth, you will tell no tales."
She hurried away and struck into a path leading to the stone terrace. She could see the lanterns flashing like firefly sparks; she could hear the clear voice of Sir Everard Kingsland commanding. All at once the lights were still, there was a deep exclamation in the baronet's voice, a wild chorus of feminine screams, then blank silence.
Sybilla Silver threw the dagger, with a quick, fierce gesture, into the wood, and sprung in among them with glistening, greedy black eyes. They stood in a semicircle, in horror-struck silence, on the terrace. The light of half a dozen lanterns streamed redly on the stone flooring, but redder than that lurid light, a great pool of blood lay gory before them. The iron railing, painted creamy white, was all clotted with jets of blood, and clinging to a projecting knob, something fluttered in the bleak blast, but they did not see it. All eyes were riveted on the awful sight before them—every tongue was paralyzed. Edwards, the valet, was the first to break the dreadful silence.
"My master!" he cried, shrilly; "he will fall!"
He dropped his lantern and sprung forward just in time and no more. The young baronet reeled and fell heavily backward. The sight of that blood—the life-blood of his bride—seemed to freeze the very heart in his body. With a low moan he lay in his servant's arms like a dead man.
"He has fainted," said the voice of Sybilla Silver. "Lift him up and carry him to the house."
"Wait!" cried some one. "What is this?"
He tore the fluttering garment off the projection and held it up to the light.
"My lady's Injy scarf!"
No one knew who spoke—all recognized it. It was a little Cashmere shawl Lady Kingsland often wore. Another thrilling silence followed; then—
"The Lord be merciful!" gasped a house-maid. "She's been murdered, and we in our beds!"
Sybilla Silver, leaning lightly against the railing, turned authoritatively to Edwards:
"Take your master to his room, Edwards. It is no use of lingering here now; we must wait until morning. Some awful deed has been done, but it may not be my lady murdered."
"How comes her shawl there, then?" asked the old butler. "Why can't she be found in the house?"
"I don't know. It is frightfully mysterious, but nothing more can be done to-night."
"Can't there?" said the butler. "Jackson and Fletcher will go to the village and get the police and search every inch of the park before daylight. The murderer can't be far away."
"Probably not, Mr. Norris. Do as you please about the police, only if you ever wish your master to recover from that death-like swoon, you will carry him at once to the house and apply restoratives."
She turned away with her loftiest air of hauteur, and Miss Silver had always been haughty to the servants. More than one dark glance followed her now.
"You're a hard one, you are, if there ever was a hard one!" said the butler. "There's been no luck in the house since you first set foot in it."
"She always hated my lady," chimed in a female. "It's my opinion she'll be more glad than sorry if she is made away with. She wanted Sir Everard for herself."
"Hold your tongue, Susan!" angrily cried Edwards. "You daren't call your soul your own if Miss Silver was listening. Bear a hand here, you fellers, and help me fetch Sir Heverard to the house."
They bore the insensible man to the house, to his room, where Edwards applied himself to his recovery. Sybilla aided him silently, skillfully. Meantime, the two gigantic footmen were galloping like mad to the village to rouse the stagnant authorities with their awful news. And the servants remained huddled together, whispering in affright; then, in a body, proceeded to search the house from attic to cellar.
"My lady may be somewhere in the house," somebody had suggested. "Who knows? Let us try."
So they tried, and utterly failed, of course.
Morning came at last. Dull and dreary it came, drenched in rain, the wind wailing desolately over the dark, complaining sea. All was confusion, not only at the Court, but throughout the whole village. The terrible news had flown like wild-fire, electrifying all. My lady was murdered! Who had done the deed?
Very early in the wet and dismal morning, Miss Silver, braving the elements, wended her way to the Blue Bell Inn.
Where was Mr. Parmalee? Gone, the landlady said, and gone for good, nobody knew where.
Sybilla stood and stared at her incredulously. Gone, and without a word to her—gone without seeing the murdered woman! What did it mean?
"Are you sure he has really gone?" she asked. "And how did he go?"
"Sure as sure!" was the landlady's response; "which he paid his bill to the last farthing, like a gentleman. And as for how he went, I am sure I can't say, not being took in his confidence; but the elderly party, she went with him, and it was late last evening."
Miss Silver was nonplused, perplexed, bewildered, and very anxious. What did Mr. Parmalee mean? Where had he gone? He might spoil all yet. She had come to see him, and accuse him of the murder—to frighten him, and make him fly the village. Circumstances were strongly against him—his knowledge of her secret; his nocturnal appointment; her disappearance. Sybilla did not doubt but that he would consider discretion the better part of valor, and fly.
She went back to the house, intensely perplexed. There the confusion was at its height. The scabbard had been found near the terrace, with the baronet's initials thereon.
Men looked into each other's blank faces, afraid to speak the frightful thoughts that filled their minds.
And in his room Sir Everard lay in a deep stupor—it was not sleep. Sybilla, upon the first faint signs of consciousness, had administered a powerful opiate.
"He must sleep," she said, resolutely, to Edwards. "It may save his life and his reason. He is utterly worn out, and every nerve in his body is strung to its utmost tension. Let him sleep, poor fellow!"
He lay before her so death-like, so ghastly, so haggard, that the stoniest enemy might have relented—the pallid shadow of the handsome, happy bridegroom of two short months ago.
"I have kept my oath," she thought. "I have wreaked the vengeance I have sworn. If I left him forever now, the manes of Zenith the gypsy might rest appeased. But the astrologer's prediction—ah! the work must go on to the appalling end."
Early in the afternoon arrived Lady Kingsland and Mildred, in a frightful state of excitement and horror. Harriet murdered! The tragic story had been whispered through The Grange until it reached their ears, thrilling them to the core of their hearts with terror.
Miss Silver met them—calm, grave, inscrutable.
"I am afraid it is true," she said, "awfully incredible as it seems. Sir Everard fainted stone-dead, my lady, at sight Of the blood upon the terrace."
"Great heavens! it is horrible! That unfortunate girl. And my son,
Sybilla, where is he?"
"Asleep in his room, my lady. I administered an opiate. His very life, I think, depended on it. He will not awake for some hours. Do not disturb him. Will you come up to your old rooms and remove your things?"
They followed her. They had come to stay until the suspense was ended—to take care of the son and brother.
Lady Kingsland wrung her hands in a paroxysm of mortal anguish in the solitude of her own room.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, "have mercy and spare! My son, my son, my son! Would God I might die to save you from the worse horrors to come!"
All that day, all the next, and the next, and the next, the fruitless search for the murdered bride was made. All in vain; not the faintest trace was to be obtained.
Mr. Parmalee was searched for high and low. Immense rewards were offered for the slightest trace of him—immense rewards were offered for the body of the murdered woman. In vain, in vain!
Had the earth opened and swallowed them up, Mr. Parmalee and the baronet's lost bride could not more completely have vanished.
And, meanwhile, dark, ominous whispers rose and circulated from mouth to mouth, by whom originated no one knew. Sir Everard's frantic jealousy of Mr. Parmalee, his onslaught in the picture-gallery, the threats he had used again and again, overheard by so many, the oath he had sworn to take her life if she ever met the American artist again, his ominous conduct that night, his rushing like a madman to the place of tryst, his returning covered with blood—white, wild, like one insane. Then the finding of the scabbard, marked with his initials, and his own words:
"Blood! Good God! it is hers! She is murdered!"
The whispers rose and grew louder and louder; men looked in dark suspicion upon the young lord of Kingsland, and shrunk from him palpably. But as yet no one was found to openly accuse him.
Toward the close of the second week, a body was washed ashore, some miles down the coast, and the authorities there signified to the authorities of Worrel that the corpse might be the missing lady.
Sir Everard, his mother, and Miss Silver went at once. But the sight was too horrible to be twice looked at.
The height corresponded, and so did the long waves of flowing hair, and Sybilla Silver, the only one with nerve enough to glance again, pronounced it emphatically to be the body of Harriet, Lady Kingsland.
There was to be a verdict, and the trio remained; and before it commenced, the celebrated detective from Scotland Yard, employed from the first by Sir Everard, appeared upon the scene with crushing news. He held up a blood-stained dagger before the eye of the baronet:
"Do you know this little weapon, Sir Everard?"
Sir Everard looked at it and recognized it at once.
"It is mine," he replied. "I purchased it last year in Paris. My initials are upon it."
"So I see," was the dry response.
"How comes it here? Where did you find it?"
The detective eyed him narrowly, almost amazed at his coolness.
"I found it in a very queer place, Sir Everard—lodged in the branches of an elm-tree, not far from the stone terrace. It's a miracle it was ever found. I think this little weapon did the deed. I'll go and have a look at the body."
He went. Yes, there in the region of the heart was a gaping wound.
The inquest came on; the facts came out—mysteriously whispered before, spoken aloud now. And for the first time the truth dawned on the stunned baronet—he was suspected of the murder of the wife he loved!
The revolting atrocity, the unnatural horror of the charge, nerved him as nothing else could have done. His pale, proud face grew rigid as stone; his blue eyes flashed scornful defiance; his head reared itself haughtily aloft. How dare they accuse him of so monstrous a crime?
But the circumstantial evidence was crushing. Sybilla Silver's evidence alone would have damned him.
She gave it with evident reluctance; but give it she did with frightful force, and the bereaved young husband stood stunned at the terrible strength of the case she made out.
Everything told against him. His very eagerness to find the murderer seemed but throwing dust in their eyes. Not a doubt lingered in the minds of the coroner or his jury, and before sunset that day Sir Everard Kingsland was on his way to Worrel Jail to stand his trial at the coming assizes for the willful murder of Harriet, his wife.