The House of Strange Secrets: A Detective Story

by A. Eric Bayly

With the discovery that the servant from the Dene was without doubt a man in disguise, the mystery surrounding the house adjoining the Squire's residence was considerably deepened instead of being in any way solved.

Laurence Carrington, as, smarting under the burly housewife's blow, he conducted his companion back to the Manse, hardly fulfilled his duties as host in silently meditating as to his next step. Suddenly he recollected himself.

"Excuse me, Miss Scott," he said apologetically. "This discovery has rather alarmed me, and for the moment I almost forgot that I was not alone. Come, it is getting late, and your aunt will be worrying about you. You must try and forget all about this skeleton in father's cupboard. It will be giving you bad dreams, and that would never do."

But if the young man charged Selene to think no more, for the present, about the uncanny state of affairs, he was unable, or did not intend, to allow this first reverse to put an end to his attempts at the solution of the mystery. Having wished Miss Scott and her aunt "good-night" on their departure to bed, he lighted his pipe and stepped out through the French windows of the dining-room on to the lawn. Fumbling unconsciously in one of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, which he had worn during the day and donned after dinner before starting off for the village, his hand came in contact with the small pistol which Head, the gardener, had found amongst the hay in the barn.

So many and varied had the events of the day been that he had almost forgotten the incidents of the stolen dinner and the rustling in the hay. Now it appeared to him that here was the most important clue he had as to the identity of the attempted murderer of the Squire. It seemed to him extremely possible that this was the weapon used by the unknown cyclist, for whose else could it possibly be, when no one in any way connected with the Manse carried firearms, except the Squire, whose blunderbus was certainly not to be mistaken for this? Careful examination of the pistol failed, however, to reveal any sign of the maker's name, and the hope which had risen in Laurence's breast gave way to a feeling of disappointment.

But a question of deepest importance that suggested itself to the amateur investigator was how it was that, if the strange cyclist came from the adjoining house, he had ventured into the barn which stood well within the Manse grounds. Had he been some chance enemy—the poacher, for instance, whom Laurence had already set down as a possible suspect—there was nothing more probable than that he should have taken refuge in the barn, but in the other case it was hardly likely.

One thing was undeniable, he had been there. Whoever the mysterious person was, he had stolen the gardener's plate of dinner and likewise his old coat. It certainly seemed improbable that Major Jones-Farnell, would-be murderer or no, should stoop to the robbery of old clothes and food. The poacher idea rose in the young man's mind, but was at once dismissed as out of the question. The Squire's secret had to do with something or somebody more mysterious by far than a mere poacher.

If the intruder had been in the barn at lunch-time, it was possible that he might be there still, though he had certainly disappeared completely before the gardener's manœuvres with the pitchfork.

At any rate, Laurence decided to have a look round before going to bed, and consequently strolled down to the barn and crept noiselessly inside. The moonshine peeped in from a roof window, lighting up the whole of one side of the fine old rambling building as though it were broad daylight. Puffing silently at his pipe, Laurence glanced round, peering up into the rafters, down on the floor, and into the loosely piled hay that surrounded him.

Suddenly, by that strange instinctive intuition that comes at times to us all, he became aware and convinced of the fact that he was not alone—that some one was looking at him!