“Have you any idea what killed your late master and mistress?” I asked her aside. “What terrible times you have gone through!”
“Ay, terrible indeed,” she said. “A kinder master and mistress no one could have had. Parry and I always thought something blew in from outside. There is too much vegetation in the grounds, and it grows so near the house. They do say the place is built on the site of a morass.”
“A morass, and in Hampshire!” I laughed. “Why, that sounds incredible. The soil is surely gravel.”
“So it may be—now,” she replied. “I’m speaking of many years ago. The house is very ancient, sir.”
I asked Sir Eldred afterwards if there was any truth in her remark, and he said, “Yes, I believe there was a swamp here once; at least there is mention of one in a very old history of Hampshire that we have in the library. It was drawn off towards the end of the sixteenth century when the house was built. But I’m surprised at the Parrys knowing anything about it, for I’ve never heard anyone allude to it—not even my father.”
“Are the Parrys of the ordinary servant class?” I asked.
“I believe so,” Sir Eldred replied; “but I really know nothing of their antecedents, for I seldom encourage them to speak. As I told you, they both rather get on my nerves.”
That night, some hours after the household had retired to rest, I took a rope out of my portmanteau, and, fixing one end of it securely to the bedstead, lowered myself out of the window on to the ground beneath. Then, keeping under cover of the pine trees, and evading the moonbeams as much as possible, I made a detour of the house. The night air smelt pure and sweet. Heavily charged with the scent of pinewood and heather, there was absolutely nothing about it even remotely suggestive of poisonous gas.
As I was about to emerge from the trees to re-enter the house, I heard a slight crunching sound on the gravel. I sprang back again into the gloom, and as I did so, two figures—a man and girl—stole noiselessly past me.