Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

To oppose our entrance was not to be thought of. We had entered and could not be thrust back again. Eunice took to her heels up the passage, and confronted us at the parlour-door with a pair of tongs. Duffham and Tod disarmed her. She then flew to the kitchen, sat down, and went into hysterics. Old Jones read out the authority for the search, but she only screamed the louder.

They left her to get out of the screaming at her leisure, and went up, seeking the entrance to the tower. It was found without much difficulty: Tod was the one to see it first. A small door (only discovered by Stephen Radcliffe since his father’s death, as we heard later) led from a dark and unused lumber-room to the narrow stairs of the tower. In its uppermost compartment, a little, round den, sat Frank Radcliffe, chained to the wall.

Not at once could we take in the features of the scene; for, all the light came in through the one long narrow opening, a framed loophole without glass, that was set in the deep round wall of the tower. A mattress was spread on the floor, with a pillow and blankets; one chair stood close to a box that served for a table, on which he no doubt eat his meals, for there were plates and food on it; another box, its lid open, was in a corner, and on the other chair sat Frank. That was every earthly article the place contained. It was through that opening—you could not call it a window—that Frank’s cries for help had gone forth to the air. There he sat, the chain round his waist, turning his amazed eyes upon us.

And raving mad, you ask? No. He was all skin and bone, and his fair hair hung down like that of a wild man of the woods, but he was as sane as you or I. He rose up, the chain clanking, and then we saw that it was long enough to admit of his moving about to any part of the den.

“Oh, God bless you, Frank!—we have come to release you,” burst forth the Squire, impetuously seizing both his hands. “God help you, my poor lad!” And Frank, what with surprise and the not being over stout, burst into joyous tears.

The ingenious scheme of taking possession of Frank, and representing him as dead, that he might enjoy all the money, had occurred to Stephen Radcliffe when he found Frank was recovering under Dr. Dale’s treatment. During the visits Stephen paid to London at that time, he and Pitt, Dr. Dale’s head man, became very intimate: and when Pitt was discharged from Dr. Dale’s they grew more so. Stephen Radcliffe would not perhaps have done any harm to Frank in the shape of poison or a dagger, being no more of a killer and slayer of men than were his neighbours; but to keep him concealed in the Torr, so as to reap the benefit himself of all the money, he looked upon as a very venial crime indeed—quite justifiable, so to say. Especially, if he could escape being found out. And this fine scheme he perfected and put in practice, and successfully carried through.

How much of it he confided to Pitt, or how much he did not, will never be known. Certain it was, that Pitt wrote the letter announcing Frank’s death; though we could not find out that he had helped it in any other way. But a very curious coincidence attended the affair; one that aided Stephen’s plans materially; and but for its happening I do not see that they could have succeeded when inquiries were made. In the London house where Stephen lodged (Gibraltar Terrace, that I and the Squire had a two days’ hunt to find) there came to live a young man, who was taken ill close upon his entrance with a malady arising from his habits of drinking. Pitt, coming often to Gibraltar Terrace then with Stephen Radcliffe, took to attend on the young man out of good nature, doing for him all that could be done. It was this young man who died, and was buried in Finchley Cemetery; and of whose death the landlady with the faded face and black silk apron spoke to the Squire, thereby establishing in our minds the misapprehension that it was Francis Radcliffe. Stephen did not take Frank to the lodgings at all; he brought him straight down to the Torr when he was released from Dr. Dale’s, taking care to get out at a remote country station in the dusk of evening, where his own gig, conveyed thither by Becca, was in waiting. He laid his plans well, that crafty Stephen! And, once he had got Frank securely into that upper den, he might just have kept him there for life, but for that blessed outlet in the wall, and no one been any the wiser.

Stephen Radcliffe did not bargain for that. It nearly always happens that in doing an ill deed we overreach ourselves in some fatal way. Knowing that no sound, though it were loud enough to awaken the seven sleepers, could penetrate from that upper room through the massive walls of the house, and be heard below, Stephen thought his secret was safe, and that Frank might call out, if he would, until Doomsday. It never occurred to him that the cries could get out through that unglazed window in the tower wall, and set the neighbourhood agog with curiosity. They did, however: and Stephen, whatever amount of dread it might have brought his heart, was unable to stop them. Not until Frank had been for some months chained in his den, did it occur to himself to make those cries, so hopeless was he of their being heard below to any good purpose. But one winter night when the wind was howling outside, and the sound of it came booming into his ears through the window, it struck him that he might be heard through that very opening; and from that time his voice was raised in supplication evening after evening. Stephen could do nothing. He dared not brick the opening up lest some suspicion or other should be excited outside; he could not remove Frank, for there was no other secret room to remove him to, or where his cries would not have been heard below. He ordered Frank to be still: he threatened him; he once took a horsewhip to him and laid it about his shoulders. All in vain. When Frank was alone, his cries for release never ceased. Stephen and his household put it upon the birds and the wind, and what not; but they grew to dread it: and Stephen, even at this time, of discovery, was perpetually ransacking his brains for some safe means of departing for Canada and carrying Frank with him. The difficulty lay in conveying Frank out of the Torr and away. They might drug him for the bare exit, but they could not keep him perpetually drugged; they could not hinder him coming in contact with his fellow-men on the journey and transit, and Frank had a tongue in his head. No: Stephen saw no hope, no safety, but in keeping him where he was.

“But how could you allow yourself to be brought up here?—and fastened to a stake in this shameful fashion?” was nearly the first question of the Squire when he could collect his senses: and he asked it with just a touch of temper, for he was beginning to think that Frank, in permitting it, must have been as simple as the fool in a travelling circus.

“He got me up by stratagem,” answered Frank, tossing his long hair back from his face. “While we were sitting at supper the night we arrived here, he began talking about the wonderful discovery he had made of the staircase and opening to the tower. Naturally I was interested; and when Stephen proposed to show it me at once, I assented gladly. Becca came with us, saying she’d carry the candle. We got up here, and were all three standing in the middle of the floor, just where we are standing now, when I suddenly had a chain—this chain—slipped round my waist, and found myself fastened to the wall, a prisoner.”