Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

Well, I grabbed my hook and made after my shadowy man who had darted from behind the big reading desk. I knew some mystic palaver or other had been going on, but what that mummery had to do with the death or disappearance of my father I did not care—only just streaked it down the passage. It was dark as pitch, of course, but firm underfoot, and of a uniform height. The walls had been painted recently, I should say, for I felt the bits of plaster come away in my hand as I put it out, and all along the courses of the stones felt ridgy.

Then all of a sudden it dipped down, and the going got wet and soppy.

"Under the moat!" said I to myself, thinking myself no end clever to have hit on it. "We will be going up presently," I added to myself.

Just so it happened. And then Joseph Yarrow thought himself the cleverest fellow in the world; though, come to think of it now, it was really a chance word of Elsie's that set me on the track.

Anyway, there was somebody before me, for I heard a door open, then shut, and, as it seemed, a kind of fumbling as if with a key which wouldn't act.

I was at the door in a trice—indeed, I rather tumbled upon it. For there were two or three steps leading up, pretty sloppy and slippery with green stuff, and the smell of dank earth all about. Also, it got cold, while it had been quite warm below. So I knew we were getting near the surface where the black frost was.

Plung! I darted my long staff with the hook at the end of it between the door and the doorpost. Luckily it caught on the steel part, so the man behind could not get the key to turn. Way there! I used my staff as a lever. The door gave. And in the chill dawn I found myself in a little sham ruin, covered with ivy, quite near the place where Mr. Stennis got off his pony and came upon us the very first day Elsie and I had ever gone to Deep Moat Grange.

There was nobody there. My gentleman had failed to lock the door, but had managed to shoot an outside bolt which my long hook lever had torn away like so much brown paper. I climbed through a gap in the ruin—either a bit of an old cottage, such as shepherds live in, or, more probably, a thing built on purpose to shield the head of the secret passage. I had never thought of secret passages in connection with the Grange. But, of course—come to think of it—the people there would not have respected themselves if they had not at least one. They saw to it first thing—after the little coffins. "Necessities first, luxuries after," as my poor mother used to say when she confiscated my Saturday's penny for the Sunday's church collection.

But in the growing light of the morning—dawn is the proper word, though smelling of poetry—I saw the man who had led me such a chase running through the wood in the direction of Brom Common. Now, I knew that piece. Had not Elsie and I come there, crawling on our stomachs—yes, lifting our four feet one at a time, counting the front ones, and not daring to move hardly! I was sure the fellow would have to cross the road, and I knew where. He would not do it right in front of Mr. Bailiff Ball's house; he would have to turn away to the right, about the place where poor Harry Foster was done to death. Because, you see, he would have to cross Brom Water by the bridge, and he couldn't expect to have secret passages everywhere handy. So I made right for that place. It was risky, I own; but then I was in the mood for risks.

I could see him running—or rather gliding—a big portfolio thing under his arm, from tree to tree. And it came to me with a sudden certainty that this man knew the fate of my father, and that he was carrying off the booty under his armpits. Then somehow I got very angry all at once, and vowed I would put the steel hook into him or burst. I stretched across for the stile where he would have to cross the big march-dyke that bordered the Deep Moat property. He had not arrived, though I could hear him coming—in a precious hurry, too, and crashing like a steer through the underbrush. I crouched behind a bush of laurel—for we were in the pheasant shrubbery behind Bailiff Ball's—and waited with my hook at the "Ready."