Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

"Very shortly after my uncle's death I went to stay for a time with some relatives, who, having settled some years before in New Zealand, were now over in England on a visit. Circumstances kept them in this country for more than a year, and when they finally went back, and I--having no other home--returned to the shelter of Lady Clinton's roof, for she had been married again in the interim, it was to Garion Keep that I came.

"Although I had heard of the existence of such a person, it was not till then that I made the acquaintance of Signor Sperani, her ladyship's brother, who had arrived at the Keep two or three days later than I.

"The first knowledge I had of your existence, Mr. Brabazon, was when your insensible body was brought into the house late one night by Signor Sperani and Jared Sprowle, the latter being the son of the old woman who waits on you, and the man, as I learnt afterwards, who had been employed to dog your footsteps for days before. I happened to be crossing the gallery at the moment when they brought your body in and laid it on the hall table. A single lamp was burning below, the gallery was in gloom, and from where I stood I could look down on all that passed, myself unseen.

"Apparently the first thing Sperani did was to satisfy himself that you were not dead (I have learnt since that he was brought up to the medical profession, as was his father before him), after which he went in search of her ladyship, who came back with him two minutes later. Then a hurried consultation was held between the two, Sprowle standing somewhat apart meanwhile, but they spoke so guardedly that not a word of what they said reached me. Then her ladyship went, and the two men, carrying the body between them--your body, please bear in mind, Mr. Brabazon--disappeared with it down one of the corridors which diverge from the hall, but not down the one which leads to her ladyship's and Sir Everard's rooms, which, I may here remark, are on the ground floor, in order that the latter may be spared the necessity of going up and down stairs.

"To what place they had taken you, Mr. Brabazon, I could not in the least imagine, but from the air of hurried secrecy with which the affair seemed to be invested, I concluded that it would most likely be to some part of the house with which the servants have little or nothing to do, for in the north wing alone there are several rooms which are always kept locked, and which nobody ever seems to enter. At that time I had no knowledge of the underground passage which leads from the house to the tower.

"I need scarcely tell you that the scene I had witnessed from the gallery took a powerful hold of my imagination. I could not get it out of my thoughts; but I felt that I durst not ask a question of any one about it--indeed, there was no one but her ladyship to ask, and I was quite sure the affair was one I was supposed to know nothing about. In the house everything went on as usual; there was nothing in the demeanour of the servants to indicate that they were aware of anything unusual having occurred; the shut-up rooms in the north wing were still shut up; what then had become of the insensible body of the young man which I had seen carried away by Sperani and his accomplice? That he was not dead I had seen enough to satisfy myself, and yet it seemed impossible that he should be hidden away in the house without the servants being cognisant of the fact; for, when all is said, the Keep has only a limited number of rooms, and the servants are passing backward and forward almost continually.

"But you know already, Mr. Brabazon, how it was that, as far as I was concerned, you had so unaccountably vanished. It was either on the third or fourth evening after the scene in the hall that, as I chanced to be passing a certain door on what may be called the cellar floor of the house, to which I had never ventured to penetrate before, it was opened from the other side, and I found myself face to face with Mrs. Sprowle. The woman was evidently far more disconcerted than I, indeed, it is not too much to say that she looked thoroughly terrified. I was about to pass on, but she took a couple of strides forward and clutched me by the sleeve. 'Not a word to anybody, miss, that you have seen me here, she said in my ear, or it will be worse for both of us.' I nodded and passed on, asking myself what hidden meaning lay behind her words. Could it be that I had lighted on the clue for which during the last three days I had been so anxiously searching?

"In the course of next forenoon I made it my business to secure a private interview with Mrs. Sprowle. As you are doubtless aware, she is stone deaf--at least, she passes for such, but I think it just possible that her affliction may not be quite so extreme as it is her policy to make people believe. But be that as it may, my intercourse with her is carried on through the medium of the finger alphabet, an accomplishment which I picked up while at school I had had little or nothing to do with Mrs. Sprowle before. She and her son had lived at the Keep in the office of caretakers previously to the arrival of Sir Everard and her ladyship. Now that I had got her to myself it did not take me long to discover that her one great passion or failing, or whatever one chooses to term it, is greed--the love of money--and that if I would only pay her sufficiently, and, as she termed it, pass her my word never to 'split' on her, she would answer all my questions truthfully and to the best of her ability. She had a further incentive to do so, had any been needed, in her hatred of Sperani, who had nearly frightened her into a fit one day by making believe to egg on one of his big brutes to worry her. It was a piece of sport for which she never forgave him.

"Well, you may be sure that the old lady and I were not long in coming to terms. And in such fashion it was, Mr. Brabazon, that I learnt you were Sir Everard Clinton's nephew; that, for some reason unknown, her ladyship had a great spite against you; that as soon as it was known you had made your appearance at Crag End, a watch was set upon your movements; that you were murderously attacked in the dark; and that, finally, you were now a prisoner in the old tower on the cliff, to which place your meals were taken you by the woman who told me all this. From that moment I made up my mind to help you to escape should it anyhow be possible for me to do so.

"But the more I thought over the affair, the more beset with difficulties it seemed. Sperani was ever on the watch--he and his dogs. I was helpless; I could do nothing. But there is no need to trouble you with all I thought and felt. It is enough to say that I was beginning to despair, and that I had said to myself more than once: 'It is useless; I can do nothing,' when chance--if there be such a thing--came to my aid in a way the most surprising. Yesterday morning Signor Sperani was called away to London on some business of importance, the nature of which I am ignorant of. The time of his return was uncertain; he might be back within thirty-six hours, or he might be detained considerably longer; that part of the affair was discussed between him and her ladyship over breakfast, and in my presence. Before starting for the station, he interviewed both Sprowle and his mother (so Mrs. S. informed me later), and gave them their instructions. The key of the room--your room--he took with him; he would not entrust it to anybody; but the key which opens the two doors of the underground passage, one at either end, he was compelled to leave, otherwise you would have had to starve till his return. The latter key he gave into the custody of Sprowle, who was to let his mother have it for the time being as often as your meal times came round, with strict injunctions not to quit the Keep end of the passage till he had received it from her again on her return from the tower.