“I never did believe in it and I never will to the last day of my life,” said Finch, sturdily. “No one, who knew Mr. Lionel as I knew him, could harbour such a thought for a single moment.”
“Uncle Pearce says exactly the same as you. ‘No power on earth could make me believe it.’ Them’s his very words. But I say, Mr. Finch, isn’t the old General a darling?”
“Yes, Miss Piper, I approve of the General—I approve of him very much indeed. But Mr. Kester St. George is a sort of person whom I would never condescend to engage as my employer. I don’t like that gentleman. It seems a strange thing to say, but he has never looked his proper self since the night of the murder. His man tells me that he has to drench himself with brandy every morning before he can dress himself. Who knows? Perhaps it’s the ghosts. They’re enough to turn any man’s brain.”
“I know that I shouldn’t like to go after dark anywhere near where the murder was done,” said Miss Piper. “It’s a good job they have nailed the door up. There’s no getting either in or out of the room now.”
“And yet they do say,” remarked Finch, “that on the eighth of every month—you know the murder was done on the eighth of May—a little before midnight, footsteps can be heard—the noise of some one walking about in the nailed-up room. You, as the niece of Mr. Pearce, have not been told this, but it has been known to me all along.”
“But you don’t believe it, Mr. Finch?”
“Well, I don’t know so much about that,” answered Finch, dubiously. “You see it was on account of them footsteps that Sims and Baker left last month. They had been told about the footsteps, and they made up their minds to go and hear them. They did hear them, and they gave warning next day. They told Mr. Pearce that the place wasn’t lively enough for them. But it was the footsteps that drove them away.”
“After what you have told me, I shall be frightened of moving out of my own room after dusk. Listen!” cried Miss Piper, jumping up in alarm. “That’s uncle’s ring at the side bell. He must have got back before his time.”
It was as Finch had stated. Kester St. George was staying as his uncle’s guest at Park Newton. The General’s letter found him at Paris, where he had been living of late almost en permanence. It was couched in such a style that he saw clearly if he were to refuse the invitation thus given, a breach would be created between his uncle and himself which might never be healed in time to come; and, distasteful as the idea of visiting Park Newton was to him, he was not the man to let any sentimental rubbish, as he himself would have been the first to call it, stand in the way of any possible advantage that might accrue to him hereafter. Rich though he was, he still hankered after his uncle’s money-bags almost as keenly as in the days when he was so poor; and in his uncle’s letter there were one or two sentences which seemed to imply that the probability of their one day becoming his own was by no means so remote as he had at one time deemed it to be.
“And who has so much right to the old boy’s savings as I have?” he asked himself. “Certainly not that scowling black-browed Richard Dering. I hope with all my heart that he’ll be gone back to India—or to Jericho—or to the bottom of the sea—before I get to Park Newton.”