“He will never come of age! He will be killed first—he is being killed now!” interposed Lady Essington, agitatedly. “Oh, Mr. Headland, help me! I love the boy—he is my own child’s child. I love him as I never loved anything else in all the world; and if he were to die——Dear God! what should I do? And he is dying: I tell you he is. And they won’t let me go near him: they won’t let me have him all to myself, these two! If his cries in the night wring my heart and I run to his nursery, one or the other of them is always there, and never for one moment will they let me hold him in my arms nor be with him alone.”
“Hum-m-m! Cries out in the night, does he, your ladyship? What kind of cries? Those of fright or of pain?”
“Of pain—of excruciating pain: it would wring the heart of a stone to hear him, and, though there is never a spot of blood nor a sign of violence, he declares that some one comes in the night and sticks something into his neck—something which, in his baby way, he likens to ‘a long, long needle that goes yite froo my neck and sets uvver needles prickin’ and prickin’ all down my arm.’”
“Hello! what’s that? Let’s have that again, please!” rapped out Cleek, before he thought; then recollected himself and added apologetically, “I beg your ladyship’s pardon, but I am apt to get a little excited at times. Something like a needle being run into his neck, eh? And other needles continuing the sensation down the arm? Hum-m-m! Had a doctor called in?”
“No. I wished to, but neither the uncle nor aunt would let me do so. They say it is nothing—a mere ‘growing pain’ which he will overcome in time. But it is not—I know it is not! If it were natural, why did it never manifest itself before the failure of that wretched diamond company? Why did it wait to begin until after the Honourable Felix Carruthers had lost his money? And why is it going on, night after night, ever since? Why has he begun to fail in health?—to change from a happy, laughing, healthy child into a peevish, fretful, constantly complaining one? I tell you they are killing him, those two; I tell you they are using some secret diabolical thing which is sapping his very life; and if——”
She stopped and sucked her breath in with a little gasp of fright, and, whisking down her veil, turned and made hurriedly for the door.
“I told you he guessed; I told you I should be followed!” she said in a shaking voice. “He is coming—that man: along the road there! look through the window and you will see. Oh, come to my assistance, Mr. Headland! Find some way to do it, for God’s sake! Good-bye!”
Then the door opened and shut and she was gone, darting out from the rear of the inn into the shelter of the scattered clumps of furze bushes and the thick growth of bracken which covered the downs, and running like a hare pursued.
“Well, what do you make of it, old chap?” asked Narkom anxiously, turning to Cleek after ascertaining past all doubt that the Honourable Felix Carruthers was riding up the road toward the French Horn.
“Oh, a crime beyond doubt,” he replied. “But whose I am in no position to determine at present. A hundred things might produce that stabbing sensation in the neck, from the prick of a pin-point dipped in curare to a smear of the ‘Pope’s balm,’ that hellish ointment of the Borgias. Hum-m-m! And so that’s the Honourable Felix Carruthers, is it? Keep back from the window, my friend. When you are out gunning for birds, it never does to raise an alarm. And we should be hard put to it to explain our presence here at this particular time if he were to see you.”