“Nothing, absolutely nothing!” she answered, with a look of something akin to horror. “I know what you are thinking of, but although he is as bad as man can be, it is abominable to suppose that he would lift his hand against his own father.”
“Hum-m-m! Yes, of course! But still, it has been known to happen; and, as you say, he was a bad lot. I ran foul of the young gentleman once when——No matter; it doesn’t signify. So you don’t know anything about him, eh?”
“Nothing, thank God. The last I did hear, he had gone on the stage and taken up with some horrible creature, and the pair of them were subsequently sent to prison for enticing people to dreadful places and then drugging and robbing them. But even that I heard from an outside source; for my uncle never so much as mentioned him. No, I know nothing of him—nothing at all. In fact, I’ve never seen him since he was a boy. He never lived here, you know; and until I came here, I knew next to nothing of my uncle himself. We were poor and lived in a quite different town, my mother and I. Uncle Septimus never came to see us while my mother lived. He came for the first time when she was dead and his son had gone away: and I was so poor and so friendless I was glad to accept the home he offered. No, Mr. Headland, I know nothing of Harry Nosworth. I hope, for his own sake, he is dead.”
Cleek made no reply. He sat for a minute pinching his chin and staring at the carpet, then he got up suddenly and faced round in the direction of the little group at the far end of the room.
“That’s all for the present,” he said. “Mr. Narkom, Mr. Nippers—get a light of some sort, please, and let’s go out and have a look at those footprints.”
CHAPTER IX
The suggestion was acted upon immediately—even Mrs. Armroyd joining in the descent upon the portable lamps and filing out with the rest into the gloom and loneliness of the grounds; and Miss Renfrew, finding that she was likely to be left alone in this house of horrors, rose quickly and hurried out with them.
One step beyond the threshold brought them within sight of the famous Round House. Bulked against the pale silver of the moonlit sky, there it stood—a grim, unlovely thing of stone and steel with a trampled flower bed encircling the base of it, and a man on guard—Constable Gorham.
“Lummy! I’d clean forgot him!” exclaimed Mr. Nippers as he caught sight of him. “And theer un be keepin’ guard, like I told un, out here in the grounds whiles weem ben talkin’ comfortable inside. ’E do be a chap for doin’ as heem tole, that Gorham—indeed, yes!”