Yet though I chatted with the grooms and other outdoor servants at Barnack during the next day, I heard nothing.
Over the dinner-table that evening, however, old Colonel Cooper, who had driven over from Polebrook, near Oundle, related to the guests a strange story that he had heard earlier in the day.
“A mysterious affair has happened over at Buckworth, near the Great North Road, they say,” he exclaimed, adjusting his monocle and addressing his hostess and Bindo, who sat on her right. “It seems that a house called ‘The Cedars,’ about a mile out of the village, has been rented furnished by some foreigners, a man named Latour and his wife and son, whose movements were rather suspicious. Yesterday they received three visitors, who came to spend a week; but just before dinner one of the servants, on entering the drawing-room, was horrified to find both her master and mistress lying upon the floor dead, strangled by the silken cords used to loop up the curtains, while the visitors and the little boy were missing. So swiftly and quietly was it all done,” he added, “that the servants heard nothing. The three visitors are described as very gentlemanly-looking men, evidently Frenchmen, who appeared to be on most intimate terms of friendship with their hostess. One of them, however, is declared by the groom to be a man he had met in the neighbourhood two days before; therefore it would seem as though the affair had been very carefully planned.”
“Most extraordinary!” declared Bindo, while a chorus of surprise and horror went around the table. “And the boy is missing with the assassins?”
“Yes; they have apparently taken him away with them. They say that there’s some woman at the bottom of it all—and most probably,” sniffed the old Colonel. “The foreigners who live here in England are mostly a queer lot, who’ve broken the laws of their own country and efface their identity here.”
I listened at the open door with breathless interest as the old fellow discussed the affair with young Lady Casterton, who sat next him, while around the table various theories were advanced.
“I met the man Latour once—one day in the summer,” exclaimed Mr. Molesworth, a tall, thin-faced man, rector of a neighbouring parish. “He was introduced to me at the village flower-show at Alconbury, when I was doing duty there. He struck me as a very pleasant, well-bred man, who spoke English perfectly.”
I stood in the corridor like a man in a dream. Had I actually assisted the mysterious woman to abduct the child? Every detail of my adventure on the previous night arose vividly before me. That she had been aware of the terrible tragedy was apparent, for without doubt she was in league with the assassins. She had made me promise to deny having seen her, and I ground my teeth at having been so cleverly tricked by a pretty woman.
Yet ought I to prejudge her when still ignorant of the truth, which she had promised to reveal to me? Was it just?
Next day, making excuse that I wished to test the car, I ran over to the sleepy little village of Buckworth, which lay in a hollow about two miles from the sign-post where I had been stopped by Clotilde. “The Cedars” was a large, old-fashioned house, standing away from the village in its own grounds, and at the village inn, where I called, I learned from the landlord many additional details of how the three mysterious visitors had arrived in a station-fly from Huntingdon, how eagerly Mr. Latour had welcomed them, and how they had disappeared at nightfall, after accomplishing their object.