Chapter Six.
The Horror of Lockie.
Many readers will recall the tragedy of Renstoke Castle and the terrible death of young Lord Renstoke. The case aroused much sensation at the time. It would have aroused far more had the real facts been allowed to transpire.
They were known, however, to only a few people, and, for reasons which were at the time sufficient, they were kept secret. I am now able to lift the veil which shrouded one of the most perplexing mysteries which has ever puzzled the scientific world. Even now, the story is not complete; the great secret died with the amazing but perverted genius who discovered it.
Lord Renstoke, a young man only thirty, was one of those favoured individuals on whom Fortune seemed to have showered all her gifts. Born and brought up in Canada, he was connected only very remotely with the ancient family of Renstoke, and no one ever dreamed that he could by any possibility succeed to the title, which carried with it Renstoke Castle and a rent-roll of something like a hundred thousand pounds a year.
James Mitchell, as Lord Renstoke was before he succeeded to the title, had left a lumber camp in Upper Canada when the call of the Great War brought Britishers from all the wild places of the world to join the colours. He served as a private in one of the Canadian Regiments, rapidly winning his way upward, and finally being awarded the Victoria Cross for a piece of dare-devil folly—so his comrades declared—that had led to the capture of an important German position and had helped very materially to bring about one of the most brilliant of the many successes scored by the Canadians in the closing stages of the fighting.
That episode seemed to mark the turning-point in the fortunes of James Mitchell. From then onward it seemed as though Fate had no gifts that were too good to be showered upon him. It was only a few weeks later that the obscure Canadian private was summoned to headquarters to receive the astounding intelligence that through a series of deaths that in fiction would have been deemed fantastic, he was a peer of the United Kingdom with a vast fortune at his disposal.
Then James Mitchell, Baron Renstoke, went back to his trenches and the comrades he had learned to love to finish the work on hand.
It was during the latter half of the war that James Mitchell found himself swept by chance into the strange web of mystery and adventure that surrounded the doings of Yvette Pasquet and Dick Manton. He had been detailed, quite privately and “unofficially,” to help Yvette in one of her achievements, and the clever French girl had been quick to recognise in him an assistant of more than ordinary ability. Yvette was one of those rare people who never forget, and so there came about a gradual friendship which included Dick Manton and Jules Pasquet. Yvette rejoiced unfeignedly when, after the Armistice, she learned of Mitchell’s good fortune. The friendship continued and ripened, and Yvette, Jules, and Dick Manton were staying at Renstoke Castle when a terrible stroke of malign fate cut short a career of brilliant promise and brought an ancient lineage to an end.