THE BITTERMEADS MYSTERY
By E. R. Punshon
CONTENTS
[ CHAPTER I. ] THE LONE PASSENGER
[ CHAPTER II. ] THE FIGHT IN THE WOOD
[ CHAPTER III. ] A COINCIDENCE
[ CHAPTER IV. ] A WOMAN WEEPS
[ CHAPTER V. ] A WOMAN AND A MAN
[ CHAPTER VI. ] A DISCOVERY
[ CHAPTER VII. ] QUESTION AND ANSWER
[ CHAPTER VIII. ] CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE
[ CHAPTER IX. ] THE ATTIC OF MYSTERY
[ CHAPTER X. ] THE NEW GARDENER
[ CHAPTER XI. ] THE PROBLEM
[ CHAPTER XII. ] AN AVOWAL
[ CHAPTER XIII. ] INVISIBLE WRITING
[ CHAPTER XIV. ] LOVE-MAKING AT NIGHT
[ CHAPTER XV. ] THE SOUND OF A SHOT
[ CHAPTER XVI. ] IN THE WOOD
[ CHAPTER XVII. ] A DECLARATION
[ CHAPTER XVIII. ] ROBERT DUNN'S ENEMY
[ CHAPTER XIX. ] THE VISIT TO WRESTE ABBEY
[ CHAPTER XX. ] ELLA'S WARNING
[ CHAPTER XXI. ] DOUBTS AND FEARS
[ CHAPTER XXII. ] PLOTS AND PLAYS
[ CHAPTER XXIII. ] COUNTER-PLANS
[ CHAPTER XXIV. ] AN APHORISM
[ CHAPTER XXV. ] THE UNEXPECTED
[ CHAPTER XXVI. ] A RACE AGAINST TIME
[ CHAPTER XXVII. ] FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
[ CHAPTER XXVIII. ] BACK AT BITTERMEADS
[ CHAPTER XXIX. ] THE ATTIC
[ CHAPTER XXX. ] SOME EXPLANATIONS
[ CHAPTER XXXI. ] CONCLUSION
CHAPTER I. THE LONE PASSENGER
That evening the down train from London deposited at the little country station of Ramsdon but a single passenger, a man of middle height, shabbily dressed, with broad shoulders and long arms and a most unusual breadth and depth of chest.
Of his face one could see little, for it was covered by a thick growth of dark curly hair, beard, moustache and whiskers, all overgrown and ill-tended, and as he came with a somewhat slow and ungainly walk along the platform, the lad stationed at the gate to collect tickets grinned amusedly and called to one of the porters near:
“Look at this, Bill; here's the monkey-man escaped and come back along of us.”
It was a reference to a travelling circus that had lately visited the place and exhibited a young chimpanzee advertised as “the monkey-man,” and Bill guffawed appreciatively.
The stranger was quite close and heard plainly, for indeed the youth at the gate had made no special attempt to speak softly.
The boy was still laughing as he held out his hand for the ticket, and the stranger gave it to him with one hand and at the same time shot out a long arm, caught the boy—a well-grown lad of sixteen—by the middle and, with as little apparent effort as though lifting a baby, swung him into the air to the top of the gate-post, where he left him clinging with arms and legs six feet from the ground.
“Hi, what are you a-doing of?” shouted the porter, running up, as the amazed and frightened youth, clinging to his gate-post, emitted a dismal howl.
“Teaching a cheeky boy manners,” retorted the stranger with an angry look and in a very gruff and harsh voice. “Do you want to go on top of the other post to make a pair?”
The porter drew back hurriedly.
“You be off,” he ordered as he retreated. “We don't want none of your sort about here.”
“I certainly have no intention of staying,” retorted the other as gruffly as before. “But I think you'll remember Bobbie Dunn next time I come this way.”
“Let me down; please let me down,” wailed the boy, clinging desperately to the gate-post on whose top he had been so unceremoniously deposited, and Dunn laughed and walked away, leaving the porter to rescue his youthful colleague and to cuff his ears soundly as soon as he had done so, by way of a relief to his feelings.
“That will learn you to be a bit civil to folk, I hope,” said the porter severely. “But that there chap must have an amazing strong arm,” he added thoughtfully. “Lifting you up there all the same as you was a bunch of radishes.”
For some distance after leaving the station, Dunn walked on slowly.
He seemed to know the way well or else to be careless of the direction he took, for he walked along deep in thought with his eyes fixed on the ground and not looking in the least where he was going.
Abruptly, a small child appeared out of the darkness and spoke to him, and he started violently and in a very nervous manner.
“What was that? What did you say, kiddy?” he asked, recovering himself instantly and speaking this time not in the gruff and harsh tones he had used before but in a singularly winning and pleasant voice, cultivated and gentle, that was in odd contrast with his rough and battered appearance. “The time, was that what you wanted to know?”
“Yes, sir; please, sir,” answered the child, who had shrunk back in alarm at the violent start Dunn had given, but now seemed reassured by his gentle and pleasant voice. “The right time,” the little one added almost instantly and with much emphasis on the “right.”
Dunn gravely gave the required information with the assurance that to the best of his belief it was “right,” and the child thanked him and scampered off.
Resuming his way, Dunn shook his head with an air of grave dissatisfaction.
“Nerves all to pieces,” he muttered. “That won't do. Hang it all, the job's no worse than following a wounded tiger into the jungle, and I've done that before now. Only then, of course, one knew what to expect, whereas now—And I was a silly ass to lose my temper with that boy at the station. You aren't making a very brilliant start, Bobby, my boy.”
By this time he had left the little town behind him and he was walking along a very lonely and dark road.
On one side was a plantation of young trees, on the other there was the open ground, covered with furze bush, of the village common.
Where the plantation ended stood a low, two-storied house of medium size, with a veranda stretching its full length in front. It stood back from the road some distance and appeared to be surrounded by a large garden.
At the gate Dunn halted and struck a match as if to light a pipe, and by the flickering flame of this match the name “Bittermeads,” painted on the gate became visible.
“Here it is, then,” he muttered. “I wonder—”
Without completing the sentence he slipped through the gate, which was not quite closed, and entered the garden, where he crouched down in the shadow of some bushes that grew by the side of the gravel path leading to the house, and seemed to compose himself for a long vigil.
An hour passed, and another. Nothing had happened—he had seen nothing, heard nothing, save for the passing of an occasional vehicle or pedestrian on the road, and he himself had never stirred or moved, so that he seemed one with the night and one with the shadows where he crouched, and a pair of field-mice that had come from the common opposite went to and fro about their busy occupations at his feet without paying him the least attention.
Another hour passed, and at last there began to be signs of life about the house.
A light shone in one window and in another, and vanished, and soon the door opened and there appeared two people on the threshold, clearly visible in the light of a strong incandescent gas-burner just within the hall.
The watcher in the garden moved a little to get a clearer view.
In the paroxysm of terror at this sudden coming to life of what they had believed to be a part of the bushes, the two little field-mice scampered away, and Dunn bit his lip with annoyance, for he knew well that some of those he had had traffic with in the past would have been very sure, on hearing that scurrying-off of the frightened mice, that some one was lurking near at hand.
But the two in the lighted doorway opening on the veranda heard and suspected nothing.
One was a man, one a woman, both were young, both were extraordinarily good-looking, and as they stood in the blaze of the gas they made a strikingly handsome and attractive picture on which, however, Dunn seemed to look from his hiding-place with hostility and watchful suspicion.
“How dark it is, there's not a star showing,” the girl was saying. “Shall you be able to find your way, even with the lantern? You'll keep to the road, won't you?”
Her voice was low and pleasant and so clear Dunn heard every word distinctly. She seemed quite young, not more than twenty or twenty-one, and she was slim and graceful in build and tall for a woman. Her face, on which the light shone directly, was oval in shape with a broad, low forehead on which clustered the small, unruly curls of her dark brown hair, and she had clear and very bright brown eyes. The mouth and chin were perhaps a little large to be in absolute harmony with the rest of her features, and she was of a dark complexion, with a soft and delicate bloom that would by itself have given her a right to claim her possession of a full share of good looks. She was dressed quite simply in a white frock with a touch of colour at the waist and she had a very flimsy lace shawl thrown over her shoulders, presumably intended as a protection against the night air.
Her companion was a very tall and big man, well over six feet in height, with handsome, strongly-marked features that often bore an expression a little too haughty, but that showed now a very tender and gentle look, so that it was not difficult to guess the state of his feelings towards the girl at his side. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and his whole build powerful in the extreme, and Dunn, looking him up and down with the quick glance of one accustomed to judge men, thought that he had seldom seen one more capable of holding his own.
Answering his companion's remark, he said lightly:
“Oh, no, I shall cut across the wood, it's ever so much shorter, you know.”
“But it's so dark and lonely,” the girl protested. “And then, after last week—”
He interrupted her with a laugh, and he lifted his head with a certain not unpleasing swagger.
“I don't think they'll trouble me for all their threats,” he said. “For that matter, I rather hope they will try something of the sort on. They need a lesson.”
“Oh, I do hope you'll be careful,” the girl exclaimed.
He laughed again and made another lightly-confident, almost-boastful remark, to the effect that he did not think any one was likely to interfere with him.
For a minute or two longer they lingered, chatting together as they stood in the gas-light on the veranda and from his hiding-place Dunn watched them intently. It seemed that it was the girl in whom he was chiefly interested, for his eyes hardly moved from her and in them there showed a very grim and hard expression.
“Pretty enough,” he mused. “More than pretty. No wonder poor Charles raved about her, if it's the same girl—if it is, she ought to know what's become of him. But then, where does this big chap come in?”
The “big chap” seemed really going now, though reluctantly, and it was not difficult to see that he would have been very willing to stay longer had she given him the least encouragement.
But that he did not get, and indeed it seemed as if she were a little bored and a little anxious for him to say good night and go.
At last he did so, and she retired within the house, while he came swinging down the garden path, passing close to where Dunn lay hidden, but without any suspicion of his presence, and out into the high road.
CHAPTER II. THE FIGHT IN THE WOOD
From his hiding-place in the bushes Dunn slipped out, as the big man vanished into the darkness down the road, and for the fraction of a second he seemed to hesitate.
The lights in the house were coming and going after a fashion that suggested that the inmates were preparing for bed, and almost at once Dunn turned his back to the building and hurried very quickly and softly down the road in the direction the big man had just taken.
“After all,” he thought, “the house can't run away, that will be still there when I come back, and I ought to find out who this big chap is and where he comes from.”
In spite of the apparent clumsiness of his build and the ungainliness of his movements it was extraordinary how swiftly and how quietly he moved, a shadow could scarcely have made less sound than this man did as he melted through the darkness and a swift runner would have difficulty in keeping pace with him.
An old labourer going home late bade the big man a friendly good night and passed on without seeing or hearing Dunn following close behind, and a solitary woman, watching at her cottage door, saw plainly the big man's tall form and heard his firm and heavy steps and would have been ready to swear no other passed that way at that time, though Dunn was not five yards behind, slipping silently and swiftly by in the shelter of the trees lining the road.
A little further beyond this cottage a path, reached by climbing a stile, led from the high road first across an open field and then through the heart of a wood that seemed to be of considerable extent.
The man Dunn was following crossed this stile and when he had gone a yard or two along the path he halted abruptly, as though all at once grown uneasy, and looked behind.
From where he stood any one following him across the stile must have shown plainly visible against the sky line, but though he lingered for a moment or two, and even, when he walked on, still looked back very frequently, he saw nothing.
Yet Dunn, when his quarry paused and looked back like this, was only a little distance behind, and when the other moved on Dunn was still very near.
But he had not crossed the stile, for when he came to it he realised that in climbing it his form would be plainly visible in outline for some distance, and so instead, he had found and crawled through a gap in the hedge not far away.
They came, Dunn so close and so noiseless behind his quarry he might well have seemed the other's shadow, to the outskirts of the wood, and as they entered it Dunn made his first fault, his first failure in an exhibition of woodcraft that a North American Indian or an Australian “black-fellow” might have equalled, but could not have surpassed.
For he trod heavily on a dry twig that snapped with a very loud, sharp retort, clearly audible for some distance in the quiet night, and, as dry twigs only snap like that under the pressure of considerable weight, the presence of some living creature in the wood other than the small things that run to and fro beneath the trees, stood revealed to all ears that could hear.
Dunn stood instantly perfectly still, rigid as a statue, listening intently, and he noted with satisfaction and keen relief that the regular heavy tread of the man in front did not alter or change.
“Good,” he thought to himself. “What luck, he hasn't heard it.”
He moved on again, as silently as before, perhaps a little inclined to be contemptuous of any one who could fail to notice so plain a warning, and he supposed that the man he was following must be some townsman who knew nothing at all of the life of the country and was, like so many of the dwellers in cities, blind and deaf outside the range of the noises of the streets and the clamour of passing traffic.
This thought was still in his mind when all at once the steady sound of footsteps he had been following ceased suddenly and abruptly, cut off on the instant as you turn off water from a tap.
Dunn paused, too, supposing that for some reason the other had stopped for a moment and would soon walk on again.
But a minute passed and then another and there was still no sound of the footsteps beginning again. A little puzzled, Dunn moved cautiously forward.
He saw nothing, he found nothing, there was no sign at all of the man he had been following.
It was as though he had vanished bodily from the face of the earth, and yet how this had happened, or why, or what had become of him, Dunn could not imagine, for this spot was, it seemed, in the very heart of the wood, there was no shelter of any sort or kind anywhere near, and though there were trees all round just the ground was fairly open.
“Well, that's jolly queer,” he muttered, for indeed it had a strange and daunting effect, this sudden disappearance in the midst of the wood of the man he had followed so far, and the silence around seemed all the more intense now that those regular and heavy footsteps had ceased.
“Jolly queer, as queer a thing as ever I came across,” he muttered again.
He listened and heard a faint sound from his right. He listened again and thought he heard a rustling on his left, but was not sure and all at once a great figure loomed up gigantic before him and the light of lantern gleamed in his face.
“Now, my man,” a voice said, “you've been following me ever since I left Bittermeads, and I'm going to give you a lesson you won't forget in a hurry.”
Dunn stood quite still. At the moment his chief feeling was one of intense discomfiture at the way in which he had been outwitted, and he experienced, too, a very keen and genuine admiration for the woodcraft the other had shown.
Evidently, all the time he had known, or at any rate, suspected, that he was being followed, and choosing this as a favourable spot he had quietly doubled on his tracks, come up behind his pursuer, and taken him unawares.
Dunn had not supposed there was a man in England who could have played such a trick on him, but his admiration was roughly disturbed before he could express it, for the grasp upon his collar tightened and upon his shoulders there alighted a tremendous, stinging blow, as with all his very considerable strength, the big man brought down his walking-stick with a resounding thwack.
The sheer surprise of it, the sudden sharp pain, jerked a quick cry from Dunn, who had not been in the least prepared for such an attack, and in the darkness had not seen the stick rise, and the other laughed grimly.
“Yes, you scoundrel,” he said. “I know very well who you are and what you want, and I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life.”
Again the stick rose in the air, but did not fall, for round about his body Dunn laid such a grip as he had never felt before and as would for certain have crushed in the ribs of a weaker man. The lantern crashed to the ground, they were in darkness.
“Ha! Would you?” the man exclaimed, taken by surprise in his turn, and, giant as he was, he felt himself plucked up from the ground as you pluck a weed from a lawn and held for a moment in mid-air and then dashed down again.
Perhaps not another man alive could have kept his footing under such treatment, but, somehow, he managed to, though it needed all his great strength to resist the shock.
He flung away his walking-stick, for he realized very clearly now that this was not going to be, as he had anticipated, a mere case of the administration of a deserved punishment, but rather the starkest, fiercest fight that ever he had known.
He grappled with his enemy, trying to make the most of his superior height and weight, but the long arms twined about him, seemed to press the very breath from his body and for all the huge efforts he put forth with every ounce of his tremendous strength behind them, he could not break loose from the no less tremendous grip wherein he was taken.
Breast to breast they fought, straining, swaying a little this way or that, but neither yielding an inch. Their muscles stood out like bars of steel, their breath came heavily, neither man was conscious any more of anything save his need to conquer and win and overthrow his enemy.
The quick passion of hot rage that had come upon Dunn when he felt the other's unexpected blow still burned and flamed intensely, so that he no longer remembered even the strange and high purpose which had brought him here.
His adversary, too, had lost all consciousness of all other things in the lust of this fierce physical battle, and when he gave presently a loud, half-strangled shout, it was not fear that he uttered or a cry for aid, but solely for joy in such wild struggle and efforts as he had never known before.
And Dunn spake no word and uttered no sound, but strove all the more with all the strength of every nerve and muscle he possessed once again to pluck the other up that he might dash him down a second time.
In quick and heavy gasps came their breaths as they still swayed and struggled together, and though each exerted to the utmost a strength few could have withstood, each found that in the other he seemed to have met his match.
In vain Dunn tried again to lift his adversary up so that he might hurl him to the ground. It was an effort, a grip that seemed as though it might have torn up an oak by the roots, but the other neither budged nor flinched beneath it.
And in vain, in his turn, did he try to bend Dunn backwards to crush him to the earth, it was an effort before which one might have thought that iron and stone must have given away, but Dunn still sustained it.
Thus dreadfully they fought, there in the darkness, there in the silence of the night.
Dreadfully they wrestled, implacable, fierce, determined, every primeval passion awake and strong again, and slowly, very slowly, that awful grip laid upon the big man's body began to tell.
His breathing grew more difficult, his efforts seemed aimed more to release himself than to overcome his adversary, he gave way an inch or two, no more, but still an inch or two of ground.
There was a sharp sound, like a thin, dry twig snapping beneath a careless foot.
It was one of his ribs breaking beneath the dreadful and intolerable pressure of Dunn's enormous grip. But neither of the combatants heard or knew, and with one last effort the big man put forth all his vast strength in a final attempt to bear his enemy down.
Dunn resisted still, resisted, though the veins stood out like cords on his brow, though a little trickle of blood crept from the corner of his mouth and though his heart swelled almost to bursting.
There was a sound of many waters in his ears, the darkness all around grew shot with little flames, he could hear some one breathing very noisily and he was not sure whether this were himself or his adversary till he realized that it was both of them. With one sudden, almost superhuman effort, he heaved his great adversary up, but had not strength enough left to do more than let him slip from his grasp to fall on the ground, and with the effort he himself dropped forward on his hands and knees, just as a lantern shone at a distance and a voice cried:
“This way, Tom. Master John, Master John, where are you?”
CHAPTER III. A COINCIDENCE
Another voice answered from near by and Dunn scrambled hurriedly to his feet.
He had but a moment in which to decide what to do, for these new arrivals were coming at a run and would be upon him almost instantly if he stayed where he was.
That they were friends of the man he had just overthrown and whose huge bulk lay motionless in the darkness at his feet, seemed plain, and it also seemed plain to him that the moment was not an opportune one for offering explanations.
Swiftly he decided to slip away into the darkness. What had happened might be cleared up later when he knew more and was more sure of his ground; at present he must think first, he told himself, of the success of his mission.
Physically, he was greatly exhausted and his gait was not so steady nor his progress so silent and skillful as it had been before, as now he hurried away from the scene of the combat.
But the two new-comers made no attempt to pursue him and indeed did not seem to give his possible presence in the vicinity even a thought, as with many muttered exclamations of dismay and anger, they stooped over the body of his prostrate enemy.
It was evident they recognized him at once, and that he was the “Mr. John” whose name they had called, for so they spoke of him to each other as they busied themselves about him.
“I expect I've been a fool again,” Dunn thought to himself ruefully, as from a little distance, well-sheltered in the darkness, he crouched upon the ground and listened and watched. “I may have ruined everything. Any one but a fool would have asked him what he meant when he hit out like that instead of flying into a rage and hitting back the way I did. Most likely it was some mistake when he said he knew who I was and what I wanted—at least if it wasn't—I hope I haven't killed him, anyhow.”
Secure in the protection the dark night afforded him, he remained sufficiently near at hand to be able to assure himself soon that his overthrown adversary was certainly not killed, for now he began to express himself somewhat emphatically concerning the manner in which the two new-comers were ministering to him.
Presently he got to his feet and, with one of them supporting him on each side, began to limp away, and Dunn followed them, though cautiously and at a distance, for he was still greatly exhausted and in neither the mood nor the condition for running unnecessary risks.
The big man, Mr. John, as the others called him, seemed little inclined for speech, but the others talked a good deal, subsiding sometimes when he told them gruffly to be quiet but invariably soon beginning again their expressions of sympathy and vows of vengeance against his unknown assailant.
“How many of them do you think there were, Mr. John, sir?” one asked presently. “I'll lay you marked a fair sight of the villains.”
“There was only one man,” Mr. John answered briefly.
“Only one?” the other repeated in great surprise. “For the Lord's sake, Mr. John—only one? Why, there ain't any one man between here and Lunnon town could stand up to you, sir, in a fair tussle.”
“Well, he did,” Mr. John answered. “He had the advantage, he took me by surprise, but I never felt such a grip in my life.”
“Lor', now, think of that,” said the other in tones in which surprise seemed mingled with a certain incredulity. “It don't seem possible, but for sure, then, he don't come from these here parts, that I'll stand to.”
“I knew that much before,” retorted Mr. John. “I said all the time they were outsiders, a London gang very likely. You'll have to get Dr. Rawson, Bates. I don't know what's up, but I've a beast of a pain in my side. I can hardly breathe.”
Bates murmured respectful sympathy as they came out of the shelter of the trees, and crossing some open ground, reached a road along the further side of which ran a high brick wall.
In this, nearly opposite the spot where they emerged on the road, was a small door which one of the men opened and through which they passed and locked it behind them, leaving Dunn without.
He hesitated for a moment, half-minded to scale the wall and continue on the other side of it to follow them.
Calculating the direction in which the village of Ramsdon must lie, he turned that way and had gone only a short distance when he was overtaken by a pedestrian with whom he began conversation by asking for a light for his pipe.
The man seemed inclined to be conversational, and after a few casual remarks, Dunn made an observation on the length of the wall they were passing and to the end of which they had just come.
“Must be a goodish-sized place in there,” he said. “Whose is it?”
“Oh, that there's Ramsdon Place,” the other answered. “Mr. John Clive lives there now his father's dead.”
Dunn stood still in the middle of the road.
“Who? What?” he stammered. “Who—who did you say?”
“Mr. John Clive,” the other repeated. “Why—what's wrong about that?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Dunn answered, but his voice shook a little with what seemed almost fear, and behind the darkness of the friendly night his face had become very pale. “Clive—John Clive, you say? Oh, that's impossible.”
“Needn't believe it if you don't want to,” grumbled the other. “Only what do you want asking questions for if you thinks folks tells lies when they answers them?”
“I didn't mean that, of course not,” exclaimed Dunn hurriedly, by no means anxious to offend the other. “I'm very sorry, I only meant it was impossible it should be the same Mr. John Clive I knew once, though I think he came from about here somewhere. A little, middle-aged man, I mean, quite bald and wears glasses?”
“Oh, that ain't this 'un,” answered the other, his good humour quite restored. “This is a young man and tremendous big. I ain't so small myself, but he tops me by a head and shoulders and so he does most hereabouts. Strong, too, with it, there ain't so many would care to stand up against him, I can tell you. Why, they do say he caught two poachers in the wood there last month and brought 'em out one under each arm like a pair of squealing babes.”
“Did he, though?” said Dunn. “Take some doing, that, and I daresay the rest of the gang will try to get even with him for it.”
“Well, they do say as there's been threats,” the other agreed. “But what I says is as Mr. John can look after hisself all right. There was a tale as a man had been dodging after him at night, but all he said when they told him, was as if he caught any one after him he would thrash them within an inch of their lives.”
“Serve them right, too,” exclaimed Dunn warmly.
Evidently this explained, in part at least, what had recently happened. Mr. Clive, finding himself being followed, had supposed it was one of his poaching enemies and had at once attempted to carry out his threat he had made.
Dunn told himself, at any rate, the error would have the result of turning all suspicion away from him, and yet he still seemed very disturbed and ill at ease.
“Has Mr. Clive been here long?” he asked.
“It must be four or five years since his father bought the place,” answered his new acquaintance. “Then, when the old man was killed a year ago, Mr. John inherited everything.”
“Old Mr. Clive was killed, was he?” asked Dunn, and his voice sounded very strange in the darkness. “How was that?”
“Accident to his motor-car,” the other replied. “I don't hold with them things myself—give me a good horse, I say. People didn't like the old man much, and some say Mr. John's too fond of taking the high hand. But don't cross him and he won't cross you, that's his motto and there's worse.”
Dunn agreed and asked one or two more questions about the details of the accident to old Mr. Clive, in which he seemed very interested.
But he did not get much more information about that concerning which his new friend evidently knew very little. However, he gave Dunn a few more facts concerning Mr. John Clive, as that he was unmarried, was said to be very wealthy, and had the reputation of being something of a ladies' man.
A little further on they parted, and Dunn took a side road which he calculated should lead him back to Bittermeads.
“It may be pure coincidence,” he mused as he walked slowly in a very troubled and doubtful mood. “But if so, it's a very queer one, and if it isn't, it seems to me Mr. John Clive might as well put his head in a lion's jaws as pay visits at Bittermeads. But of course he can't have the least suspicion of the truth—if it is the truth. If I hadn't lost my temper like a fool when he whacked out at me like that I might have been able to warn him, or find out something useful perhaps. And his father killed recently in an accident—is that a coincidence, too, I wonder?”
He passed his hand across his forehead on which a light sweat stood, though he was not a man easily affected, for he had seen and endured many things.
His mind was very full of strange and troubled thoughts as at last he came back to Bittermeads, where, leaning with his elbows on the garden gate, he stood for a long time, watching the dark and silent house and thinking of that scene of which he had been a spectator when John Clive and the girl had stood together on the veranda in the light of the gas from the hall and had bidden each other good night.
“It seems,” he mused, “as though the last that was seen of poor Charley must have been just like that. It was just such a dark night as this when Simpson saw him. He was standing on that veranda when Simpson recognized him by the light of the gas behind, and a girl was bidding him good night—a very pretty girl, too, Simpson said.”
Silent and immobile he stood there a long time, not so much now as one who watched, but rather as if deep in thought, for his head was bent and supported on his hands and his eyes were fixed on the ground.
“As for this John Clive,” he muttered presently, rousing himself. “I suppose that must be a coincidence, but it's queer, and queer the father should have died—like that.”
He broke off, shuddering slightly, as though at thoughts too awful to be endured, and pushing open the gate, he walked slowly up the gravel path towards the house, round which he began to walk, going very slowly and cautiously and often pausing as if he wished to make as close examination of the place as the darkness would permit.
More by habit than because he thought there was any need of it, he moved always with that extreme and wonderful dexterity of quietness he could assume at will, and as he turned the corner of the building and came behind it, his quick ear, trained by many an emergency to pick out the least unusual sound, caught a faint, continued scratching noise, so faint and low it might well have passed unnoticed.
All at once he understood and realized that some one quite close at hand was stealthily cutting out the glass from one of the panes of a ground-floor window.
CHAPTER IV. A WOMAN WEEPS
Cautiously he glided nearer, moving as noiselessly as any shadow, seeming indeed but one shadow the more in the heavy surrounding darkness.
The persistent scratching noise continued, and Dunn was now so close he could have put out his hand and touched the shoulder of the man who was causing it and who still, intent and busy, had not the least idea of the other's proximity.
A faint smile touched Dunn's lips. The situation seemed not to be without a grim humour, for if one-half of what he suspected were true, one might as sensibly and safely attempt to break into the condemned cell at Pentonville Gaol as into this quiet house.
But then, was it perhaps possible that this fellow, working away so unconcernedly, within arm's-length of him, was in reality one of them, seeking to obtain admittance in this way for some reason of his own, some private treachery, it might be, or some dispute? To Dunn that did not seem likely. More probably the fellow was merely an ordinary burglar—some local practitioner of the housebreaking art, perhaps—whose ill-fortune it was to have hit upon this house to rob without his having the least idea of the nature of the place he was trying to enter.
“He might prove a useful recruit for them, though,” Dunn thought, and a sudden idea flashed into his mind, vivid and startling.
For one moment he thought intently, weighing in his mind this idea that had come to him so suddenly. He was not blind to the risks it involved, but his eager temperament always inclined him to the most direct and often to the most dangerous course. His mind was made up, his plan of action decided.
The scratching of the burglar's tool upon the glass ceased. Already he had smeared treacle over the square of glass he intended to remove and had covered it with paper so as to be able to take it out easily and in one piece without the risk of falling fragments betraying him.
Through the gap thus made he thrust his arm and made sure there were no alarms fitted and no obstacles in the way of his easy entrance.
Cautiously he unfastened the window and cautiously and silently lifted the sash, and when he had done so he paused and listened for a space to make sure no one was stirring and that no alarm had been caused within the house.
Still very cautiously and with the utmost precaution to avoid making even the least noise, he put one knee upon the window-sill, preparatory to climbing in, and as he did so Dunn touched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Well, my man, what are you up to?” he said softly. And without a word, without giving the least warning, the burglar, a man evidently of determination and resource, swung round and aimed at Dunn's head a tremendous blow with the heavy iron jemmy he held in his right hand.
But Dunn was not unprepared for an attack and those bright, keen eyes of his seemed able to see as well in the dark as in the light. He threw up his left hand and caught the other's wrist before that deadly blow he aimed could descend and at the same instant he dashed his own clenched fist full into the burglar's face.
As it happened, more by good luck than intended aim, the blow took him on the point of the chin. He dropped instantly, collapsing in on himself as falls a pole-axed bullock, and lay, unconscious, in a crumpled heap on the ground.
For a little Dunn waited, crouching above him and listening for the least sound to show that their brief scuffle had been heard.
But it had all passed nearly as silently as quickly. Within the house everything remained silent, there was no sound audible, no gleam of light to show that any of the inmates had been disturbed.
Taking from his pocket a small electric flash-lamp Dunn turned its light on his victim.
He seemed a man of middle age with a brutal, heavy-jawed face and a low, receding forehead. His lips, a little apart, showed yellow, irregular teeth, of which two at the front of the lower jaw had been broken, and the scar of an old wound, running from the corner of his left eye down to the centre of his cheek, added to the sinister and forbidding aspect he bore.
His build was heavy and powerful and near by, where he had dropped it when he fell, lay the jemmy with which he had struck at Dunn. It was a heavy, ugly-looking thing, about two feet in length and with one end nearly as sharp as that of a chisel.
Dunn picked it up and felt it thoughtfully.
“Just as well I got my blow in first,” he mused. “If he had landed that fairly on my skull I don't think anything else in this world would ever have interested me any more.”
Stooping over the unconscious man, he felt in his pockets and found an ugly-looking revolver, fully loaded, a handful of cartridges, a coil of thin rope, an electric torch, a tiny dark lantern no bigger than a match-box, and so arranged that the single drop of light it permitted to escape fell on one spot only, a bunch of curiously-shaped wires Dunn rightly guessed to be skeleton keys used for opening locks quietly, together with some tobacco, a pipe, a little money, and a few other personal belongings of no special interest or significance.
These Dunn replaced where he had found them, but the revolver, the rope, the torch, the dark lantern, and the bunch of wires he took possession of.
He noticed also that the man was wearing rubber-soled boots and rubber gloves, and these last he also kept. Stooping, he lifted the unconscious man on to his shoulder and carried him with perfect ease and at a quick pace out of the garden and across the road to the common opposite, where, in a convenient spot, behind some furze bushes, he laid him down.
“When he comes round,” Dunn muttered. “He won't know where he is or what's happened, and probably his one idea will be to clear off as quickly as possible. I don't suppose he'll interfere with me at all.”
Then a new idea seemed to strike him, and he hurriedly removed his own coat and trousers and boots and exchanged them for those the burglar was wearing.
They were not a good fit, but he could get them on and the idea in his mind was that if the police of the district began searching, as very likely they would, for Mr. John Clive's assailant, and if they had discovered any clues in the shape of footprints or torn bits of clothing or buttons—and Dunn knew his attire had suffered considerably during the struggle—then it would be as well that such clues should lead not to him, but to this other man, who, if he were innocent on that score, had at any rate been guilty of attempting to carry out a much worse offence.
“I'm afraid your luck's out, old chap,” Dunn muttered, apostrophizing the unconscious man. “But you did your best to brain me, and that gives me a sort of right to make you useful. Besides, if the police do run you in, it won't mean anything worse than a few questions it'll be your own fault if you can't answer. Anyhow, I can't afford to run the risk of some blundering fool of a policeman trying to arrest me for assaulting the local magnate.”
Much relieved in mind, for he had been greatly worried by a fear that this encounter with John Clive might lead to highly inconvenient legal proceedings, he left the unlucky burglar lying in the shelter of the furze bushes and returned to the house.
All was as he had left it, the open window gaped widely, almost inviting entrance, and he climbed silently within. The apartment in which he found himself was apparently the drawing-room and he felt his way cautiously and slowly across it, moving with infinite care so as to avoid making even the least noise.
Reaching the door, he opened it and went out into the hall. All was dark and silent. He permitted himself here to flash on his electric torch for a moment, and he saw that the hall was spacious and used as a lounge, for there were several chairs clustered in its centre, opposite the fireplace. There were two or three doors opening from it, and almost opposite where he stood were the stairs, a broad flight leading to a wide landing above.
Still with the same extreme silence and care, he began to ascend these stairs and when he was about half-way up he became aware of a faint and strange sound that came trembling through the silence and stillness of the night.
What it was he could not imagine. He listened for a time and then resumed his silent progress with even more care than previously, and only when he reached the landing did he understand that this faint and low sound he heard was caused by a woman weeping very softly in one of the rooms near by.
Silently he crossed the landing in the direction whence the sound seemed to come. Now, too, he saw a thread of light showing beneath a door at a little distance, and when he crept up to it and listened he could hear for certain that it was from within this room that there came the sound of muffled, passionate weeping.
The door was closed, but he turned the handle so carefully that he made not the least sound and very cautiously he began to push the door back, the tiniest fraction of an inch at a time, so that even one watching closely could never have said that it moved.
When, after a long time, during which the muffled weeping never ceased, he had it open an inch or two, he leaned forward and peeped within.
It was a bed-chamber, and, crouching on the floor near the fireplace, in front of a low arm-chair, her head hidden on her arms and resting on the seat of the chair, was the figure of a girl. She had made no preparations for retiring, and by the frock she wore Dunn recognized her as the girl he had seen on the veranda bidding good-bye to John Clive.
The sound of her weeping was very pitiful, her attitude was full of an utter and poignant despair, there was something touching in the extreme in the utter abandonment to grief shown by this young and lovely creature who seemed framed only for joy and laughter.
The stern features and hard eyes of the unseen watcher softened, then all at once they grew like tempered steel again.
For on the mantlepiece, just above where the weeping girl crouched, stood a photograph—the photograph of a young and good-looking, gaily-smiling man. Across it, in a boyish and somewhat unformed hand, was written,
“Devotedly yours,
Charley Wright.”
It was this photograph that had caught Dunn's eyes. Both it and the writing and the signature he recognized, and his look was very stern, his eyes as cold as death itself, as slowly, slowly he pushed back the door of the room another inch or so.
CHAPTER V. A WOMAN AND A MAN
The girl stirred. It was as though some knowledge of the slow opening of the door had penetrated to her consciousness before as yet she actually saw or heard anything.
She rose to her feet, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, and as she was moving to a drawer near to get a clean one her glance fell on the partially-open door.
“I thought I shut it,” she said aloud in a puzzled manner.
She crossed the floor to the door and closed it with a push from her hand and in the passage outside Dunn stood still, not certain what to do next.
But for that photograph he might have gone quietly away, giving up the reckless plan that had formed itself so suddenly in his mind while he watched the burglar at work.
That photograph, however, with its suggestion that he stood indeed on the brink of the solution of the mystery, seemed a summons to him to go on. It was as though a voice from the dead called him to continue on his task to punish and to save, and slowly, very slowly, with an infinite caution, he turned again the handle of the door and still very slowly, still with the same infinite caution, he pushed back the door the merest fraction of an inch at a time so that not even one watching could have said that it moved.
When he had it once more so far open that he could see within, he bent forward to look. The girl was beginning her preparations for the night now. She had assumed a long, comfortable-looking dressing-gown and, standing in front of the mirror, she had just finished brushing her hair and was beginning to fasten it up in a long plait. He could see her face in the mirror; her deep, sad eyes, swollen with crying, her cheeks still tear-stained, her mouth yet quivering with barely-repressed emotion.
He was still watching her when, as if growing uneasy, she turned her head and glanced over her shoulder, and though he moved back so quickly that she did not catch sight of him, she saw that the door was open once more.
“What can be the matter with the door?” she exclaimed aloud, and she crossed the room towards it with a quick and somewhat impatient movement.
But this time, instead of closing it, she pulled it open and found herself face to face with Dunn.
He did not speak or move, and she stood staring at him blankly. Slowly her mouth opened as though to utter a cry that, however, could not rise above her fluttering throat. Her face had taken on the pallor of death, her great eyes showed the awful fear she felt.
Still without speaking, Dunn stepped forward into the room and, closing the door, stood with his back to it.
She shrank away and put her hand upon a chair, but for the support of which she must certainly have fallen, for her limbs were trembling so violently they gave her little support.
“Don't hurt me,” she panted.
In truth he presented a strange and terrifying appearance. The unkempt hair that covered his face and through which his keen eyes glowed like fire, gave him an unusual and formidable aspect. In one hand he held the ugly-looking jemmy he had taken from the burglar, and the new clothes he had donned, ill-fitting and soiled, served to accentuate the ungainliness of his form.
The frightened girl was not even sure that he was human, and she shrank yet further away from him till she sank down upon the bed, dizzy with fear and almost swooning.
As yet he had not spoken, for his eyes had gone to the mantlepiece on which he saw that the photograph signed with the name “Charley Wright,” did not now stand upright, but had fallen forward on its face so that one could no longer see what it represented.
It must have fallen just as he entered the room and this seemed to him an omen, though whether of good or ill, he did not know.
“Who are you?” the girl stammered. “What do you want?”
He looked at her moodily and still without answering, though in his bright and keen eyes a strange light burned.
She was lovely, he thought, of that there could be no question. But her beauty made to him small appeal, for he was wondering what kind of soul lay behind those perfect features, that smooth and delicate skin, those luminous eyes. Yet his eyes were still hard and it was in his roughest, gruffest tones that he said:
“You needn't be afraid, I won't hurt you.”
“I'll give you everything I have,” she panted, “if only you'll go away.”
“Not so fast as all that,” he answered, coolly, for indeed he had not taken so mad a risk in order to go away again if he could help it. “Who is there in the house besides you?”
“Only mother,” she answered, looking up at him very pleadingly as if in hopes that he must relent when he saw her in distress. “Please, won't you take what you want and go away? Please don't disturb mother, it would nearly kill her.”
“I'm not going to hurt either you or your mother if you'll be sensible,” he said irritably, for, unreasonably enough, the extreme fear she showed and her pleading tones annoyed him. He had a feeling that he would like to shake her, it was so absurd of her to look at him as though she expected him to gobble her up in a mouthful.
She seemed a little reassured.
“Mother will be so dreadfully frightened,” she repeated, “I'll give you everything there is in the house if only you'll go at once.”
“I can take everything I want without your giving it me,” he retorted. “How do I know you're telling the truth when you say there's no one else in the house? How many servants have you?”
“None,” she answered. “There's a woman comes every day, but she doesn't sleep here.”
“Do you live all alone here with your mother?” he asked, watching her keenly.
“There's my stepfather,” she answered. “But he's not here tonight.”
“Oh, is he away?” Dunn asked, his expression almost one of disappointment.
The girl, whose first extreme fear had passed and who was watching him as keenly as he watched her, noticed this manner of disappointment, and could not help wondering what sort of burglar it was who was not pleased to hear that the man of the house was away, and that he had only two women to deal with.
And it appeared to her that he seemed not only disappointed, but rather at a loss what to do next.
As in truth he was, for that the stepfather should be away, and this girl and her mother all alone, was, perhaps, the one possibility that he had never considered.
She noticed, too, that he did not pay any attention to her jewellery, which was lying close to his hand on the toilet-table, and though in point of actual fact this jewellery was not of any great value, it was exceedingly precious in her eyes, and she did not understand a burglar who showed no eagerness to seize on it.
“Did you want to see Mr. Dawson?” she asked, her voice more confident now and even with a questioning note in it.
“Mr. Dawson! Who's he?” Dunn asked, disconcerted by the question, but not wishing to seem so.
“My stepfather, Mr. Deede Dawson,” she answered. “I think you knew that. If you want him, he went to London early today, but I think it's quite likely he may come back tonight.”
“What should I want him for?” growled Dunn, more and more disconcerted, as he saw that he was not playing his part too well.
“I don't know,” she answered. “I suppose you do.”
“You suppose a lot,” he retorted roughly. “Now you listen to me. I don't want to hurt you, but I don't mean to be interfered with. I'm going over the house to see what I can find that's worth taking. Understand?”
“Oh, perfectly,” she said.
She was watching him closely, and she noticed that he still made no attempt to take possession of her jewellery, though it lay at his hand, and that puzzled her very much, indeed, for she supposed the very first thing a burglar did was always to seize such treasures as these of hers. But this man paid them no attention whatever, and did not even notice them.
He was feeling in his pockets now and he took out the revolver and the coil of thin rope he had secured from the burglar.
“Now, do you know what I'm going to do?” he asked, with an air of roughness and brutality that was a little overdone. He put the revolver and the rope down on the bed, the revolver quite close to her.
“I'm going,” he continued, “to tie you up to one of those chairs. I can't risk your playing any tricks or giving an alarm, perhaps, while I'm searching the house. I shall take what's worth having, and then I shall clear off, and if your stepfather's coming home tonight you won't have to wait long till he releases you, and if he don't come I can't help it.”
He turned his back to her as he spoke and took hold of one of the chairs in the room, and then of another and looked at them as though carefully considering which would be the best to use for the carrying out of his threat.
He appeared to find it difficult to decide, for he kept his back turned to her for two or three minutes, during all of which time the revolver lay on the bed quite close to her hand.
He listened intently for he fully expected her to snatch it up, and he wished to be ready to turn before she could actually fire. But, indeed, nothing was further from her thoughts, for she did not know in the least how to use the weapon or even how to fire it off, and the very thought of employing it to kill any one would have terrified her far more even than had done her experiences of this night.
So the pistol lay untouched by her side, while, very pale and trembling a little, she waited what he would do, and on his side he felt as much puzzled by her failure to use the opportunity he had put in her way as she was puzzled by his neglect to seize her jewellery lying ready to his hand.
He was still hesitating, still appearing unable to decide which chair to employ in carrying out his proclaimed purpose of fastening her up when she asked a question that made him swing round upon her very quickly and with a very startled look.
“Are you a real burglar?” she said.
CHAPTER VI. A DISCOVERY
“What do you mean?” Dunn asked quickly. The matted growth of hair on his face served well to hide any change of expression, but his eyes betrayed him with their look of surprise and discomfiture, and in her own clear and steady glance appeared now a kind of puzzled mockery as if she understood well that all he did was done for some purpose, though what that purpose was still perplexed her.
“I mean,” she said slowly, “well—what do I mean? I am only asking a question. Are you a burglar—or have you come here for some other reason?”
“I don't know what you're getting at,” he grumbled. “Think I'm here for fun? Not me. Come and sit on this chair and put your hands behind you and don't make a noise, or scream, or anything, not if you value your life.”
“I don't know that I do very much,” she answered with a manner of extreme bitterness, but more as if speaking to herself than to him.
She did as he ordered, and he proceeded to tie her wrists together and to fasten them to the back of the chair on which she had seated herself. He was careful not to draw the cords too tight, but at the same time he made the fastening secure.
“You won't disturb mother, will you?” she asked quietly when he had finished. “Her room's the one at the end of the passage.”
“I don't want to disturb any one,” he answered. “I only want to get off quietly. I won't gag you, but don't you try to make any noise, if you do I'll come back. Understand?”
“Oh, perfectly,” she answered. “May I ask one question? Do you feel very proud of yourself just now?”
He did not answer, but went out of the room quickly, and he had an impression that she smiled as she watched him go, and that her smile was bitter and a little contemptuous.
“What a girl,” he muttered. “She scored every time. I didn't find out a thing, she didn't do anything I expected or wanted her to. She seemed as if she spotted me right off—I wonder if she did? I wonder if she could be trusted?”
But then he thought of that photograph on the mantelpiece and his look grew stern and hard again. He was careful to avoid the room the girl had indicated as occupied by her mother, but of all the others on that floor he made a hasty search without discovering anything to interest him or anything of the least importance or at all unusual.
From the wide landing in the centre of the house a narrow stairway, hidden away behind an angle of the wall so that one did not notice it at first, led above to three large attics with steeply-sloping roofs and evidently designed more for storage purposes than for habitation.
The doors of two of these were open and within was merely a collection of such lumber as soon accumulates in any house.
The door of the third attic was locked, but by aid of the jemmy he still carried, he forced it open without difficulty.
Within was nothing but a square packing-case, standing in the middle of the floor. Otherwise the light of the electric torch he flashed around showed only the bare boarding of the floor and the bare plastered walls.
Near the packing-case a hammer and some nails lay on the floor and the lid was in position but was not fastened, as though some interruption had occurred before the task of nailing it down could be completed.
Dunn noted that one nail had been driven home, and he was on the point of leaving the attic, for he knew he had not much time and hoped that downstairs he would be able to make some discoveries of importance, when it occurred to him that it might be wise to see what was in this case, the nailing down the lid of which had not been completed.
He crossed the room to it, and without drawing the one nail, pushed back the lid which pivoted on it quite easily.
Within appeared a covering of coarse sacking. He pulled this away with a careless hand, and beneath the beam of his electric torch showed the pale and dreadful features of a dead man—of a man, the center of whose forehead showed the small round hole where a bullet had entered in; of a man whose still-recognizable features were those of the photograph on the mantel-piece of the room downstairs, the photograph that was signed:
“Devotedly yours,
Charley Wright.”
For a long time Robert Dunn stood, looking down in silence at that dead face which was hardly more still, more rigid than his own.
He shivered, for he felt very cold. It was as though the coldness of the death in whose presence he stood had laid its chilly hand on him also.
At last he stirred and looked about him with a bewildered air, then carefully and with a reverent hand, he put back the sackcloth covering.
“So I've found you, Charley,” he whispered. “Found you at last.”
He replaced the lid, leaving everything as it had been when he entered the attic, and stood for a time, trying to collect his thoughts which the shock of this dreadful discovery had so disordered, and to decide what to do next.
“But, then, that's simple,” he thought. “I must go straight to the police and bring them here. They said they wanted proof; they said I had nothing to go on but bare suspicion. But that's evidence enough to hang Deede Dawson—the girl, too, perhaps.”
Then he wondered whether it could be that she knew nothing and was innocent of all part or share in this dreadful deed. But how could that be possible? How could it be that such a crime committed in the house in which she lived could remain unknown to her?
On the other hand, when he thought of her clear, candid eyes; when he remembered her gentle beauty, it did not seem conceivable that behind them could lie hidden the tigerish soul of a murderess.
“That's only sentiment, though,” he muttered. “Nothing more. Beautiful women have been rotten bad through and through before today. There's nothing for me to do but to go and inform the police, and get them here as soon as possible. If she's innocent, I suppose she'll be able to prove it.”
He hesitated a moment, as he thought of how he had left her, bound and a prisoner.
It seemed brutal to leave her like that while he was away, for he would probably be some time absent. But with a hard look, he told himself that whatever pain she suffered she must endure it.
His first and sole thought must be to bring to justice the murderers of his unfortunate friend; and to secure, too, thereby, the success almost certainly of his own mission.
To release her and leave her at liberty might endanger the attainment of both those ends, and so she must remain a prisoner.
“Only,” he muttered, “if she knew the attic almost over her head held such a secret, why, didn't she take the chance I gave her of getting hold of my revolver? That she didn't, looks as if she knew nothing.”
But then he thought again of the photograph in her room and remembered that agony of grief to which she had been surrendering herself when he first saw her. Now those passionate tears of hers seemed to him like remorse.
“I'll leave her where she is,” he decided again. “I can't help it; I mustn't run any risks. My first duty is to get the police here and have Deede Dawson arrested.”
He went down the stairs still deep in thought, and when he reached the landing below he would not even go to make sure that his captive was still secure.
An obscure feeling that he did not wish to see her, and still more that he did not wish her to see him, prevented him.
He descended the second flight of steps to the hall, taking fewer precautions to avoid making a noise and still very deep in thought.
For some time he had had but little hope that young Charley Wright still lived.
Nevertheless, the dreadful discovery he had made in the attic above had affected him profoundly, and left his mind in a chaos of emotions so that he was for the time much less acutely watchful than usual.
They had spent their boyhood together, and he remembered a thousand incidents of their childhood. They had been at school and college together. And how brilliantly Charley had always done at work and play, surmounting every difficulty with a laugh, as if it were merely some new and specially amusing jest!
Every one had thought well of him, every one had believed that his future career would be brilliant. Now it had ended in this obscure and dreadful fashion, as ends the life of a trapped rat.
Dunn found himself hardly able to realize that it was really so, and through all the confused medley of his thoughts there danced and flickered his memory of a young and lovely face, now tear-stained, now smiling, now pale with terror, now calmly disdainful.
“Can she have known?” he muttered. “She must have known—she can't have known—it's not possible either way.”
He shuddered and as he put his foot on the lowest stair he raised his hands to cover his face as though to shut out the visions that passed before him.
Another step forward he took in the darkness, and all at once there flashed upon him the light of a strong electric torch, suddenly switched on.
“Put up your hands,” said a voice sharply. “Or you're a dead man.”
He looked bewilderedly, taken altogether by surprise, and saw he was faced by a fat little man with a smooth, chubby, smiling face and eyes that were cold and grey and deadly, and who held in one hand a revolver levelled at his heart.
“Put up your hands,” this newcomer said again, his voice level and calm, his eyes intent and deadly. “Put up your hands or I fire.”
CHAPTER VII. QUESTION AND ANSWER
Dunn obeyed promptly.
There was that about this little fat, smiling man and his unsmiling eyes which proclaimed very plainly that he was quite ready to put his threat into execution.
For a moment or two they stood thus, each regarding the other very intently. Dunn, his hands in the air, the steady barrel of the other's pistol levelled at his heart, knew that never in all his adventurous life had he been in such deadly peril as now, and the grotesque thought came into his mind to wonder if there were room for two in that packing-case in the attic.
Or perhaps no attempt would be made to hide his death since, after all, it is always permissible to shoot an armed burglar.
The clock on the stairs began to strike the hour, and he wondered if he would still be alive when the last stroke sounded.
He did not much think so for he thought he could read a very deadly purpose in the other's cold grey eyes, nor did he suppose that a man with such a secret as that of the attic upstairs to hide was likely to stand on any scruple.
And he thought that if he still lived when the clock finished striking he would take it for an omen of good hope.
The last stroke sounded and died away into the silence of the night.
The revolver was still levelled at his heart, the grim purpose in the other's eyes had not changed, and yet Dunn drew a breath of deep relief as though the worst of the danger was past.
Through his mind, that had been a little dulled by the sudden consciousness of so extreme a peril, thought began again to race with more than normal rapidity and clearness.
It occurred to him, with a sense of the irony of the position, that when he entered this house it had been with the deliberate intention of getting himself discovered by the inmates, believing that to show himself to them in the character of a burglar might gain him their confidence.
It had seemed to him that so he might come to be accepted as one of them and perhaps learn in time the secret of their plans.
The danger that they might adopt the other course of handing him over to the police had not seemed to him very great, for he had his reasons for believing that there would be no great desire to draw the attention of the authorities to Bittermeads for any reason whatever.
But the discovery he had made in the attic changed all that. It changed his plans, for now he could go to the police immediately. And it changed also his conception of how these people were likely to act.
Before, it had not entered his mind to suppose that he ran any special risk of being shot at sight, but now he understood that the only thing standing between him and instant death was the faint doubt in his captor's mind as to how much he knew.
It seemed to him his only hope was to carry out his original plan and try to pass himself off as the sort of person who might be likely to be useful to the master of Bittermeads.
“Don't shoot, sir,” he said, in a kind of high whine. “I ain't done no harm, and it's a fair cop—and me not a month out of Dartmoor Gaol. I shall get a hot 'un for this, I know.”
The little fat man did not answer; his eyes were as deadly, the muzzle of his pistol as steady as before.
Dunn wondered if it were from that pistol had issued the bullet that had drilled so neat and round a hole in his friend's forehead. He supposed so.
He said again
“Don't shoot, Mr. Deede Dawson, sir; I ain't done no harm.”
“Oh, you know my name, do you, you scoundrel?” Deede Dawson said, a little surprised.
“Yes, sir,” Dunn answered. “We always find out as much as we can about a crib before we get to work.”
“I see,” said Mr. Dawson. “Very praiseworthy. Attention to business and all that. Pray, what did you find out about me?”
“Only as you was to be away tonight, sir,” answered Dunn. “And that there didn't seem to be any other man in the house, and, of course, how the house lay and the garden, and so. But I didn't know as you was coming home so soon.”
“No, I don't suppose you did,” said Deede Dawson.
“I ain't done no harm,” Dunn urged, making his voice as whining and pleading as he could. “I've only just been looking round the two top floors—I ain't touched a thing. Give a cove a chance, sir.”
“You've been looking round, have you?” said Deede Dawson slowly. “Did you find anything to interest you?”
“I've only been in the bedrooms and the attics,” answered Dunn, changing not a muscle of his countenance and thinking boldness his safest course, for he knew well the slightest sign or hint of knowledge that he gave would mean his death. “I'd only just come downstairs when you copped me, sir; I ain't touched a thing in one of these rooms down here.”
“Haven't you?” said Deede Dawson slowly, and his face was paler, his eyes more deadly, the muzzle of his pistol yet more inflexibly steady than before.
More clearly still did Dunn realize that the faintest breath of suspicion stirring in the other's mind that he knew of what was hidden in the attic would mean certain death and just such another neat little hole bored through heart or brain as that he had seen showing in the forehead of his dead friend.
“Haven't you, though?” Deede Dawson repeated. “The bedrooms—the attics—that's all?”
“Yes, sir, that's all, take my oath that's all,” Dunn repeated earnestly, as if he wished very much to impress on his captor that he had searched bedrooms and attics thoroughly, but not these downstairs rooms.
Deede Dawson was plainly puzzled, and for the first time a little doubt seemed to show in his hard grey eyes.
Dunn perceived that a need was on him to know for certain whether his dreadful secret had been discovered or not.
Until he had assured himself on that point Dunn felt comparatively safe, but he still knew also that to allow the faintest suspicion to dawn in Deede Dawson's mind would mean for him instant death.
He saw, too, watching very warily and ready to take advantage of any momentary slip or forgetfulness, how steady was Deede Dawson's hand, how firm and watchful his eyes.
With many men, with most men indeed, Dunn would have seized or made some opportunity to dash in and attack, taking the chance of being shot down first, since there are few indeed really skilled in the use of a revolver, the most tricky if the most deadly of weapons.
But he realized he had small hope of taking unawares this fat little smiling man with the unsmiling eyes and steady hand, and he was well convinced that the first doubtful movement he made would bring a bullet crashing through his brain.
His only hope was in delay and in diverting suspicion, and Deede Dawson's voice was very soft and deadly as he said:
“So you've been looking in the bedrooms, have you? What did you find there?”
“Nothing, sir, not a thing,” protested Dunn. “I didn't touch a thing, I only wanted to look round before coming down here to see about the silver.”
“And the attics?” asked Deede Dawson. “What did you find there?”
“There wasn't no one in them,” Dunn answered. “I only wanted to make sure the young lady was telling the truth about there being no servants in the house to sleep.”
“Did you look in all the attics, then?” asked Deede Dawson.
“Yes,” answered Dunn. “'There was one as was locked, but I tooked the liberty of forcing it just to make sure. I ain't done no harm to speak of.”
“You found one locked, eh?” said Deede Dawson, and his smile grew still more pleasant and more friendly. “That must have surprised you a good deal, didn't it?”
“I thought as perhaps there was some one waiting already to give the alarm,” answered Dunn. “I didn't mind the old lady, but I couldn't risk there being some one hiding there, so I had to look, but I ain't done no damage to speak of, I could put it right for you myself in half-an-hour, sir, if you'll let me.”
“Could you, indeed?” said Deede Dawson. “Well, and did you find any one sleeping there?”
But for that hairy disguise upon his cheeks and chin, Dunn would almost certainly have betrayed himself, so dreadful did the question seem to him, so poignant the double meaning that it bore, so clear his memory of his friend he had found there, sleeping indeed.
But there was nothing to show his inner agitation, as he said, shaking his head.
“There wasn't no one there, any more than in the other attics, nothing but an old packing-case.”
“And what?” said Deede Dawson, his voice so soft it was like a caress, his smile so sweet it was a veritable benediction. “What was in that packing-case?”
“Didn't look,” answered Dunn, and then, with a sudden change of manner, as though all at once understanding what previously had puzzled him. “Lum-me,” he cried, “is that where you keep the silver? Lor', and to think I never even troubled to look.”
“You never looked?” repeated Deede Dawson.
Dunn shook his head with an air of baffled regret. “Never thought of it,” he said. “I thought it was just lumber like in the other attics, and I might have got clear away with it if I had known, as easy as not.”
His chagrin was so apparent, his whole manner so innocent, that Deede Dawson began to believe he really did know nothing.
“Didn't you wonder why the door was locked?” he asked.
“Lor',” answered Dunn, “if you stopped to wonder about everything you find rummy in a crib you're cracking, when would you ever get your business done?”
“So you didn't look—in that packing-case?” Deede Dawson repeated.
“If I had,” answered Dunn ruefully, “I shouldn't be here, copped like this. I should have shoved with the stuff and not waited for nothing more. But I never had no luck.”
“I'm not so sure of that,” said Deede Dawson grimly, and as he spoke a soft voice called down from upstairs.
“Is there any one there?” it said. “Oh, please, is any one there?”
“Is that you, Ella?” Deede Dawson called back. “Come down here.”
“I can't,” she answered. “I'm fastened to a chair.”
“I didn't hurt the young lady,” Dunn interposed quickly. “I only tied her up as gentle as I could to a chair so as to stop her from interfering.”
“Oh, that's it, is it?” said Deede Dawson, and seemed a little amused, as though the thought of his stepdaughter's plight pleased him rather than not. “Well, if she can't come down here, we'll go up there. Turn round, my man, and go up the stairs and keep your hands over your head all the time. I shan't hesitate to shoot if you don't, and I never miss.”
Dunn was not inclined to value his life at a very high price as he turned and went awkwardly up the stairs, still holding his hands above his head.
But he meant to save it if he could, for many things depended on it, among them due punishment to be exacted for the crime he had discovered this night; and also, perhaps, for the humiliation he was now enduring.
CHAPTER VIII. CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE
Up the stairs, across the landing, and down the passage opposite Dunn went in silence, shepherded by the little man behind whose pistol was still levelled and still steady.
His hands held high in the air, he pushed open with his knee the door of the girl's room and entered, and she looked up as he did so with an expression of pure astonishment at his attitude of upheld hands that changed to one of comprehension and of faint amusement as Deede Dawson followed, revolver in hand.
“Oh,” she murmured. “Captivity captive, it seems.”
At the fireplace Dunn turned and found her looking at him very intently, while from the doorway Deede Dawson surveyed them both, for once his eyes appearing to share in the smile that played about his lips as though he found much satisfaction in what he saw.
“Well, Ella,” he said. “You've been having adventures, it seems, but you don't look too comfortable like that.”
“Nor do I feel it,” she retorted. “So please set me free.”
“Yes, so I will,” he answered, but he still hesitated, and Dunn had the idea that he was pleased to see the girl like this, and would leave her so if he could, and that he was wondering now if he could turn her predicament to his own advantage in any way.
“Yes, I will,” he said again. “Your mother—?”
“She hasn't wakened,” Ella answered. “I don't think she has heard anything. I don't suppose she will, for she took two of those pills last night that Dr. Rawson gave her for when she couldn't sleep.”
“It's just as well she did,” said Deede Dawson.
“Yes, but please undo my hands,” she asked him. “The cords are cutting my wrists dreadfully.”
As she spoke she glanced at Dunn, standing by the fireplace and listening gravely to what they said, and Deede Dawson exclaimed with an air of great indignation:—
“The fellow deserves to be well thrashed for treating you like that. I've a good mind to do it, too, before handing him over to the police.”
“But you haven't released me yet,” she remarked.
“Oh, yes, yes,” he said, starting as if this were quite a new idea. “I'll release you at once—but I must watch this scoundrel. He must have frightened you dreadfully.”
“Indeed he did not,” she answered quickly, again looking at Dunn. “No, he didn't,” she said again with a touch of defiance in her manner and a certain slightly lifting her small, round chin. “At least not much after just at first,” she added.
“I'll loose you,” Deede Dawson said once more, and coming up to her, he began to fumble in a feeble, ineffectual way at the cords that secured her wrists.
“Jove, he's tied you up pretty tight, Ella!” he said.
“He believes in doing his work thoroughly, I suppose,” she remarked, lifting her eyes to Dunn's with a look in them that was partly questioning and partly puzzled and wholly elusive. “I daresay he always likes to do everything thoroughly.”
“Seems so,” said Deede Dawson, giving up his fumbling and ineffectual efforts to release her.
He stepped back and stood behind her chair, looking from her to Dunn and back again, and once more Dunn was conscious of an impression that he wished to make use for his own purposes of the girl's position, but that he did not know how to do so.
“You are a nice scoundrel,” said Deede Dawson suddenly, with an indignation that seemed to Dunn largely assumed. “Treating a girl like this. Ella, what would you like done to him? He deserves shooting. Shall I put a bullet through him for you?”
“He might have treated me worse, I suppose,” said Ella quietly. “And if you would be less indignant with him, you might be more help to me. There are scissors on the table somewhere.”
“I'll get them,” Deede Dawson said. “I'll get them,” he repeated, as though now at last finally making up his mind.
He took the scissors from the toilet-table where they lay before the looking-glass and cut the cords by which Ella was secured.
With a sigh of relief she straightened herself from the confined position in which she had been held and began to rub her wrists, which were slightly inflamed where the cords had bruised her soft skin.
“Like to tie him up that way now?” asked Deede Dawson. “You shall if you like.”
She turned and looked full at Dunn and he looked back at her with eyes as steady and as calm as her own.
Again she showed that faint doubt and wonder which had flickered through her level gaze before as though she felt that there was more in all this than was apparent, and did not wish to condemn him utterly without a hearing.
But it was plain also that she did not wish to say too much before her stepfather and she answered carelessly:
“I don't think I could tie him tight enough, besides, he looks ridiculous enough like that with his hands up in the air.”
It was her revenge for what he had made her suffer. He felt himself flush and he knew that she knew that her little barbed shaft had struck home.
“Well, go and look through his pockets,” Deede Dawson said. “And see if he's got a revolver. Don't be frightened; if he lowers his hands he'll be a dead man before he knows it.”
“He has a pistol,” she said. “He showed it me, it's in his coat pocket.”
“Better get it then,” Deede Dawson told her. She obeyed and brought him the weapon, and he nodded with satisfaction as he put it in his own pocket.
“I think we might let you put your hands down now,” he remarked, and Dunn gladly availed himself of the permission, for every muscle in his arms was aching badly.
He remained standing by the wall while Deede Dawson, seating himself on the chair to which Ella had been bound, rested his chin on his left hand and, with the pistol still ready in his right, regarded Dunn with a steady questioning gaze.
Ella was standing near the bed. She had poured a few drops of eau-de-Cologne on her wrists and was rubbing them softly, and for ever after the poignant pleasant odour of the scent has remained associated in Robert Dunn's mind with the strange events of that night so that always even the merest whiff of it conjures up before his mind a picture of that room with himself silent by the fireplace and Ella silent by the bed and Deede Dawson, pistol in hand, seated between them, as silent also as they, and very watchful.
Ella appeared fully taken up with her occupation and might almost have forgotten the presence of the two men. She did not look at either of them, but continued to rub and chafe her wrists softly.
Deede Dawson had forgotten for once to smile, his brow was slightly wrinkled, his cold grey eyes intent and watchful, and Dunn felt very sure that he was thinking out some plan or scheme.
The hope came to him that Deede Dawson was thinking he might prove of use, and that was the thought which, above all others, he wished the other to have. It was, indeed, that thought which all his recent actions had been aimed to implant in Deede Dawson's mind till his dreadful discovery in the attic had seemed to make at last direct action possible. How, in his present plight that thought, if Deede Dawson should come to entertain it, might yet prove his salvation. Now and again Deede Dawson gave him quick, searching glances, but when at last he spoke it was Ella he addressed.
“Wrists hurt you much?” he asked.
“Not so much now,” she answered. “They were beginning to hurt a great deal, though.”
“Were they, though?” said Deede Dawson. “And to think you might have been like that for hours if I hadn't chanced to come home. Too bad, what a brute this fellow is.”
“Men mostly are, I think,” she observed indifferently.
“And women mostly like to get their own back again,” he remarked with a chuckle, and then turned sharply to Dunn. “Well, my man,” he asked, “what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” Dunn answered. “It was a fair cop.”
“You've had a taste of penal servitude before, I suppose?” Deede Dawson asked.
“Maybe,” Dunn answered, as if not wishing to betray himself. “Maybe not.”
“Well, I think I remember you said something about not being long out of Dartmoor,” remarked Deede Dawson. “How do you relish the prospect of going back there?”
“I wonder,” interposed Ella thoughtfully. “I wonder what it is in you that makes you so love to be cruel, father?”
“Eh what?” he exclaimed, quite surprised. “Who's being cruel?”
“You,” she answered. “You enjoy keeping him wondering what you are going to do with him, just as you enjoyed seeing me tied to that chair and would have liked to leave me there.”
“My dear Ella!” he protested. “My dear child!”
“Oh, I know,” she said wearily. “Why don't you hand the man over to the police if you're going to, or let him go at once if you mean to do that?”
“Let him go, indeed!” exclaimed Deede Dawson. “What an idea! What should I do that for?”
“If you'll give me another chance,” said Dunn quickly, “I'll do anything—I should get it pretty stiff for this lot, and that wouldn't be any use to you, sir, would it? I can do almost anything—garden, drive a motor, do what I'm told, It's only because I've never had a chance I've had to take to this line.”
“If you could do what you're told you certainly might be useful,” said Deede Dawson slowly. “And I don't know that it would do me any good to send you off to prison—you deserve it, of course. Still—you talk sometimes like an educated man?”
“I had a bit of education,” Dunn answered.
“I see,” said Deede Dawson. “Well, I won't ask you any more questions, you'd probably only lie. What's your name?”
With that sudden recklessness which was a part of his impulsive and passionate nature, Dunn answered:
“Charley Wright.”
The effect was instantaneous and apparent on both his auditors.
Ella gave a little cry and started so violently that she dropped the bottle of eau-de-Cologne she had in her hands.
Deede Dawson jumped to his feet with a fearful oath. His face went livid, his fat cheeks seemed suddenly to sag, of his perpetual smile every trace vanished.
He swung his revolver up, and Dunn saw the crooked forefinger quiver as though in the very act of pressing the trigger.
The pressure of a hair decided, indeed, whether the weapon was to fire or not, as in a high-pitched, stammering voice, Deede Dawson gasped:
“What—what do you mean? What do you mean by that?”
“I only told you my name,” Dunn answered. “What's wrong with it?”
Doubtful and afraid, Deede Dawson stood hesitant. His forehead had become very damp, and he wiped it with a nervous gesture.
“Is that your name—your real name?” he muttered.
“Never had another that I know of,” Dunn answered.
Deede Dawson sat down again on the chair. He was still plainly very disturbed and shaken, and Ella seemed scarcely less agitated, though Dunn, watching them both very keenly, noticed that she was now looking at Deede Dawson with a somewhat strange expression and with an air as though his extreme excitement puzzled her and made her—afraid.
“Nothing wrong with the name, is there?” Dunn muttered again.
“No, no,” Deede Dawson answered. “No. It's merely a coincidence, that's all. A coincidence, I suppose, Ella?”
Ella did not answer. Her expression was very troubled and full of doubt as she stood looking from her stepfather to Dunn and back again.
“It's only that your name happens to be the same as that of a friend of ours—a great friend of my daughter's,” Deede Dawson said as though he felt obliged to offer some explanation. “That's all—a coincidence. It startled me for the moment.” He laughed. “That's all. Well, my man, it happens there is something I can make you useful in. If you do prove useful and do what I tell you, perhaps you may get let off. I might even keep you on in a job. I won't say I will, but I might. You look a likely sort of fellow for work, and I daresay you aren't any more dishonest than most people. Funny how things happen—quite a coincidence, your name. Well, come on; it's that packing-case you saw in the attic upstairs. I want you to help me downstairs with that—Charley Wright.”
CHAPTER IX. THE ATTIC OF MYSTERY
Robert Dunn was by no means sure that he was not going to his death as he went out of Ella's room on his way to the attics above, for he had perceived a certain doubt and suspicion in Deede Dawson's manner, and he thought it very likely that a fatal intention lay behind.
But he obeyed with a brisk promptitude of manner, like one who saw a prospect of escape opening before him, and as he went he saw that Ella had relapsed into her former indifference and was once more giving all her attention to bathing her wrists with eau-de-Cologne; and he saw, too, that Deede Dawson, following close behind, kept always his revolver ready.
“Perhaps he only wants to get me out of her way before he shoots,” he reflected. “Perhaps there is room in that packing-case for two. It will be strange to die. Shall I try to rush him? But he would shoot at once, and I shouldn't have a chance. One thing, if anything happens to me, no one will ever know what's become of poor Charley.”
And this seemed to him a great pity, so that he began to form confused and foolish plans for securing that his friend's fate should become known.
With a sudden start, for he had not known he was there, he found himself standing on the threshold of that attic of death. It was quite dark up here, and from behind Deede Dawson's voice told him impatiently to enter.
He obeyed, wondering if ever again he would cross that threshold alive, and Deede Dawson followed him into the dark attic so that Dunn was appalled by the man's rashness, for how could he tell that his victim would not take this opportunity to rise up from the place where he had been thrust and take his revenge?
“What an idea,” he thought to himself. “I must be going dotty, it's the strain of expecting a bullet in my back all the time, I suppose. I was never like this before.”
Deede Dawson struck a match and put it to a gas-jet that lighted up the whole room. Between him and Dunn lay the packing-case, and Dunn was surprised to see that it was still there and that nothing had changed or moved; and then again he said to himself that this was a foolish thought only worthy of some excitable, hysterical girl.
“It's being too much for me,” he thought resignedly. “I've heard of people being driven mad by horror. I suppose that's what's happening to me.”
“You look—queer,” Deede Dawson's voice interrupted the confused medley of his thoughts. “Why do you look like that—Charley Wright?”
Dunn looked moodily across the case in which the body of the murdered man was hidden to where the murderer stood.
After a pause, and speaking with an effort, he said:
“You'd look queer if some one with a pistol was watching you all the time the way you watch me.”
“You do what I tell you and you'll be all right,” Deede Dawson answered. “You see that packing-case?”
Dunn nodded.
“It's big enough,” he said.
“Would you like to know?” asked Deede Dawson slowly with his slow, perpetual smile. “Would you like to know what's in it—Charley Wright?”
And again Dunn was certain that a faint suspicion hung about those last two words, and that his life and death hung very evenly in the balance.
“Silver, you said,” he muttered. “Didn't you?”
“Ah, yes—yes—to be sure,” answered Deede Dawson. “Yes, so I did. Silver. I want the lid nailed down. There's a hammer and nails there. Get to work and look sharp.”
Dunn stepped forward and began to set about a task that was so terrible and strange, and that yet he had, at peril of his life—at peril of more than that, indeed—to treat as of small importance.
Standing a little distance from the lighted gas-jet, Deede Dawson watched him narrowly, and as Dunn worked he was very sure that to betray the least sign of his knowledge would be to bring instantly a bullet crashing through his brain.
It seemed curious to him that he had so carefully replaced everything after making his discovery, and that without any forethought or special intention he had put back everything so exactly as he had found it when the slightest neglect or failure in that respect would most certainly have cost him his life.
And he felt that as yet he could not afford to die.
One by one he drove in the nails, and as he worked at his gruesome task he heard the faintest rustle on the landing without—the faintest sound of a soft breath cautiously drawn in, of a light foot very carefully set down.
Deede Dawson plainly heard nothing; indeed, no ear less acute and less well-trained than Dunn's could have caught sounds that were so slight and low, but he, listening between each stroke of his hammer, was sure that it was Ella who had followed them, and that she crouched upon the landing without, watching and listening.
Did that mean, he wondered, that she, too, knew? Or was it merely natural curiosity; hostile in part, perhaps, since evidently the relations between her and her stepfather were not too friendly—a desire to know what task there could be in the attics so late at night for which Deede Dawson had such need of his captive's help?
Or was it by any chance because she wished to know how things went with him, and what was to be his fate?
In any case, Dunn was sure that Ella had followed then, and was on the landing without.
He drove home the last nail and stood up. “That's done,” he said.
“And well done,” said Deede Dawson. “Well done—Charley Wright.”
He spoke the name softly and lingeringly, and then all at once he began to laugh, a low and somewhat dreadful laughter that had in it no mirth at all, and that sounded horrible and strange in the chill emptiness of the attic.
Leaning one hand on the packing-case that served as the coffin of his dead friend, Dunn swore a silent oath to exact full retribution, and henceforth to put that purpose on a level with the mission on which originally he had come.
Aloud, and in a grumbling tone he said:
“What's the matter with my name? It's a name like any other. What's wrong with it?”
“What should there be?” flashed Deede Dawson in reply.
“I don't know,” Dunn answered. “You keep repeating it so, that's all.”
“It's a very good name,” Deede Dawson said. “An excellent name. But it's not suitable. Not here.” He began to laugh again and then stopped abruptly.
“Do you know, I think you had better choose another?” he said.
“It's all one to me,” declared Dunn. “If Charley Wright don't suit, how will Robert Dunn do? I knew a man of that name once.”
“It's a better name than Charley Wright,” said Deede Dawson. “We'll call you Robert Dunn—Charley Wright. Do you know why I can't have you call yourself Charley Wight?”
Dunn shook his head.
“Because I don't like it,” said Deede Dawson. “Why, that's a name that would drive me mad,” he muttered, half to himself.
Dunn did not speak, but he thought this was a strange thing for the other to say and showed that even he, cold and remorseless and without any natural feeling, as he had seemed to be, yet had about him still some touch of humanity.
And as he mused on this, which seemed to him so strange, though really it was not strange at all, his attentive ears caught the sound of a soft step without, beginning to descend the stairs.
Had that name, then, been more than she also could bear?
If so, she must know.
“I don't see why, I don't see what's wrong with it,” he said aloud. “But Robert Dunn will suit me just as well.”
“All a matter of taste,” said Deede Dawson, his manner more composed and natural again.
“It's a funny thing now—suppose my name was Charley Wright, then there would be two Charley Wrights in this attic, eh? A coincidence, that would be?”
“I suppose so,” answered Dunn. “I knew another man named Charley Wright once.”
“Did you? Where's he?”
“Oh, he's dead,” answered Dunn.
Deede Dawson could not repress the start he gave and for a moment Dunn thought that his suspicions were really roused. He came a little nearer, his pistol still ready in his hand.
“Dead, is he?” he said. “That's a pity. He's not here, then; but it would be funny wouldn't it, if there were two Charley Wrights in one room?”
“I don't know what you mean,” Dunn answered. “I think there are lots of funnier things than that would be.”
“That's where you're wrong,” retorted Deede Dawson, and he laughed again, shrilly and dreadfully, a laughter that had in it anything but mirth.
“Can you carry that packing-case downstairs if I help you get it on your shoulder?” he asked abruptly.
“It's heavy, but I might,” Dunn answered.
He supposed that now it was about to be hidden somewhere and he felt that he must know where, since that knowledge would mean everything and enable him to set the authorities to work at once immediately he could communicate with them.
The weight of the thing taxed even his great strength to the utmost, but he managed it somehow, and bending beneath his burden, he descended the stairs to the hall and then, following the orders Deede Dawson gave him from behind, out into the open air.
He was nearly exhausted when at last his task-master told him he could put it down as he stood still for a minute or two to recover his breath and strength.
The night was not very dark, for a young moon was shining in a clear sky, and it appeared to Dunn, as he felt his strength returning, that now at last he might find an opportunity of making an attack upon his captor with some chance of success.
Hitherto, in the house, in the bright glare of the gas lights, he had known that the first suspicious movement he made would have ensured his being instantly and remorselessly shot down, his mission unfulfilled.
But here in the open air, in the night that the moon illumined but faintly, it was different, and as he watched for his opportunity he felt that sooner or later it was sure to come.
But Deede Dawson was alert and wary, his pistol never left his hand, he kept so well on his guard he gave Dunn no opening to take him unawares, and Dunn did not wish to run too desperate a chance, since he was sure that sooner or later one giving fair chance of success would present itself.
“Do you want it carried any further?” he asked. “It's very heavy.”
“I suppose you mean you're wondering what's in it?” said Deede Dawson sharply.
“It's nothing to me what's in it—silver or anything else,” retorted Dunn. “Do you want me to carry it further, that's all I asked?”
“No,” answered Deede Dawson. “No, I don't. Do you know, if you knew what was really in it, you'd be surprised?”
“Very likely,” answered Dunn. “Why not?”
“Yes, you would be surprised,” Deede Dawson repeated, and suddenly shouted into the darkness: “Are you ready? Are you ready there?”
Dunn was very startled, for somehow, he had supposed all along that Deede Dawson was quite alone.
There was no answer to his call, but after a minute or two there was the sound of a motor-car engine starting and then a big car came gliding forward and stopped in front of them, driven by a form so muffled in coats and coverings as to be indistinguishable in that faint light.
“Put the case inside,” Deede Dawson said. “I'll help you.”
With some trouble they succeeded in getting the case in and Deede Dawson covered it carefully with a big rug.
When he had done so he stepped back.
“Ready, Ella?” he said.
“Yes,” answered the girl's soft and low voice that already Dunn could have sworn to amidst a thousand others.
CHAPTER X. THE NEW GARDENER
“Go ahead, then,” said Deede Dawson, and the great car with its terrible burden shot away into the night.
For a moment or two Deede Dawson stood looking after it, and then he turned and walked slowly towards the house, and mechanically Dunn followed, the sole thought in his mind, the one idea of which he was conscious, that of Ella driving away into the darkness with the dead body of his murdered friend in the car behind her.
Did she—know? he asked himself. Or was she ignorant of what it was she had with her?
It seemed to him that that question, hammering itself so awfully upon his mind and clamouring for an answer, must soon send him mad.
And still before him floated perpetually a picture of long, dark, lonely roads, of a rushing motor-car driven by a lovely girl, of the awful thing hidden in the car behind her.
Dully he recognized that the opportunity for which he had watched and waited so patiently had come and gone a dozen times, for Deede Dawson had now quite relaxed his former wary care.
It was as though he supposed all danger over, as though in the reaction after an enormous strain he could think of nothing but the immediate relief. He hardly gave a single glance at Dunn, whose faintest movement before had never escaped him. He had even put his pistol back in his pocket, and at almost any moment Dunn, with his unusual strength and agility, could have seized and mastered him.
But for such an enterprise Dunn had no longer any spirit, for all his mind was taken up by that one picture so clear in his thoughts of Ella in her great car driving the dead man through the night. “She must know,” he said to himself. “She must, or she would never have gone off like that at that time—she can't know, it's impossible, or she would never have dared.”
And again it seemed to him that this doubt was driving him mad.
Deede Dawson entered the house and got a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda-water and mixed himself a drink. For the first time since Ella's departure he seemed to remember Dunn's presence.
“Oh, there you are,” he said.
Dunn did not answer. He stood moodily on the threshold, wondering why he did not rush upon the other, and with his knee upon his chest, his hands about his throat, force him to answer the question that was still whispering, shouting, screaming itself into his ears:
“Does she know what it is she drives with her on that big car through the black and lonely night?”
“Like a drink?” asked Deede Dawson.
Dunn shook his head, and it came to him that he did not attack Deede Dawson and force the truth from him because he dared not, because he was afraid, because he feared what the answer might be.
“There's a tool-shed at the bottom of the garden,” Deede Dawson said to him. “You can sleep there, tonight. You'll find some sacks you can make a bed of.”
Without a word in reply Dunn turned and stumbled away. He felt very tired—physically exhausted—and the idea of a bed, even of sacks in an outhouse, became all at once extraordinarily attractive.
He found the place without difficulty, and, making a pile of the sacks, flung himself down on them and was asleep almost at once. But almost as promptly he awoke again, for he had dreamed of Ella driving her car through the night towards some strange peril from which in his dream he was trying frantically and ineffectively to save her when he awoke.
So it was all through the night.
His utter and complete exhaustion compelled him to sleep, and every time some fresh, fantastic dream in which Ella and the huge motor-car and the dreadful burden she had with her always figured, awoke him with a fresh start.
But towards morning he fell into a heavy sleep from which presently he awoke to find it broad daylight and Deede Dawson standing on the threshold of the shed with his perpetually smiling lips and his cold, unsmiling eyes.
“Well, my man; had a good sleep?” he said.
“I was tired,” Dunn answered.
“Yes, we had a busy night,” agreed Deede Dawson. “I slept well, too. I've been wondering what to do with you. Of course, I ought to hand you over to the police, and it's rather a risk taking on a man of your character, but I've decided to give you a chance. Probably you'll misuse it. But I'll give you an opportunity as gardener and chauffeur here. You can drive a car, you say?”
Dunn nodded.
“That's all right,” said Deede Dawson.
“You shall have your board and lodging, and I'll get you some decent clothes instead of those rags; and if you prove satisfactory and make yourself useful you'll find I can pay well. There will be plenty of chances for you to make a little money—if you know how to take them.”
“When it's money,” growled Dunn, “you give me the chance, and see.”
“I think,” added Deede Dawson, “I think it might improve your looks if you shaved.”
Dunn passed his hand over the tangle of hair that hid his features so effectually.
“What for?” he asked.
“Oh, well: please yourself,” answered Deede Dawson; “I don't know that it matters, and perhaps you have reasons of your own for preferring a beard. Come on up to the house now and I'll tell Mrs. Dawson to give you some breakfast. And you might as well have a wash, too, perhaps—unless you object to that as well as to shaving.”
Dunn rose without answering, made his toilet by shaking off some of the dust that clung to him, and followed his new employer out of the tool-house into the open air.
It was a fresh and lovely morning, and coming towards them down one of the garden paths was Ella, looking as fresh and lovely as the morning in a dainty cotton frock with lace at her throat and wrists.
That she could possibly have spent the night tearing across country in a powerful car conveying a dead man to an unknown destination, appeared to Dunn a clean impossibility, and for a moment he almost supposed he had been mistaken in thinking he recognized her voice.
But he knew he had not, that he had made no mistake, that it had indeed been Ella he had seen dash away into the darkness on her strange and terrible errand.
“Oh, my daughter,” said Deede Dawson carelessly, noticing Dunn's surprise. “Oh, yes, she's back—you didn't expect to see her this morning. Well, Ella, Dunn's surprised to see you back so soon, aren't you, Dunn?”
Dunn did not answer, for a kind of vertigo of horror had come upon him, and for a moment all things revolved about him in a whirling circle wherein the one fixed point was Ella's gentle lovely face that sometimes, he thought, had a small round hole with blue edges in the very centre of the forehead, above the nose.
It was her voice, clear and a little loud, that called him back to himself.
“He's not well,” she was saying. “He's going to faint.”
“I'm all right,” he muttered. “It was nothing, nothing, it's only that I've had nothing to eat for so long.”
“Oh, poor man!” exclaimed Ella.
“Come up to the house,” Deede Dawson said.
“Breakfast's ready,” Ella said. “Mother told me to find you.”
“Has the woman come yet?” Deede Dawson asked. “If she has, you might tell her to give Dunn some breakfast. I've just been telling him I'm willing to give him another chance and to take him on as gardener and chauffeur, so you can keep an eye on him and see if he works well.”
Ella was silent for a moment, but her expression was grave and a little puzzled as though she did not quite understand this and wondered what it meant, and when she looked up at her stepfather, Dunn was certain there was both distrust and suspicion in her manner.
“I suppose,” she said then, “last night seemed to you a good recommendation?” As she spoke she glanced at her wrists where the bruises still showed, and Deede Dawson's smile broadened.
“One should always be ready to give another chance to a poor fellow who's down,” he said. “He may run straight now he's got an opportunity. I told him he had better shave, but he seems to think a beard suits him best. What do you say?”
“Breakfast's waiting,” Ella answered, turning away without taking any notice of the question.
“I'll go in then,” said Deede Dawson. “You might show Dunn the way to the kitchen—his name's Robert Dunn, by the way—and tell Mrs. Barker to give him something to eat.”
“I should think he could find his way there himself,” Ella remarked.
But though she made this protest, she obeyed at once, for though she used a considerable liberty of speech to her stepfather, it was none the less evident that she was very much afraid of him and would not be very likely to disobey him or oppose him directly.
“This way,” she said to Dunn, and walked on along a path that led to the back of the house. Once she stopped and looked back. She smiled slightly and disdainfully as she did so, and Dunn saw that she was looking at a clump of small bushes near where they had been standing.
He guessed at once that she believed Deede Dawson to be behind those bushes watching them, and when she glanced at him he understood that she wished him to know it also.
He said nothing, though a faint movement visible in the bushes convinced him that her suspicions, if, indeed, she had them, were well-founded, and they walked on in silence, Ella a little ahead, and Dunn a step or two behind.
The garden was a large one, and had at one time been well cultivated, but now it was neglected and overgrown. It struck Dunn that if he was to be the gardener here he would certainly not find himself short of work, and Ella, without looking round, said to him over her shoulder:
“Do you know anything about gardening?”
“A little, miss,” he answered.
“You needn't call me 'miss,'” she observed. “When a man has tied a girl to a chair I think he may regard himself as on terms of some familiarity with her.”
“What must I call you?” he asked, and his words bore to himself a double meaning, for, indeed, what name was it by which he ought to call her?
But she seemed to notice nothing as she answered “My name is Cayley —Ella Cayley. You can call me Miss Cayley. Do you know anything of motoring?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Though I never cared much for motoring at night.”
She gave him a quick glance, but said no more, and they came almost immediately to the back door.
Ella opened it and entered, nodding to him to follow, and crossing a narrow, stone-floored passage, she entered the kitchen where a tall gaunt elderly woman in a black bonnet and a course apron was at work.
“This is Dunn, Mrs. Barker,” she called, raising her voice. “He is the new gardener. Will you give him some breakfast, please?” She added to Dunn:
“When you've finished, you can go to the garage and wash the car, and when you speak to Mrs. Barker you must shout. She is quite deaf, that is why my stepfather engaged her, because he was sorry for her and wanted to give her a chance, you know...”
CHAPTER XI. THE PROBLEM
When he had finished his breakfast, and after he had had the wash of which he certainly stood in considerable need, Dunn made his way to the garage and there occupied himself cleaning the car. He noticed that the mud with which it was liberally covered was of a light sandy sort, and he discovered on one of the tyres a small shell.
Apparently, therefore, last night's wild journey had been to the coast, and it was a natural inference that the sea had provided a secure hiding-place for the packing-case and its dreadful contents.
But then that meant that there was no evidence left on which he could take action.
As he busied himself with his task, he tried to think out as clearly as he could the position in which he found himself and to decide what he ought to do next.
To his quick and hasty nature the swiftest action was always the most congenial, and had he followed his instinct, he would have lost no time in denouncing Deede Dawson. But his cooler thoughts told him that he dared not do that, since it would be to involve risks, not for himself, but for others, that he simply dared not contemplate.
He felt that the police, even if they credited his story, which he also felt that very likely they would not do, could not act on his sole evidence.
And even if they did act and did arrest Deede Dawson, it was certain no jury would convict on so strange a story, so entirely uncorroborated.
The only result would be to strengthen Deede Dawson's position by the warning, to show him his danger, and to give him the opportunity, if he chose to use it, of disappearing and beginning again his plots and plans after some fresh and perhaps more deadly fashion.
“Whereas at present,” he mused, “at any rate, I'm here and he doesn't seem to suspect me, and I can watch and wait for a time, till I see my way more clearly.”
And this decision he came to was a great relief to him, for he desired very greatly to know more before he acted and in especial to find out for certain what was Ella's position in all this.
It was Deede Dawson's voice that broke in upon his meditations.
“Ah, you're busy,” he said. “That's right, I like to see a man working hard. I've got some new things for you I think may fit fairly well, and Mrs. Dawson is going to get one of the attics ready for you to sleep in.”
“Very good, sir,” said Dunn.
He wondered which attic was to be assigned to him and if it would be that one in which he had found his friend's body. He suspected, too, that he was to be lodged in the house so that Deede Dawson might watch him, and this pleased him, since it meant that he, in his turn, would be able to watch Deede Dawson.
Not that there appeared much to watch, for the days passed on and it seemed a very harmless and quiet life that Deede Dawson lived with his wife and stepdaughter.
But for the memory, burned into Dunn's mind, of what he had seen that night of his arrival, he would have been inclined to say that no more harmless, gentle soul existed than Deede Dawson.
But as it was, the man's very gentleness and smiling urbanity filled him with a loathing that it was at times all he could do to control.
The attic assigned to him to sleep in was that where he had made his dreadful discovery, and he believed this had been done as a further test of his ignorance, for he was sure Deede Dawson watched him closely to see if the idea of being there was in any way repugnant to him.
Indeed at another time he might have shrunk from the idea of sleeping each night in the very room where his friend had been foully done to death, but now he derived a certain grim satisfaction and a strengthening of his nerves for the task that lay before him.
Only a very few visitors came to Bittermeads, especially now that Mr. John Clive, who had come often, was laid up. But one or two of the people from the village came occasionally, and the vicar appeared two or three times every week, ostensibly to play chess with Deede Dawson, but in reality, Dunn thought, drawn there by Ella, who, however, seemed quite unaware of the attraction she exercised over the good man.
Dunn did not find that he was expected to do very much work, and in fact, he was left a good deal to himself.
Once or twice the car was taken out, and occasionally Deede Dawson would come into the garden and chat with him idly for a few minutes on indifferent subjects. When it was fine he would often bring out a little travelling set of chessmen and board and proceed to amuse himself, working out or composing problems.
One day he called Dunn up to admire a problem he had just composed.
“Pretty clever, eh?” he said, admiring his own work with much complacence. “Quite an original idea of mine and I think the key move will take some finding. What do you say? I suppose you do play chess?”
“Only a very little,” answered Dunn.
“Try a game with me,” said Deede Dawson, and won it easily, for in fact, Dunn was by no means a strong player.
His swift victory appeared to delight Deede Dawson immensely.
“A very pretty mate I brought off there against you,” he declared. “I've not often seen a prettier. Now you try to solve that problem of mine, it's easy enough once you hit on the key move.”
Dunn thought to himself that there were other and more important problems which would soon be solved if only the key move could be discovered.
He said aloud that he would try what he could do, and Deede Dawson promised him half a sovereign if he solved it within a week.
“I mayn't manage it within a week,” said Dunn. “I don't say I will. But sooner or later I shall find it out.”
During all this time he had seen little of Ella, who appeared to come very little into the garden and who, when she did so, avoided him in a somewhat marked manner.
Her mother, Mrs. Dawson, was a little faded woman, with timid eyes and a frightened manner. Her health did not seem to be good, and Ella looked after her very assiduously. That she went in deadly fear of her husband was fairly evident, though he seemed to treat her always with great consideration and kindness and even with a show of affection, to which at times she responded and from which at other times she appeared to shrink with inexplicable terror.
“She doesn't know,” Dunn said to himself. “But she suspects —something.”
Ella, he still watched with the same care and secrecy, and sometimes he seemed to see her walking amidst the flowers as an angel of sweetness and laughing innocence; and sometimes he saw her, as it were, with the shadow of death around her beauty, and behind her gentle eyes and winning ways a great and horrible abyss.
Of one thing he was certain—her mind was troubled and she was not at ease; and it was plain, also, that she feared her smiling soft-spoken stepfather.
As the days passed, too, Dunn grew convinced that she was watching him all the time, even when she seemed most indifferent, as closely and as intently as he watched her.
“All watching together,” Dunn thought grimly. “It would be simple enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I suppose no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't very well be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here like this. I suppose he is simply waiting his time.”
As for the chess problem, that baffled him entirely. He said as much to Deede Dawson, who was very pleased, but would not tell him what the solution was.
“No, no, find it out for yourself,” he said, chuckling with a merriment in which, for once his cold eyes seemed to take full share.
“I'll go on trying,” said Dunn, and it grew to be quite a custom between them for Deede Dawson to ask him how he was getting on with the problem; and for Dunn to reply that he was still searching for the key move.
Several times little errands took Dunn into the village, where, discreetly listening to the current gossip, he learned that Mr. John Clive of Ramsdon Place had been injured in an attack made upon him by a gang of ferocious poachers—at least a dozen in number—but was making good progress towards recovery.
Also, he found that Mr. John Clive's visits to Bittermeads had not gone unremarked, or wholly uncriticized, since there was a vague feeling that a Mr. Clive of Ramsdon Place ought to make a better match.
“But a pretty face is all a young man thinks of,” said the more experienced; and on the whole, it seemed to be felt that the open attention Clive paid to Ella was at least easily to be understood.
Almost the first visit Clive paid, when he was allowed to venture out, was to Bittermeads; and Dunn, returning one afternoon from an errand, found him established on the lawn in the company of Ella, and looking little the worse for his adventure.
He and Ella seemed to be talking very animatedly, and Dunn took the opportunity to busy himself with some gardening work not far away, so that he could watch their behaviour.
He told himself it was necessary he should know in what relation they stood to each other, and as he heard them chatting and laughing together with great apparent friendliness and enjoyment, he remembered with considerable satisfaction how he had already broken one rib of Clive's, and he wished very much for an opportunity to break another.
For, without knowing why, he was beginning to conceive an intense dislike for Clive; and, also, it did not seem to him quite good taste for Ella to sit and chat and laugh with him so readily.
“But we were told,” he caught a stray remark of Ella's, “that it was a gang of at least a dozen that attacked you.”
“No,” answered Clive reluctantly. “No, I think there was only one. But he had a grip like a bear.”
“He must have been very strong,” remarked Ella thoughtfully.
“I would give fifty pounds to meet him again, and have it out in the light, when one could see what one was doing,” declared Clive with great vigour.
“Oh, you would, would you?” muttered Dunn to himself. “Well, one of these days I may claim that fifty.”
He looked round at Clive as he thought this, and Clive noticed him, and said:
“Is that a new man you've got there Miss Cayley? Doesn't he rather want a shave? Where on earth did Mr. Dawson pick him up?”
“Oh, he came here with the very best testimonials, and father engaged him on the spot,” answered Ella, touching her wrists thoughtfully. “He certainly is not very handsome, but then that doesn't matter, does it?”
She spoke more loudly than usual, and Dunn was certain she did so in order that he might hear what she said. So he had no scruple in lingering on pretence of being busy with a rose bush, and heard Clive say:
“Well, if he were one of my chaps, I should tell him to put the lawn-mower over his own face.”
Ella laughed amusedly.
“Oh, what an idea, Mr. Clive,” she cried, and Dunn thought to himself:
“Yes, one day I shall very certainly claim that fifty pounds.”
CHAPTER XII. AN AVOWAL
When Clive had gone that afternoon, Ella, who had accompanied him as far as the gate, and had from thence waved him a farewell, came back to the spot where Dunn was working.
She stood still, watching him, and he looked up at her and then went on with his work without speaking, for now, as always, the appalling thought was perpetually in his mind: “Must she not have known what it was she had with her in the car when she went driving that night?”
After a little, she turned away, as if disappointed that he took no notice of her presence.
At once he raised himself from the task he had been bending over, and stood moodily watching the slim, graceful figure, about which hung such clouds of doubt and dread, and she, turning around suddenly, as if she actually felt the impact of his gaze, saw him, and saw the strange expression in his eyes.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she asked quickly, her soft and gentle tones a little shrill, as though swift fear had come upon her.
“Like what?” he mumbled.
“Oh, you know,” she cried passionately. “Am I to be the next?” she asked.
He started, and looked at her wonderingly, asking himself if these words of hers bore the grim meaning that his mind instantly gave them.
Was it possible that if she did know something of what was going on in this quiet country house, during these peaceful autumn days, she knew it not as willing accomplice, but as a helpless, destined victim who saw no way of escape.
As if she feared she had said too much, she turned and began to walk away.
At once he followed.
“Stop one moment,” he exclaimed. “Miss Cayley.”
She obeyed, turning quickly to face him. They were both very pale, and both were under the influence of strong excitement. But between them there hung a thick cloud of doubt and dread that neither could penetrate.
All at once Dunn, unable to control himself longer, burst out with that question which for so long had hovered on his lips.
“Do you know,” he said, “do you know what you took away with you in the car that night I came here?”
“The packing-case, you meant,” she asked. “Of course I do; I helped to get it ready—what's the matter?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, though indeed he had staggered as beneath some sudden and violent blow. “Oh—did you?” he said, with an effort.
“Certainly,” she answered. “Now I've answered your question, will you answer me one? Why did you tell us your name was Charley Wright?”
“I knew a man of that name once,” he answered. “He's dead now.”
“I thought perhaps,” she said slowly and quite calmly, “that it was because you had seen the name written on a photograph in my room.”
“No, it wasn't that,” he answered gravely, and his doubts that for a moment had seemed so terribly confirmed, now came back again, for though she had said that she knew of the contents of the packing-case, yet, if that were really so, how was it conceivable that she should speak of such a thing so calmly?
And yet again, if she could do it, perhaps also she could talk of it without emotion. Once more there was fear in his eyes as he watched her, and her own were troubled and doubtful.
“Why do you have all that hair on your face?” she asked.
“Well, why shouldn't I?” he retorted. “It saves trouble.”
“Does it?” she said. “Do you know what it looks like—like a disguise?”
“A disguise?” he repeated. “Why should I want a disguise?”
“Do you think I'm quite a fool because I'm a woman?” she asked impatiently. “Do you suppose I couldn't see very well when you came that night that you were not an ordinary burglar? You had some reason of your own for breaking into this house. What was it?”
“I'll tell you,” he answered, “if you'll tell me truly what was in that packing-case?”
“Oh, now I understand,” she cried excitedly. “It was to find that out you came—and then Mr. Dawson made you help us get it away. That was splendid.”
He did not speak, for once more a kind of horror held him dumb, as it seemed to him that she really—knew.
She saw the mingled horror and bewilderment in his eyes, and she laughed lightly as though that amused her.
“Do you know,” she said, “I believe I guessed as much from the first, but I'm afraid Mr. Dawson was too clever for you—as he is for most people. Only then,” she added, wrinkling her brows as though a new point puzzled her, “why are you staying here like this?”
“Can't you guess that too?” he asked hoarsely.
“No,” she said, shaking her head with a frankly puzzled air. “No, I can't. That's puzzled me all the time. Do you know—I think you ought to shave?”
“Why?”
“A beard makes a good disguise,” she answered, “so good it's hardly fair for you to have it when I can't.”
“Perhaps you need it less,” he answered bitterly, “or perhaps no disguise could be so effective as the one you have already.”
“What's that?” she asked.
“Bright eyes, a pretty face, a clear complexion,” he answered.
He spoke with an extreme energy and bitterness that she did not in the least understand, and that quite took away from the words any suspicion of intentional rudeness.
“If I have all that, I suppose it's natural and not a disguise,” she remarked.
“My beard is natural too,” he retorted.
“All the same, I wish you would cut it off,” she answered. “I should like to see what you look like.”
She turned and walked away, and the more Dunn thought over this conversation, the less he felt he understood it.
What had she meant by that strange start and look she had given him when she had asked if she were to be the next? And when she asserted so confidently that she knew what was in the packing-case, was that true, or was she speaking under some mistaken impression, or had she wished to deceive him?
The more he thought, the more disturbed he felt, and every hour that passed he seemed to feel more and more strongly the influence of her gracious beauty, the horror of his suspicions of her.
The next day Clive came again, and again Ella seemed very pleased to see him, and again Dunn, hanging about in their vicinity, watched gloomily their friendly intercourse.
That Clive was in love with Ella seemed fairly certain; at any rate, he showed himself strongly attracted by her, and very eager for her company.
How she felt was more doubtful, though she made no concealment of the fact that she liked to see him, and found pleasure in having him there. Dunn, moving about near at hand, was aware of an odd impression that she knew he was watching them, and that she wished him to do so for several times he saw her glance in his direction.
He could always move with a most extraordinary lightness of foot, so that, big and clumsy as he seemed in build, he could easily go unheard and even unseen, and John Clive seemed to have little idea that he remained so persistently near at hand.
This gift or power of Dunn's he had acquired in far-off lands, where life may easily depend on the snapping of a twig or the right interpretation of a trampled grass-blade, and he was using it now, almost unconsciously, so as to make his presence near Ella and Clive as unobtrusive as possible, when his keen eye caught sight of a bush, of which leaves and branches were moving against the wind.
For that he knew there could be but one explanation, and when he walked round, so as to get behind this bush, he was not surprised to see Deede Dawson crouching there, his eyes very intent and eager, his unsmiling lips drawn back to show his white teeth in a threatening grin or snarl.
Near by him was his little chess-board and men, and as Dunn came up behind he looked round quickly and saw him.
For a moment his eyes were deadly and his hand dropped to his hip-pocket, where Dunn had reason to believe he carried a formidable little automatic pistol.
But almost at once his expression changed, and with a gesture he invited Dunn to crouch down at his side. For a little they remained like this, and then Deede Dawson moved cautiously away, signing to Dunn to follow him.
When they were at a safe distance he turned to Dunn and said
“Is he serious, do you think, or is he playing with her? I'll make him pay for it if he is.”
“How should I know?” answered Dunn, quite certain it was no such anxiety as this that had set Deede Dawson watching them so carefully.
Deede Dawson seemed to feel that the explanation he had offered was a little crude, and he made no attempt to enlarge on it.
With a complete change of manner, with his old smile on his lips and his eyes as dark and unsmiling as ever, he said,
“Pretty girl, Ella—isn't she?”
“She is more than pretty, she is beautiful,” Dunn answered with an emphasis that made Deede Dawson look at him sharply.
“Think so?” he said, and gave his peculiar laugh that had so little mirth in it. “Well, you're right, she is. He'll be a lucky man that gets her—and she's to be had, you know. But I'll tell you one thing, it won't be John Clive.”
“I thought it rather looked,” observed Dunn, “as if Miss Cayley might mean—”
Deede Dawson interrupted with a quick jerk of his head.
“Never mind what she means, it'll be what I mean,” he declared. “I am boss; and what's more, she knows it. I believe in a man being master in his own family. Don't you?”
“If he can be,” retorted Dunn. “But still, a girl naturally—”
“Naturally nothing,” Deede Dawson interrupted again. “I tell you what I want for her, a man I can trust—trust—that's the great thing. Some one I can trust.”
He nodded at Dunn as he said this and then walked off, and Dunn felt very puzzled as he, too, turned away.
“Was he offering her to me?” he asked himself. “It almost sounded like it. If so, it must mean there's something he wants from me pretty bad. She's beautiful enough to turn any man's head—but did she know about poor Charlie's murder?—help in it, perhaps?—as she said she did with the packing-case.”
He paused, and all his body was shaken by strong and fierce emotion.
“God help me,” he groaned. “I believe I would marry her tomorrow if I could, innocent or guilty.”
CHAPTER XIII. INVISIBLE WRITING
It was the next day that there arrived by the morning post a letter for Dunn.
Deede Dawson raised his eyebrows slightly when he saw it; and he did not hand it on until he had made himself master of its contents, though that did not prove to be very enlightening or interesting. The note, in fact, merely expressed gratification at the news that Dunn had secured steady work, a somewhat weak hope that he would keep it, and a still fainter hope that now perhaps he would be able to return the ten shillings borrowed, apparently from the writer, at some time in the past.
Mr. Deede Dawson, in spite of the jejune nature of the communication, read it very carefully and indeed even went so far as to examine the letter through a powerful magnifying-glass.
But he made no discovery by the aid of that instrument, and he neglected, for no man thinks of everything, to expose the letter to a gentle heat, which was what Dunn did when, presently, he received it, apparently unopened and with not the least sign to show that it had been tampered with in any way whatever.
Gradually, however, as Dunn held it to the fire, there appeared between the lines fresh writing, which he read very eagerly, and which ran:
“Jane Dunsmore, born 1830, married, against family wishes, John Clive and had one son, John, killed early this year in a motor-car accident, leaving one son, John, now of Ramsdon Place and third in line of succession to the Wreste Abbey property.”
When he had read the message thus strangely and with such precaution conveyed to him, Dunn burnt the letter and went that day about his work in a very grave and thoughtful mood.
“I knew it couldn't be a mere coincidence,” he mused. “It wasn't possible. I must manage to warn him, somehow; but, ten to one, he won't believe a word, and I don't know that I blame him—I shouldn't in his place. And he might go straight to Deede Dawson and ruin everything. I don't know that it wouldn't be wiser and safer to say nothing for the present, till I'm more sure of my ground—and then it may be too late.”
“Just possibly,” he thought, “the job Deede Dawson clearly thinks he can make me useful in may have something to do with Clive. If so, I may be able to see my way more clearly.”
As it happened, Clive was away for a few days on some business he had to attend to, so that for the present Dunn thought he could afford to wait.
But during the week-end Clive returned, and on the Monday he came again to Bittermeads.
It was never very agreeable to Dunn to have to stand aloof while Clive was laughing and chatting and drinking his tea with Ella and her mother, and of those feelings of annoyance and vexation he made this time a somewhat ostentatious show.
That his manner of sulky anger and resentment did not go unnoticed by Deede Dawson he was very sure, but nothing was said at the time.
Next morning Deede Dawson called him while he was busy in the garage and insisted on his trying to solve another chess problem.
“I haven't managed the other yet,” Dunn protested. “It's not too easy to hit on these key-moves.”
“Never mind try this one,” Deede Dawson said; and Ella, going out for a morning stroll with her mother, saw them thus, poring together over the travelling chess-board.
“They seem busy, don't they?” she remarked. “Father is making quite a friend of that man.”
“I don't like him,” declared Mrs. Dawson, quite vigorously for her. “I'm sure a man with such a lot of hair on his face can't be really nice, and I thought he was inclined to be rude yesterday.”
“Yes,” agreed Ella. “Yes, he was. I think Mr. Clive was a little vexed, though he took no notice, I suppose he couldn't very well.”
“I don't like the man at all,” Mrs. Dawson repeated. “All that hair, too. Do you like him?”
“I don't know,” Ella answered, and after she and her mother had returned from their walk she took occasion to find Dunn in the garden and ask him some trifling question or another.
“You are interested in chess?” she remarked, when he had answered her.
“All problems are interesting till one finds the answer to them,” he replied.
“There's one I know of,” she retorted. “I wish you would solve for me.”
“Tell me what it is,” he said quickly. “Will you?”
She shook her head slightly, but she was watching him very intently from her clear, candid eyes, and now, as always, her nearness to him, the infinite appeal he found in her every look and movement, the very fragrance of her hair, bore him away beyond all purpose and intention.
“Tell me what it is,” he said again. “Won't you? Miss Cayley, if you and I were to trust each other—it's not difficult to see there's something troubling you.”
“Most people have some trouble or another,” she answered evasively.
He came a little nearer to her, and instead of the gruff, harsh tones he habitually used, his voice was singularly pleasant and low as he said:
“People who are in trouble need help, Miss Cayley. Will you let me help you?”
“You can't,” she answered, shaking her head. “No one could.”
“How can you tell that?” he asked eagerly. “Perhaps I know more already than you think.”
“I daresay you do,” she said slowly. “I have thought that a long time. Will you tell me one thing?—Are you his friend or not?”
There was no need for Dunn to ask to whom the pronoun she used referred.
“I am so much not his friend,” he answered as quietly and deliberately as she had spoken. “That it's either his life or mine.”
At that she drew back in a startled way as though his words had gone beyond her expectations.
“How do I know I can trust you?” she said presently, half to herself, half to him.
“You can,” he said, and it was as though he flung the whole of his enigmatic and vivid personality into those two words.
“You can,” he said again. “Absolutely.”
“I must think,” she muttered, pressing her hands to her head. “So much depends—how can I trust you? Why should I—why?”
“Because I'll trust you first,” he answered with a touch of exultation in his manner. “Listen to me and I'll tell you everything. And that means I put my life in your hands. Well, that's nothing; I would do that any time; but other people's lives will be in your power, too—yes, and everything I'm here for, everything. Now listen.”
“Not now,” she interrupted sharply. “He may be watching, listening—he generally is.” Again there was no need between them to specify to whom the pronoun referred. “Will you meet me tonight near the sweet-pea border—about nine?”
She glided away as she spoke without waiting for him to answer, and as soon as he was free from the magic of her presence, reaction came and he was torn by a thousand doubts and fears and worse.
“Why, I'm mad, mad,” he groaned. “I've no right to tell what I said I would, no right at all.”
And again there returned to him his vivid, dreadful memory of how she had started on that midnight drive with her car so awfully laden.
And again there returned to him his old appalling doubt:
“Did she not know?”
And though he would willingly have left his life in her hands, he knew he had no right to put that of others there, and yet it seemed to him he must keep the appointment and the promise he had made.
About nine that evening, then, he made his way to the sweet-pea border, though, as he went, he resolved that he would not tell her what he had said he would.
Because he trusted his own strength so little when he was with her, he confirmed this resolution by an oath he swore to himself: and even that he was not certain would be a sure protection against the witchery she wielded.
So it was with a mind doubtful and troubled more than it had ever been since the beginning of these things that he came to the border where the sweet-peas grew, and saw a dark shadow already close by them.
But when he came a little nearer he saw that it was not Ella who was there but Deede Dawson and his first thought was that she had betrayed him.
“That you, Dunn?” Deede Dawson hailed him in his usual pleasant, friendly manner.
“Yes,” Dunn answered warily, keeping himself ready for any eventuality.
Deede Dawson took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it and offered one to Dunn, who refused it abruptly.
Deede Dawson laughed at that in his peculiar, mirthless way.
“Am I being the third that's proverbially no company?” he asked. “Were you expecting to find some one else here? I thought I saw a white frock vanish just as I came up.”
Dunn made no answer, and Deede Dawson continued after a pause
“That's why I waited. You are being just a little bit rapid in this affair, aren't you?”
“I don't know why. You said something, didn't you?” muttered Dunn, beginning to think that, after all, Deede Dawson's presence here was due to accident—or rather to his unceasing and unfailing watchfulness, and not to any treachery of Ella's.
“Yes, I did, didn't I?” he agreed pleasantly. “But you are a working gardener taken on out of charity to give you a chance and keep you out of gaol, and you are looking a little high when you think of your master's ward and daughter, aren't you?”
“There was a time when I shouldn't have thought so,” answered Dunn.
“We're talking of the present, my good man,” Deede Dawson said impatiently. “If you want the girl you must win her. It can be done, but it won't be easy.”
“Tell me how,” said Dunn.
“Oh, that's going too fast and too far,” answered the other with his mirthless laugh. “Now, there's Mr. John Clive—what about him?”
“I'll answer for him,” replied Dunn slowly and thickly. “I've put better men than John Clive out of my way before today.”
“That's the way to talk,” cried Deede Dawson. “Dunn, dare you play a big game for big stakes?”
“Try me,” said Dunn.
“If I showed you,” Deede Dawson's voice sank to a whisper, “if I showed you a pretty girl for a wife—a fortune to win—what would you say?”
“Try me,” said Dunn again, and then, making his voice as low and hoarse as was Dunn's, he asked:
“Is it Clive?”
“Later—perhaps,” answered Deede Dawson. “There's some one else—first. Are you ready?”
“Try me,” said Dunn for the third time, and as he spoke his quick ear caught the faint sound of a retreating footstep, and he told himself that Ella must have lingered near and had perhaps heard all they said.
“Try me,” he said once more, speaking more loudly and clearly this time.
CHAPTER XIV. LOVE-MAKING AT NIGHT
Dunn went to his room that night with the feeling that a crisis was approaching. And he wished very greatly that he knew how much Ella had overheard of his talk with her stepfather, and what interpretation she had put upon it.
He determined that in the morning he would take the very first opportunity he could find of speaking to her.
But in the morning it appeared that Mrs. Dawson had had a bad night, and was very unwell, and Ella hardly stirred from her side all day.
Even when Clive called in the afternoon she would not come down, but sent instead a message begging to be excused because of her mother's indisposition, and Dunn, from a secure spot in the garden, watched the young man retire, looking very disconsolate.
This day, too, Dunn saw nothing of Deede Dawson, for that gentleman immediately after breakfast disappeared without saying anything to anybody, and by night had still not returned.
Dunn therefore was left entirely to himself, and to him the day seemed one of the longest he had ever spent.
That Ella remained so persistently with her mother troubled him a good deal, for he did not think such close seclusion on her part could be really necessary.
He was inclined to fear that Ella had overheard enough of what had passed between him and Deede Dawson to rouse her mistrust, and that she was therefore deliberately keeping out of his way.
Then too, he was troubled in another fashion by Deede Dawson's absence, for he was afraid it might mean that plans were being prepared, or possibly action being taken, that might mature disastrously before he himself was ready to act.
All day this feeling of unrest and apprehension continued, and at night when he went upstairs to bed it was stronger than ever. He felt convinced now that Ella was deliberately avoiding him. But then, if she distrusted him, that must be because she feared he was on her stepfather's side, and if it seemed to her that who was on his side was of necessity an object of suspicion to herself, then there could be no such bond of dread and guilt between them as any guilty knowledge on her part of Wright's death would involve.
The substantial proof this exercise in logic appeared to afford of Ella's innocence brought him much comfort, but did not lighten his sense of apprehension and unrest, for he thought that in this situation in which he found himself his doubts of Ella had merely been turned into doubts on Ella's part of himself, and that the one was just as likely as the other to end disastrously.
“Though I don't know what I can do,” he muttered as he stood in his attic, “if I gain Deede Dawson's confidence I lose Ella's, and if I win Ella's, Deede Dawson will at once suspect me.”
He went over to the window and looked out, supporting himself on his elbows, and gazing moodily into the darkness.
As he stood there a faint sound came softly to his ear through the stillness of the quiet night in which nothing stirred.
He listened, and heard it again. Beyond doubt some one was stirring in the garden below, moving about there very cautiously and carefully, and at once Dunn glided from the room and down the stairs with all that extraordinary lightness of tread and agility of movement of which his heavy body and clumsy-looking build gave so small promise.
He had not been living so many days in the house without having taken certain precautions, of which one had been to secure for himself a swift and silent egress whenever necessity might arise.
Keys to both the front and back doors were in his possession, and the passage window on the ground floor he could at need lift bodily from its frame, leaving ample room for passage either in or out. This was the method of departure he chose now since he did not know but that the doors might be watched.
Lifting the window down, he swung himself outside, replacing behind him the window so that it appeared to be as firmly in position as ever, but could be removed again almost instantly should need arise.
Once outside he listened again, and though at first everything was quiet, presently he heard again a cautious step going to and fro at a little distance.
Crouching in the shadow of the house, he listened intently, and soon was able to assure himself that there was but one footstep and that he would have only one individual to deal with.
“It won't be Deede Dawson's,” he thought to himself, “but it may very likely be some one waiting for him to return. I must find out who—and why.”
Slipping through the darkness of the night, with whose shadows he seemed to melt and mingle, as though he were but another one of them, he moved quickly in the direction of these cautious footsteps he had listened to.
They had ceased now, and the silence was profound, for those faint multitudinous noises of the night that murmur without ceasing in the woods and fields are less noticeable near the habitations of men.
A little puzzled, Dunn paused to listen again and once more crept forward a careful yard or two, and then lay still, feeling it would not be safe to venture further till he was more sure of his direction, and till some fresh sound to guide him reached his ears.
He had not long to wait, for very soon, from quite close by, he heard something that surprised and perplexed him equally—a deep, long-drawn sigh.
Again he heard it, and in utter wonder asked himself who this could be who came into another person's garden late at night to stand and sigh, and what such a proceeding could mean.
Once more he heard the sigh, deeper even than before, and then after it a low murmur in which at first he could distinguish nothing, but then caught the name of Ella being whispered over and over again.
He bent forward, more and more puzzled, trying in vain to make out something in the darkness, and then from under a tree, whose shadow had hitherto been a complete concealment, there moved forward a form so tall and bulky there could be little doubt whom it belonged to.
“John Clive—what on earth—!” Dunn muttered, his bewilderment increasing, and the next moment he understood and had some difficulty in preventing himself from bursting out laughing as there reached him the unmistakable sound of a kiss lightly blown through the air.
Clive was sending a kiss through the night towards Ella's room and his nocturnal visit was nothing more than the whim of a love-sick youth.
With Dunn, his first amusement gave way almost at once to an extreme annoyance.
For, in the first place, these proceedings seemed to him exceedingly impertinent, for what possible right did Clive imagine he had to come playing the fool like this, sighing in the dark and blowing kisses like a baby to its mammy?
And secondly, unless he were greatly mistaken, John Clive might just as sensibly and safely have dropped overboard from a ship in mid-Atlantic for a swim as come to indulge his sentimentalities in the Bittermeads garden at night.
“You silly ass!” he said in a voice that was very low, but very distinct and very full of an extreme disgust and anger.
Clive fairly leaped in the air with his surprise, and turned and made a sudden dash at the spot whence Dunn's voice had come, but where Dunn no longer was.
“What the blazes—?” he began, spluttering in ineffectual rage. “You—you—!”
“You silly ass!” Dunn repeated, no less emphatically than before.
Clive made another rush that a somewhat prickly bush very effectually stopped.
“You—who are you—where—what—how dare you?” he gasped as he picked himself up and tried to disentangle himself from the prickles.
“Don't make such a row,” said Dunn from a new direction. “Do you want to raise the whole neighbourhood? Haven't you played the fool enough? If you want to commit suicide, why can't you cut your throat quietly and decently at home, instead of coming alone to the garden at Bittermeads at night?”
There was a note of sombre and intense conviction in his voice that penetrated even the excited mind of the raging Clive.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and then:
“Who are you?”
“Never mind who I am,” answered Dunn. “And I mean just what I say. You might as well commit suicide out of hand as come fooling about here alone at night.”
“You're crazy, you're talking rubbish!” Clive exclaimed.
“I'm neither crazy nor talking rubbish,” answered Dunn. “But if you persist in making such a row I shall take myself off and leave you to see the thing through by yourself and get yourself knocked on the head any way you like best.”
“Oh, I'm beginning to understand,” said Clive. “I suppose you're one of my poaching friends—are you? Look here, if you know who it was who attacked me the other night you can earn fifty pounds any time you like.”
“Your poaching friends, as you call them,” answered Dunn, “are most likely only anxious to keep out of your way. This has nothing to do with them.”
“Well, come nearer and let me see you,” Clive said. “You needn't be afraid. You can't expect me to take any notice of some one I can't see, talking rubbish in the dark.”
“I don't much care whether you take any notice or not,” answered Dunn. “You can go your own silly way if you like, it's nothing to me. I've warned you, and if you care to listen I'll make my warning a little clearer. And one thing I will tell you—one man already has left this house hidden in a packing-case with a bullet through his brain, and I will ask you a question: 'How did your father die?'”
“He was killed in a motor-car accident,” answered Clive hesitatingly, as though not certain whether to continue this strange and puzzling conversation or break it off.
“There are many accidents,” said Dunn. “And that may have been one, for all I know, or it may not. Well, I've warned you. I had to do that. You'll probably go on acting like a fool and believing that nowadays murders don't happen, but if you're wise, you'll go home to bed and run no more silly risks.”
“Of course I'm not going to pay the least attention,” began Clive, when Dunn interrupted him sharply.
“Hush! hush!” he said sharply. “Crouch down: don't make a sound, don't stir or move. Hush!”
For Dunn's sharp ear had caught the sound of approaching footsteps that were drawing quickly nearer, and almost instantly he guessed who it would be, for there were few pedestrians who came along that lonely road so late at night.
There were two of them apparently, and at the gate of Bittermeads they halted.
“Well, good night,” said then a voice both Dunn and Clive knew at once for Deede Dawson's. “That was a pretty check by the knight I showed you, wasn't it?”
A thin, high, somewhat peculiar voice cursed Deede Dawson, chess, and the pretty mate by the knight very comprehensively.
“It's young Clive that worries me,” said the voice when it had finished these expressions of disapproval.
“No need,” answered Deede Dawson's voice with that strange mirthless laugh of his. “No need at all; before the week's out he'll trouble no one any more.”
When he heard this, Clive would have betrayed himself by some startled movement or angry exclamation had not Dunn's heavy hand upon his shoulder held him down with a grave and steady pressure there was no disregarding.
Deede Dawson and his unknown companion went on towards the house, and admitted themselves, and as the door closed behind them Clive swung round sharply in the darkness towards Dunn.
“What's it mean?” he muttered in the bewildered and slightly-pathetic voice of a child at once frightened and puzzled. “What for? Why should any one—?”
“It's a long story,” began Dunn, and paused.
He saw that the unexpected confirmation of his warning Clive had thus received from Deede Dawson's own lips had rendered his task of convincing Clive immensely more easy.
What he had wished to say had now at least a certainty of being listened to, a probability of being believed, and there was at any rate, he supposed, no longer the danger he had before dreaded of Clive's going straight with the whole story to Deede Dawson in arrogant disbelief of a word of it.
But he still distrusted Clive's discretion, and feared some rash and hasty action that might ruin all his plans, and allow Deede Dawson time to escape.
Besides he felt that the immediate task before him was to find out who Deede Dawson's new companion was, and, if possible, overhear anything they might have to say to each other.
That, and the discovery of the new-comer's identity, might prove to be of the utmost importance.
“I can't explain now,” he said hurriedly. “I'll see you tomorrow sometime. Don't do anything till you hear from me. Your life may depend on it—and other people's lives that matter more.”
“Tell me who you are first,” Clive said quickly, incautiously raising his voice. “I can manage to take care of myself all right, I think, but I want to know who you are.”
“H-ssh!” muttered Dunn. “Not so loud.”
“There was a fellow made an attack on me one night a little while ago,” Clive went on unheedingly. “You remind me of him somehow. I don't think I trust you, my man. I think you had better come along to the police with me.”
But Dunn's sharp ears had caught the sound of the house door opening cautiously, and he guessed that Deede Dawson had taken the alarm and was creeping out to see who invaded so late at night the privacy of his garden.
“Clear out quick! Quiet! If you want to go on living. I'll stop them from following if I can. If you make the least noise you're done for.”
Most likely the man they had seen in his company would be with him, and both of them would be armed. Neither Clive nor Dunn had a weapon, and Dunn saw the danger of the position and took the only course available.
“Go,” he whispered fiercely into Clive's ear.
CHAPTER XV. THE SOUND OF A SHOT
He melted away into the darkness as he spoke, and through the night he slipped, one shadow more amongst many, from tree to bush, from bush to tree. Across a patch of open grass he crawled on his hands and knees; and once lay flat on his face when against the skyline he saw a figure he was sure was Deede Dawson's creep by a yard or two on his right hand.
On his left another shadow showed, distinguishable in the night only because it moved.
In a moment both shadows were gone, secret and deadly in the dark, and Dunn was very sure that Clive's life and his own both hung upon a slender chance, for if either of them was discovered the leaping bullet would do the rest.
It would be safe and easy—suspected burglars in a garden at midnight—nothing could be said. He lay very still with his face to the dewy sod, and all the night seemed full to him of searching footsteps and of a swift and murderous going to and fro.
He heard distinctly from the road a sudden, muffled sound as Clive in the darkness blunderingly missed his footing and fell upon one knee.
“That's finished him,” Dunn thought grimly, his ears straining for the sharp pistol report that would tell Clive's tale was done, and then he was aware of a cat, a favourite of Ella's and often petted by himself, that was crouching near by under a tree, most likely much puzzled and alarmed by this sudden irruption of hurrying men into its domain. Instantly Dunn saw his chance, and seizing the animal, lifted it and threw it in the direction where he guessed Deede Dawson to be.
His guess was good and fortune served him well, for the tabby flying caterwauling through the air alighted almost exactly in front of Deede Dawson on top of a small bush. For a moment it hung there, quite unhurt, but very frightened, and emitted a yell, then fled.
In the quietness the tumult of its scrambling flight sounded astonishingly loud, so that it sounded as through a miniature avalanche had been let loose in the garden.
“Only cats,” Deede Dawson exclaimed disgustedly, and from behind, nearer the house, Dunn called:
“Who's there? What is it? What's the matter? Is it Mr. Dawson? Is anything wrong?”
“I think there is,” said Deede Dawson softly. “I think, perhaps, there is. What are you doing out here at this time of night, Charley Wright?”
“I heard a noise and came down to see what it was,” answered Dunn. “There was a light in the breakfast-room, but I didn't see any one, and the front door was open so I came out here. Is anything wrong?”
“That's what I want to know,” said Deede Dawson. “Come back to the house with me. If any one is about, he can just take himself off.”
He spoke the last sentence loudly, and Dunn took it as a veiled instruction to his companion to depart.
He realized that if he had saved Clive he had done so at the cost of missing the best opportunity that had yet come his way of obtaining very important, and, perhaps, decisive information.
To have discovered the identity of this stranger who had come visiting Deede Dawson might have meant much, and he told himself angrily that Clive's safety had certainly not been worth purchasing at the cost of such a lost chance, though he supposed that was a point on which Clive himself might possibly entertain a different opinion.
But now there was nothing for it but to go quietly back to the house, for clearly Deede Dawson's suspicions were aroused and he had his revolver ready in his hand.
“I suppose it was only cats all the time,” he observed, with apparent unconcern. “But at first I made sure there were no burglars in the house.”
“And I suppose,” suggested Deede Dawson. “You think one burglar's enough in a household.”
“I don't mean to have any one else mucking around,” growled Dunn in answer.
“Very admirable sentiments,” said Deede Dawson and asked several more questions that showed he still entertained some suspicion of Dunn, and was not altogether satisfied that his appearance in the garden was quite innocent, or that the noise heard there was due solely to cats.
Dunn answered as best he could, and Deede Dawson listened and smiled, and smiled again, and watched him from eyes that did not smile at all.
“Oh, well,” Deede Dawson said at last, with a yawn. “Anyhow, it's all right now. You had better get along back to bed, and I'll lock up.” He accompanied Dunn into the hall and watched him ascend the stairs, and as Dunn went slowly up them he felt by no means sure that soon a bullet would not come questing after him, searching for heart or brain.
For he was sure that Deede Dawson still suspected him, and he knew Deede Dawson to be very sudden and swift in action. But nothing happened, he reached the broad, first landing in safety, and he was about to go on up to his attic when he beard a door at the end of the passage open and saw Ella appear in her dressing-gown.
“What is the matter?” she asked, in a low voice.
“It's all right,” he answered. “There was a noise in the garden, and I came down to see what it was, but it's only cats.”
“Oh, is that all?” she said distrustfully.
“Yes,” he answered, in a lower voice still, he said:
“Will you tell me something? Do you know any one who talks in a very peculiar shrill high voice?”
She did not answer, and, after a moment's hesitation, went back into her room and closed the door behind her.
He went on up to his attic with the feeling that she could have answered if she had wished to, and lay down in a troubled and dispirited mood.
For he was sure now that Ella mistrusted him and would give him no assistance, and that weighed upon him greatly, as did also his conviction that what it behoved him above all else to know—the identity of the man who, in this affair, stood behind Deede Dawson and made use of his fierce and fatal energies—he had had it in his power to discover and had failed to make use of the opportunity.
“I would rather know that,” he said to himself, “than save a dozen Clives ten times over.” Though again it occurred to him that on this point Clive might hold another opinion. “If he hadn't made such a blundering row I might have got to know who Deede Dawson's visitor was. I must try to get a word with Clive tomorrow by hook or crook, though I daresay Deede Dawson will be very much on the lookout.”
However, next morning Deede Dawson not only made no reference to the events of the night, but had out the car and went off immediately after breakfast without saying when he would be back.
As soon after his departure as possible, Dunn also set out and took his way through the woods towards Ramsdon Place on the look-out for an opportunity to speak to Clive unobserved.
He thought it most likely that Clive would be drawn towards the vicinity of Bittermeads by the double fascination of curiosity and fear, and he supposed that if he waited and watched in the woods he would be sure presently to see him.
But though he remained for long hidden at a spot whence he could command the road to Bittermeads from Ramsdon Place, he saw nothing at all of Clive, and the sunny lazy morning was well advanced when he was startled by the sound of a gun shot some distance away.
“A keeper shooting rabbits, I suppose,” he thought, looking round just in time to see Ella running through the wood from the direction whence the sound of the shot had seemed to come, and then vanish again with a quick look behind her into the heart of a close-growing spinney.
CHAPTER XVI. IN THE WOOD
There had been an air of haste, almost of furtiveness, about this swift appearance and more swift vanishing of Ella, that made Dunn ask himself uneasily what errand she could have been on.
He hesitated for a moment, half expecting to see her return again, or that there would be some other development, but he heard and saw nothing.
He caught no further glimpse of Ella, whom the green depths of the spinney hid well; and he heard no more shots.
After a little, he left the spot where he had been waiting and went across to where he had seen her.
The exact spot where she had entered the spinney was marked, for she had broken the branch of a young tree in brushing quickly by it, and a bramble she had trodden on had not yet lifted itself from the earth to which she had pressed it.
By other signs like these, plain enough and easy to read—for she had hurried on in great haste and without care, almost, indeed, as one who fled from some great danger or from some dreadful sight, and who had no thought to spare save for flight alone—he followed the way she had gone till it took him to a beaten public path that almost at once led over a stile to the high road which passed in front of Bittermeads. Along this beaten path, trodden by many, Ella's light foot had left no perceptible mark, and Dunn made no attempt to track her further, since it seemed certain that she had been simply hurrying back home.
“She was badly frightened over something or another,” he said to himself. “She never stopped once, she went as straight and quick as she could. I wonder what upset her like that?”
He went back the way he had come, and at the spot where he had seen her enter the spinney he set to work to pick up her trail in the direction whence she had appeared, for he thought that if he followed it he might find out what had been the cause of her evident alarm.
The ground was much more open here, and the trail correspondingly more difficult to follow, for often there was little but a trodden blade of grass to show where she had passed; and sometimes, where the ground was bare and hard, there was no visible sign left at all.
Once or twice at such places he was totally at fault, but by casting round in a wide circle like a dog scenting his prey he was able to pick up her tracks again.
They seemed to lead right into the depths of the wood, through lonely spots that only the keepers knew, and where others seldom came.
But that he was on the right trail he presently had proof, for on the bank of a lovely and hidden dell he picked up a tiny embroidered handkerchief with the initials “E. C.” worked in one corner.
It had evidently been lying there only a very short time, for it was perfectly clean and fresh, and he picked it up and held it for a moment in his hands, smiling to himself with pleasure at its daintiness and smallness, and yet still uneasily wondering why she had come here, and why she had fled away again so quickly.
The morning was very fine and calm, though in the west heavy clouds were gathering and seemed to promise rain soon. But overhead the sun shone brightly, the air was calm and warm, and the little dell on whose verge he stood a very pretty and pleasant place.
A small stream wandered through it, the grass that carpeted it was green and soft, near by a great oak stood alone and spread its majestic branches far out on every side to give cool shelter from the summer heat.
The thought occurred to Dunn that this was just such a pretty and secluded spot as two lovers might choose to exchange their vows in, and the thought stung him intolerably as he wondered whether it was for such a reason that Ella had come here.
But if so, why had she fled away again in such strange haste?
He walked on slowly for a yard or two, not now attempting to follow Ella's trail, for he had the impression that this was her destination, and that she had gone no further than here.
All at once he caught sight of the form of a man lying hidden in the long grass that nearly covered him from view just where the far-spreading branches of the great oak ceased to give their shade.
At first Dunn thought he was sleeping, and he was just about to call out to him when something in the rigidity of the man's position and his utter stillness struck him unpleasantly.
He went quickly to the man's side, and the face of dead John Clive, supine and still, stared up at him from unseeing eyes.
He had been killed by a charge of small shot fired at such close quarters that his breast was shot nearly in two and his clothing and flesh charred by the burning powder.
But Dunn, standing staring down at the dead man, saw not him, but Ella. Ella fleeing away silently and furtively through the trees as from some sight or scene of guilt and terror.
He stooped closer over the dead man. Death had been instantaneous. Of course there could be no doubt. From one hand a piece of folded paper had fallen.
Dunn picked it up, and saw that there was writing on it, and he read it over slowly.
“Dear Mr. Clive,—Can you meet me as before by the oak
tomorrow at eleven? There is something I very much want to
say to you.—Yours sincerely,
“ELLA CAYLEY.”
Was that, then, the lure which had brought John Clive to meet his death? Was this the bait that had made him disregard the warnings he had received, and come alone to so quiet and solitary a spot?
Dunn had a moment of quick envy of him; he lay so quiet and still in the warm sunshine, with nothing to trouble or distress him any more for ever.
Then, stumblingly and heavily, Dunn turned an went away, and his eyes were very hard, his bearded face set like iron.
Like a man in a dream, or one obsessed by some purpose before which all other things faded into nothingness, he went his way, the way Ella had taken in her flight—through the wood, through the spinney to the public foot-path, and then out on the road that led to Bittermeads.
When he entered the garden there, he saw Ella sitting quietly on a deck-chair close to her mother, quietly busy with some fancy work.
He could not believe it; he stood watching in bewilderment, appalled and wondering, watching her white hands flashing busily to and fro, hearing the soft murmur of her voice as now and then she addressed some remark to her mother, who nodded drowsily in the sunshine over a book open on her knees.
Ella was dressed all in white; she had flung aside her hat, and the quiet breeze played in her fair hair, and stirred gently a stray curl that had escaped across her broad low brow.
The picture was one of gentleness and peace and an innocence that thought no wrong, and yet with his own eyes he had seen her not an hour ago fleeing with hurried steps and fearful looks from the spot where lay a murdered man.
Somewhat unsteadily, for he felt so little master of himself, it was as though he had no longer even control of his own limbs, Dunn stumbled forward, and Ella looked up and saw him, and saw also that he was looking at her very strangely.
She rose and came towards him, her needlework still in her hands.
“What is the matter?” she said in a voice of some concern. “Are you ill?”
“No,” he answered. “No. I've been looking for Mr. Clive.”
“Have you?” she said, a little surprised apparently, but in no way flustered or disturbed. “Did you find him?”
Dunn did not answer, for indeed he could not, and she said again:
“Did you find him?”
Still he made no answer, for it seemed to him those four words were the most awful that any one had ever uttered since the beginning of the world.
“What is the matter?” she said again. “Is anything the matter?”
“Oh, no, no,” he said, and he gave himself a little shake like a man wakening from deep sleep and trying to remember where he was.
“Well, then,” she said.
“I found Mr. Clive,” he said hardly and abruptly. And he repeated again: “Yes, I found him.”
They remained standing close together and facing each other, and he saw her as through a veil of red, and it was as though a red mist enveloped her, and where her shadow lay the earth was red, he thought, and where she put her foot it seemed to him red tracks remained, and never before had he understood how utterly he loved her and must love her, now and for evermore.
But he uttered no sound and made no movement, only stood very still, thinking to himself how dreadful it was that he loved her so greatly.
She was not paying him, any attention now. A rose bush was near by, and she picked one of the flowers, and arranged it carefully at her waist.
She said, still looking at him:
“Do you know—I wish you would shave yourself?”
“Why?” he mumbled.