Beresford could find no words in which to express his surprise and
chagrin.
He could only stare, speechlessly, at the detective waiting for an
explanation.
He saw that Landon looked pale and nervous.
“You are ill!” he exclaimed, at last, as if that explained all.
“No, I am not ill, but--I--have had--a great shock--so that I can not
bring myself to go on with the search for Miss Fane. You must employ
some one else.”
“But who can succeed where you have failed, Landon? You, the bravest,
cleverest detective in New York!”
The detective smiled, as if gratified at this praise, then sighed:
“You would not call me brave if you knew all. You could hardly credit
it, that a New York detective, in this prosaic nineteenth century,
could feel a fear of--the supernatural!”
He paled and shuddered as at some ghastly recollection, then continued:
“I am coward, I confess it, Mr. Beresford. I that never flinched at
the sight of danger in mortal shape, have struck my colors and fled
from--ghosts!”
“Explain!” cried the young man, anxiously; then seeing the extreme
pallor of his visitor, hastily rang for wine. “Drink; you will feel
better,” he said.
Landon gulped down half a glass, and the color returned to his pallid
face, as he said:
“I have been searching Suicide Place again for Miss Fane.”
“Yes?” eagerly.
“I have not found the missing girl, Mr. Beresford, but I have learned
that the gossips of Mount Vernon told the truth when they declared that
Suicide Place is haunted by evil spirits!”
Every word dropped separately with awful emphasis, and Landon’s face,
white and solemn, with deep, troubled eyes, attested his implicit faith
in his own declaration.
Beresford was too shocked to reply. He waited mutely for more.
Landon drained his glass, and continued:
“When I had searched New York vainly for a week, I concluded that Miss
Fane had perhaps ventured back to Suicide Place. I went down there
three days ago. The very first night I made a startling discovery.”
“What?”
“I found that Otho Maury and his eldest sister, the beautiful Maybelle,
were in the habit of spending the wee small hours of each night
secretly within the portals of Suicide Place.”
“Great heavens! for what sinister purpose, Landon?”
“It occurred to me that they had somehow imprisoned Miss Fane in the
house, and were keeping her there to force her consent to a marriage
with Otho, who is madly in love with the little beauty.”
“It is very probable. But you--you found out----”
“No.”
As that strange word dropped from the detective’s lips, Beresford
glared at him as if he would spring at his throat.
“You--you dared to come away and leave her to their mercy, you coward!”
he groaned.
Landon paled and shuddered, but he fronted the other’s wrath
fearlessly, answering quietly:
“I am not angry at your harsh epithets, for--my God! how can you
understand?”
“Explain then before I leave this house to go to her assistance!”
thundered Beresford, in deadly anger, overcome by the thought of Floy
in the power of her relentless enemies.
What would they do to her, his hapless darling? Would they kill her,
or, perhaps, more terrible still, force her into an abhorred marriage
with Otho Maury?
His senses whirled with his misery, and he was on the verge of falling,
when Landon caught him, pushing him back into his seat.
“Listen to me one moment,” he cried, and continued: “I have done that
any man could do, but I have failed to follow the wretches to their
lair. In that grim old house there is some malign influence that drives
the bravest man back to the threshold half mad with horror. What is
it? It is haunted; that is why! No, I have seen nothing, but--the
spirits of the damned haunt that house as surely as we two live and
breathe. If you could hear them, Mr. Beresford, those sounds of woe
that echo through the long corridors and empty rooms, that fiend’s
laugh that chills your blood like ice, and drives you back, shuddering
from the threshold, out into the cool darkness of the summer night so
sweet and peaceful, you would no longer cry out coward; you, too, would
turn and fly.”
“Not I, Landon; not I. All the hordes of hell assembled could not
frighten me back from my darling in peril!”
“You think so. Let me tell you what I have seen. I have watched them
go in before me, Otho and his sister, and as I retreated they would
rush past me in terror great as mine. I have seen her three nights fall
swooning on the wet grass. He would revive her, coax her, and hand in
hand, encouraging each other, they would re-enter, perhaps overcoming
their fears, and remain for hours, always leaving before daylight and
skulking home unseen. Braver than I, you say? Yes, but they were two, I
was only one. At last I could bear it no longer; I came away. I ask no
recompense; I resign the terrible quest.”