CRUFT'S FOLLY
Looking over my cousin's shoulders were two other faces, one covered
with rough hair, and evidently belonging to a game-keeper, the other
the beautiful face of my cousin, Lady Ethel Vanborough, St. Nivel's
sister.
"Poor fellow!" she remarked sympathetically. "What have they been
doing to you?"
I could hardly believe my eyes, and passed my hand wearily across my
forehead.
St. Nivel turned to the keeper.
"Give me the brandy flask," he said.
The man produced it, and my cousin poured some out in the little silver
cup attached to it.
"It's a lucky thing for you, Bill," he observed, while I greedily drank
the brandy down, "that I thought of bringing this flask with me this
morning. Ethel was against it; she's a total abstainer."
"Except when alcohol is needed medicinally," she interposed in an
explanatory tone, "then it is another matter."
I now took a good look at her; she was wearing a short, tweed,
tailor-made shooting costume, and carried in her hand a light sixteen
bore shot gun.
"You look just about done," continued her brother. "Whatever has
happened to you?"
"You would look bad," I answered, "if you had had nothing to eat since
lunch yesterday."
St. Nivel was a soldier and man of action.
"Botley," he said to the keeper, "the sandwiches."
"Now," said the guardsman invitingly, when I had ravenously disposed of
my second sandwich, "tell us something about it."
I had just opened my lips to speak, when there came a great cry from
the roof of the tower above, and a black body shot past the little
window near which I was sitting.
We all ran to the window but could see nothing.
Then St. Nivel made a suggestion.
"Let us mount up to the roof," he said, "and see what is to be seen.
You, Botley, had better go down to the foot of the tower."
The keeper touched his forelock and commenced his descent of the spiral
staircase. Meanwhile, Lady Ethel, her brother and I mounted up to the
top.
We passed the room in which I had been imprisoned, and went up a very
much narrower flight of steps to the roof, coming out at a little door
which was standing open. The roof was flat and covered with lead.
"Take care how you tread," cried St. Nivel. "I expect it is all pretty
rotten. In fact, Ethel, I think you had better go inside."
Ethel, however, was not of that way of thinking; she was a thorough
sportswoman and wanted to see all the fun.
"All right, Jack," she rejoined cheerily. "You go on, I'll look after
myself without troubling you."
It was very evident at the first glance that there had been an
accident, a piece of the low stone wall which surrounded the roof was
gone. It looked as if it had recently tumbled over. St. Nivel was
evidently right when he said the place was rotten. Rotten it certainly
was.
Stepping very gingerly we all approached the embattled wall, and,
selecting the firmest part, looked over, one at a time. I had the
second peep and was just in time to see two men, one limping very
much--this I am sure was Saumarez--disappear into a neighbouring wood.
A countrified-looking boy was running up from the opposite direction.
At the foot of the tower, however, was another matter; huddled up in a
heap was the body of a man, with a coil of rope and some shattered
masonry lying all around it.
By the body stood Botley, the game-keeper, scratching his head.
It was now very evident what had occurred.
The three miscreants who had tried to torture me had endeavoured to
escape by letting themselves down by a rope from the top of the tower.
Two had succeeded and one had been killed. The reason of this was
obvious, the rope had been fixed round one of the battlements and it
had not been sufficiently strong to maintain the weight of the three
men. The two lowest had probably got off with a shaking, the man who
had got on the rope last had lost his life. All this was perfectly
evident.
"Who is it?" shouted Lord St. Nivel to the keeper below.
"Doan't know, me lord," came back the answer, "he's a stranger to me."
The keeper had now been joined by the countrified boy, and the two
turned the body over on to its face. I could see that it was the
fairer of the two men who had acted under Saumarez' orders.
"I think we had better go down," suggested my cousin, the Guardsman;
"we may be of some service there."
On the way down the winding staircase, a thought struck me.
"What has become of that body," I asked, "that was found on Lansdown
yesterday morning?"
"What body?" replied my two cousins together.
"The body of an old lady."
"We have heard nothing of it," replied St. Nivel, "and we ought to have
done so. But you have not told us what happened to _you_."
Going down the old stone staircase, I gave them a brief account of my
arrest in London and journey down there, with my imprisonment during
the night in the tower.
"Well," remarked St. Nivel, while his sister murmured a few words of
sympathy, "I haven't quite got the hang of the thing yet, but you must
tell us more at lunch."
We found that the man lying at the foot of the tower was certainly
dead; his neck was broken.
We could therefore do nothing but leave the gamekeeper in charge of the
body while we despatched the boy to warn the police and fetch a doctor.
With a shilling in his pocket to get his dinner, the young yokel set
off on his journey, and we strolled away.
"I don't think we'll shoot any more this morning, Jack," Ethel said,
"this affair has made me feel a bit shaky."
"Then you had better come up to the house with us, Bill," said her
brother, slapping me on the back, "and have some lunch. Then you can
tell us all your adventures."
I readily agreed, and we had walked some little distance when I heard
footsteps running behind us; we stopped and turned. It was the country
boy we had sent to the police.
"I forgot to show you this yere sir," he said, opening his hand, in
which he held something carefully clasped.
"What is it?" I asked as he addressed me.
"It's this yere _heye_, sir," he answered. "It don't belong to the
dead 'un; he's got two."
I glanced into his open palm and beheld two halves of a brown
artificial eye, made of glass, and much shot with imitation blood!
* * * * *
"No," observed my friend, Inspector Bull, "there's been no body found
on Lansdown, and I should have heard of it if there had been without a
doubt."
The inspector finished a liberal tumbler of Lord St. Nivel's Scotch
whisky and soda, and set the tumbler carefully down on the table as if
it were a piece of very rare china.
My cousin, who was standing on the hearthrug, laughed heartily.
"That was only another piece of the rogue's plot," he said. "They must
have had a clever head to direct them."
"Yes," I put in, "a clever head with only one eye in it, if I'm not
much mistaken."
The inspector gave me a doubtful look; then his eye reverted to the
whisky decanter upon which it had been fondly fixed. St. Nivel
observed it and pushed the whisky towards him.
"Thank you, my lord," said the police officer, helping himself with a
look of intense satisfaction; he did not often get such whisky. "It's
a curious thing, however, that this man with one eye should ha' been
doing all these pranks right under my nose as it were, and I never even
heard of him before."
Being aware of his methods, I was not at all surprised.
Even now, knowing that I was respectably connected, he even suspected
me, and regarded me as an impostor with rich relatives.
This story of the finding of the body on Lansdown only confirmed his
views of my powers of invention.
"As a matter of fact," observed Lord St. Nivel, "I am only a stranger
in these parts, having borrowed a friend's house for a week's shooting;
but no doubt you can tell me what this tower is, where my cousin was
kept a prisoner, and which my sister and I came across by the merest
chance."
"Cruft's Folly," replied the beaming inspector, with his whisky glass
in his hand. "Cruft's Folly has stood where it does nearly a hundred
years. It was built by some gentleman, I believe, a long while ago, to
improve the landscape, just like Sham Castle over yonder."
"But does nobody live in it?"
"No, I've always understood it was quite empty and nearly a ruin."
"Then I have little doubt," said my cousin with a chuckle, "that your
friends, Bill, simply appropriated it for their own uses."
"I suppose you'll have the place thoroughly searched, Mr. Bull, won't
you?" I asked. "There may be something hidden there which will give
you a clue to my assailants."
"You may rely upon that, Mr. Anstruther," replied the inspector, rising
and slapping his chest, "but we shall have to communicate with the
owner first."
Thus through the red-tapism of the law the chance was lost. Had the
old tower of Cruft's Folly been searched at that moment the remainder
of this history most certainly would never have been written.