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THE BITTERMEADS MYSTERY
By E. R. Punshon
CONTENTS
I THE LONE PASSENGER
II THE FIGHT IN THE WOODS
III A COINCIDENCE
IV A WOMAN WEEPS
V A WOMAN AND A MAN
VI A DISCOVERY
VII QUESTION AND ANSWER
VIII CAPTIVITY CAPTURE
IX THE ATTIC OF MYSTERY
X THE NEW GARDENER
XI THE PROBLEM
XII AN AVOWAL
XIII INVISIBLE WRITING
XIV LOVE-MAKING AT NIGHT
XV THE SOUND OF A SHOT
XVI IN THE WOOD
XVII A DECLARATION
XVIII ROBERT DUNN'S ENEMY
XIX THE VISIT TO WRESTE ABBEY
XX ELLA'S WARNING
XXI DOUBTS AND FEARS
XXII PLOTS AND PLANS
XXIII COUNTER PLANS
XXIV AN APHORISM
XXV THE UNEXPECTED
XXVI A RACE AGAINST TIME
XXVII FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
XXVIII BACK AT BITTERMEADS
XXIX THE ATTIC
XXX SOME EXPLANATIONS
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.