Even when he had said this aloud it was still as though he could not
grasp its full meaning.
“Walter,” he repeated vaguely. “Walter.”
His thoughts, that had seemed as frozen by the sudden shock of the
tremendous revelation so unconsciously made to him by Ella, began to
stir and move again, and almost at once, with an extraordinary and
abnormal rapidity.
As a drowning man is said to see flash before his eyes the whole history
and record of his life, so now Dunn saw the whole story of his life-long
friendship with Walter pictured before him.
For when he was very small, Walter had been to him like an elder
brother, and when he was older, it was Walter who had taught him to
ride and to shoot, to hunt and to fish, and when he was at school it was
Walter to whom he looked up as the dashing young man of the world, who
knew all life's secrets, and when he was at college it was Walter who
had helped him out of the inevitable foolish scrapes into which it is
the custom of the undergraduate to fall.
Then, when he had come to man's estate, Walter had still been his
confidential friend and adviser. In Walter's hand he had been accustomed
to leave everything during his absences on his hunting and exploring
trips; and at what time during this long and kindly association of
good-fellowship had such black hate and poison of envy bred in Walter's
heart?
“Walter!” he said aloud once more, and he uttered the name as though it
were a cry of anguish.
Yet, too, even in his utter bewilderment and surprise, it seemed strange
to him that he had never once suspected, never dreamed, never once had
the shadow of a suspicion.
Little things, trifling things, a word, an accent, a phrase that had
passed at the time for a jest, a thousand such memories came back to him
now with a new and terrible significance.
For, after all, Walter was in the direct line. Only just a few lives
stood between him and a great inheritance, a great position. Perhaps
long brooding on what might so easily be had made him mad.
Dunn remembered now, too, that it was Walter who had discovered that
first murderous attempt which had first put them on their guard, but
perhaps he had discovered it only because he knew of it, and when it
failed, saw his safest plan was to be foremost in tracking it out.
And it was Walter who had last seen poor Charley Wright alone, and far
from Bittermeads. But perhaps that was a lie to confuse the search for
the missing man, and a reason why that search had failed so utterly up
to the moment of Dunn's own grim discovery in the attic.
With yet a fresh shock so that he reeled as he stood with the impact of
the thought, Dunn realized that all this implied that every one of his
precautions had been rendered futile that of all his elaborate plans not
one would take effect since all had been entrusted to the care of the
very man against whom they were aimed.
It was Walter for whom the net had been laid in Ottam's Wood; and Walter
to whom had been entrusted the task of drawing that net tight at the
right moment.
It was Walter's friends and agents who were to break into Wreste
Abbey, and Walter to whom had been entrusted the task of defeating and
capturing them. It was Walter from whom Ella stood in most danger if her
action that morning had been observed, and it was Walter to whom he had
given the task of protecting her.
At this thought, he turned and began to run as fast as he could in the
direction of Bittermeads.
At all costs she must be saved, she who had exposed the whole awful
plot. For a hundred yards or so he fled, swift as the wind, till on a
sudden he stopped dead with the realization of the fact that every yard
he took that way took him further and further from Ottam's Wood.
For there was danger there, too--grim and imminent--and sentences
in Ella's hasty letter that bore now to his new knowledge a deep
significance she had not dreamed of.
As when a flash of lightning lights all the landscape up and shows the
traveller dreadful dangers that beset his path, so a wave of intuition
told Dunn clearly the whole conspiracy; so that he saw it all, and
saw how every detail was to be fitted in together. His father, General
Dunsmore, was to be murdered first at the Brook Bourne Spring, to which
he was being lured; and afterwards, when Dunn arrived, he was to be
murdered, too. And on him, dead and unable to defend himself, the
blame of his father's death would be laid. It would not be difficult to
manage. Walter would arrange it all as neatly as he had been accustomed
to arrange the Dunsmore business affairs placed in his hands for
settlement.
A forged letter or two, Dunn's own revolver used to shoot the old man
with and then placed in Dunn's dead hand when his own turn had come,
convincing detail like that would be easy to arrange. Why, the very
fact of his disguise, the tangled beard that he had grown to hide his
features with, would appear conclusive. Any coroner's jury would return
a verdict of wilful murder against his memory on that one fact alone.
Walter would see to that all right. A little false evidence apparently
reluctantly given would be added, and all would be kneaded together into
the one substance till the whole guilt of all that happened would appear
to lie solely on his shoulders.
As for motive, it would simply be put forward that he had been in a
hurry to succeed his uncle. And very likely some tale of a quarrel with
his father or something of that sort would be invented, and would go
uncontradicted since there would be no one to contradict it.
And most probably what was contemplated at Wreste Abbey was no ordinary
burglary, but the assassination of old Lord Chobham, of which the guilt
would also be set down to him.
Very clearly now he realized that this tremendous plot was aimed, not
only at life, but at honour--that not only was his life required, but
also that he should be thought a murderer.
With the realization of the danger that threatened at Wreste Abbey he
turned and began to run back in the direction where it lay, that he
might take timely warning there, but he did not run a dozen strides when
he remembered Ella again, and paused.
Surely he must think of her first, alone and unprotected. For she was
the woman he loved; and besides, she had summoned him to her help, and
then she was a woman, and at least, the others were men.
All this flood of thoughts, this intuitive grasping of a situation
terrible beyond conception, almost unparalleled in bloody and dreadful
horror, passed through his mind with extreme rapidity.
Once more he turned and began to run--to run as he had never run before,
for now he saw that all depended on the speed with which he could cover
the eight miles that lay between him and Ottam's Wood, whether he could
still save his father or not.
The district was lonely in the extreme, there was no human habitation
near, no place where he could obtain any help or any swift means of
conveyance. His one hope must be in his speed, his feet must be swift to
save, not only his own life and his father's, but his honour, too, and
Ella and his old uncle as well; and all--all hung upon the speed with
which he could cover the eight long miles that lay between him and Brook
Bourne Spring in Ottam's Wood. Even as he ran, as he thought of Ella,
he came abruptly to a pause, wrung with sudden anguish. For each fleet
stride he was making towards Brook Bourne Spring was taking him
further and further away from Bittermeads just as before each step to
Bittermeads had been taking him further from Ottam's Wood.
He began to run again, even faster than before, and it was towards
Ottam's Wood that he ran, each step taking him further from Bittermeads
and further from the woman he loved in her bitter need and peril, who
looked to him for the help he could not give. With pain and anguish
he ran on, ran as men have seldom run--as seldom so much was hung upon
their running.
On and on he sped, fleet as the wind, fleet as the light breeze that
blew lightly by. A solitary villager trudging on some errand in this
lonely place, tells to this day the tale of the bearded, wild-eyed man
who raced so madly by him, raced on and down the long, straight road
till his figure dwindled and vanished in the distance.
A shepherd boy went home with a tale of a strange thing he had seen of
a man running so fast it seemed he was scarcely in sight before he was
gone again.
And except for those two and one other none saw him at all and he ran
his race alone beneath the skies, across the bare country side.
It was at a spot where the path ran between two high hedges that he came
upon a little herd of cows a lad was driving home.
It seemed impossible to pass through that tangle of horns and tails and
plunging hoofs, and so indeed it was, but Dunn took another way, and
with one leap, cleared the first beast clean and alighted on the back of
the second.
Before the startled beast could plunge away he leaped again from the
vantage of its back and landed on the open ground beyond and so on,
darting full speed past the staring driver, whose tale that he told when
he got home caused him to go branded for years as a liar.
On and on Dunn fled, without stay or pause, at the utmost of his speed
every second of time, every yard of distance. For he knew he had need
of every ounce of power he possessed or could call to his aid, since he
knew well that all, all, might hang upon a second less or more, and now
four miles lay behind him and four in front.
Still on he raced with labouring lungs and heart near to bursting
--onward still, swift, swift and sure, and now there were six miles
behind and only two in front, and he was beginning to come to a part of
the country that he knew.
Whether he was soon or late he had no idea or how long it was that he
had raced like this along the lonely country road at the full extremity
and limit of his strength.
He dared not take time to glance at his watch, for he knew the fraction
of a second he would thus lose might mean the difference between in time
and too late. On he ran still and presently he left the path and took
the fields.
But he had forgotten that though the distance might be shorter the going
would be harder, and on the rough grass he stumbled, and across the bare
ground damp earth clung to his boots and hindered him as though each
foot had become laden with lead.
His speed was slower, his effort greater if possible, and when he came
to a hedge he made no effort to leap, but crashed through it as best he
could and broke or clambered or tumbled a path for himself.
Now Ottam's Wood was very near, and reeling and staggering like a man
wounded to the death but driven by inexorable fate, he plunged on still,
and there was a little froth gathering at the corners of his mouth and
from one of his nostrils came a thin trickle of blood.
Yet still he held on, though in truth he hardly knew any longer why he
ran or what his need for haste, and as he came to the wood round a spur
where a cluster of young beeches grew, he saw a tall, upright, elderly
man walking there, well-dressed and of a neat, soldier-like appearance.
“Hallo--there you are--father--” he gasped and fell down, prone
unconscious.