Though she could remember one or two uncomfortable days in her life,
Lois Reddle could not recall one that bore any comparison with the
twenty hours that followed her departure from Gallows Farm. She had
been awakened by the woman at some unknown hour in the middle of the
night, ordered to dress and come downstairs. The first order was easy
to obey, for she had not taken off her clothes. When she came down
into the passage she found the doctor waiting for her. He was wearing
his heaviest overcoat, and carried a thick stick, and was testing a
flash-lamp as she joined him.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, as he led her across the yard to
the accompaniment of the savage chorus of the dogs.
“You’ll find out in good time,” was the unpromising reply. “I don’t
want you to ask questions or to speak until I tell you. After you
leave this house you are to be silent--understand that?”
They mounted the gentle slope of the downs and presently descended
into a valley on the other side. Although the moon was obscured, there
was sufficient light to enable her to pick her way across the rough
ground and to dispense with the arm he offered her. Once they made a
wide detour to avoid a marshy patch, and once he had to help her
through a fence of hawthorn. Ahead of them was a dark line of trees,
which was on the estate. He told her there were twelve hundred acres
of land attached to the farm, only a small portion of which had been
sub-let, and none of which was under cultivation.
“It is poor land, anyway--most of this downland is. That is Gallows
Wood,” he said, indicating the trees ahead. “The farm takes its name
from the wood. There used to be a gallows on the crest of the hill
years ago. Not scared, are you?”
He chuckled when she answered “No.”
After a while they struck a rough track which led into the heart of
the copse, and now for the first time he produced the flash-lamp; a
necessary precaution, for the path was overgrown and difficult to
follow. Although her voice was steady and her attitude one of sublime
confidence, Lois was inwardly quaking. There was something very
ominous in this move. Yet it was not the fear of what would happen in
the wood that frightened her. She guessed that the doctor was moving
her from the farm because he expected the return of Michael Dorn. She
dreaded only this; that Michael would search the house and be
satisfied that she was not there. Would the doctor move the
grey-haired woman too, she wondered? After ten minutes’ walk he
stopped, and she thought he had lost the way, until the light of his
lamp revealed a small stone cottage, standing back from the path and
almost hidden by trees and undergrowth. This, then, was the new
prison, she thought.
“Hold this light,” he ordered, and she obeyed, whilst he tried key
after key in the lock.
After a while the door swung open and he went in, turning his head to
see that she was coming after. The floor was thick with dust; the only
furniture in the room into which he invited her was an old backless
chair. On one of the walls was a yellow almanac for the year 1913, and
probably the house had not been occupied since then.
“You’ll stay here and keep quiet. There will be light in a few hours.
If you want anything, ask Mrs. Rooks--she will be here presently.”
He went out, but did not lock the door; she found afterwards that it
was lacking in this appendage. Followed half an hour’s wait, and then
she heard footsteps in the hall, heard another door open, and a mutter
of conversation. Something dropped with a thud on the passage, and for
a second Lois’ heart came into her mouth. But it seemed that Mrs.
Rooks, who, she guessed, was the sallow-faced woman, had come heavily
laden, for the sound of her complaining reached the girl. Evidently
she had brought the provisions necessary for the party--the weight of
them was not very promising, and Tappatt was seemingly prepared for a
long stay.
“Nearly broke my back,” she grumbled. “Why couldn’t she carry it,
doctor?”
Lois crept nearer to the door and listened, hoping to hear something
that would confirm her theory that she was being hidden because the
doctor expected a return visit from Michael Dorn.
“Get a chair from the other room,” she heard him growl. “What are you
making all this fuss about? It is no worse for you than for me. This
isn’t the first time you’ve sat up all night, is it?”
“I don’t see why you should take all this trouble,” grumbled the
woman. “He’ll not come back again, and, if he did, what’s to stop him
coming into the wood?”
“He will come back--you need have no doubt about that. I know the man.
And you can make your mind easy about his finding them. He isn’t
likely to search every copse in the neighbourhood.”
A few minutes later the front door slammed as he went out, and she
heard the woman grumbling to herself. She was sitting within a few
feet of the door, and could hear every sound and move in the bare
room. To open the window might be possible, but to do so without her
hearing was a hopeless impossibility.
Soon after daybreak Mrs. Rooks took her into the kitchen, and, passing
the room which held the second prisoner, Lois saw that there was a key
in that door. If the conditions were the same in the other prison room
it was as impossible for the unknown woman to escape. Who was she, she
wondered? Some poor creature, perhaps, who had been entrusted by her
friends to the tender mercy of Dr. Tappatt. Her heart ached for the
woman, and in her pity she forgot her own danger and discomfort.
Throughout the long and weary day that followed she saw no sign of any
human being. The wood was situate on a private estate, and the
overgrown condition of the path had told her that it was not
frequented even by those who had authority to cross the land. From the
windows she could see only the trunks of beeches and the green tracery
of leaves. The oppressive loneliness told even upon the
uncommunicative Mrs. Rooks, who must have been unused to a solitary
life, for that afternoon she came into the room where Lois was
sitting. Lois had opportunity for studying her. She must have been in
the region of fifty, a harsh, sour-faced woman, with a grievance
against the world and its people.
“It’s so pesky quiet that I should go off my head if I was here long,”
she complained.
Lois wondered if she could make the woman talk about other things than
the loneliness of the wood.
“Have you been in England a long time?” she asked.
Mrs. Rooks had to master her natural repugnance to gossip before she
spoke.
“Only two years. We were in India before then. I don’t know what that
has got to do with you, anyway.”
“I heard you call your dogs by Indian names. ‘Mali’ means money,
doesn’t it?”
“Don’t you ask questions, young lady,” said the woman. “You behave
yourself, and you won’t be badly treated. Act the fool, and
you’ll----” She nodded significantly. “Of course ‘Mali’ means money.
Do you _mallum_ the _bat_?”
Lois shook her head smilingly. She guessed that she was being asked if
she spoke or understood Hindustani.
“Why am I kept here--can you tell me that?”
“Because you’re not right in your head.” The reply would have driven
Lois to a fury, but she had already guessed the excuse that would be
made for her detention. “You’ve been hearing things and seeing things.
An’ people who hear things, voices an’ all that, are batty.”
Lois laughed quietly.
“You know that I am not mad, Mrs. Rooks.”
“Nobody thinks they are mad,” said Mrs. Rooks alarmingly. “That’s one
of the symptoms. The minute a person thinks she’s sane, she’s mad! The
doctor knows: he’s the cleverest man in the world.”
She glanced back at the open door. Lois heard a steady echo of
footsteps, as though somebody was pacing the floor.
“Who is in the other room?” she asked, without expecting any very
satisfactory reply.
“A woman--she’s nutty.”
“I thought I saw her the other evening,” said the girl with affected
carelessness. “Weren’t you--talking to her in the yard?”
The woman’s shrewd eyes looked her up and down.
“You saw me quieting her with the whip. She gets fresh sometimes--most
of ’em do. You will too.” Lois shuddered at this ominous prophecy.
“Bless you, they don’t mind a licking! Lunatics ain’t human beings
anyway, they’re just animals, the doctor says, and you’ve got to treat
’em like animals. That’s the only kind of treatment they understand.”
Lois tried to veil her horror and disgust and felt that she had not
wholly succeeded.
“I hope you will not treat me like an animal,” she said, and Mrs.
Rooks sniffed.
“If you behave yourself, you’ll be treated well. All nutty people have
a good time if they don’t get fresh and obstrepulous. That’s the
doctor’s way.”
It was clear to Lois that, whatever faults this woman might have,
however brutal she might be, she had accepted without any question any
diagnosis that the doctor might make. To Mrs. Rooks she was crazy,
just as was the other woman. And if she became “obstrepulous” she
would be served in the same way.
“Why did you call her a gaolbird?”
Again that shrewd, suspicious scrutiny.
“I call her lots of things,” said Mrs. Rooks indifferently. “If you
hadn’t been spying you wouldn’t have heard. Names don’t hurt anybody.
They’re better than the whip anyway--did you know that man that came
last night?”
“Mr. Dorn?”
“Yes, who is he?”
“He’s a police officer,” said Lois.
The effect of the words upon the woman was unexpected. Her sallow skin
became a pasty white.
“A detective!”
Lois nodded, and Mrs. Rooks’ face cleared.
“That’s part of your crazy ideas,” she said calmly. “He is a man the
doctor owes money to. I know, because the doctor told me. The doctor’s
been in difficulties, and he’s not the kind of man who’d have any
trouble with the police. They told a lot of lies about him in India,
but he’s a good man, the best man in the world.”
And then a thought struck Lois, and she asked:
“What is supposed to be my delusion?”
Mrs. Rooks shot a cunning glance at the girl.
“I’m surprised at you asking that, young lady! You think you’re
somebody who you’re not!”
Lois frowned.
“You mean I am under the impression that I am somebody important?”
Mrs. Rooks nodded.
“Yes--you think you’re the Countess of Moron!” she said.