As soon as the altercation between Goodhare and Rees grew warm,
Deborah, hearing the tramp of footsteps on the pavement outside the
house, had crept to the cellar window, and, unheard by the two men in
their excited discussion, had torn away one of the boards from the
nail which fastened it, and succeeded in attracting the attention of a
passer-by, who proved to be policeman.
“Get in! break in! get in somehow!” she cried, “there are two men
quarrelling here, and I’m afraid they will do each other harm.”
By that time the voices in the lower cellar were growing louder, and
she stumbled across the floor, called to the men, and beat against the
door. But they were too much excited to heed her. She heard upstairs
the sound of knocking; and climbing up the ladder as fast as she could
in the darkness, she groped her way to the front door. There was,
however, nothing that she could do to help. She could only wait, sick
with terror, while they hammered in the nailed-up door from the
outside. Before the first board gave way, she heard someone pass her
in the darkness and spring up the staircase. From the agility with
which he mounted she thought it must be Rees.
“Rees, is it you? Are you safe? Hide, hide yourself,” she called to
him in a hissing whisper.
Amos Goodhare heard her voice and recognised it. It flashed through
his mind instantly that it must have been to her that Sep had given
the jewels. If he could only get possession of them, the day’s work
which had rid him of a troublesome confederate and satisfied his
appetite for revenge on two men he hated, would be indeed well done.
He descended the stairs as softly and rapidly as he had mounted them.
“Yes, Deborah, it is I, Rees,” he said, in a whisper which was only
just audible in the noise of knocking, both at the front and the back
of the house. “Where are you? Give me your hand. You have the jewels?”
“Yes,” she answered, hesitatingly.
“Where are you? where are you?” he repeated impatiently. “Quick; I
must be off.”
But he had betrayed himself. Deborah, shocked, alarmed, crept along
the wall away from him, uttering no sound. He groped about for her,
muttering to himself, until, with a crash, one of the boards of the
door fell. By the light which was thus let in, he saw where the girl
was, and sprang at her. But she pushed him off with a piercing shriek,
avoided nimbly a second attack, and got back to the front door just as
it was quivering on its hinges. Goodhare saw that he had no more time
to lose.
“Good-bye, my dear; my love to Rees,” he said, as he re-mounted the
staircase rapidly, and disappeared from view just as the front-door
fell down with a crash on to the rotten flooring, and four policemen
rushed in.
“Upstairs, upstairs, he’s escaped upstairs,” panted out Deborah.
Two out of the four men mounted the staircase in pursuit; the other
two remained with her and wanted to know what had happened.
“I don’t know myself yet,” she answered. She was still breathless and
trembling from her recent encounter with Goodhare, and feverish with
anxiety on Rees Pennant’s account.
The officers seemed inclined to look upon her with suspicion. Deborah
noticed this, and tried hard to compose herself.
“I want you to go downstairs--into the cellars,” she cried. “They were
quarreling there, and one of them ran upstairs past me while I was
standing here.”
“And what might you be doing here, miss?” asked one of the men, not
uncivilly, but in a tone of cautious inquiry, which woke Deborah
suddenly to a full knowledge of the dangerous thing she was doing in
letting the servants of the law into this busy little nest of
villainy. She had thought only of summoning help for Rees when she
fancied that he was physically at the mercy of a savage and
unscrupulous man; now she saw that by so doing she had perhaps
betrayed Rees into the clutches of the law.
There was no help for it now, however.
“My name is Deborah Audaer,” said she. “I live at Carstow, in
Monmouthshire. I will give you any particulars you want later.”
“What was it you said about the cellars, miss?” asked the other
constable, as the lady paused.
Deborah turned desperately towards the ladder.
“This way down,” said she briefly, as she led the way herself.
It was quite dark, and the constables were unprovided with any light
except matches, which they struck from time to time as they blundered
down. It occurred to her that if Rees were unharmed and had failed to
take warning by the noise of the policemen’s forcible entrance, she
might find a chance of aiding his escape. So she hurried down as fast
as she could, and stood with her back to the door of the lower cellar,
so as to hide the fire-light which showed through the hole made by the
old lock.
“Search this place first, please,” said she.
“I’ll light my lantern,” said one of the men.
The other struck a match, and examined the den as well as he could by
its feeble light.
“What’s that in the corner?” said the first man.
Deborah was not paying much heed to their discoveries. She was
watching for an opportunity, when their backs were turned, of slipping
down into the adjoining cellar to find out what had become of Rees.
But an exclamation from both men at once, as they crossed with their
heavy tread to the corner indicated, riveted her attention.
“Look here, miss,” called one of them.
Deborah crept forward, prepared for some horrible sight, and thinking
still of Rees.
On the damp, muddy floor, with a piece of old and frayed matting
wrapped around it, lay the body of a man. As Deborah drew near, the
flickering match held by the policeman went out, and while he struck
another his companion laid his hand on the lady’s arm with evident
suspicion. Deborah did not resent the touch; she stood in a dumb agony
of dread.
When the lantern was lighted, she dared not look; the policeman drew
her forward.
“Will you besergood as to tell us whether you know the gentleman?”
She glanced down, and utterly unable to restrain herself, almost
shrieked:
“Lord St. Austell! Dead! Murdered!”
The men looked at each other and at her. By her tone they knew that
the sight was for her a ghastly surprise, and the man who had held her
arm at once let it go. Lord St. Austell was a well-known and popular
peer, and, looking closer, one of the policemen recognised his face.
“She’s right. The lady’s right, Bill,” said he more respectfully.
And the men looked at each other and at Deborah again. The dead earl’s
character was so well-known that their first thought was of an ambush
laid, with a handsome woman as decoy.
“Do you know who’s done this, ma’am?” asked one, bluntly.
“Yes, the man who escaped upstairs; his name is Amos Goodhare,” she
answered promptly. “But come into the inner cellar. There may be
another murdered man lying there,” she cried, rousing herself suddenly
out of the numb apathy into which the horrible sight had cast her.
“You go, Fred; I’ll stay here.”
The other nodded and accompanied her to the door of the inner cellar,
where Deborah fumbled for a minute with weak, wet fingers.
“Open it,” said she hoarsely.
The man did so, and leapt down at once into the den. The fire was
getting low now, but the air was still as hot as a furnace, and there
was enough light for him to find his way to the prostrate form of
Rees.
“By Jove! Another!” he muttered.
Deborah got down with difficulty, and tottered with swimming brain
across the floor.
“Rees, Rees!” she whispered. “Dead, too!”
“No, miss, not quite--this one,” said the policeman, trying to speak
re-assuringly, but growing every moment more perplexed by the whole
affair. “This poor chap may come round, I think, if he ain’t bled too
much. Let’s try to stop the bleeding if we can.”
Scarcely knowing what she did, Deborah lent her aid. Pressing her
fingers to the wound, she said imploringly:
“Go and fetch a doctor as quickly as you can, please. It is his only
chance.”
“All right, miss,” said the man.
And, quite satisfied that she would not move from the side of the
handsome young fellow, he went out at once. Although, in the close,
stifling atmosphere of the cellar, absorbed in grief and anxiety of
the most bitter kind, Deborah fancied that she passed an hour kneeling
by the side of the unconscious man, with her fingers tightly pressing
together the sides of the ghastly wound in his chest, it was really
not more than seven minutes before the policeman came back with a
doctor.
“There’s a gentleman just got into the house from the back, miss,”
said the constable. “He doesn’t seem to know anything of what’s been
going on, and I haven’t told him, but he asked if there was a lady
here, and I told him there was.”
“A gentleman!” echoed Deborah, as she rose from the floor, and
staggered, overcome by the stifling heat.
She glanced down at Rees. He was in the doctor’s hands now; she could
do no more for him. She was glad to escape out of this horrible den,
and she climbed up the ladder to the ground floor without further
question. A short, fair man, with a strong sense of his own importance
apparent in his face and bearing, but evidently suffering for the time
from some deep anxiety, was waiting in the passage. He carried a lamp
which Deborah had seen on the table at Rees Pennant’s lodgings, and by
its light she recognised the Honorable Charles Cenarth, keeper of the
regalia.
“My niece, Marion, followed her father and you to a house in St.
Martin’s-lane, and then she drove to my house and brought me here. She
was afraid of coming alone, lest he should be angry. And a young man
who was hovering about outside showed me the way to this place----”
“Sep Jocelyn,” murmured Deborah.
“And told me he thought my brother had come here. Perhaps you, Miss
Audaer, can tell me where Lord St. Austell is.”
Deborah paused. She had no fear of inflicting a very severe wound on
this deliberate gentleman by informing him of his elder brother’s
death. It was pretty well known that the Honorable Charles looked upon
the earl chiefly as the man who stood between him and the title.
“You are Lord St. Austell now,” she said, gently.
He honored the announcement with a start of surprise, but made no show
of being deeply affected. There was a pause.
“How was it?” he asked, trying to keep his hands out of the pockets to
which they instinctively felt their way.
“He was murdered, I think, by Amos Goodhare,” she answered in a
whisper.
“Dear me, how very stupid of him to trust himself with Amos,” said the
new earl, fretfully. “Have they caught him yet?”
“Not yet, I think.”
“Then I hope they won’t! I hope to God they won’t! It’s an awkward
position, don’t you see? And the fellow does say such unpleasant
things.”
Deborah was disgusted. But she had something of importance to say to
this phlegmatic gentleman, and it was perhaps fortunate in one way
that he was unemotional.
“I have a favor to ask of you,” she said.
He pricked up his ears. “A favor! It’s of no use asking favors of me,
Miss Audaer. I’m not my unfortunate brother, you know,” he said
hastily.
“You need not trouble yourself on that point. Nobody is likely to
mistake you for him.”
“So much the better. I’m a poor man. The estates are very heavily
encumbered, owing to my unhappy brother’s extravagance, his lamentable
extravagance, I repeat. So that it is quite out of my power to grant
favors--quite.”
“Even when they put money into your pocket?” said Deborah, who thought
he deserved this plain-speaking.
He was not in the least offended.
“Tell me what it is?” said he at once.
At that moment the noise of a scuffle and men’s cries, “I’ve got you,
my lad.” “Hold him, Jim!” in the upper part of the house reached their
ears.
“They’ve caught him!” cried Deborah, with excitement.
The new Lord Austell gave an exclamation of impatience.
“Well, well, tell me at once what you want, before we are
interrupted.”
Deborah had known how to gain the ear of the generous nobleman.