A STARTLING DISCOVERY
Within one short hour Cleek had explored the Castle from end to end, in
company with a tireless girl for whom every stick and stone of the grand
old place held a memory that was as sacred to her as the church is to
the priest who has passed all his days in the service of it. But they
met no other members of the family just then. Only, as they passed
through the left wing, where the servants' quarters lay beyond, Cleek
was introduced to Johanna McCall--paid hireling and companion of Lady
Paula, and not too pleased with her job, either, if all he read in that
frightened face of hers was true.
He found her a little pale slip of a thing, with wide, anxious eyes set
in an ivory-tinted, utterly colourless face, and with hair that was
"mousey" and straight, and a mouth that might tremble at an unkind word
as a child's does.
She bowed to him timidly and extended a slender hand.
"How do you do," she said, in a soft, toneless sort of voice which
matched her poor, toneless, utterly downtrodden personality. "Your
stepmother, Miss Duggan? She is in the study, I suppose? I have her
embroidery silks, and she wanted them immediately. But it took such a
time to get them disentangled. Master Cyril was playing with them last
night. I--oh, I do hope she won't be angry!"
"Don't worry, Miss McCall. Rome won't fall, you know, even if she does
speak an unkind word to you in her hasty fashion," gave back Maud
Duggan, with a kindly pressure of one hand upon the frail girl's arm.
"And she's busy just now with Sir Andrew. Looking over some accounts, I
believe. I should wait for her in her boudoir, if I were you. She's
bound to ring if she wants you."
"Yes, perhaps that would be better."
Miss McCall hurried down the corridor, silent-footed, as a paid
companion should always be, and Cleek shook his head as she vanished
through an open door at the end of the passage.
"Poor little frightened thing!" he said softly. "And all for a pittance
which, in her sort of profession, must necessarily be small!"
"Yes, and she works like a black for it, too," gave back Maud Duggan
heatedly. "Slogs away all the day long, running errands
for--_her_--sewing, darning, mending, writing interminable letters which
Paula tears up afterward and decides not to send. And gets not a crumb
of comfort for her pains. Paula is terribly hard upon her, Mr. Deland.
I wonder the girl stands it; only--there's an attraction."
"And you women are endurance personified--in those circumstances!" he
responded with a little significant laugh. "When your hearts are
involved, your common sense vanishes to make room for it. I've seen it a
thousand times before.... Really, Miss Duggan, you have been an
indefatigable guide. I don't believe there's a nook or cranny of this
place which I haven't seen, is there?"
"Only the cellars--or, properly speaking, the dungeons. And they're of
no interest to anybody. Father keeps the wines down there, of course,
and anything that does not require too much storage. But, excepting for
the cellar, the place is never entered from one year's end to another.
Not a servant would go down into them for double wages. The peasant-girl
is supposed to stay there when she is not out on her nightly prowl for
the man who abducted her!"
"Indeed? That's interesting. I suppose I couldn't go down? Dungeons are
a perfect passion with me, for I've an insatiable curiosity, and always
want to go poking my nose where no one else does. Sort of brand of my
profession, I suppose. Do you think you could find energy enough to take
me down?"
"Certainly."
She led the way down an L-shaped passage, which led past the kitchens
and the servants' hall, and gave out upon a little stone courtyard set
apart from the house and bounded about with a high wall through which
arrow-slits gave the true mediaeval touch, and then down to the right of
this through a huge oaken door which opened noiselessly, showing a
flight of steep, uneven stone steps leading down into a dark,
damp-smelling interior.
At the top of the steps she paused and looked back at him over the curve
of her shoulder, making a wry face.
"You still want to go?" she asked jestingly. "I'm a brave woman, Mr.
Deland, but I wouldn't undertake this journey alone for anything!
There's--_rats_!"
"As well as ghosts? But this is morning, and Scotland, and the twentieth
century--so lead on, Macduff," he answered her in the same jesting
spirit. "Or would you like me to go first?"
She shivered and twitched up her shoulders.
"No; I'll do the honours properly. This way. If you've a torch on you,
you'll need it at the bottom of these stairs. It's as dark as pitch."
"I have."
Cleek produced it, and they proceeded upon the uncanny journey. The
steps led down, down, into what seemed the very bowels of the earth
(which indeed they were), until they reached a little square opening
from which iron-grilled doorways looked out upon them from every side,
saving for one oak door on the left, which Miss Duggan pointed out as
the wine-cellar.
"H'm! And smells like it, too," put in Cleek, with a sniff--"What's
behind that door is worth a fortune, I'll be bound. Hello! here's a
candle-end stuck in a bottle! Now, who the dickens uses that, I wonder?"
"The servants, I suppose. They come down through their own stairs, Mr.
Deland--over there on the left--you can see them if you look hard
enough. They're wooden ones, and were put in by my father's grandsire,
for the convenience of the house. The servants don't like this way at
all. They prefer to come through the butler's pantry."
"And those stairs lead up there? I see. Hello! Here's a chain attached
to this iron post. What's that?"
"The prisoner's chain. This room here"--she pointed to the grilled door
opening next to the cellar "was kept for political prisoners, I believe.
And those two across the way were for personal enemies of the family."
"And are there any others?"
"Yes--through that first door on the right--but you won't get _me_ to go
into them," she responded with a laugh. "It's horrible in there. There's
a rack and one or two thumbscrews and other articles which belong to the
Spanish Inquisition period; as well as rats innumerable. My bravery
vanishes at this point. I'll not go a step farther!"
"But you don't mind if I do?"
"Not a bit. I'll wait here. But there's nothing to see--really. And it's
getting perilously near lunch-time."
Cleek cocked his head persuasively at her.
"I won't be a minute--really. But that thumbscrew has got me guessing,
as our American cousins say. I suppose there's no lock on the door? Gad!
but it opens easily enough. Been fairly recently oiled, I take it?"
"Not that I know of. In fact, I don't believe any one's been in the
place since Ross came down here, three months ago, to show a friend
round. Perhaps he oiled it then."
"Perhaps. I won't be a minute, really. And I've another torch, if you'd
like it. Here." He tossed it to her, and, keeping his spotlight ahead
of him, entered the dark, dank, evil-smelling place, his footsteps
ringing upon the stone flooring and sending the echoes scampering into
the corners, together with more tangible--and verminous--things. There
was nothing in the first room, but beyond it he came upon the Torture
Chamber and all those instruments of cruelty which marked a less kindly
period of the world's history. And this Chamber was larger than the
other cell. Rusty hooks hung from the ceiling, of incredible size and
suggesting unthinkable horrors, and over all hung the odour of damp and
decay, mingled with something more modern, which caused Cleek to stop
suddenly and sniff like a terrier scenting a rat.
"Strange!" he said to the silence and the solitude of that awful place,
"but she said the cellars were over there! But if someone hasn't been
drinking spirits here a short time ago, I miss my guess! And, what's
more, someone _has_! A solitary debauch, I suppose. Now, who the dickens
would have thought it?"
His torch caught a glimmer of something that shone like glass--which
_was_ glass, in fact, and resolved itself into a cracked tumbler beside
which stood a syphon of soda and an empty bottle smelling strongly of
whisky.
"Whew! Nice little place for a quiet read and a smoke--I _don't_ think!"
he apostrophized it. "With rats in the corners and ghosts all
around--brrh! He's a strange fellow who likes this sort of company, I
must say. But there's nothing to be nosed out here in this pleasant
little den. I'll just take a glimpse through the next one, and then get
back to Miss Duggan, or she'll be getting the creeps and run."
He had started back, and had just swung his torch through the doorway
beyond, when of a sudden he stopped, sucked in his breath, and fairly
ran into the place, head down, nose to the ground, like a dog, every
faculty alert.
What he saw there is not recorded, for just at that moment he heard
Miss Duggan's clear voice calling him, and he had perforce to answer.
But he had time to stoop suddenly and swoop down upon something white
but slightly bloodstained which lay on the ground before him, dart a
hasty glance at it, and cram it into his pocket, before swinging round
upon his heel and answering her summons; and all the time saying to
himself: "Who'd have thought it? Now who the dickens would have thought
it?"
Meanwhile he fingered the slightly bloodstained handkerchief which he
had picked up, and upon which by the light of his torch he had remarked
the initials "R. D." embroidered in one corner. And he laughed softly
and joyfully clapped his hands together.