behind, but saw no sign of any other passenger. And then he turned the
rim of his dark felt hat down over his face, stepped out briskly for
some fifty yards further, and turned sharply through an open gate. Once
again he stopped and listened keenly, standing now in the shadow of the
trees beside the drive. In his dark top coat and with his hat turned
over his face he was as nearly invisible as a man could be, but even
this did not seem to satisfy him, for in a moment he gently parted the
branches of the trees and pushed through the belt of planting to the
lawn beyond.
The villa of Mr. Simon Rattar was now half seen beyond the curving end
of the belt that bounded the drive. It was dim against the night sky,
and the garden was dimmer still. Carrington kept on the grass, following
the outside of the trees, and then again plunged into them when they
curved round at the top of the drive. Pushing quietly through, he
reached the other side, and there his expedition in search of fresh air
seemed to have found its goal, for he leaned his back against a tree
trunk, folded his arms, and waited.
He was looking obliquely across a sweep of gravel, with the whole front
of the house full in view. A ray came from the fanlight over the front
door and a faint radiance escaped through the slats of the library
blinds, but otherwise the villa was a lump of darkness in the dark.
One minute after another passed without event and with scarcely even the
faintest sound. Then, all at once, a little touch of breeze sprang up
and sighed overhead through the tree tops, and from that time on, there
was an alternation of utter silence with the sough of branches gently
stirred.
From a church tower in the town came the stroke of a clock. Carrington
counted nine and his eyes were riveted on the front door now. Barely
two more minutes passed before it opened quietly; a figure appeared for
an instant in the light of the hall, and then, as quietly, the door
closed again. There was a lull at the moment, but Carrington could hear
not a sound. The figure must be standing very still on the doorstep,
listening--evidently listening. And then the thickset form of Simon
Rattar appeared dimly on the gravel, crossing to the lawn beyond. The
pebbles crunched a little, but not very much. He seemed to be walking
warily, and when he reached the further side he stood still again and
Carrington could see his head moving, as though he were looking all
round him through the night.
But now the figure was moving again, coming this time straight for the
head of the belt of trees. Carrington had drawn on a pair of dark
gloves, and he raised his arm to cover the lower part of his face,
looking over it through the branches, and facing the silent owner of the
garden, till there were hardly three paces between them, the one on the
lawn, the other in the heart of the plantation.
And then when Simon was exactly opposite, he stopped dead. Carrington's
other hand slipped noiselessly into the pocket where he had dropped that
little article, but otherwise he never moved a muscle and he breathed
very gently. The man on the turf seemed to be doing something with his
hands, but what, it was impossible to say. The hands would move into his
pocket and then out again, till quite three or four minutes had passed,
and then came a sudden flash of light. Carrington's right hand moved
halfway out of his pocket and then was stayed, for by the light of the
match he saw a very singular sight.
Simon Rattar was not looking at him. His eyes were focussed just before
his nose where the bowl of a pipe was beginning to glow. Carrington
could hear the lips gently sucking, and then the aroma of tobacco came
in a strong wave through the trees. Finally the match went out, and the
glowing pipe began to move slowly along the turf, keeping close to the
shelter of the trees.
For a space Carrington stood petrified with wonder, and then, very
carefully and quite silently, he worked his way through the trees out on
to the turf, and at once fell on his hands and knees. Had any one been
there to see, they would have beheld for the next five minutes a strange
procession of two slowly moving along the edge of the plantation; a
thickset man in front smoking a pipe and something like a great gorilla
stalking him from behind. This procession skirted the plantation nearly
down to the gate; then it turned at right angles, following the line of
trees that bordered the wall between the garden and the road; and then
again at right angles when it had reached the further corner of Mr.
Rattar's demesne. Simon was now in a secluded path with shrubs on either
hand, and instead of continuing his tour, he turned at the end of this
path and paced slowly back again. And seeing this, the ape behind him
squatted in the shadow of a laurel and waited.
A steady breeze was now blowing and the trees were sighing continuously.
The sky at the same time cleared, and more and more stars came out till
the eyes of the man behind the bush could follow the moving man from end
to end of the path. The wind made the pipe smoke quickly, and presently
a shower of sparks showed that it was being emptied, and in a minute or
two another match flashed and a second pipe glowed faintly.
Backwards and forwards paced the lawyer, and backwards and forwards
again, but for the space of nearly an hour from his first coming out,
that was everything that happened; and then at last came a tapping of
the bowl and more sparks flying abroad in the wind. The procession was
resumed, Simon in front, the ape-like form behind; but with a greater
space between them this time as the night was clearer, and now they were
heading for the house. The lawyer's steps crunched lightly on the gravel
again, the front door opened and closed, and Carrington was alone in the
garden.
Still crawling, he reached the shelter of the belt of trees and then
rose and made swiftly for the gate, and out into the road. As he passed
under a lamp, his face wore a totally new expression, compounded of
wonder, excitement, and urgent thought. He was walking swiftly, and his
pace never slackened, nor did the keenness leave his face, till he was
back at the door of the Kings Arms Hotel. Before he entered, he took off
his hat and turned up the brim again, and his manner when he tapped at
the door of the manageress' room was perfectly sedate. He let it appear,
however, that he had some slight matter on his mind.
"What is the name of Mr. Rattar's head clerk?" he enquired. "An oldish,
prim looking man, with side whiskers."
"Oh, that will be Mr. Ison," said the manageress.
"I have just remembered a bit of business I ought to have seen about
to-night," he continued. "I can't very well call on Mr. Rattar himself
at this hour, but I was thinking of looking up Mr. Ison if I could
discover his whereabouts."
"The boots will show you the way to his house," said she, and rang the
bell.
While waiting for the boots, Mr. Carrington asked another casual
question or two and learned that Mr. Ison had been in the office since
he was a boy. No man knew the house of Rattar throughout its two
generations better than Mr. Ison, said Miss Peterkin; and she remembered
afterwards that this information seemed to give Mr. Carrington peculiar
satisfaction. He seemed so gratified, indeed, that she wondered a little
at the time.
And then the visitor and the boots set out together for the clerk's
house, and at what hour her guest returned she was not quite sure. The
boots, it seemed, had been instructed to wait up for him, but she had
long gone to bed.
XXXVI
THE WALKING STICK
Had there been, next morning, any curious eyes to watch the conduct of
the gentleman who had come to rent a sporting estate, they would
probably have surmised that he had found something to please his fancy
strangely, and yet that some perplexity still persisted. They would also
have put him down as a much more excitable, and even demonstrative,
young man than they had imagined. On a lonely stretch of shore hard by
the little town he paced for nearly an hour, his face a record of the
debate within, and his cane gesticulating at intervals.
Of a sudden he stopped dead and his lips moved in a murmured
ejaculation, and then after standing stock still for some minutes, he
murmured again:
"Ten to one on it!"
His cane had been stationary during this pause. Now he raised it once
more, but this time with careful attention. It was a light bamboo with a
silver head. He looked at it thoughtfully, bent it this way and that,
and then drove it into the sand and pressed it down. Though to the
ordinary eye a very chaste and appropriate walking stick for such a
gentleman as Mr. Carrington, the result of these tests seemed to
dissatisfy him. He shook his head, and then with an air of resolution
set out for the town.
A little later he entered a shop where a number of walking sticks were
on view and informed the proprietor that he desired to purchase
something more suitable for the country than the cane he carried. In
fact, his taste seemed now to run to the very opposite extreme, for the
points on which he insisted were length, stiffness, and a long and if
possible somewhat pointed ferule. At last he found one to his mind, left
his own cane to be sent down to the hotel, and walked out with his new
purchase.
His next call was at Mr. Simon Rattar's villa. This morning he
approached it without any of the curious shyness he had exhibited on the
occasion of his recent visit. His advance was conducted openly up the
drive and in an erect posture, and he crossed the gravel space boldly,
and even jauntily, while his ring was firmness itself. Mary answered the
bell, and her pleasure at seeing so soon again the sympathetic gentleman
with the eyeglass was a tribute to his tact.
"Good morning, Mary," said he, with an air that combined very happily
the courtesy of a gentleman with the freedom of an old friend, "Mr.
Rattar is at his office, I presume."
She said that he was, but this time the visitor exhibited neither
surprise nor disappointment.
"I thought he would be," he confessed confidentially, "and I have come
to see whether I couldn't do something to help you to get at the bottom
of these troublesome goings on. Anything fresh happened?"
"The master was out in the garden again last night, sir!" said she.
"Was he really?" cried Mr. Carrington. "By Jove, how curious! We really
must look into that: in fact, I've got an idea I want you to help me
with. By the way, it sounds an odd question to ask about Mr. Rattar, but
have you ever seen any sign of a pipe or tobacco in the house?"
"Oh, never indeed!" said she. "The master has never been a smoking
gentleman. Quite against smoking he's always been, sir."
"Ever since you have known him?"
"Oh, and before that, sir."
"Ah!" observed Mr. Carrington in a manner that suggested nothing
whatever. "Well, Mary, I want this morning to have a look round the
garden."
Her eyes opened.
"Because the master walks there at nights?"
He nodded confidentially.
"But--but if he was to know you'd been interfering, sir--I mean what
he'd think was interfering, sir--"
"He shan't know," he assured her. "At least not if you'll do what I tell
you. I want you to go now and have a nice quiet talk with cook for half
an hour--half an hour by the kitchen clock, Mary. If you don't look out
of the window, you won't know that I'm in the garden, and then nobody
can blame you whatever happens. We haven't mentioned the word 'garden'
between us--so you are out of it! Remember that."
He smiled so pleasantly that Mary smiled back.
"I'll remember, sir," said she. "And cook is to be kept talking in the
kitchen?"
"You've tumbled to it exactly, Mary. If neither of you see me, neither
of you know anything at all."
She got a last glimpse of his sympathetic smile as she closed the door,
and then she went faithfully to the kitchen for her talk with cook. It
was quite a pleasant gossip at first, but half an hour is a long time to
keep talking, when one has been asked not to stop sooner, and it so
happened, moreover, that cook was somewhat busy that morning and began
at length to indicate distinctly that unless her friend had some matter
of importance to communicate she would regard further verbiage with
disfavour. At this juncture Mary decided that twenty minutes was
practically as good as half an hour, and the conversation ceased.
Passing out of the kitchen regions, Mary glanced towards a distant
window, hesitated, and then came to another decision. Mr. Carrington
must surely have left the garden now, so there was no harm in peeping
out. She went to the window and peeped.
It was only a two minutes' peep, for Mr. Carrington had not left the
garden, and at the end of that space of time something very disturbing
happened. But it was long enough to make her marvel greatly at her
sympathetic friend's method of solving the riddle of the master's
conduct. When she first saw him, he seemed to be smoothing the earth in
one of the flower beds with his foot. Then he moved on a few paces,
stopped, and drove his walking stick hard into the bed. She saw him lean
on it to get it further in and apparently twist it about a little. And
then he withdrew it again and was in the act of smoothing the place when
she saw him glance sharply towards the gate, and the next instant leap
behind a bush. Simultaneously the hum of a motor car fell on her ear,
and Mary was out of the room and speeding upstairs.
She heard the car draw up before the house and listened for the front
door bell, but the door opened without a ring and she marvelled and
trembled afresh. That the master should return in a car at this hour of
the morning seemed surely to be connected with the sin she had connived
at. It swelled into a crime as she held her breath and listened. She
wished devoutly she had never set eyes on the insinuating Mr.
Carrington.
But there came no call for her, or no ringing of any bell; merely sounds
of movement in the hall below, heard through the thrumming of the
waiting car. And then the front door opened and shut again and she
ventured to the window. It was a little open and she could hear her
master speak to the chauffeur as he got in. He was now wearing, she
noticed, a heavy overcoat. A moment more and he was off again, down the
drive, and out through the gates. When she remembered to look again for
her sympathetic friend, he was quietly driving his walking stick once
more into a flower bed.
About ten minutes afterwards the front door bell rang and there stood
Mr. Carrington again. His eye seemed strangely bright, she thought, but
his manner was calm and soothing as ever.
"I noticed Mr. Rattar return," he said, "and I thought I would like to
make sure that it was all right, before I left. I trust, Mary, that you
have got into no trouble on my account."
She thought it was very kind of him to enquire.
"The master was only just in and out again," she assured him.
"He came to get his overcoat, I noticed," he remarked.
Mr. Carrington's powers of observation struck her as very surprising for
such an easy-going gentleman.
"Yes, sir, that was all."
"Well, I'm very glad it was all right," he smiled and began to turn
away. "By the way," he asked, turning back, "did he tell you where he is
going to now?"
"He didn't see me, sir."
"You didn't happen to overhear him giving any directions to the
chauffeur, did you? I noticed you at an open window."
For the first time Mary's sympathetic friend began to make her feel a
trifle uncomfortable. His eyes seemed to be everywhere.
"I thought I heard him say 'Keldale House,'" she confessed.
"Really!" he exclaimed and seemed to muse for a moment. In fact, he
appeared to be still musing as he walked away.
Mary began to wonder very seriously whether Mr. Carrington was going to
prove merely a fresh addition to the disquieting mysteries of that
house.
XXXVII
BISSET'S ADVICE
The short November afternoon was fading into a gusty evening, as Ned
Cromarty drew near his fortalice. He carried a gun as usual, and as
usual walked with seven league strides. Where the drive passed through
the scrap of stunted plantation it was already dusk and the tortured
boughs had begun their night of sighs and tossings. Beyond them, pale
daylight lingered and the old house stood up still clear against a
broken sky and a grey waste with flitting whitecaps all the way to the
horizon. He had almost reached the front door when he heard the sound of
wheels behind him. Pausing there, he spied a pony and a governess' car,
with two people distinct enough to bring a sudden light into his eye.
The pony trotted briskly towards the door, and he took a stride to meet
them.
"Miss Farmond!" he said.
A low voice answered, and though he could not catch the words, the tone
was enough for him. And then another voice said:
"Aye, sir, I've brought her over."
"Bisset!" said he. "It's you, is it? Well, what's happened?"
He was lifting her out of the trap and not hesitating to hold her hand
a little longer than he had ever held it before, now that he could see
her face quite plainly and read what was in her eyes.
"I've dared to come after all!" she said, with a little smile, which
seemed to hint that she knew the risk was over now.
"I advised her vera strongly, sir, to come over with me to Stanesland,"
explained her escort. "The young lady has had a trying experience at
Keldale, and forby the fair impossibility of her stopping on under the
unfortunate circumstances, I was of the opinion that the sea air would
be a fine change and the architectural features remarkably interesting.
In fac', sir, I practically insisted that Miss Farmond had just got to
come."
"Good man!" said Ned. "Come in and tell me the unfortunate
circumstances." He bent over Cicely and in a lowered voice added:
"Personally I call 'em fortunate--so long as they haven't been too
beastly for you!"
"It's all right now!" she murmured, and as they went up the steps he
found, somehow or other, her hand for an instant in his again.
"If you'll stand by your pony for a moment, Bisset, I'll send out some
one to take her," he said with happy inspiration.
But Mr. Bisset was not so easily shaken off.
"She'll stand fine for a wee while," he assured his host. "You'll be the
better of hearing all about it from me."
They went into the smoking room and the escort began forthwith.
"The fact is, Mr. Cromarty, that yon man Simon Rattar is a fair
discredit. Miss Farmond has been telling me the haill story of her
running away, and your ain vera seasonable appearance and judicious
conduct, sir; which I am bound to say, Mr. Cromarty, is neither more nor
less than I'd have expectit of a gentleman of your intelligence. Weel,
to continue, Miss Farmond acted on your advice--which would have been my
own, sir, under the circumstances--and tellt her ladyship the plain
facts. Weel then----"
"And what did Lady Cromarty say to you?" demanded Ned.
"Hardly a word. She simply looked at me and said she would send for Mr.
Rattar."
Not a whit rebuffed, Mr. Bisset straightway resumed his narrative.
"A perfectly proper principle if the man was capable of telling the
truth. I'm no blaming her ladyship at that point, but where she departit
from the proper principles of evidence----"
"When did Rattar come?"
"This morning," said Cicely. "And--can you believe it?--he absolutely
denied that he had ever advised me to go away!"
"I can believe it," said Ned grimly. "And I suppose Lady Cromarty
believed him?"
"God, but you're right, sir!" cried Bisset. "Your deductions are
perfectly correct. Yon man had the impudence to give the haill thing a
flat denial! And then naturally Miss Farmond was for off, but at first
her ladyship was no for letting her go. Indeed she went the length of
sending for me and telling me the young lady was not to be permitted to
shift her luggage out of the house or use any conveyance."
"But Bisset was splendid!" cried Cicely. "Do you know what the foolish
man did? He gave up his situation and took me away!"
Bisset, the man, permitted a gleam of pleasure to illuminate his blunt
features; but Bisset, the philosopher, protested with some dignity.
"It was a mere matter of principle, sir. Detention of luggage like yon
is no legal. I tellt her ladyship flatly that she'd find herself afore
the Shirra', and that I was no going to abet any such proceedings. I
further informed her, sir, of my candid opinion of Simon Rattar, and I
said plainly that he was probably meaning to marry her and get the
estate under his thumb, and these were the kind o' tricks rascally
lawyers took in foolish women wi'."
"You told Lady Cromarty that!" exclaimed Ned. "And what did she say?"
"We had a few disagreeable passages, as it were, sir," said the
philosopher calmly. "And then I borrowed yon trap and having advised
Miss Farmond to come to Stanesland and she being amenable, I just
brought her along to you."
"Oh, it was on your advice then?"
"Yes, sir."
Cicely and her host exchanged one fleeting glance and then looked
extremely unconscious.
"She's derned wise!" said he to himself.
He held out his hand to the gratified counsellor.
"Well done, Bisset, you've touched your top form to-day, and I may tell
you I've been wanting some one like you badly for a long while, if you
are willing to stay on with me. Put that in your pipe, Bisset, and smoke
over it! And now, you know your way, go and get yourself some tea, and a
drink of the wildest poison you fancy!"
Hardly was the door closed behind him than the laird put his fate to the
test as promptly and directly as he did most other things.
"I want you to stop on too, Cicely--for ever. Will you?"
Her eyes, shyly questioning for a moment and then shyly tender, answered
his question before her lips had moved, and it would have been hard to
convince them that the minutes which followed ever had a parallel within
human experience.
A little later he confessed:
"Do you know, Cicely, I've always had a funky feeling that if I ever
proposed my glass eye would drop out!"
The next event was the somewhat sudden entry of Lilian Cromarty, and
that lady's self control was never more severely tested or brilliantly
vindicated. One startled glance, and then she was saying, briskly, and
with the old bright smile:
"A telegram for you, Ned."
"Thanks," said he. "By the way, here's the future Mrs. Ned--that's to
say if she doesn't funk it before the wedding."
Lilian's welcome, Lilian's embrace, and Lilian's congratulations were
alike perfect. Cicely wondered how people could ever have said the
critical things of her which some of her acquaintances were unkind
enough to say at times. As to Bisset's dictum regarding the lady in the
castle, that was manifestly absurd on the face of it. Miss Cromarty was
clearly overjoyed to hear of her brother's engagement.
"And now, Neddy dear!" cried the bright lady, "tell me how it all came
about!"
Ned looked up from his telegram with a glint in his eye that was hardly
a lover's glance.
"Cicely will tell you all about it," said he. "I'm afraid I've got to be
off pretty well as quick as I can."
He handed them the wire and they read: "Meet me eight to-night Kings
Arms urgent. Carrington."
"From Mr. Carrington!" exclaimed his sister.
Ned smiled.
"Cicely will explain him too," he said. "By Gad, I wonder if this is
going to be the finishing bit of luck!"
In another twenty minutes the lights of his gig lamps were raking the
night.
XXXVIII
TRAPPED
Cromarty and Carrington slipped unostentatiously out of the hotel a few
minutes after eight o'clock.
"Take any line you like," said Carrington, "but as he knows now that you
brought Miss Farmond back and have heard her version, he'll naturally be
feeling a little uncomfortable about the place where one generally gets
kicked, when he sees you march in. He will expect you to open out on
that subject, so if I were you I'd take the natural line of country and
do what he expects."
"Including the kicking?"
Carrington laughed.
"Keep him waiting for that. Spin it out; that's your job to-night."
"I wish it were more than talking!" said Ned.
"Well," drawled Carrington, "it may lead to something more amusing. Who
knows? You haven't bought your own gun, I suppose? Take mine."
He handed him the same little article he had taken out the night before,
and Ned's eye gleamed.
"What!" said he. "That kind of gun once more? This reminds me of old
times!"
"It's a mere precaution," said the other. "Don't count on using it!
Remember, you're going to visit the most respectable citizen of the
town--perhaps on a wild goose errand."
"I guess not," said Ned quietly.
"We daren't assume anything. I don't want to make a fool of myself, and
no more do you, I take it."
"I see," said Ned, with a nod. "Well, I'll keep him in his chair for
you."
"That's it."