A BLIND ALLEY
Mr. Penfellow, the Vicar, received us at the west door of the parish
church, a gigantic edifice which was all that was left of the once
noble foundation of the Priory of St. Cuthbert of Crowden. With
verger and curate, both striving mightily to equal his solemn
countenance, he escorted Hugh--and incidentally, Nikka and me--up the
center aisle to a high-walled pew directly under the choir.
Immediately behind us, Watkins was marshaling the slender array of
servants from Castle Chesby, all of whom had come to pay the lost
honors to their dead master.
The church was so large that the considerable congregation were
swallowed up in its echoing nave. The transepts contained nothing
save monuments and tombs. The tempered light that stole through
stained-glass windows left most of the space in shadow, but I
descried beyond the breadth of the crossing a second box-like pew
identical with ours, and in it a company whose gay raiment and
gabbling ways were out of place in contrast with the stolid piety of
the village folk and neighboring gentry.
"There's Hilyer," muttered Hugh in my ear, as the verger pompously
presented his mace and the Vicar withdrew toward the altar.
But we had no time to spare for observing the county's black sheep.
Mr. Penfellow's quavering, nasal voice began to intone the stately
rite of the Established Church for the dead. The shrill voices of
the choir-boys responded.
Our eyes became fastened upon the oblong casket resting on its low
catafalque under the choir railing, which contained the body of James
Chesby, that quaint, whimsical, Twentieth Century knight errant, who
had upheld the traditions of his race by tilting over the world in
pursuit of a prize which all sober men proclaimed to be impossible of
attainment.
And he had as good as found it! Laughed at, derided, mocked and
ridiculed, he had persisted doggedly in what he had regarded as his
life-work. He had succeeded where all others had failed or feared to
venture. And at the last, probably when he envisaged complete
success in his grasp, he had accepted death rather than yield the
prize to any but his heir. He must have had good stuff in him, that
slight, wan-faced slip of a man, whom I had only seen as he lay on
his death-bed in the hospital, his eyes shining to the end with
indomitable spirit.
As I thought of him, cut and hacked by that brute Toutou, I found my
fingers clenching on the book-rack in front of me; and glancing down,
I saw Hugh's knuckles, too, were white. We exchanged a grim glance.
For the first time we understood fully that we were playing a man's
game, a game in which there was no limit. And we experienced the
thirst for action which comes from a desire to slake unsatisfied
vengeance. This task we had set ourselves to was more than a hunt
for treasure. It was likewise a pursuit of James Chesby's murderers.
Nikka must have read somewhat of our thoughts in our faces, for he
reached behind me and slid a hand over Hugh's straining knuckles; and
I saw that his lips were shut tight and his eyes blazing like coals
under their eagle brows. And then my eyes chanced to stray toward
the opposite side of the crossing, and in the shadows that hovered
over the Hilyer pew I glimpsed a pair of eyes that gleamed with the
evil green light of a beast of prey. For an instant only they
showed. Then the shadows moved, and they disappeared. Startled, I
looked again, and saw nothing. It must have been fancy, I told
myself, a trick of the sunbeams filtered through the particolored
glass of the windows. And I turned my ear to the cadenced voice of
the Vicar:
"Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is
full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he
fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."
The formal service was soon ended, and after the congregation had
filed out, a little knot of men from Chesby farms poised the casket
on their shoulders and paced slowly after Mr. Penfellow and the
verger down the broad, winding stairs to the pillared crypt. At the
east end, beneath the altar, the verger unlocked a massy oaken door
and behind that an iron grate. There was a minute's delay while he
lit tall candles, and then the little procession marched on into the
last resting-place of the Chesbys.
It was an octagonal chamber, Tudor in style and extraordinarily
spacious, the groined roof springing lightly from slender pillars.
At the far end was a simple altar, and all around the other segments
of the octagon were ledges in two tiers. At intervals over the floor
space were tombs and sarcophagi. The flickering candles brought out
an occasional inscription.
"Hugh James Cuthbert................twenty-eighth Baron Chesby."
"Claudia Anne, Lady Chesby, aetat 34, beloved.......... James,
twenty-first................"
On several coffins reposing on the side ledges there were the
moldering remnants of old flags. On one lay an officer's cocked hat
and sword, tarnished and covered with dust.
Mr. Penfellow was bowing to Hugh.
"The--ah--space next your grandfather, I suppose?"
Hugh nodded dumbly, and the men carrying the casket shifted it gently
into the niche adjoining the twenty-eighth baron's. Once they had
set it in place, we were at some difficulty to distinguish it from
those above and on either side of it. They were all exactly alike.
And how different, probably, had been the men and women they held!
Hugh stumbled forward, and knelt beneath his uncle's casket. Nikka,
beside me, breathed hastily in my ear:
"I can't stand this, Jack. How can people be buried in stone vaults?
I'm choking."
Without waiting for a reply, he slipped away between the pillars, and
I was left alone with Mr. Penfellow. The verger was just shepherding
the pall-bearers through the gate.
"A very sad chapter in the glorious history of this ancient family,
Mr. Nash," murmured the vicar with moist eyes. "But surely no man
could hope for a grander Valhalla."
He gestured toward the encircling tombs.
"All of the line since Elizabethan times. That is, all the lords and
their ladies. Cadets and collaterals are buried elsewhere in the
church. Have you heard the story of Lady Jane Chesby, the builder of
this chamber? Ah! Very interesting, is it not? Her own husband was
lost at sea, you know. But here is an empty tomb she reared to him."
He led me to the handsomest sarcophagus in the center of the chamber.
On the marble lid was carved life-size the effigy of a man in
half-armor, sea-boots and morion. In his hands, clasped upon his
breast, he grasped a sextant.
The lettering of the inscription on the side I hastily deciphered as:
[Illustration: inscription]
"James Matthew Kymmer, Baron Chesby Hereditarie Rangare of Crowdene
Wood, Admirall of ye Queene's Gracious Majestie, Scourge of ye
Spaniards and all Papists and Infidells, Lost at Sea anno apud. 1590
And underneath this;
[Illustration: inscription]
"Deere Lord, I, that was yr Bedfellowe, do reare thys thatte yf yt
please Godde so to do and Hee bringe You to my Side there shal not
Lacke a Space."
"The famous Lady Jane rests under the adjoining sarcophagus with the
plain lid," continued the Vicar. "I wish we might find the old
crypt. It is somewhere under the Priory grounds but she concealed it
very effectually. The tradition is that the old lords were buried in
their mail. They were all noted as warriors. Ah, Lord Chesby," as
Hugh rose and walked over to us. "This has been very sad, very sad,
indeed. And yet, as I was saying to Mr. Nash, it is something for a
man after he dies to be brought back to wait the Last Trump in such
glorious company."
"I am afraid I have been thinking of the criminals who murdered my
uncle," said Hugh curtly. "You have been very kind, sir. I should
like to thank you and everybody else for what they have done.
Where's Nikka, Jack? Gone up? Do you mind if we leave you to shut
the vault, Mr. Penfellow? Thank you again."
He hooked his arm in mine, and together we passed out of that
sepulchral chamber, with its great company of illustrious dead.
Upstairs in the church porch Nikka was awaiting us, breathing in deep
gusts of the air that blew in tinctured with the perfume of Crowden
Forest that stretched all around the village.
"I'm sorry, Hugh," he exclaimed, taking Hugh's other arm, "I couldn't
wait. There's something in me that rebels against your churches. I
feel the same way about mosques and synagogues, for that matter. And
as for being buried down in a close, stone-lined hole in the ground,
herded in with other dead!" He shivered violently. "I hope not! If
there is a God--and there must be some kind of one to make the trees
and hills and the grass and to put music in one's heart--why, I pray
to Him that I shall lie on a hillside, with only the trees around me
and the sun beating down."
Hugh smiled.
"Each to his own, Nikka. You are a Gypsy, a son of the open road. I
am an Englishman, son to these stone walls, that old house we came
from. I cannot get away from it. I am bound up with them. So long
as they and I last we shall be indivisible."
"And what am I?" I demanded lightly.
"You? You are an American. The world is your oyster. You can be
satisfied in any way, in Nikka's way or in mine."
It was a scant ten minutes' walk through the park to Castle Chesby.
As we entered the drive, Watkins, who had driven back with the
servants, came around the house from the stables and started to run
toward us.
"Somebody broke in whilst we were at church, your ludship," he panted
when he was within earshot.
We were all startled.
"Anything missing?" questioned Hugh sharply.
"I can't say as yet, your ludship. They seem to 'ave been only in
the unoccupied parts. I fancy, sir, they 'adn't the time to go
through the West Wing."
We hastened into the house after him. A rear door in the center of
the castle--it was really more of a manor than a castle in style--had
been forced. Desks, wardrobes, chests of drawers, closets, armories,
every corner or piece of furniture that might conceal anything had
been thoroughly ransacked. Drawers and their contents were still
piled helter-skelter on the floor.
"Do you suppose they could have found anything?" I asked.
Watkins shook his head positively.
"I am sure they could not, Mr. Nash, sir. I think I know most of the
stuff that they have gone through. Oh, in a very general way, your
ludship, to be sure. But I am sure 'is late ludship was not in the
'abit of keeping anything he was precious of in the East Wing or the
Main 'Ouse, sir."
We left Watkins to supervise the servants in reëstablishing order in
the upset rooms, and returned to the West Wing. In the Gunroom, Hugh
lit a cigarette and straddled his legs in front of the fire. Nikka
and I dropped into the lounge that faced the hearth.
"Well?" said Hugh, and his lips had resumed the grim line I had
noticed in church.
"Who are they?" I suggested.
"Good idea," approved Hugh, and he rang the bell by the door.
Watkins arrived with the celerity of a djin.
"Watty, I wish you'd make inquiries along the roads, and find out if
any strangers have been seen around the place this morning. Oh, yes,
and tell the servants not to talk. You understand? Not to talk.
The man or woman who talks is to be dismissed."
"That was another good idea," said Nikka. "Our best bet is to keep
our mouths shut. They, whoever, they are, have us guessing. Maybe
we can make them guess a little. And that reminds me, do you realize
that they have saved us quite a bit of searching?"
"You mean in turning two-thirds of the house upside down?" answered
Hugh.
"Just that. And I'd suggest that we waste no time in going
thoroughly over this wing, ourselves."
We set to work with gusto. On my suggestion--they nominated me
captain in this enterprise because of my supposed architectural
knowledge--we commenced with the Gunroom. We examined it from end to
end, tapped the paneling for secret recesses, examined the furniture.
No result.
After luncheon, we began on the upper floor and went over the entire
wing in detail. We measured the different rooms. I even took outer
measurements. We studied chimneys. We sounded floors. We took to
pieces every article of furniture which might have concealed a secret
drawer--and we found several hidden receptacles, by the way, but they
contained nothing beyond ordinary family letters and trash. Immersed
in the hunt and baffled by lack of success, we caused Watkins to put
off dinner, and worked on until after nine o'clock. Still no success.
We went to bed that night, tired out and disgusted. But in the
morning we arose with sharpened interest and determined to canvas the
possibilities in the parts of the house the invaders had searched.
Again we took careful measurements, inside and out. Again we sounded
paneling, investigated recesses and chimney spaces. We hunted for
two days. Then we went back, and reëxamined the West Wing a second
time. We ended up in stark disappointment in the Gunroom.
"Damn it all!" ripped Hugh. "The trouble is that my family were not
Catholics in the times when priests were proscribed, and every
self-respecting Catholic family had its Priest's Hole."
"I'm not worried just because your family can't boast an accessible
hiding-place," I retorted. "What bothers me is that their
hiding-place, if they have one, is so cunningly hidden that we can't
find it."
"'If they have one,'" repeated Hugh. "You may well say that! I am
beginning to believe we may be on a wild goose chase, after all.'
"If we were the only ones after it, I might think so," I replied.
Nikka, who had relapsed into one of his frequent spells of silent
contemplation, jumped suddenly from his chair.
"If it is here, it is in this room," he said.
"Is that a Gypsy prophecy?" jeered Hugh.
There was a racket of motors outside in the drive, and Watkins
appeared in the doorway.
"Pardon, your ludship. But I thought you would wish to know Mr.
Hilyer and 'is party 'ave just driven up.'
"The devil they have!" exclaimed Hugh. "I suppose we'll have to see
'em."
But Watkins lingered in the doorway.
"What is it?"
Watkins cleared his throat.
"You may remember you instructed me to inquire if strangers 'ad been
seen on the roads 'ereabouts the morning of the funeral, your
ludship."
Hugh nodded.
"Mrs. Dobson at the Lodge said nobody passed on the village road,
your ludship. And I made other inquiries, but without success until
I met 'Iggins, the carpenter, sir, this morning. 'E said one of Mr.
Hilyer's motors passed on the London road close on noon, but that was
all."
"Well, that doesn't help any," said Hugh. "Whoever did it must have
taken to the woods and cut across to the Channel road."
"They need only 'ave dropped over the park wall to reach the London
Road, your ludship," suggested Watkins.
"Oh, I see your point," agreed Hugh. "Then Hilyer's people might
have seen them. I'll find an opportunity to speak to him about it.'
"Thank you, your ludship."
And Watkins withdrew.