"Well? What is it, dear? Forgotten something?"
With an effort he had put on a light, matter-of-fact tone. He pretended
not to notice her perturbation.
"No. But--"
She looked genuinely distressed, worse still--genuinely frightened. She
almost pushed past him in her anxiety to get into the full light, and he
noticed a quick movement of half turning the head as though to look
behind her.
"But--what? I think it's that bit of fried plum pudding; still, the
touch of burnt brandy on it should have counteracted its effects," he
went on, keeping up the role. "Nightmare of course. And our solemn
discussion before you turned in would make that way."
"No, no," and she shook her head, decisively. "I wish it was. As sure
as I sit here, Uncle Seward, there was a Something in the room. I heard
it--first--heard it moving, but for the life of me I dared not move
myself, not even to light the candle. It was the sound of steps--of
light steps--coming towards the bed. Oh, it was horrible--awful?" she
broke off, with a quick, scared glance around as though still expecting
to see something. "And then--wait a bit," seizing him by the wrists.
"Something cold and clammy touched my face, just touched it--like the
feel of dead fingers. I could see something shadowy too in the light of
the fire--and then I just dashed out of bed and came straight down
here."
"Melian, pull yourself together child," he said gently. "You've had a
bad dream, coming on top of what we were talking about." But the look
on her face was that of one who had had a very bad scare indeed, and
somehow Mervyn had been under the impression that his niece was the sort
of girl who would take a great deal of scaring. "Here, put this down.
It'll pull you together."
"This" was a glass of port, which he had got out of the sideboard. She
sipped a little, and looked as if she didn't like it, then a little
more, and felt better.
"That's right," he went on. "Now, look here, you've been using that
room for over a fortnight, and have never thought of bothering about
anything of the kind. Why I slept in it myself for several nights
before you came."
He had meant the assurance to be reassuring, but hardly had he made it
than Mervyn saw he had made a false step.
"But why did you sleep in it, Uncle Seward?" said the girl, quickly.
"Eh? Why to see that it was comfortable--not damp and all that sort of
thing."
He wondered if she accepted this explanation. In his heart he doubted
it.
"The cold touch on your face was probably a bat," he went on. "Do you
sleep with your window open?"
"Oh yes, always."
"There you are then. I think we've got at the solution. Now let's go
straight up and look for the bat."
He had as yet not gauged the extent of his niece's knowledge of natural
history, and would have given much to have had a real live bat in his
possession at that moment, that he might privily have set it loose when
they gained the room. She, however, seemed not inclined to question the
probability of bats hawking around at large in what was nearly
mid-winter!
"Now," he said, holding up the light, and making a careful inspection of
the room, "we'll find him probably, hanging on somewhere in the corner.
No," after an exhaustive search. "Oh well, he's probably gone out by
the way he came. Better keep the window nearly up to the top--then he
can't get back again."
"Do you think it was really that, Uncle Seward?" Melian asked.
"Why of course," he answered with the uneasy consciousness of skating on
thin ice. "Unless it was a common or house mouse which had found its
way in through somewhere. But now you go to bed again, child, and I'll
come up and turn in too. Then you'll know there's some one right near
you, and all you've got to do is to knock on the partition in case you
get another scare. It's not a very thick one, and I shall hear at once.
But you mustn't get another scare, if only that there's nothing on
earth to get scared at. Look--you can see all over the room now. It's
just an ordinary room--old, but with no secret panels or anything of
that kind, and I'm only just the other side of that partition. You'll
sleep like a humming top now, I should think."
"I believe I will," she answered, feeling more reassured by his tone of
decisive confidence, the recent glass of port, to one unaccustomed,
contributing largely to that end. "Tell me, Uncle Seward, do you think
me an awful fool? I wouldn't like that?"
"My dear child, of course I don't. All women get nervy at times--not
only women either--for the rest the plum pudding, _and_ the subject of
conversation. Now good-night, darling, you'll be as jolly as Punch in
the morning. And remember, there's only the partition between us."
Even as her uncle had predicted, the girl laid her head on the pillow
perfectly reassured and calmed, and in no time was breathing softly and
evenly in a dreamless sleep. But this did not fall to Mervyn's lot.
The incident had banished all sleep from his mind. He had laughed off
the situation, and effectually soothed Melian--in fact he was surprised
to think how completely he had succeeded. But what if something of the
sort recurred, and he found that it got too much upon the girl's nerves,
and that, too, just as he flattered himself that everything was going on
so well? There were reasons why he did not want to leave Heath Hover;
reasons over and above his undoubted attachment to the place--and they
were very vital reasons indeed; perhaps not wholly unconnected with
Inspector Nashby.
He put up the window sash and leaned out. The night, was wild and
rather heavy, and a moist earthy odour came up from the saturation of
the fallen leaves in the wet woodland. Away on the bank, up towards the
head of the long pond, a fox barked several times. He liked the sound,
he liked all the sounds of the lonely night, and when an owl floated out
on noiseless pinions and hooted beneath the murky sky--he could just
make out its shadowy shape--that too, fitted in with his mood. There
was a moon, a feeble one, and concealed behind the prevailing mistiness,
but in such light as it afforded he could pick out the boardings which
held up the steps of the footpath leading up to the sluice. And on one
of these the round stone stood out just discernible.
Just discernible! To his gaze--to his then mood--it seemed the one
thing discernible--it and the thing that it held--the thing that it
entombed. And the pointed roundness of that thing seemed to rise from
the earth and gleam dull white in the lack-lustre of the night.
There it had lain for weeks, and for weeks, almost nightly, as now, he
had gazed out upon the tomb of it--just as he was doing now--with a
strange, uneasy, but wholly compelling fascination. Why had he left it
there all this time? Any chance movement, on anybody's part, might
dislodge the stone. Why, his niece had slipped on it, the first day she
had been at Heath Hover! The time had come to bury this thing--this
accursed thing--far away from any possibility of it being unearthed--at
any rate in his lifetime. After that it would not matter.
A stout bag, a stone or two, and the deepest centre of Plane Pond would
custody it until the crack of doom. And yet--and yet--somehow he had
never been able to bring himself to touch it again. Was it that some
instinct moved him to decide that the best hiding place for anything--or
anybody--was the least likely hiding place? If so, the middle of that
path stairway assuredly was that.
The observation, of which he had spoken laughingly, contemptuously to
his niece, was another factor in the situation. All shut in as the
place was, Mervyn knew that he could never absolutely count upon a
single moment when he could safely declare himself free from such
observation. In the day time he certainly could not. In the hanging
woods, on the road, anywhere, there was always the possibility of the
presence of those who could see him while he could not see them.
But what about the dark--the night time?
Simple enough--doesn't it seem? But there was that about the thing that
he wanted--or might have wanted--to remove--that rendered the effecting
of that process in the dark out of the question. Yet, all things
considered, as he told himself here, to-night, not for the first time--
why should he trouble his head about it at all? Why should he not let
well alone?
A life of solitude and self-concentration breeds a--well, a not
altogether satisfactory state of mind; which for present purposes may be
taken to mean that this thing had got upon Mervyn's mind. It was too
close--too near to him altogether. He would fain have known it farther
away. Furthermore, there were all sorts of possibilities shrouding
around the fateful thing which were wholly outside of such
considerations as Inspector Nashby, and other people--up to date. And
since the advent of his niece, with her youth and brightness, and above
all, affection--which he had seen growing day by day to irradiate his
life--the necessity of getting rid entirely and completely of this
fateful horror had been growing upon him more and more.
He listened. No sound came from the other side of the partition. The
girl had gone to sleep then, comfortably, calmly, as he thought she
would. Some impulse now drew him to effect what he had long been
contemplating, to remove that sinister thing beyond all chance of human
eye ever falling upon it again. Everything favoured this. The night
was here, and the night was not too dark, while just dark enough.
Another instinct told him that now was the time, now was his chance.
He pulled out a drawer--noiselessly, then another drawer. Yes--here was
what he sought--a pair of thick gloves; but--it was an old pair, and the
ends of some of the fingers were in holes. He looked at them dubiously.
There was a great deal underlying the fact of those gloves being in
holes, it seemed. Then he put them on.
He listened again--intently. Still no sound on the dead, soundless
night. He fancied he could hear the girl's soft, regular breathing, in
tranquil slumber, through the partition. That was just what he wanted.
He had told her he would be there, if she had occasion to call him; but
now, what he wanted to effect would take some time, nearly half an hour
perhaps. What if she were to awake suddenly, in an agony of fear, and
to call for him, and he were away in the dark woodland path up towards
the pond head! Well, there were chances in everything.
He listened again--then opened the door silently, and went down the
stairs, keeping to the end of each step to minimise the chances of it
creaking. As noiselessly as possible he opened the hall door, then
listened again.
All was still. He could hear the ticking of the clock in the
living-room, and to him it sounded loud. But for the rest nothing was
audible. He went out, and the faint puff of the night air wafted round
his face. All was still. Not even the ululating voice of an owl, in or
over the dark woods, floated out to break it. Mervyn realised that his
nerves were somewhat athrill as he placed his first step on the path
stairway. And yet--and yet--at his age, and with his experience, why
should they be? It was ridiculous.
There was the stone. One wrench, and what he wanted would be in his
hand. He looked around, not quickly nor directly, but in a casual
manner; taking fully a minute over the process. But as he turned to the
stone again a kind of influence seemed to spring from it, almost
assuming the tones of a voice. "You cannot. You dare not," it seemed
to say. Then came reaction.
"Oh, can't I? Daren't I?" he repeated scornfully to himself. "We'll
see."
He bent over the stone now, at the same time drawing the finger ends of
his holed gloves as far forward as possible, as though to cover as far
as might be, the defects of those same holes. Then he stood upright
again, and continued his stroll up towards the sluice. For ever so
faint a sound had caught his ear.
"Good evenin' Mr Mervyn, good evenin' sur. Fine evenin' to get the
air, sure-ly."
"Ah, good-evening, Pierce. Yes. A breath of air makes you sleep better
in this February weather, eh?"
Sir John Tullibard's head keeper had been looking up the pond. Now he
turned, the glow of the bowl of his short clay pipe showing dull red in
the gloom.
"That it do, sur. But I could sleep middlin' without that," answered
the man, with a grin.
"I'd say something about a pint of ale, Pierce," went on Mervyn, "but I
don't want to risk disturbing Miss Seward. She sleeps light, and--well,
do you know, I'm afraid she's getting a bit of a scare on about the old
place. I only hope no one has been chattering over all the old silly
yarns about it to her, eh?"
"That haven't I, sur," answered the man.
"Well, get the pint to-morrow instead of to-night," said Mervyn, and
something changed hands. "Still, I believe she must have overheard some
one chattering; yet I've rubbed the fear of the Lord into old Joe about
it."
"Thank'ee sur. No, I don't know as how anything of the sort could have
been nabbled around. Folks have been mighty careful since the strange
gent's affair, sur. They won't talk--not they. Think maybe they'll be
`pulled' over that."
"Do they. Well, long may they go on thinking so at that rate. But, do
you know, I'm rather getting fed up with that business myself, and am
always wishing to Heaven the poor chap had picked out some one else's
hospitable roof to go and end up under, or that I hadn't heard, and had
left him where he was in the first instance. It would have come to the
same thing in the long run--or rather the very short run--and would have
saved me no end of bother."
"Why, yes, sur, it would have done that sure-ly. Thank'ee again, sur,
and good-night."
Mervyn had judged it time to go in. And as he walked back over the
fateful stone again he found himself wondering whether the keeper's
presence there was really accidental after all. Was Nashby privily
employing the whole countryside--or such of it as was trustworthy--to
keep watch on him--tireless watch by night as well as by day? Further,
had Pierce actually seen him stop and bend over the stone? That would
finish things. Mervyn's head and forehead were not quite dry as he
noiselessly re-entered his front door, and that in spite of the now
chilly atmosphere of the night.