John Seward Mervyn lay back in his accustomed armchair and puffed very
contentedly at his pipe. The fire burned clearly in the deep,
old-fashioned fireplace, and the room looked exactly the same as when we
first discovered him in it. Even the wind, swirling boisterously around
the gables of Heath Hover, seemed to sound the same note, but it was not
snow-laden this time, for autumn had not yet fairly gone out. The same
little black kitten, though it was no longer a kitten now, still it had
grown not much larger, and was as fluffy and almost as playful as ever,
had jumped up on to his knee and sat there purring.
"Fill up, Varne," he said, pushing the square bottle over to his
companion--the glow of glasses and syphons between them shone merrily in
the cheerful lamplight. "And now--we can talk. No, it's all right.
She can't hear," following an almost imperceptible lift of the other's
eyebrows toward the ceiling, the sound of footsteps on the upper side of
this betokening that Melian was undergoing the intricate and protracted
process of feminine turning in.
Helston Varne, ensconced in the opposite chair, mixed himself a
deliberate peg and relit his pipe. He was, in fact, more interested
than--from force of habit--he allowed to appear, for now he was going to
learn at first hand what he had pieced together in theory.
"First of all, tell me," went on Mervyn. "I haven't asked you yet, was
purposely waiting until we got back here--on the very scene of it all,
so to say. How did you get your cue to play up to on that Star
business, when you were doing inquisitor-in-chief in that damnable
hell-cave?"
"Mainly from deduction, I found the confirmation--here."
"Here? How--when?" And remembering various manoeuvres of his own--
here--Mervyn might well give way to amazement.
"You remember that day you came back from Clancehurst, and found me in
the old lumber room. I had just discovered it then, and shoved back the
old sideboard barely in time when you came in."
"Good God!"
The other nodded.
"I'll astonish you still further, Mervyn," he said. "Before it got
there it reposed under a roundish topped stone on the sluice path. You
transhipped it while you had me locked up in the cellar yonder."
"Wrong there, Varne," said Mervyn, with something of a chuckle, "but not
altogether though. I did transfer that one, but it wasn't the one you
found. That was kindly delivered here since, and it was the one I
stowed away upstairs temporarily. By the way I take it you have some
inkling of what those things represent?"
"Perhaps I have."
"Well, then--they are charged with a most deadly, subtle, and hitherto
unknown poison. The touch of a hidden spring in the centre releases
this, and then the merest invisible pin-prick from any one of the
points--good-night! Well just imagine my feelings when I looked out of
the window to see Melian airily coming down the path with that infernal
thing in her hand. I wonder I didn't faint. Well, that was the one you
found."
The other started at the mention of Melian in this connexion, and his
face took on something of the look of horror which had come over that of
his host, evolved by the bare recollection.
"Yes, indeed. I can imagine them," he said. "Then the man you pulled
out of the water--and who incidentally was instrumental in setting up
the great Heath Hover mystery, brought the first?"
"That's right."
"What have you done with these two infernal things up to date, Mervyn?"
asked Helston Varne, not without some shade of anxiety.
"They're both snug and safe till the Day of Judgment at the bottom of
the deepest part of Plane Pond. Thickly rolled up, well weighted, and
by this time under six feet of mud and twenty of water. If they drained
the pond they'd never find them."
Helston Varne nodded approvingly.
"It's an interesting case, Mervyn--very. But--do you know, I was very
much getting on to the hang of it when--well, when we began to know each
other."
"The devil you were? I knew you were--trying to."
"I know you did. Well, we've been through a strange experience together
since then haven't we? But it's an infernally inconsequent world. For
instance why should I have predicted to Coates that you would be sure to
turn up over there again, and he have predicted that it would be bad for
you if you did? And--we were both right."
"Yes, indeed."
There was silence for a few moments. Both lay back in their chairs
puffing out contented clouds of smoke, and gazing into the red-hot wood
cavern. Without the wind howled.
"Do you know, Varne," resumed Mervyn, meditatively. "It's a deuced odd
thing, but that chap I got out of the pond, you know--to this day I
can't make out whether I killed him or whether he killed himself. He
died from a prick from the Star anyhow, because none of the doctors
could make head or tail of it, and by an inspiration of luck I had been
careful to hide away the thing."
"If you only knew what sleepless nights you've entailed upon Nashby.
He's just as suspicious as ever, you know. When I saw him in
Clancehurst the other day he looked at _me_ suspiciously. Thinks I've
deserted to the other side."
"Oh damn Nashby. He's a fool," came the gusty reply. "Well Varne, you
know all about the finding of the chap dead, and the inquest, and all
that. Very well. I had a sort of instinct against him from the moment
I saw him in the full light. After I had left him to turn in on that
sofa, I took precautions against him--I mean against him getting near me
during the night. Now,"--lowering his voice to what was almost a
whisper, and an impressive one, "I am almost certain I went down--in my
sleep--and--turned the Star upon him. In my sleep, mind, and
unconsciously. For, I give you my word that when the thing dropped off
him in the morning the discovery came upon me as a wild and entire
surprise. But it seemed to bring back a lot, and that with a rush."
The other emitted two deliberate puffs of smoke.
"If it's as you say, Mervyn, you are not responsible, but whether it is
or not--or whether the chap was careless over handling the infernal
machine, and so did for himself--and I don't see why you shouldn't give
yourself the benefit of the doubt--the result's the same, and a good one
for you, in that we shouldn't be here talking to-night, if he had lived
another day. Had you any reason, by the way, to expect the attentions
of this amiable confraternity?"
Mervyn knitted his brows and hesitated.
"Well, yes. I had," he said at length. "I had received signs to put
myself under its orders again. I had chucked it--clean, altogether--for
years, in fact I thought that the very act of coming to this out of the
way place would--well, blot out the trail. But I took no notice of
them, and--this was the consequence. There's no mistake about it, mind.
I've no idea as to the man's identity, but I recognised him, not at
first, but the next morning, as one of those light coloured Afghans. He
was Europeanised and talked English perfectly. Then, of course, I had
the key to the whole situation."
"Well, as I said, if he had lived, you would not have," said the other.
"I've sometimes thought," rejoined Mervyn, "and that's the only thing
that has bothered me--that is supposing I really did--you know--that
after saving his life, he might have backed out of his errand."
But Helston Varne shook his head slowly.
"I can't presume to teach _you_ your East, Mervyn. But--I think you are
mistaken there."
"Perhaps I am--most likely I am," came the answer. "Anyway, Varne, I'm
not going to stick on here any more, so if they plant another of those
little reminders on me they'll have to find out where I've got to."
"They won't," said the other. "And when you're in that jolly little
cottage inside my park that you've promised me to inhabit, for--well, as
long as it suits you--I think it'll be a risky matter for any one to
come fooling round you on that sort of errand."
And then the two men talked on--on this topic and others--far into the
night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since her return to Heath Hover Melian had experienced none of the fears
and misgivings which had hung over her before. The "influence" what
ever it was, seemed to have ceased, or was it in abeyance? Anyway, with
Helston Varne under the same roof nothing mattered. It seemed as if
nothing could matter.
For here he was, installed at Heath Hover as a guest, he who had first
come there as a spy, and that in a hostile interest to his now host. He
had not returned from the East in their company. With marvellous self
denial--or self control--or both, he had waited a week later, and then
returned alone. Characteristically he had reckoned that just that
period of time without him would deepen Melian's interest in him, would
cause her to miss him, in short--or not. If so, and he felt justified
in feeling sanguine--why there were all their lives before them to make
up for it in. If not--well, he refused to contemplate such a
contingency.
They had stayed at Mazaran just long enough for a rest after their hard,
perilous experiences, but Mervyn had seemed as eager to get away from
the country as before he had been to return to it. Helston had seen
them off at Karachi, himself taking a passage which brought him home
nearly as soon as themselves. And now he had arrived at Heath Hover the
evening before, and certainly had found no cause to complain of the
nature of his welcome.
The clear, brisk, bracing air lay upon Plane Pond, and upon the
reddening woods which flowed down to it, in the early morning, and the
voices of birds lifted in their late autumn song, ere silencing for
drear winter, made music in "Broceliande." The girl, tripping lightly
up the sluice path, felt all the invigorating influence of it go through
her system like a stimulant.
"Good morning, Sirdar."
Helston Varne turned. He had been leaning on the rail gazing out over
the expanse of water, thinking; and what he was thinking about was
embodied in this vision of youth and bright sweetness which now stood
before him in the early freshness of morning. Melian had taken to
calling him "Sirdar" since she had seen him in his wonderful Eastern
make-up. But neither of the two men had ever told her the extent of the
ghastly peril which the wonderful success of that make-up had been
instrumental in delivering them from.
She put out both hands and he took them--both. He held them for quite a
moment, gazing into the sweet blue eyes.
"Come," he said, still holding them. "We'll stroll a little through
`Broceliande,' the enchanted forest."
She looked at him, and said nothing; and they went, and as they went he
drew one of the long white hands over his arm and covered it with one of
his brown ones. And what they said in "Broceliande," the enchanted
forest, under the old gnarled oaks--why, reader, that is no earthly
concern of yours or mine. What may be, however, is that they emerged
eventually therefrom perfectly happy, and at peace with all the world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End.