A MIDNIGHT INTRUDER.
Lionel Dering found himself back at Park Newton three days earlier than
he had intended. Mrs. Garside’s sister in Paris having been suddenly
taken ill, Mrs. Garside was telegraphed for to go over. She begged of
Edith to accompany her. Lionel ran down with them as far as Dover, saw
them safely on board the steamer, and then bade them goodbye.
There being no longer any attraction for him in London, he decided to
go straight through to Park Newton, as several matters there claimed
his attention, and he went accordingly. He reached home about seven
o’clock in the evening, much to the consternation of Mrs. Benson, his
housekeeper, who had not expected him till the end of the week, and who
was in the midst of a high festival of scrubbing and scouring. Among
other places, Lionel’s bedroom was in a topsy-turvy condition, and
altogether unfit for occupation; so that Mrs. Benson, with many
apologies, was compelled to ask him whether he would object to sleep in
another room for that night only. Lionel, who was the most good-natured
of men with his servants, made no objection to the change.
After his simple dinner was over, Lionel spent an hour among his
letters and papers, and then took a cigar and his travelling cap with
the intention of having a quiet smoke in the shrubbery. The night was
clear and cold. There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly.
The footways were dry and pleasant to walk on, and Lionel lingered
outside for nearly an hour, winding in and out among the maze of walks,
and the thick clumps of evergreens, wherever his vagrant footsteps led
him. His thoughts were with Edith. He was thinking of the time, so soon
to come, when they should pace those pleasant walks together; when that
dim old pile, which looked so majestic in the starlight, should call
her mistress. There would be their home through all the happy years to
come. His heart was full of solemn joy and gratitude: unbidden tears
stood in his eyes: he felt that Heaven had been very kind to him. Then
and there he registered a promise that the sick, the aged, and the
poverty-stricken on his estate—and he knew already that they were many
in number—should be made the special care of Edith and himself.
He was slowly retracing his steps when, as he turned the corner of a
thick clump of holly only a few yards from the house, to his utter
surprise he nearly stumbled over a man, who started up, from under his
very feet as it seemed, and plunged at once into the depths of the
shrubbery on the other side. For the moment Lionel was too much
startled to think of pursuit, and a second thought convinced him that
it would be useless to attempt any. The trees were thickly planted just
there, and that part of the grounds was quite strange to him; besides,
would it be worth his while to follow the intruder? The man, whoever he
might be, had evidently been hiding, and had certainly no business
there; but, in all probability, he was merely some young fellow from
the village who had been sweethearting with one of the servants at the
Hall, and had stayed beyond his time.
Nevertheless, when Lionel reached the house, he decided that, for once,
he would look after the fastenings of the windows and doors himself.
When he had satisfied himself that everything was secure, he took his
candle and went off to his bed in the Dolphin. He was very tired and
soon fell asleep. But Lionel had a trick—begotten of the time when he
lay camping out in the wilds of North America, and had to sleep with
his loaded rifle resting on his arm, and in constant dread of a
surprise by hostile Indians—of waking up at the slightest noise at all
out of the common way: waking up in a moment, completely, fully, and
with all his wits about him. The old instinct did not desert him on the
present occasion. He had been asleep for a couple of hours or so, when
he was recalled in a moment from the land of dreams to life the most
vivid and conscious, by the overturning of some heavy piece of
furniture in the room immediately over that in which he was sleeping.
He sat up in bed and listened with all his senses on the alert. But all
was again as silent as the grave.
After two or three minutes he lay back in bed, still listening, but not
so keenly as before; and trying to make out, from his knowledge of the
house, which particular room it was from whence the noise proceeded
that he had just heard.
All at once it struck him—and the thought sent a chill through his
heart—that the room in question was none other than the Griffin—none
other, in fact, than the room in which his Uncle Arthur had died. The
more he thought of it, the more certain he felt that he was right. It
was the Griffin without doubt. But what could any living being be doing
in that room of all others, and at that hour of the night? The room had
been left untouched since his uncle’s death, and, as far as he, Lionel,
was concerned, was likely to be so left for some time to come.
It was always kept locked, too, although the key was not taken away but
left outside the door; and all the servants, from Mrs. Benson
downwards, had a superstitious dread of entering it. How, then, account
for the noise he had heard, which certainly came from that room and
from no other? With such thoughts in his mind, to sleep again, for some
time to come, was out of the question. A quarter of an hour, or it
might be twenty minutes, passed thus, and the silence was still
unbroken. Then there came a sound, and Lionel started involuntarily as
he heard it. It was the faint sound of footsteps—the noise made by some
one moving slowly and cautiously across the floor of the room above. It
was so faint, so muffled, so subdued, that at any other time than the
middle of the night, and to any ears less keen than those now listening
with all their might, it would have been altogether inaudible. If, for
a moment, he had shivered at the recollection that it was in that very
room his uncle had breathed his last—if, for a moment, some vague
ghostly fancies had flitted across his mind, it was for a moment only.
Involuntarily, and without any consciousness on his part, his mind
seemed, in some strange way, to connect the dim half-seen figure that
had melted before his eyes into the shrubbery, with the mysterious
footsteps overhead.
It was the work of a very short time for Lionel to slip out of bed,
light his candle, and partially dress himself. He had no weapon of any
kind in his room, but, man against man, he was not afraid of any one;
and that there was more than one person upstairs seemed highly
improbable. He opened his room door as noiselessly as possible, and
stole out into the corridor. He had to traverse one long passage,
ascend a flight of stairs, and there, at the end of another passage,
was the door of the room he was in quest of.
It was the state bedroom of the house, this room called the Griffin.
None of the rooms near it were occupied: the servants all slept in the
opposite wing. Had Lionel slept in his own room that night, the unknown
intruder would have had one whole wing of Park Newton entirely to
himself—a fact that was probably well-known and calculated upon. Along
the chilly corridor and up the oaken staircase, lighted candle in hand,
stole Lionel step by step, slowly and without noise. At the top of the
staircase he paused and listened. Two or three minutes passed in
silence the most profound. Had not his senses deceived him? he asked
himself. Was it, indeed, the sound of mortal footsteps that he had
heard? or nothing more than some of the vague, unaccountable noises,
born of night and the darkness—moans, whispers, the creaking of doors,
the rustling of ghostly garments—such as may be heard during the mute
hours of sleep in any old house in which several generations of people
have lived and died?
Some such thoughts as these were wandering through his mind—he was
still listening intently—when the candle he was carrying dropped down
into the socket, flared up suddenly for a moment, and then went out.
Stooping to place the candlestick on the ground, and turning his head
as he did so, what was his surprise to see a thin, faint streak of
light shining from under the door at the end of the corridor! The sight
of this braced his nerves like a tonic. A few swift strides brought him
to the other end of the passage. It was the work of a moment to turn
the key and fling wide open the door.
The late Mr. St. George’s bedroom was a large but gloomy apartment,
panelled with black oak, and having in one corner a huge
funereal-looking bedstead, plumed and carved, and with a quantity of
faded gilding about it, that matched well with the faded colours of the
painted ceiling overhead. When Lionel flung open the door, an
exclamation of surprise burst involuntarily from his lips. The cloaked
figure of a man, with his back towards Lionel, and holding a dark
lantern in one hand, was standing in front of a small cupboard or
recess in the panelling—a hiding place evidently; but what he was doing
there Lionel had not time to see. A moment later and the lantern was
shut, and he and the stranger were alone in the dark.
As Lionel sprang forward to seize him, the stranger turned to fly. As
he did so, there was a noise of money falling to the floor. Lionel
seized him by the cloak, but that came away in his hands. Then he
grasped him again, this time by the shoulder, and held him firmly. With
a growl like that of a wild beast suddenly trapped, the stranger turned
on Lionel, and before the latter could guess what he was about, or
could defend himself in any way, he jerked his right arm free, and
swinging it round with all his strength, brought the butt-end of the
pistol, which it held, crashing down on Lionel’s head. Twice in quick
succession was the terrible blow repeated, and then Lionel fell heavily
to the ground and remembered nothing more.