explained young Raynor as he led him to a seat in a big wicker chair.
"Sharp attack of indigestion, if I know the symptoms. Bet you a hat,
mater, it was that beastly cheese souffle we had for lunch. Enough to
kill a dog, that stuff. But you will give that silly ass of a cook his
head, and let him serve up anything he likes. How are you, Clavering?
Things look like going all right for you after all--eh, what? 'Tisn't
every man who can have his rival's wind shut off to order."
The remark could not be said to be a happy one, despite the fact that
the maker of it laughed as though he had just perpetrated a witticism;
for even his doting mother could not but deplore it.
"Harry, darling, how can you?" she said reproachfully, as young
Clavering coloured and the two girls looked distressed and indignant.
"Darling, you ought to think before you speak."
"Huh!" grunted the disgusted General. "If he did, he probably wouldn't
speak at all. It seems to me, Harry, that you must lie awake at nights
planning how you can arrange to say just the wrong thing upon all
occasions--you do it so constantly."
"Oh, that's it--just lay everything on me!" responded his dutiful
offspring sulkily. "I'm always doing the wrong thing--if you believe
what other people say. Seems to me that the best thing I can do is to
take myself off, and then everybody will be happy. I say, Barch, when
you feel like yourself again you'll find me either at the stables or in
the pater's blessed ruin taking lessons in etiquette from the family
ghost--if the pater has been able to rake up one and coax him to reside
there."
And with this ill-natured dig at his father's pet weakness this engaging
young gentleman lurched down the steps of the veranda and walked surlily
away round the angle of the house.
The place which he had spoken of as "the pater's ruin" was a little fad
of the General's, whose love of antiquities and the like had tempted him
to transform a bare and unattractive part of the Grange grounds into
something at least picturesque if not in the very highest good taste.
Ancient ruins had always been a passion with him, but as you can't have
ancient ruins in modern Wimbledon, the General had had a ruin built for
himself, modelling it after the crumbling remains of an old Scottish
castle which had appealed to his artistic eye, planting it with ferns
and enwrapping ivy and vines of Virginia creeper, and even supplying it
with owls and bats to keep up the illusion. It was his one harmless
weakness, his one foible--that ruin; and nobody but his son ever mocked
him for it, though many laughed in their sleeves and secretly made game
of his foolish whim.
Cleek had heard of the "ruin" at Wuthering Grange before he had ever set
foot inside the gates of the place; and hearing of it again--now, like
this--he felt that he would like to kick the young cub who could
publicly mock his father's folly in this fashion. He saw the General's
kindly old face flush with anger and mortification, and was not at all
surprised when he presently made an excuse to get away and retired
indoors.
Meantime, Cleek's plan of pretending illness had panned out precisely as
he had imagined, and was productive of the results he desired.
Essentially feminine and of a highly sympathetic nature, Lady Katharine
hovered near him, doing all in her power to ease the sufferings of one
whom she shrewdly suspected of being very near to the heart of her
dearest friend, and this naturally brought Geoffrey to the little group
surrounding him, and enabled him to study his attitude at close
quarters.
The more he saw of Sir Philip Clavering's son and heir, the better he
liked him; but although the young man occasionally turned an adoring
look upon Lady Katharine, and appeared to be doing his best to share her
evident high spirits, it was apparent to Cleek, after a moment's study,
that his attitude was for the most part assumed. He made no attempt to
get away from the others and have the lady of his heart all to himself,
and whenever he and she were for a moment separated from Mrs. Raynor and
Ailsa Lorne, he was nervous, distressed, and acted with an air of
restraint that was as puzzling as it was pronounced.
A chance remark regarding the state of Lord St. Ulmer's health brought
from Lord St. Ulmer's daughter the happy, excited remark:
"Oh, Geoff, dear, he's improving every hour, and he has been so
wonderfully kind and tender to me this afternoon that I could kiss him.
Just think, he says that things can go on now just as they did before
Count de Louvisan came; that there is nothing now to come between us,
Geoff; nothing to keep us apart for another moment!"
"Really? That's ripping!" said young Clavering, and in his effort to
appear delighted smiled the ghastliest parody of a smile possible to
conceive. It was so pronounced that even Lady Katharine herself noticed
it and looked puzzled and distressed.
"You don't seem very glad," she said, a note of pain in her voice, a
look of pain in her reproachful eyes. "_Aren't_ you glad, Geoff? And is
that why you did not come over to see me before?"
"Don't be silly, Kathie. I couldn't come any earlier because--well,
because I couldn't, that's all."
"A very lucid explanation, I must say. What is the matter with you,
Geoff? You're not a bit like yourself to-day--is he, Ailsa?"
But Ailsa made no reply. There was none really needed. Geoffrey had
taken hardly any notice, but as if struck with a sudden thought, whipped
out a notebook and began shuffling the pages nervously through his
fingers.
"I'd nearly forgotten, Kathie," he said apologetically; "my mother asked
if you would lend her these books." He handed her the torn leaf with
something scribbled upon it. "Any time will do, but she said you would
have them."
Lady Katharine looked down at the writing, and a wave of colour surged
over her face.
"But----" she commenced.
"I don't want them now; in fact, I can't stop even now, only I just
wanted to know that you were all right."
There was no mistaking the look of adoration on the young man's face,
but she looked at him reproachfully.
"Going back again, so soon!" she said softly, averting her head, while
her lips trembled and her hand clutched painfully on the leaf of the
notebook.
"I'm afraid I must, dear," responded Geoff. Then he turned swiftly to
Cleek, who had been watching the little scene, the peculiar one-sided
smile looping up the corners of his mouth.
"Good-bye, Mr. Barch; pleased to have met you," he said without,
however, coming forward and offering his hand.
"Thanks! same to you; good-bye," replied Cleek, and that same smile was
still on his face when a minute or two later, young Clavering having
taken his departure, Cleek was rejoined by Ailsa Lorne.
"What do you think about it?" she asked abruptly. "What is it that is
wrong? Oh, Mr. Cleek, do you think----"
"I'll be beyond 'thinking' before the morning. I shall know," he
interposed. "Now, show me the way to that ruin, please. I want a word or
two with Mr. Harry Raynor if he is there. Down that path, is it? Thanks
very much." And swinging down from the veranda, he moved away in the
direction indicated.
A brisk two minutes' walk brought him to the picturesque ruin with its
ivy-wrapped walls, its gaping Gothic windows, and its fern-bedded
battlements, so artfully copied that the stones actually seemed to be
crumbling and the plants to have been set there by Nature rather than by
man. Even the appearance of a dried-up moat and a ruined drawbridge was
not wanting to complete the picture and to give an air of genuine
antiquity; and he had just stepped on the latter to make his way across
to the wide arch of the entrance when he was hailed, not from within,
but from behind.
He faced round suddenly to see young Raynor moving quickly toward him.
He was walking rapidly, and appeared to be in a state of great
excitement.
"I say, Barch, hold on a moment, will you?" he sang out. Cleek gave him
time to get to the drawbridge and then the reason for his excitement
became known. "Look here, old chap, I'm afraid we shall have to give up
our little 'lark' for this evening, after all. Rotten bad luck, but I've
just got a message that will call me to--well, somewhere else; and I've
got to go at once. Don't expect I shall be able to get back this side of
midnight; but if you don't mind prolonging your stay and making it two
nights instead of one----"
"Not in the least. Delighted, old chap."
"Oh, well, then, that's all right. Have our night out to-morrow
instead--eh, what? Look here, Barch, blest if I don't like you
immensely. Let you into the secret. It'll be with 'Pink Gauze.'"
"Pink Gauze? Don't mean the little Frenchy, do you--the little beauty of
the photograph?"
"The very identical. Be a good boy, Barchie, and I'll take you to see
her to-morrow night. What do you think--eh, what?"
Cleek didn't say what he thought; it would have surprised the young man
if he had.
"Well, ta-ta until midnight or thereabouts, old chap. So long!" And with
a wave of the hand he was gone.
Cleek stood and looked after him for a moment, a curl on his lip, an
expression of utter contempt in his eyes; then he gave his head a jerk
indicative of a disgust beyond words, and, facing about, walked on into
the ruins.
The General had done the thing well, at all events. The atmosphere of
antiquity was very cleverly reproduced: walls, roof, floor--all had the
appearance of not having been disturbed by the hand of any one for ages.
Half-defaced armorial bearings, iron-studded doors, winding staircases,
even a donjon keep.
This he came to realize when the sight of a rusted iron ring in the
floor tempted him to pull up and lay back a slab of stone that appeared
centuries old, and to expose in doing so a twisting flight of stone
steps leading downward into the very depths of the earth.
Really, you know, the old chap had done it well. Cells down there, no
doubt--cells and chains and all that sort of thing. Well, he had time to
spare; he'd go down and have a look at those cells. And, leaving the
stone trap-slab open, he went down the black stairway into the blacker
depths below, flicking the light of his torch about and going from cell
to cell. One might swear that the place was centuries old. Rusty old
barred doors, rustier old chains hanging from rings in the walls.
Nothing modern, nothing that looked as if it had known use or been
disturbed for these hundreds of years; nothing that---- Hello! There was
a break in the illusion, at all events: a garden spade, with fresh earth
clinging to the blade of it, leaning against the wall. Fancy a man so
careful of preserving an atmosphere of antiquity letting one of the
gardeners leave---- No, b'gad! it hadn't been left merely by chance. It
had been brought here for use, and was probably left for _further_ use.
There was a place over in that corner that most decidedly had been
recently dug up.
He walked over to the place in question and directed the glow of the
torch so that the circle of light fell full upon it. Somebody had been
digging in the earthen floor of the cell, and had made an attempt to
hide the fact by sprinkling bits of stone and plaster scraped from the
walls over it. In the ordinary course of things, and with a light less
powerful than this of the electric torch, the thing would have passed
muster very well, and would, in all probability, have escaped
observation. Now, asked Cleek of himself, what the dickens should any
one wish to dig in this place for? And, having dug, why try to disguise
the fact? Hum-m-m!
He switched round suddenly, walked to the place where the spade stood,
in the angle of the wall opposite, took it up, and, returning, began to
dig where the digging had been done before.
This he had to do in the darkness, for the moment his thumb was removed
from the button of the torch the light went out. But, having once
located the place, this was not difficult, for the earth, having once
before been disturbed, yielded easily to the spade.
For five--possibly six--minutes he worked on, shovelling out the loose
earth and tossing it aside unseen; then, of a sudden, the spade
encountered something which, though soft and yielding, would not allow
the blade to penetrate it at all, press his foot down as hard as he
might. If Cleek knew anything at all, he knew that that betokened a
fabric of some sort, and knew, too, that he had got to the bottom of the
original excavation.
He laid aside the spade, and the electric torch spat its light into the
hole.
Clothing at the bottom of it--buried clothing!
He stooped and pulled it to the surface, letting the articles thus
unearthed drop one by one from his fingers. A cap, a pair of trousers, a
coat with a badge on it, a stick with a loop of leather by which to
carry it, a belt, and a number on that belt.
He looked at the number; it was a brass "4." He looked at the badge, and
then rose upright, clamping his jaws hard and understanding.
What he had unearthed was the clothing of the Common keeper who had been
done to death last night--the clothing which the assassin had stolen and
worn.
And he had found that clothing here, hidden in the grounds of Wuthering
Grange! Why, then, in that case, the murderer---- He stopped; and the
thought went no farther--stopped, and releasing the button of the torch,
let utter darkness swing in and surround him.
Some one had entered the ruin--some one was moving about overhead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE THUNDERBOLT
It was not a man's foot that made that soft noise; his trained ear
recognized that fact at once. A woman, eh? What woman would be coming
here at this time when all the ladies of the household would be in their
rooms dressing for dinner?
He crept in the darkness out of the cell in which he had been digging,
through the one next and through the next again, until he came to the
passage leading to the staircase, and then, dropping on his hands and
knees, went soundlessly up the stone steps.
Above him as he crept upward--as slow as any tortoise and with far less
noise--sounded the woman's faint footfalls pacing the paved floor with
that persistent restlessness which tells of extreme agitation. He had
but just begun to ask himself what that agitation might portend, when
something occurred which caused him to twitch up his head with a jerk
and crouch there, a thing all eyes and ears.
The woman's footsteps had ceased abruptly, brought to a sudden halt by
the ring of others--the nervous, heavy-heeled, fast-falling steps of an
excited man coming across the drawbridge and into the ruin at a pace
which was almost a run; and that man had no more than come into range
of the woman's vision when the thin, eager voice of Lady Katharine
Fordham sounded and made the situation clear.
It was a tryst--the lovers' meeting upon which Cleek had built such high
hopes and upon which he had blundered by the merest fluke.
"Geoff!" sounded that enlightening voice, with a nervous catch in it
which told of a hard-hammering heart. "Thank heaven you have come. Ailsa
thinks I am in my room dressing for dinner. Now tell me what it is all
about, there's a dear, for my head has been in a whirl ever since I read
what you wrote. Why did you want me to come here and meet you without
anybody knowing? Whatever can it be that you 'have to say to me that no
one on this earth must hear'? Do tell me. I'm frightened half to death!"
"Are you?" His footsteps clicked sharply as he moved rapidly across the
floor toward her. "You have not gone so far as I, then, for I believe I
have been frightened _past_ death, and that after this nothing on earth
or in heaven or hell can appall me! Come here, into my arms, and let me
hold you while I speak. How I love you! My God, how I love you!"
"Geoff!"
"Put your arms round me. Kiss me! I want you to know that I love you so
well I'll fight all the dogs of justice and all the devils of hell but
what I'll stand by you and save you from them. They can't kill my love
for you. Nothing on God's earth can do that. I'll come between them and
you no matter what happens, no matter what it costs me--life with all
the rest. That's what I've come to tell you! But, oh, my God, Kathie,
why didn't you let _me_ kill him?"
"Kill him, Geoff? Good heavens, what are you talking about? Kill whom?"
"De Louvisan!"
"De Louvisan? Let you kill De Louvisan-- I? Oh, my God!
Geoff--you--think--_I_--killed--killed--him?"
Geoff groaned and buried his face in his hands. "There was no one in the
house but you," he said hoarsely. "It was you who took me into the
place; it was you who showed me his dead body spiked up there against
the wall--you and you alone. My God! Kathie, what is the use of denying
what we both know?"
Cleek sucked in his breath, drew every muscle of his body taut as wire,
and then crouching back in the darkness listened intently.
Lady Katharine remained perfectly silent for a moment, as though she had
been stricken dumb by the directness of the charge: as though the
half-despairing, half-impatient protest of that final "What is the use
of denying what we both know?" had impressed her with a realization of
the utter futility of longer endeavouring to act a part.
It was either that that held her silent, Cleek told himself, or she was
utterly amazed, utterly overcome by an accusation which had no
foundation in fact and had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt. If the
latter should prove to be the case, why, then, Geoff Clavering would be
lying, and she would be wholly and entirely innocent of the crime with
which he had charged her.
Then she spoke suddenly:
"You mean this thing? You really and truly _mean_ it?"
Geoff bowed his head in silent assent.
"That I--I--did this thing?"
Still he could not answer, could not put into brutal words the
conviction that had been forced upon him.
"That I met you and took you into Gleer Cottage last night?" she went
on. "Took you in there and showed you that man's--body? I?"
"Not exactly showed it to me--that, as we both know, is an exaggeration.
You showed me into the room where it was hanging, however. Or, at least,
you waved me to the door and told me to go in there and wait a minute or
two and you'd rejoin me and show me something that would 'light the way
back to the land of happiness!' But you never did rejoin me. I waited in
that dark room for fully ten minutes but you never came back. Afterward,
when I struck a match to light a cigarette and saw that dead man spiked
to the wall-- God! I think I went mad for the moment. I know I ran out
of the house, although I do not know when nor how; for when I came to my
senses I was racing up and down the right-of-way across the fields; and
if it had not been for you I should have run on until I dropped. But all
of a sudden I remembered you, remembered that in rushing out of the
house I had left you there; and you might come back to that room and
find me gone, and think that I had deserted you. I ran back to the place
as fast as I could. I remembered that when first you met me and took me
into it you had led me in through the gates and up the drive to the
door; but when I got back there a horror of the place seized me. I
couldn't have gone in that way again had my life depended upon it. There
was a break in the boundary wall. I got back into the grounds that way,
cutting my wrist--look, see, here's the mark--on the fragments of broken
glass which still adhered to the coping. I ran through the gardens and
round to the back of the house. I burst open the rear door and raced
along the passage to the room where De Louvisan's body hung. You were
not there. I struck another match to see, noticing this time that there
was the half of a candle standing upon the mantelpiece, where it had
been secured in its own wax. I took that thing and lit it and ran
through all the house, hunting for you. There was not a trace of you
anywhere--and at last, in a panic, I rushed from the house and flew for
my very life. But there was no getting away so easily as all that.
Lights were shining, men were coming, the hue and cry had begun. I could
not go forward; I dared not go back. I remembered the old hollow tree
where we used to play in our kiddy days, you and I. I ran to that and
got inside of it--and I was there through all that followed. I was found
in time, and it might have ended badly for me but for my father's
friend, Mr. Narkom, and a French detective--a muff of a fellow named De
Lesparre. It didn't, however. I got off scot free, thanking God that no
suspicion pointed your way, and telling myself that you had not left so
much as one hair from the ermine cloak you wore that might be caught up
as a clue to bring the thing home to you!"
"The ermine cloak I wore! You say I wore an ermine cloak?"
"Yes. An ermine cloak and the same pretty white frock you had worn at
the Close earlier in the evening. It was the white of the ermine that
first attracted my attention in the darkness when I looked up and saw
you near the gates of Gleer Cottage."
"That is not the truth!" she flung back, with a sudden awakening from
the sort of stupor which, up till now, had mastered her. "I never wore
an ermine cloak in my life! I never was nearer to Gleer Cottage last
night than I am at this minute; and if you say that I met you, that I
spoke to you, that I even saw you, or that you saw me after Ailsa Lorne
led me out of the drawing-room at Clavering Close when you threatened
the Count de Louvisan's life, you are saying what is absolutely untrue."
"Kathie!"
"I repeat it, utterly and absolutely untrue."
"Good God! Do you accuse me of lying?"
"There must be some horrible mistake. Some one impersonated me for some
awful purpose. You never saw me again after I left your father's house
last night, and you know it. But, in any case, since you confess that
you were there, what took you to Gleer Cottage last night at all?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A QUESTION OF VERACITY
Geoffrey Clavering's reply to Lady Katharine's staggering question was
given so promptly that one might have been tempted to believe he had
expected it and prepared himself for the question beforehand.
"I had no idea of going there at first," he said. "I couldn't remain
among the guests after you had left the Close and Narkom's men had
bundled that De Louvisan out of the house; my head seemed full of fire,
and I simply couldn't. I got away as soon as I decently could, and went
upstairs to my own room. I couldn't stop there, either; the stillness
and the loneliness half maddened me and set me to thinking and thinking
until I thought my head would burst. So, in sheer desperation, I caught
up a cap, sneaked down the back stairs, and let myself out. Nobody saw
me go, and, thank God, nobody saw me return, either. I walked about the
Common for heaven knows how long before I turned round at the sound of
some one coming toward me through the mist, and the next thing I knew I
'bumped' smack into that person, and found it to be my stepmother."
"Lady Clavering?" said the girl in a tone of the utmost surprise--and
Cleek could have blessed her for the words, since they voiced an inquiry
upon a subject which he much desired to have explained. "You mean to say
that Lady Clavering was out there on the Common, away from her guests?
What could have impelled her to take such a step--and at such a time?"
"She had come in search of me, she said. She felt anxious, distressed,
afraid, so she said, that I would do something desperate, and went to my
room to talk with me. When she found it empty she jumped to the
conclusion that I had gone out for the purpose of following De Louvisan
and meeting him somewhere for the mere satisfaction of thrashing him.
She begged and implored me to come back to the Close; to do nothing
rash; to think of my father; to remember her; to be careful to do
nothing that would get your name mixed up in a vulgar brawl. And she
wouldn't leave me until I promised her on my word of honour that I would
make no effort to find De Louvisan. When I did that, she was satisfied
and went back to the Close."
In the darkness of the stone staircase Cleek puckered up his brows and
thoughtfully pinched his chin.
Oho! so that was the explanation of her ladyship's presence on the
Common last night, was it? Mere solicitude for the welfare of a beloved
stepson, eh? Hum-m-m! Rather disappointing, to say the least of it, to
find that she had no more connection with the case than just that. After
all, she was merely "a red herring drawn across the trail," eh? He
shouldn't have thought so, but, of course, if young Clavering spoke the
truth, that eliminated _her_ from the affair altogether. Odd that she
should have bribed the Common keeper not to say a word about having met
her! In the circumstances, why should she have done so?