A DEED OF DARKNESS
It was late in the afternoon when Captain Verinder and his nephew
arrived at Withington Chase. Under the circumstances, Sir Gilbert could
not well do otherwise than invite the Captain to dine and sleep there,
and when Verinder, although secretly overjoyed, pleaded that his dress
clothes were in his portmanteau at the cloakroom of the London
terminus, his excuse was at once overruled. “If that is your only
objection, sir, you shall be kept in countenance by my grandson and
myself. For once in a way we will all wear tweeds at dinner.”
Retaining Luigi’s hand in his for a few seconds, Sir Gilbert gazed
somewhat wistfully into the young man’s face. “You have not brought
back much of the tan of travel on your cheeks,” he said. “How is that,
I wonder? Not for years have we had so hot an autumn as the one now
drawing to a close.”
“My face never either tans or freckles, sir, however hot the weather
may be,” explained Luigi with a touch of heightened colour. “It is a
fact for which I am unable to account.”
“Humph! At all events I’m glad to see that your cheeks can take a
blush. I am glad, too, judging from your letters, that you seem to have
enjoyed yourself while away, although that was by no means the object I
had in view in sending you abroad. I trust that your experiences during
the last month will not be thrown away upon you, but that they will be
productive of benefit to you in more ways than one.” With that he
turned away, murmuring to himself: “What can be the reason why he never
looks me straight in the face? Why do his eyes always flicker and drop
when I try to fix them with my own? It is a bad trait, a very bad
trait, and it fills me with a vague sense of mistrust. If he would but
confront me with Lisle’s open unflinching look! That young fellow’s
eyes are as clear and honest as the day.”
It was an immense relief to Luigi to find that his grandfather made no
mention of Miss Jennings. His fear had been lest, during his absence,
that young person might have sought out Sir Gilbert and have
enlightened him as to the absurd offer which he, Luigi, had made her on
her birthday night when under the insidious influence of _Veuve
Cliequot_. When, therefore, his grandfather turned away without
mentioning “Miss J.’s” name he felt that a great danger had passed him
by.
But while one weight had been lifted off his mind, another crushed him
down with a force from which he found it impossible to free himself.
Ever before him loomed the black shadow of the deed to which he had
become engaged. Sleeping or waking, it held him with a nightmare grip.
He ate his dinner not because he wanted or cared for it, but because
not to have done so would have laid him open to question and remark.
After dinner came whist, Captain Verinder making up the quartette,
_vice_ Everard Lisle. Ethel and Luigi, being free to follow their own
devices, engaged in a desultory conversation, chiefly anent the
latter’s recent travel experiences, which before long began to languish
and presently died out. Then, with a muttered excuse that he was
altogether behindhand with English news, Luigi seized on a batch of
illustrated papers and buried himself among them, while Ethel’s face
brightened perceptibly. She saw before her not merely the prospect of a
cosy hour with a favourite author, but an escape from a _tête-à-tête_
with Mr. Lewis Clare.
Next morning the Captain routed Luigi out of bed at an untimely hour.
“I want you to show me Sir Gilbert’s study,” he said, “and the desk in
which he keeps the key of the strong room.”
There was no difficulty about doing that, because the study door was
never locked overnight, in order that the servants might have access to
it betimes, their orders being to have it in readiness for Sir Gilbert
by ten o’clock to the minute.
The room was empty when Luigi opened the door and went in, followed by
his uncle. “That is the door of the strong room—iron, as you see—and
this is the drawer in which the key of it is always kept,” said the
former.
“And where is the key of the drawer kept?” queried the Captain. “It is
one of a bunch grandfather carries about with him and rarely lets out
of his own keeping.”
Verinder glanced at the door, then he tried the drawer, which, as a
matter of course, was locked, and then he stooped and examined the
keyhole.
“As far as I can judge,” he said, “the lock is of quite an ordinary
kind, and you ought not to experience much difficulty in picking it.”
“But what will grandfather think when he finds the drawer unlocked?”
questioned Luigi.
“Why, merely that he must have omitted to lock it overnight. Of course
the key of the strong room will be there just as he left it, and there
will be nothing to arouse his suspicions that it has even been touched.
He will simply tell himself that he must be more careful in future, and
there will be an end of the matter.”
It was too early for breakfast, so they left the house and went for a
stroll in the grounds.
“I wish, Lewis, my boy,” remarked the Captain cheerfully, “you would
try not to look quite so glum and down in the mouth. If you had a
murder on your mind you could hardly look more wretched than you do.
Do, for goodness sake, assume a cheerfulness; even if you can’t feel
it—though what cause you have for being anything else than cheerful, I
cannot for the life of me imagine.”
“Oh, I’m not like you; I haven’t nerves of cast iron; I wish I had,”
retorted Luigi. “Be cheerful, indeed! It’s all very fine, but how is it
possible for me to look other than down in the mouth when I remember
the desperate business I’m booked to go through with three nights
hence?”
“Desperate business, indeed! What nonsense is this? There’s nothing
desperate about it, nothing whatever. Here’s the affair in a nutshell:
you wait in your room till the clock strikes midnight; then you kick
off your shoes, steal downstairs in the dark, and make your way to the
study. Then you open the slide of your dark lantern and proceed to
manipulate your picklocks. After a minute or two the lock yields to
your coaxing; you open the drawer and there lies the key you want,
ready to your hand. Five minutes later the bonds are yours. By
half-past twelve you are not merely back in your own room, but in bed
and asleep. _Voilà tout!_ Desperate business, quotha!”
For sole reply Luigi shrugged his shoulders and spread out the palms of
his hands with one of those indescribable gestures which an Englishman
may perhaps caricature, but cannot even passably imitate.
Although Captain Verinder had had no intimation to that effect, he was
quite aware that his visit was expected to come to an end some time
between breakfast and luncheon. Accordingly, as soon as the former meal
was over, he proceeded to make his adieux. Having said goodbye to Lady
Pell and Miss Thursby, he turned to Sir Gilbert, who had already rung
the bell and ordered the dog-cart to be brought round, and who now
accompanied him as far as the entrance hall, with Luigi bringing up the
rear. While waiting they chatted about the weather and other
indifferent topics. Presently the dog-cart drove up and Luigi flung
wide the door. Then Sir Gilbert, drawing himself up and putting on his
most grandiose manner, said, “We shall look to see you again at
Withington Chase before very long, Captain Verinder.” It was vague and
yet sufficiently courteous. Then, as the Captain bowed and murmured his
thanks: “I need scarcely tell you how very much obliged I am to you for
the care and attention you have lavished on my grandson during the time
he has been under your charge, and, as a proof that such is the case, I
trust you will do me the favour of accepting this trifling recognition
at my hands.”
As the Baronet turned back into the house after favouring Verinder with
a parting wave of the hand as the latter was being driven off, he
muttered to himself: “I can’t help it, I really can’t, but I do _not_
like that man. Of course it’s the sheerest prejudice on my part, and,
knowing it to be such, I am all the more bound to do my best to get the
better of it.”
When Captain Verinder opened the envelope which the Baronet had pressed
into his hand at parting, he found inside it a cheque for thirty
guineas. “A thousand thanks, my dear Sir Gilbert!” he exclaimed with a
chuckle. “I don’t mind how often you employ me on the same terms. You
are obliged to me for the care and attention I have lavished on your
grandson, eh? What a pity, in one sense, it is that one dare not
enlighten you about the little Brussels episode!”
In accordance with the plan agreed upon between himself and his nephew,
the Captain took the first train up to town, but only to return to
Mapleford in the course of the forenoon of the following day, bringing
with him a set of picklocks, a dark lantern and an old portmanteau. He
again took up his quarters at the _Crown and Cushion_ hotel, where
Luigi called upon him in the course of the afternoon. Then was the
purpose for which the portmanteau had been brought from London made
manifest, which was to enable Verinder to give his nephew an
object-lesson in the art of lock-picking, in which the latter proved
himself no inapt pupil.
The day was Saturday, and it was decided that the attempt should be
made the following night, because it was an understood thing at the
Chase that on Sundays the house should be shut up and every one retire
an hour earlier than on week-day nights. Supposing that all should go
off successfully, Luigi would conceal the stolen securities in his own
room till the morrow, taking the first opportunity that should offer to
make his way with them to the _Crown and Cushion_, where his uncle
would relieve him of them, and at once hurry off to London, there to
negotiate the sale of them through that “safe channel” of which he had
previously made mention to his nephew. The Captain did not let Luigi go
without once more impressing on him that, if he only carried out to the
letter the instructions laid down for him and did not lose his nerve,
he ran absolutely no risk of detection. On the other hand, should the
scheme, through some blunder on his part, prove abortive, he must be
prepared to accept the consequences. In that case, the whole
discreditable transaction with Mr. Henriques, and what gave rise to it,
would inevitably be brought to Sir Gilbert’s notice, with a result
which it was impossible to foresee, but which, in any case, must prove
nothing short of disastrous.
Never before had Luigi Rispani spent so miserable a Sunday, and yet it
came to an end all too soon for him.
At the usual hour everybody retired; indeed, Luigi had crept away some
time before without bidding goodnight to anyone. With his ulster
wrapped round him—for the autumn nights were chilly—and lighted by a
solitary candle, he sat shivering and quaking in his bedroom, waiting
for the stroke of midnight. It came, after what seemed an interminable
time, a thin tinkle of sound from the old case-clock on the gallery
staircase. With the last stroke he stood up, dropped the ulster off his
shoulders, and slipped his feet out of his patent shoes. Then he
unlocked his portmanteau and took therefrom the bunch of picklocks, the
dark lantern, and a travelling flask filled with brandy, into the cup
of which he poured a liberal measure of the spirit and drank it off
without drawing breath. Then he set light to the wick of the lantern,
shut the slide, and put it into one of the pockets of his velvet
lounging jacket, and the picklocks into the other. That done, he blew
out the candle, crossed to the door, opened it and stood listening
intently for fully a couple of minutes. Then he stepped out into the
pitch-dark corridor and drew the door to after him. Traversing the
corridor with noiseless footsteps, he emerged on the gallery which
overlooked the entrance hall. Here he paused to listen again, but
darkness and silence had the mansion to themselves. It was the work of
a minute to cross the gallery, pass swiftly down the broad old stairs
and so into the right-hand corridor on the ground floor, the second
door in which was that of Sir Gilbert’s study. By this time Luigi’s
heart was palpitating at such a rate that he was compelled to pause for
a few moments with his fingers on the handle of the door till its
beatings had slackened. Then he pushed open the door and went in.
Again he waited, scarcely breathing, while one might have counted six
slowly. Then, drawing forth his lantern, he pushed the slide halfway
back and shot a gleam of light around. All the familiar features of the
room were there just as he had seen them last.
Thus far everything had gone so well with him and so exactly as his
uncle had predicted it would, that he began to gather courage, and even
caught himself smiling at his own exaggerated fears. Well, it was his
first attempt in that particular line of business, so that every excuse
ought to be made for him, and in all sincerity he hoped it would be his
last.
By this he had placed the lantern on his grandfather’s desk and had
begun to manipulate the picklocks. As the Captain had inferred, the
lock was only an ordinary one, and after labouring for about three
minutes Luigi succeeded in picking it. His heart gave a great bound as
he heard the click of the bolt.
Two seconds later the key of the strong room was in his hand. Taking
the lantern in his other hand, he crossed the floor, lifted the metal
flap that covered the keyhole, inserted the key, turned it and pulled
open the massive iron door. Drawing a deeper breath than common he
stepped across the threshold, lifted the lantern above his head and
stared around.
The strong room at the Chase had at one time formed part of the room
now used by Sir Gilbert as his study. It was his father who had caused
the dividing wall to be built, and had turned the smaller chamber into
a depository for family papers, leases, deeds, securities and what not.
One side of the room was occupied by a row of shelves having a series
of cupboards and drawers below them, while two large japanned boxes
took up a considerable portion of the floor space; but, even then,
there was room enough and to spare to stow away all the archives of the
Clare family for generations to come. The room was lighted by a small,
barred, oval window high up in the wall.
The drawer in which Luigi had put away the American bonds, on the
occasion when his grandfather had claimed his assistance owing to the
temporary absence of Everard Lisle, was labelled B, and after his
preliminary glance round, he at once made straight for it. Placing his
lantern on the nearest shelf, he pulled open the drawer, which was
without lock or fastening of any kind.
Yes, there lay the identical bundle of papers which he had placed there
several weeks before, and which, in all probability, had never since
been touched. The bonds, which were tied together with green tape, must
have numbered a score at the least, but it had been decided by Verinder
that it would be unadvisable to abstract more than four of them, so
that, even should Sir Gilbert have occasion to handle the bundle, he
would scarcely discover the loss, unless he should happen to count
those that were left. The proceeds of the sale of the four bonds would
not only suffice to clear off the note of hand held by the executors of
Mr. Henriques, but would, in addition, provide uncle and nephew with a
welcome supply of ready money.
Luigi, with the bundle of bonds between his fingers, was stooping over
the lantern and examining the knot in the green tape which held them
together, when he suddenly became aware that he was no longer alone. He
had not heard a sound, and yet, with an indescribable creeping of the
flesh and, as it seemed, a stoppage of all the pulses of his being, he
felt, he knew, although he could not have told through what channel the
knowledge had been conveyed to him, that he was being watched by
someone or something from behind. With a gasp that constricted his
heart like a vice, he slowly turned his head, to see standing on the
threshold, clearly outlined in the semi-darkness, and seeming from the
depths of its cowl to be gazing fixedly at him—the figure of the Grey
Monk!
A cry of terror broke from his lips, the bundle of bonds dropped from
his nerveless fingers, his knees gave way under him, and sinking to the
ground, he covered his face with his hands, and so shut out that dread
appearance. An instant later he heard the heavy door swing sullenly to,
and its bolt shoot into the socket. He was a prisoner in the strong
room.