When Manston was persuaded, by the feigned heaviness of her breathing,
that Anne Seaway was asleep, he softly arose, and dressed himself in the
gloom. With ears strained to their utmost she heard him complete this
operation; then he took something from his pocket, put it in the drawer
of the dressing-table, went to the door, and down the stairs. She glided
out of bed and looked in the drawer. He had only restored to its place
a small phial she had seen there before. It was labelled ‘Battley’s
Solution of Opium.’ She felt relieved that her life had not been
attempted. That was to have been her sleeping-draught. No time was to
be lost if she meant to be a match for him. She followed him in her
nightdress. When she reached the foot of the staircase he was in the
office and had closed the door, under which a faint gleam showed that
he had obtained a light. She crept to the door, but could not venture to
open it, however slightly. Placing her ear to the panel, she could hear
him tearing up papers of some sort, and a brighter and quivering ray of
light coming from the threshold an instant later, implied that he was
burning them. By the slight noise of his footsteps on the uncarpeted
floor, she at length imagined that he was approaching the door. She
flitted upstairs again and crept into bed.
Manston returned to the bedroom close upon her heels, and entered
it--again without a light. Standing motionless for an instant to assure
himself that she still slept, he went to the drawer in which their
ready-money was kept, and removed the casket that contained it. Anne’s
ear distinctly caught the rustle of notes, and the chink of the gold
as he handled it. Some he placed in his pocket, some he returned to
its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a possibility. While
lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image of his own face in the
glass--pale and spectre-like in its indistinctness. The sight seemed to
be the feather which turned the balance of indecision: he drew a heavy
breath, retired from the room, and passed downstairs. She heard him
unbar the back-door, and go out into the yard.
Feeling safe in a conclusion that he did not intend to return to the
bedroom again, she arose, and hastily dressed herself. On going to the
door of the apartment she found that he had locked it behind him. ‘A
precaution--it can be no more,’ she muttered. Yet she was all the more
perplexed and excited on this account. Had he been going to leave home
immediately, he would scarcely have taken the trouble to lock her in,
holding the belief that she was in a drugged sleep. The lock shot into a
mortice, so that there was no possibility of her pushing back the bolt.
How should she follow him? Easily. An inner closet opened from the
bedroom: it was large, and had some time heretofore been used as a
dressing or bath room, but had been found inconvenient from having no
other outlet to the landing. The window of this little room looked out
upon the roof of the porch, which was flat and covered with lead. Anne
took a pillow from the bed, gently opened the casement of the inner room
and stepped forth on the flat. There, leaning over the edge of the
small parapet that ornamented the porch, she dropped the pillow upon the
gravel path, and let herself down over the parapet by her hands till
her toes swung about two feet from the ground. From this position she
adroitly alighted upon the pillow, and stood in the path.
Since she had come indoors from her walk in the early part of the
evening the moon had risen. But the thick clouds overspreading the whole
landscape rendered the dim light pervasive and grey: it appeared as
an attribute of the air. Anne crept round to the back of the house,
listening intently. The steward had had at least ten minutes’ start of
her. She had waited here whilst one might count fifty, when she heard a
movement in the outhouse--a fragment once attached to the main building.
This outhouse was partitioned into an outer and an inner room, which
had been a kitchen and a scullery before the connecting erections were
pulled down, but they were now used respectively as a brewhouse and
workshop, the only means of access to the latter being through the
brewhouse. The outer door of this first apartment was usually fastened
by a padlock on the exterior. It was now closed, but not fastened.
Manston was evidently in the outhouse.
She slightly moved the door. The interior of the brewhouse was wrapped
in gloom, but a streak of light fell towards her in a line across the
floor from the inner or workshop door, which was not quite closed. This
light was unexpected, none having been visible through hole or crevice.
Glancing in, the woman found that he had placed cloths and mats at the
various apertures, and hung a sack at the window to prevent the egress
of a single ray. She could also perceive from where she stood that the
bar of light fell across the brewing-copper just outside the inner door,
and that upon it lay the key of her bedroom. The illuminated interior of
the workshop was also partly visible from her position through the two
half-open doors. Manston was engaged in emptying a large cupboard of the
tools, gallipots, and old iron it contained. When it was quite
cleared he took a chisel, and with it began to withdraw the hooks
and shoulder-nails holding the cupboard to the wall. All these being
loosened, he extended his arms, lifted the cupboard bodily from the
brackets under it, and deposited it on the floor beside him.
That portion of the wall which had been screened by the cupboard was now
laid bare. This, it appeared, had been plastered more recently than the
bulk of the outhouse. Manston loosened the plaster with some kind
of tool, flinging the pieces into a basket as they fell. Having now
stripped clear about two feet area of wall, he inserted a crowbar
between the joints of the bricks beneath, softly wriggling it until
several were loosened. There was now disclosed the mouth of an old oven,
which was apparently contrived in the thickness of the wall, and having
fallen into disuse, had been closed up with bricks in this manner. It
was formed after the simple old-fashioned plan of oven-building--a mere
oblate cavity without a flue.
Manston now stretched his arm into the oven, dragged forth a heavy
weight of great bulk, and let it slide to the ground. The woman who
watched him could see the object plainly. It was a common corn-sack,
nearly full, and was tied at the mouth in the usual way.
The steward had once or twice started up, as if he had heard sounds, and
his motions now became more cat-like still. On a sudden he put out the
light. Anne had made no noise, yet a foreign noise of some kind had
certainly been made in the intervening portion of the house. She heard
it. ‘One of the rats,’ she thought.
He seemed soon to recover from his alarm, but changed his tactics
completely. He did not light his candle--going on with his work in the
dark. She had only sounds to go by now, and, judging as well as she
could from these, he was piling up the bricks which closed the oven’s
mouth as they had been before he disturbed them. The query that had not
left her brain all the interval of her inspection--how should she get
back into her bedroom again?--now received a solution. Whilst he was
replacing the cupboard, she would glide across the brewhouse, take the
key from the top of the copper, run upstairs, unlock the door, and bring
back the key again: if he returned to bed, which was unlikely, he would
think the lock had failed to catch in the staple. This thought and
intention, occupying such length of words, flashed upon her in an
instant, and hardly disturbed her strong curiosity to stay and learn the
meaning of his actions in the workshop.
Slipping sideways through the first door and closing it behind her, she
advanced into the darkness towards the second, making every individual
footfall with the greatest care, lest the fragments of rubbish on the
floor should crackle beneath her tread. She soon stood close by the
copper, and not more than a foot from the door of the room occupied
by Manston himself, from which position she could distinctly hear him
breathe between each exertion, although it was far too dark to discern
anything of him.
To secure the key of her chamber was her first anxiety, and accordingly
she cautiously reached out with her hand to where it lay. Instead of
touching it, her fingers came in contact with the boot of a human being.
She drooped faint in a cold sweat. It was the foot either of a man or
woman, standing on the brewing-copper where the key had lain. A warm
foot, covered with a polished boot.
The startling discovery so terrified her that she could hardly repress a
sound. She withdrew her hand with a motion like the flight of an arrow.
Her touch was so light that the leather seemed to have been thick enough
to keep the owner of the foot in entire ignorance of it, and the noise
of Manston’s scraping might have been quite sufficient to drown the
slight rustle of her dress.
The person was obviously not the steward: he was still busy. It was
somebody who, since the light had been extinguished, had taken advantage
of the gloom, to come from some dark recess in the brewhouse and stand
upon the brickwork of the copper. The fear which had at first paralyzed
her lessened with the birth of a sense that fear now was utter failure:
she was in a desperate position and must abide by the consequences.
The motionless person on the copper was, equally with Manston, quite
unconscious of her proximity, and she ventured to advance her hand
again, feeling behind the feet, till she found the key. On its return to
her side, her finger-tip skimmed the lower verge of a trousers-leg.
It was a man, then, who stood there. To go to the door just at this time
was impolitic, and she shrank back into an inner corner to wait. The
comparative security from discovery that her new position ensured
resuscitated reason a little, and empowered her to form some logical
inferences:--
1. The man who stood on the copper had taken advantage of the darkness
to get there, as she had to enter.
2. The man must have been hidden in the outhouse before she had reached
the door.
3. He must be watching Manston with much calculation and system, and for
purposes of his own.
She could now tell by the noises that Manston had completed his
re-erection of the cupboard. She heard him replacing the articles it had
contained--bottle by bottle, tool by tool--after which he came into the
brewhouse, went to the window, and pulled down the cloths covering it;
but the window being rather small, this unveiling scarcely relieved the
darkness of the interior. He returned to the workshop, hoisted something
to his back by a jerk, and felt about the room for some other article.
Having found it, he emerged from the inner door, crossed the brewhouse,
and went into the yard. Directly he stepped out she could see his
outline by the light of the clouded and weakly moon. The sack was slung
at his back, and in his hand he carried a spade.
Anne now waited in her corner in breathless suspense for the proceedings
of the other man. In about half-a-minute she heard him descend from the
copper, and then the square opening of the doorway showed the outline of
this other watcher passing through it likewise. The form was that of
a broad-shouldered man enveloped in a long coat. He vanished after the
steward.
The woman vented a sigh of relief, and moved forward to follow.
Simultaneously, she discovered that the watcher whose foot she had
touched was, in his turn, watched and followed also.
It was by one of her own sex. Anne Seaway shrank backward again. The
unknown woman came forward from the further side of the yard, and
pondered awhile in hesitation. Tall, dark, and closely wrapped, she
stood up from the earth like a cypress. She moved, crossed the yard
without producing the slightest disturbance by her footsteps, and went
in the direction the others had taken.
Anne waited yet another minute--then in her turn noiselessly followed
the last woman.
But so impressed was she with the sensation of people in hiding, that
in coming out of the yard she turned her head to see if any person were
following her, in the same way. Nobody was visible, but she discerned,
standing behind the angle of the stable, Manston’s horse and gig, ready
harnessed.
He did intend to fly after all, then, she thought. He must have placed
the horse in readiness, in the interval between his leaving the house
and her exit by the window. However, there was not time to weigh this
branch of the night’s events. She turned about again, and continued on
the trail of the other three.