THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
"The care with which the story is written, the complicated plot and
the clash of the different practices of man-hunters lift it out of the
common run of mystery tales and make it an absorbing book."
_Philadelphia Press._
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS
BY WATSON & REES
AUTHORS OF "THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY," ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: S.B. GUNDY
MCMXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U.S.A.
THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS
CHAPTER I
THE storm had descended swiftly, sweeping in suddenly from the sea,
driving across the downs to the hills at high speed, blotting out the
faint rays of a crescent moon and hiding the country-side beneath
a pall of blackness, which was forked at intervals by flashes of
lightning.
The darkness was so impenetrable, and the fury of the storm so fierce,
that Harry Marsland pulled his hat well over his eyes and bent over his
horse's neck to shield his face from the driving rain, trusting to the
animal's sagacity and sure-footedness to take him safely down the cliff
road in the darkness, where a slip might plunge them into the breakers
which he could hear roaring at the foot of the cliffs.
Hardly had Marsland done so when his horse swerved violently right
across the road--fortunately to the side opposite the edge of the
cliffs--slipped and almost fell, but recovered itself and then stood
still, snorting and trembling with fear.
He patted and spoke to the horse, wondering what had frightened it.
He had seen or heard nothing, but the darkness of the night and the
roar of the gale would have prevented him, even if his face had not
been almost buried in his horse's neck. However, the rain, beating with
sharp persistence on his face and through his clothes, reminded him
that he was some miles from shelter on a lonely country road, with only
a vague idea of his whereabouts. So, with a few more soothing words, he
urged his horse onward again. The animal responded willingly enough,
but as soon as it moved Marsland discovered to his dismay that it was
lame in the off hind leg. The rider was quick to realize that it must
have sprained itself in swerving.
He slipped out of his saddle and endeavoured to feel the extent of the
horse's injury, but the animal had not entirely recovered from its
fright, and snorted as his master touched it. Marsland desisted, and
gently pulled at the bridle.
The horse struggled onwards a few paces, but it was badly lamed, and
could not be ridden. It thrust a timid muzzle against its master's
breast, as though seeking refuge from its fears and the fury of the
storm. Marsland patted its head caressingly, and, facing the unpleasant
fact that he was on an unknown lonely road with a lame horse in the
worst storm he had ever seen, drew the bridle over his arm and started
to walk forward.
He found it difficult to make progress in the teeth of the gale, but
he realized that it would be useless to retrace his steps with the wind
at his back, for only the bleak bare downs he had ridden over that
afternoon lay behind, and the only house he had seen was a shepherd's
cottage on the hill-side where he had stopped to inquire his way before
the storm came on. There was nothing to be done but face the gale and
go forward, following the cliff road which skirted the downs, or to
seek shelter for himself and his horse at the way-side house until the
fury of the storm had abated. Prudence and consideration for his horse
dictated the latter course, but in the blackness of the night--which
hung before him like a cloud--he was unable to discern a twinkle of
light denoting human habitation.
The storm seemed to gather fresh force, rushing in from the sea with
such fury that Marsland was compelled to stand still and seek shelter
beside his horse. As he stood thus, waiting for it to abate, a vivid
flash of lightning ran across the western sky, revealing lividly the
storm clouds flying through the heavens, the mountainous yellow-crested
sea, and the desolate, rain-beaten downs; but it revealed, also, a
farm-house standing in the valley below, a little way back from the
road which wound down towards it from where Marsland stood.
The lightning died away, the scene it had illumined disappeared, and
a clap of thunder followed. Marsland heaved a sigh of relief. He
judged that the house was less than a half a mile down the hill, a
large, gaunt, three-storied stone building, with steeply sloping roof,
standing back from the road, with a barn beside it. Doubtless it was
the home of a sheep-farmer of the downs, who would at any rate afford
shelter to himself and his horse till the violence of the storm had
passed.
The horse responded to an encouraging appeal as though it fully
understood, and Marsland doggedly resumed his battle with the storm.
The road slanted away slightly from the cliff when horse and rider had
covered another hundred yards, and wound through a long cutting on
the hill which afforded some protection from the gale, enabling them
to make quicker progress. But still Marsland could not see a yard in
front of him. Even if his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness,
the heavy rain, beating almost horizontally on his face, would have
prevented him seeing anything.
He had matches in his pocket, but it was useless to attempt to strike
them in such a wind, and he reproached himself for having come away
without his electric torch. Slowly and cautiously he made his way down
the road, feeling his footsteps as he went, the tired horse following
obediently. The cutting seemed a long one, but at length a sudden blast
of wind, roaring in from the sea, told him that he had emerged into the
open again. He counted off another hundred paces, then paused anxiously.
"The house ought to be somewhere on the left down there," he muttered,
staring blindly into the dark.
He wondered in an irritated fashion why there were no lights showing
from the farm-house, which he felt must be very close to where he
stood. But he recollected that farmers kept early hours, and he
realized that the occupants of the house might well be excused for
going to bed on such a night even earlier than usual.
As though in answer to an unspoken wish, a flash of lightning played
over the sky. It was faint and fitful, but it was sufficient to reveal
the farm standing a little way ahead, about a hundred yards back from
the road. He saw clearly the hedge which divided its meadows from the
road, and noted that a gate leading into a wagon drive on the side of
the meadow nearest him had been flung open by the force of the gale,
and was swinging loosely on its hinges.
"They'll thank me for closing that gate if they've got any stock in the
meadows," said Marsland.
The swinging white gate was faintly visible in the darkness when
Marsland came close to it, and he turned into the open drive. He
noticed as he walked along that the gale was not so severely felt
inside as out on the road, and he came to the conclusion that the farm
was in a more sheltered part of the downs--was probably shielded from
the wind by the hill through which the cutting ran.
He reflected that it was a good idea to build in a sheltered spot
when farming on low downs facing the English Channel. He was glad to
be able to walk upright, with the wind behind him and the rain on his
back instead of beating on his face. For one thing, he found he was
able to make some use of his eyes in spite of the darkness, and soon
he discerned the house looming bleakly ahead of him, with the barn
alongside.
As Marsland passed the barn, his horse surprised him by whinnying
sharply and plucking the loose bridle from his arm. He felt for his
matchbox and hastily struck a match. The wind extinguished it, but not
before its brief splutter of light showed him the horse disappearing
through an open doorway.
He followed it and struck another match. It flared up steadily under
cover, and he saw that he was in a small storehouse attached to the
barn. Gardening tools were neatly piled in one corner, and in another
were a stack of potatoes and some bags of grain. His horse was plucking
ravenously at one of the bags. By the light of another match Marsland
espied an old lantern hanging on a nail above the tools. He took it
from the nail, and found that it contained a short end of candle--a
sight which filled him with pleasure.
He found a tin dish on top of the cornstack, opened one of the bags,
poured a measure of oats into it, and set it before his horse. The
animal eagerly thrust his nose into the dish and commenced to eat.
Marsland patted its wet flank, and then examined the injured leg by the
light of the lantern. His examination failed to reveal any specific
injury beyond a slight swelling, though the horse winced restively as
he touched it.
Marsland left the horse munching contentedly at its food, shut the door
of the storehouse to prevent the animal wandering away, and set out for
the house. The light of the lantern showed him a path branching off the
drive. He followed it till the outline of the house loomed before him
out of the darkness.
The path led across the front of the house, but Marsland looked in vain
for a ray of light in the upper stories which would indicate that one
of the inmates was awake. He walked on till the path turned abruptly
into a large porch, and he knew he had reached the front door. Instead
of knocking, he walked past the porch in order to see if there was any
light visible on the far side of the house. It was with pleasure that
he observed a light glimmering through the second window on the ground
floor. Judging by the position of the window, it belonged to the room
immediately behind the front room on the right side of the house.
Marsland returned to the porch and vigorously plied the knocker on the
door, so that the sound should be heard above the storm. He listened
anxiously for approaching footsteps of heavily-shod feet, but the first
sound he heard was that of the bolt being drawn back.
"Where have you been?" exclaimed a feminine voice. "I have been
wondering what could have happened to you."
The girl who had opened the door to him had a candle in her hand. As
she spoke, she shielded the light with her other hand and lifted it to
his face. She uttered a startled exclamation.
"I beg your pardon," said Marsland, in an ingratiating tone. "I have
lost my way and my horse has gone lame. I have taken the liberty of
putting him in the outbuildings before coming to ask you for shelter
from the storm."
"To ask me?" she repeated. "Oh, of course. Please come in."
Marsland closed the door and followed her into the dark and silent
hall. She led the way into the room where he had seen the light, placed
the candle on the table, and retreated to a chair which was in the
shadow. It occurred to him that she was anxious to study him without
being exposed to his scrutiny. But he had noticed that she was wearing
a hat and a dark cloak. These things suggested to him that she had
been on the point of going out when the storm came on. The mistaken
way in which she had greeted him on opening the door seemed to show
that she had been waiting for some one who was to have accompanied her.
Apparently she was alone in the house when he had knocked.
"I am sorry to have intruded on you in this unceremonious way," he
said, reviving his apology with the object of enabling her to dismiss
any fears at her own unprotected state. "I am completely lost, and
when I saw this house I thought the best thing I could do was to seek
shelter."
"You are not intruding upon me," she said coldly. "The house is not
mine--I do not live here. I saw the storm coming on, and, like you, I
thought it was a good idea to seek shelter."
It was apparent to him that her greeting had been intended for some one
who had accompanied her to the house and had gone to one of the farm
buildings for some purpose. He noted that her manner of speaking was
that of a well-bred young lady rather than of a farmer's daughter.
The room in which they were sitting was evidently used as a parlour,
and was somberly furnished in an old-fashioned way. There was a
horsehair suite, and in the middle of the room a large round table.
Glancing about him into the dark corners of the room which the feeble
light of the candle barely reached, Marsland noticed in one of them a
large lamp standing on a small table.
"That will give us a better light," he said; "providing, of course, it
has some oil in it."
He lifted the lamp to the centre table, and found it was nearly full
of oil. He lit it, and it sent out a strong light, which was, however,
confined to a radius of a few feet by a heavy lampshade. He glanced
at the girl. She had extinguished her candle, and her face remained
obstinately in shadow.
He sat down on one of the horsehair chairs; but his companion remained
standing a little distance away. They waited in silence thus for some
minutes. Marsland tried to think of something to say, but there was a
pensive aloofness about the girl's attitude which deterred him from
attempting to open a conversation with a conventional remark about the
violence of the storm. He listened for a knock at the front door which
would tell him that her companion had returned, but to his surprise the
minutes passed without any sign. He thought of asking her to sit down,
but he reflected that such an invitation might savour of impertinence.
He could dimly see the outline of her profile, and judged her to be
young and pretty. Once he thought she glanced in his direction, but
when he looked towards her she had her face still turned towards the
door. Finally he made another effort to break down the barrier of
silence between them.
"I suppose we must wait here until the storm has cleared away," he
began. "It is a coincidence that both of us should have sought shelter
in this empty house in the storm--I assume the house is empty for
the time being or we would have heard from the inmates. My name is
Marsland. I have been staying at Staveley, and I lost my way when out
riding this afternoon--the downs seem endless. Perhaps you belong to
the neighbourhood and know them thoroughly."
But instead of replying she made a swift step towards the door.
"Listen!" she cried. "What was that?"
He stood up also, and listened intently, but the only sounds that met
his ears were the beating of the rain against the windows and the wind
whistling mournfully round the old house.
"I hear nothing----" he commenced.
But she interrupted him imperatively.
"Hush!" she cried. "Listen!" Her face was still turned away from him,
but she held out a hand in his direction as though to enjoin silence.
They stood in silence, both listening intently. Somewhere a board
creaked, and Marsland could hear the wind blowing, but that was all.
"I do not think it was anything," he said reassuringly. "These old
houses have a way of creaking and groaning in a gale. You have become
nervous through sitting here by yourself."
"Perhaps that is so," she assented in a friendlier tone than she had
hitherto used. "But I thought--in fact, I felt--that somebody was
moving about stealthily overhead."
"It was the wind sighing about the house," he said, sitting down again.
As he spoke, there was a loud crash in a room above--a noise as though
china or glass had been broken. Marsland sprang to his feet.
"There _is_ somebody in the house," he exclaimed.
"Who can it be?" she whispered.
"Probably some one who has more right here than we have," said Marsland
soothingly. "He'll come downstairs and then we'll have to explain our
presence here."
"The man who lives here is away," she replied, in a hushed tone of
terror. "He lives here alone. If there is anybody in the house, it is
some one who has no right here."
"If you are sure of that," said Marsland slowly, "I will go and
see what has happened in the room above. The wind may have knocked
something over. Will you stay here until I return?"
"No, no!" she cried, "I am too frightened now. I will go with you!"
He felt her hand on his sleeve as she spoke.
"In that case we may as well take this lamp," he said. "It will give
more light than this." He put down his lantern and picked up the lamp
from the table. "Come along, and see what havoc the wind has been
playing with the furniture upstairs."
He led the way out of the room, carefully carrying the lamp, and the
girl followed. They turned up the hall to the staircase. As the light
of the lamp fell on the staircase they saw a piece of paper lying on
one of the lower stairs. Marsland picked it up and was so mystified at
what he saw on it that he placed the lamp on a stair above in order to
study it more closely.
"What can this extraordinary thing mean?" he said to his companion.
He put his left hand in the top pocket of his waistcoat, and then
exclaimed: "I have lost my glasses; I cannot make this out without
them."
She came close to him and looked at the paper.
The sheet was yellow with age, and one side of it was covered with
figures and writing. There was a row of letters at the top of the
sheet, followed by a circle of numerals, with more numerals in the
centre of the circle. Underneath the circle appeared several verses of
Scripture written in a small, cramped, but regular handwriting. The ink
which had been used in constructing the cryptogram was faded brown with
age, but the figures and the writing were clear and legible, and the
whole thing bore evidence of patient and careful construction.
"This is very strange," she said, in a frightened whisper.
Marsland thought she was referring to the diagrams on the paper.
"It is a mysterious sort of document, whoever owns it," he said. "I
think I'll put it on the table in there and we will study it again when
we come down after exploring the other parts of the house."
He picked up the lamp and went back to the room they had left. He
deposited the sheet of paper on the table and placed the candlestick on
it to keep it from being blown away by the wind.
"Now for the ghosts upstairs," he said cheerfully, as he returned.
He noted with a smile that his companion made a point of keeping behind
him in all his movements. When they had climbed the first flight of
stairs, they stood for a moment or two on the landing, listening, but
could hear no sound.
"Let us try this room first," said Marsland, pointing to a door
opposite the landing.
The door was closed but not shut, for it yielded to his touch and
swung open, revealing a large bedroom with an old-fashioned fourposter
in the corner furthest from the door. Marsland glanced round the
room curiously. It was the typical "best bedroom" of an old English
farm-house, built more than a hundred years before the present
generation came to life, with their modern ideas of fresh air and light
and sanitation. The ceiling was so low that Marshland almost touched it
with his head as he walked, and the small narrow-paned windows, closely
shuttered from without, looked as though they had been hermetically
sealed for centuries.
The room contained furniture as ancient as its surroundings: quaint
old chests of drawers, bureaux, clothes-presses, and some old
straight-backed oaken chairs. On the walls were a few musty old
books on shelves, a stuffed pointer in a glass case, a cabinet of
stuffed birds, some dingy hunting prints. The combination of low
ceiling, sealed windows, and stuffed animals created such a vault-like
atmosphere that Marsland marvelled at the hardy constitution of
that dead and gone race of English yeomen who had suffered nightly
internment in such chambers and yet survived to a ripe old age. His
eyes wandered to the fourposter, and he smiled as he noticed that the
heavy curtains were drawn close, as though the last sleeper in the
chamber had dreaded and guarded against the possibility of some stray
shaft of fresh air eluding the precautions of the builder and finding
its way into the room.
"Nothing here," he said, as he glanced round the floor of the room for
broken pieces of glass or china ornaments that might have been knocked
over by the wind or by a cat. "Let us try the room opposite."
She was the first to reach the door of the opposite room to which they
turned. It occurred to Marsland that her fears were wearing off. As he
reached the threshold, he lifted up the lamp above his head so that its
light should fall within.
The room was a bedroom also, deep and narrow as though it had been
squeezed into the house as an afterthought with a small, deep-set
window high up in the wall opposite the door. The room was furnished in
the old-fashioned style of the room opposite, though more sparsely. But
Marsland and the girl were astonished to see a man sitting motionless
in a large arm-chair at the far end of the room. His head had fallen
forward on his breast as though in slumber, concealing the lower part
of his face.
"By heavens, this is extraordinary," said Marsland, in a low hoarse
voice. With a trembling hand he placed the lamp on the large table
which occupied the centre of the room and stood looking at the man.
The girl crept close to Marsland and clutched his arm.
"It is Frank Lumsden," she whispered quickly. "Do you think there is
anything wrong with him? Why doesn't he speak to us?"
"Because he is dead," he answered swiftly.
"Dead!" she exclaimed, in an hysterical tone. "What makes you think so?
He may be only in a fit. Oh, what shall we do?"
Marsland pushed her aside and with a firm step walked to the chair on
which the motionless figure sat. He touched with his fingers the left
hand which rested on the arm of the chair, and turned quickly.
"He is quite dead," he said slowly. "He is beyond all help in this
world."
"Dead?" she repeated, retreating to the far end of the table and
clasping her trembling hands together. "What a dreadful lonely death."
He was deep in thought and did not respond to her words.
"As we have discovered the body we must inform the police," he said at
length.
"I did not know he was ill," she said, in a soft whisper. "He must have
died suddenly."
Marsland turned on her a searching questioning look. Her sympathy
had conquered her vague fears of the presence of death, and she
hesitatingly approached the body. Something on the table near the lamp
attracted her attention. It was an open pocket-book and beside it were
some papers which had evidently been removed from it.
"What does this mean?" she cried. "Some one has been here."
"It is extraordinary," said Marsland.
He stood between her and the arm-chair so as to hide the dead body from
her. She stepped aside as if to seek in the appearance of the dead man
an explanation of the rifled pocket-book.
"Don't!" he said quickly, as he grasped her by the arm. "Do not touch
it."
His desire to save her from a shock awoke her feminine intuition.
"You mean he has been murdered?" she whispered, in a voice of dismay.