"And spoil my hearthrugs. No; that was not the way of entrance."
"Then we come to the question--did one of the servants get up and admit
'em?"
"But that would be doubting my servants still, you see. It really seems,
Mr. Stone, as though you could not help me."
"Before saying whether I can or I can't, I should be glad, ma'am, to
have a conversation with you alone," was the unexpected answer.
So we left him with Miss Deveen. Cattledon's stays appeared to resent
it, for they creaked alarmingly in the hall, and her voice was tart.
"Perhaps the man wants to accuse you or me, Mr. Johnny!"
We knew later, after the upshot came, what it was he did want; and I may
as well state it at once. Stone had made up his mind to watch that night
in the garden; but he wished it kept secret from every one, except Miss
Deveen herself, and he charged her strictly not to mention it. "How will
it serve you, if, as you say, they do not come in that way?" she had
asked. "But the probability is they come out that way," he answered. "At
any rate, they fling the doors open, and I shall be there to drop upon
them."
Janet Carey grew very ill as the day went on. Lettice offered to sit up
with her, in case she wanted anything in the night. Janet had just the
appearance of somebody worn out.
We went to bed at the usual time, quite unconscious that Mr. Stone had
taken up his night watch in the summer-house at the end of the garden.
The nights were very bright just then; the moon at about the full.
Nothing came of it: neither the room nor the window was disturbed.
"They scented my watch," remarked the officer in private next morning
to Miss Deveen. "However, ma'am, I don't think it likely you will be
troubled again. Seeing you've put it into our hands, they'll not dare to
risk further annoyance."
"I suppose not--if they know it," dubiously spoke Miss Deveen.
He shook his head. "They know as much as that, ma'am. Depend upon it
their little game is over."
Mr. Stone was mistaken. On the following morning, the breakfast-room was
found by Lettice in exactly the same state of confusion. The furniture
dragged about, the ornaments moved from the mantelpiece, the bills and
papers opened, as before. Miss Deveen was very silent over it, and
said in the hearing of the servants that she should have to carry the
grievance to Scotland Yard.
And I'm sure I thought she set out to do it. The carriage came to the
door in the course of the morning. Miss Deveen, who was ready dressed,
passed over the others, and asked me to go with her.
"Do you know what I'm going to do, Johnny?" she questioned, as George
took his place on the box and the fat old coachman gave the word to his
horses.
"I think I do, Miss Deveen. We are going to Scotland Yard."
"Not a bit of it, Johnny," she said. "My opinion has come round to Mr.
Policeman Stone's--that we must look indoors for the disturber. I have
brought you out with me to talk about it. It is a great mystery--for I
thought I could have trusted the servants and all the rest of you with
my life."
It was a mystery--and no mistake.
"A great mystery," repeated Miss Deveen; "a puzzle; and I want you
to help me to unravel it, Johnny. I intend to sit up to-night in the
breakfast-room. But not being assured of my nerves while watching in
solitude for thieves, or ghosts, or what not, I wish you to sit up with
me."
"Oh, I shall like it, Miss Deveen."
"I have heard of houses being disturbed before in a similar manner," she
continued. "There was a story in the old days of the Cock-Lane ghost: I
think that was something of the same kind, but my memory is rather
cloudy on the point. Other cases I know have been traced to the sudden
mania, solely mischievous or otherwise, of some female inmate. I hope it
will not turn out to have been Lettice herself."
"Shall I watch without you, Miss Deveen?"
"No, no; you will bear me company. We will make our arrangements now,
Johnny--for I do not intend that any soul shall know of this; not even
Miss Cattledon. You will keep counsel, mind, like the true and loyal
knight you are."
* * * * *
The house had gone to rest. In the dark breakfast-room sat Miss Deveen
and I, side by side. The fire was dying away, and it gave scarcely any
light. We sat back against the wall between the fireplace and the door,
she in one armchair, I in another. The secretary was opposite the fire,
the key in the lock as usual; the window, closed and barred, lay to the
left, the door to the right, a table in the middle. An outline of the
objects was just discernible in the fading light.
"Do you leave the key in the secretary as a rule, Miss Deveen?" I asked
in a whisper.
"Yes. There's nothing in it that any one would care to look at," she
replied in the same cautious tone. "My cash-box is generally there, but
that is always locked. But I think we had better not talk, Johnny."
So we sat on in silence. The faint light of the fire died away, giving
place to total darkness. It was weary watching there, hour after hour,
each hour seeming an age. Twelve o'clock struck; one; two! I'd have
given something to be able to fall asleep. Just to speak a word to Miss
Deveen would be a relief, and I forgot her injunctions.
"Are you thinking of ghosts, Miss Deveen?"
"Just then I was thinking of God, Johnny. How good it is to know that He
is with us in the dark as in the light."
Almost with the last word, my ears, younger and quicker than Miss
Deveen's, caught the sound of a faint movement outside--as though steps
were descending the stairs. I touched Miss Deveen's arm and breathed a
caution.
"I hear something. I think it is coming now."
The door softly opened. Some white figure was standing there--as might
be seen by the glimmer of light that came in through the passage window.
Who or what it was, we could not gather. It closed the door behind it,
and came slowly gliding along the room on the other side the table,
evidently feeling its way as it went, and making for the window. We sat
in breathless silence. Miss Deveen had caught my hand and was holding it
in hers.
Next, the shutters were unfastened and slowly folded back; then the
window was unbolted and its doors were flung wide. This let in a flood
of moonlight: after the darkness the room seemed bright as day. And the
white figure doing all this was--Janet Carey in her nightgown, her feet
bare.
Whether Miss Deveen held my hand the tighter, or I hers, I dare say
neither of us could tell. Janet's eyes turned on us, as we sat: and I
fully expected her to go into a succession of shrieks.
But no. She took no manner of notice. It was just as though she did not
see us. Steadily, methodically as it seemed, she proceeded to search the
room, apparently looking for something. First, she took the chintz cover
off the nearest chair, and shook it out; turned over the chair and felt
it all over; a small round stand was served the same; a blotting-case
that happened to lie on the table she carried to the window, knelt down,
and examined it on the floor by the moonlight, passing her fingers over
its few pages, unfolding a letter that was inside and shaking it out
to the air. Then all that was left on the floor, and she turned over
another chair, and so went on.
I felt as cold as charity. Was it her ghost that was doing this? How was
it she did not see us sitting there? Her eyes were open enough to see
anything!
Coming to the secretary, she turned the key, and began her search in it.
Pulling out one drawer first, she opened every paper it contained, shook
them one by one, and let them drop on the floor. As she was commencing
at the next drawer, her back towards us, Miss Deveen whispered to me.
"We will get away, Johnny. You go on first. No noise, mind."
We got out without being seen or heard. At least, there was no outcry;
no sign to tell we had been. Miss Deveen drew me into the dining-room;
her face, as it caught the glimmer, entering by the fan-light over the
hall-door, looked deadly pale.
"I understand it all, Johnny. She is doing it in her sleep."
"In her sleep?"
"Yes. She is unconscious. It was better to come away. As she came round
to search our part of the room, she might have found us, and awoke. That
would have been dangerous."
"But, Miss Deveen, what is she searching for?"
"I know. I see it all perfectly. It is for a bank-note."
"But--if she is really asleep, how can she go about the search in that
systematic way? Her eyes are wide open: she seems to examine things as
though she _saw_ them."
"I cannot tell you how it is, Johnny. They do seem to see things,
though they are asleep. What's more, when they awake there remains no
consciousness of what they have done. This is not the first case of
somnambulism I have been an eye-witness to. She throws the window and
shutters open to admit the light."
"How can she have sense to know in her sleep that opening them will
admit it?"
"Johnny, though these things _are_, I cannot explain them. Go up to your
bed now and get to sleep. As I shall go to mine. You shall know about
Janet in the morning. She will take no harm if left alone: she has taken
none hitherto. Say nothing to any one."
It was the solution of the great puzzle. Janet Carey had done it all in
her sleep. And what she had been searching for was a bank-note.
In the situation where Janet had been living as nursery-governess, a
bank-note had disappeared. Janet was suspected and _accused_ of taking
it. Constitutionally timid and nervous, her spirits long depressed by
circumstances, the accusation had a grave effect upon her. She searched
the house for it incessantly, almost night and day, just as we had seen
her searching the parlour at Miss Deveen's in her sleep, and then fell
into a fever--which was only saved by great care from settling on the
brain. When well enough, Miss Cattledon had her removed to London to
Miss Deveen's; but the stigma still clung to her, and the incipient
fever seemed still to hover about her. The day William Whitney left, she
moved from Miss Cattledon's chamber to the one he had occupied: and that
night, being unrestrained, she went down in her sleep to search. The
situation of the room in which the note had been lost was precisely
similar to this breakfast-room at Miss Deveen's--in her troubled sleep,
poor girl, she must have taken it for the same room, and crept down,
still asleep, to renew the endless search she had formerly made when
awake. The night the policeman was watching in the summer-house,
Lettice sat up with Janet; so that night nothing occurred. Lettice said
afterwards that Miss Carey twice got out of bed in her sleep and seemed
to be making for the door, but Lettice guided her back to bed again. And
so there was the elucidation: and Janet was just as unconscious of what
she had done as the bed-post.
Miss Deveen's medical man was called in, for brain-fever, escaped,
appeared to be fastening on Janet in earnest now. He gave it as his
opinion that she was no natural sleep-walker, but that the mind's
disturbance had so acted on the brain and system, coupled with her
fright at meeting the policeman at the Colosseum, as to have induced the
result. At any rate, whatever may have caused it, and strange though it
was, I have only given facts. And in the next paper we shall hear more
about the bank-note.