HOW GIFFORD ESCAPED
"I waited for some time in silence, expecting him every moment to rise
and retaliate. He was a big, muscular man, but it never occurred to me to
be in any fear of him physically. For one thing my indignation was too
hot to admit fear; I happen to be quite good enough at boxing to be able
to take care of myself, and I was sure--all the more from his continuing
to lie there--that such a despicable bully must be a coward.
"'You had better get up and clear out of this house,' I said wrathfully,
'before you get the thrashing you so richly deserve.'
"No answer came. As I waited for one there was, save for my own
breathing, dead silence in the room. Before speaking I had heard
something like a long drawn sigh come from the man on the floor, but now,
listening intently, I could hear nothing. Two explanations suggested
themselves to account for his still lying there. One, shame at his vile
conduct having been witnessed by a third person, the other that he had
struck his head against the wall in falling and was stunned.
"Naturally I was not greatly concerned at the fellow's condition,
whichever it was; still it would, I concluded, be well to settle the
matter, and if he was merely skulking see that he cleared out of the
house. I shut the door, and then crossing to where the man lay, struck a
match and held it out to get a view of him.
"He lay on his face with his arms bent under him. I prodded him with my
foot, but he did not stir; he lay absolutely, rather uncannily still. The
match burned out; I struck another and leaned over to get a sight of his
face. To my horror there met my eyes a dark wet patch on the floor which
I instinctively felt must be blood. You may imagine the terrible thrill
the conviction gave me. Yet I could not believe even then that anything
really serious had happened.
"I struck a fresh match and holding it up with one hand, with the other
took the man's shoulder and turned him over on his back. Then I knew that
I was there with a dead man. The hue of the face was unmistakably that of
death. And the cause of it was plainly to be seen. There was a wound in
the man's neck from which blood came freely.
"How had the wound--clearly a fatal one--been caused? I searched for an
explanation. That which forced itself upon me was that the girl had in
her desperation stabbed her persecutor with some weapon she had found
there or brought with her. It was a horrible idea to entertain, although
the act would have been almost justified. I wondered if by chance the
weapon was still there. Striking a match I looked round. Yes; there on
the floor near the spot where Henshaw had first fallen, lay a narrow
blood-stained chisel.
"Whatever my first conclusions were I can see now the most probable
explanation of how Henshaw came by his death-wound. He had forced the
chisel away from the girl; he had kept it in his hand; in his eagerness
to prevent his victim's escape he had not realized that he was holding
it point upwards, and when he fell it had pierced him with all the force
of his heavy body falling plump on it."
"Then you know it was an accident?" Edith Morriston drew a great breath
of relief from the painful tension with which she had listened.
"I can see it was a pure accident," Gifford answered. "All the same it
was an accident with an ugly look about it, and I quickly realized that I
was in an equivocal--not to say dangerous, situation."
"It was a terrible predicament for you," the girl said sympathetically.
"It was indeed. And one which called for prompt action. Moreover the very
fact that I was not in evening clothes made it all the more suspicious. I
pulled my wits together and proceeded to make quite sure that the man was
actually dead. That I found was beyond all doubt the case, and it now
remained for me to make my escape before being found there in that
hideous situation.
"I went out to the landing, closing the door after me, with the idea of
getting down the stairs and escaping into the garden as secretly as I had
come in. I had crept down a very few stairs when I found this was not to
be. A chatter of voices just below told me that people were in the tower,
and leaning over I could see couples passing between the passage to the
hall and the room below me.
"At any moment, I realized, some of them might take it into their heads
to explore the topmost room, when the result would be disastrous.
Certainly in my mufti I could not get past the next floor just then
without exciting fatal notice, and to wait for an opportunity when the
coast might be clear was too dangerous, seeing the risk of someone
coming up.
"It was not easy to see my way of escape. I went to the top room and
locked the door. My nerves were pretty strong, but they were severely
tried when I shut myself in with the dead man and had the consciousness
of having laid myself open to the charge of being his murderer. I stood
there by the door thinking desperately what I could do. Fool that I had
been to venture into the place in that garb. But who could have foreseen
the result? Anyhow there was no time for reflection; it was necessary to
act and seek a possible expedient. Hopelessly enough I went into the
little inner room and struck a match. In a moment a thrill of hope came
to me, for the first object the light showed me was a big coil of rope
conspicuous among the odds and ends of lumber in the recess. The idea of
escape by the window had only occurred to me to be dismissed as a sheer
impossibility; the height of the tower made that quite prohibitive, but
here seemed a chance of it. If only the rope was long enough.
"I got hold of the coil as my match burned out, and pulled it away from
the surrounding rubbish. Its weight gave me hope that it would be
sufficient. In haste I dragged it to the outer room into which the
moonlight was now streaming. With a shuddering glance at the dead man,
whose ashen face stared up in ghastly fashion in the moonbeams, I opened
the window and looked out to make sure that no one was below. Satisfied
on that point I brought forward the rope and began paying it out of the
window. To my content I saw that there was a strong iron stanchion at the
side which would allow of the rope being fastened to it.
"There was light enough just then to enable me to see pretty well when
the end of the rope reached the ground, and upon examining what was left
in the room I calculated that not much more than half was outside. In a
flash the discovery gave me an idea. Why should I not simply pass the
rope behind the stanchion and use it doubled? By that means I could pull
it down after me when I reached the ground, and so not only effect my
escape but also leave the fact unknown. That, together with the door
locked on the inside, would tend to make Henshaw's death a mystery with a
strong probability in favour of suicide, which would be altogether the
happiest conclusion to arrive at. In fact my hastily formed calculation
was, as we know, subsequently borne out and the suicide theory would
probably have been quietly accepted had it not been for the intervention
of Gervase Henshaw with his smartness and incredulity.
"That is practically the end of my story, Miss Morriston. I laid the
chisel by the body, went to the window, pulled in the rope, carefully got
the centre, adjusted it through the stanchion, and with a last look at
the dead man, got out of the window, a rather nerve-trying business, and
began to lower myself. I had calculated that the double rope was long
enough to take me to within a few feet of the ground, and this proved to
be the case. When I came to the end I let go of one side and pulled the
other with me as I dropped. Then I drew the rope down, the latter half
when released falling with a great thud. Hastily I set off for the lake,
dragging the rope after me. At the landing-stage by the boat-house I
coiled it up as best I could and threw it in. As I had anticipated it was
thick and heavy enough to sink without being weighted. Then with a last
glance at the tower I made my way as quickly as possible to the hotel in
a state of nerves which you may imagine, little thinking that my descent
from the tower had been witnessed. My first intention was to abandon all
idea of going to the dance, but on reflection I came to the conclusion
that I had better at least put in an appearance there.
"Accordingly I changed and came on late to the ball, as you know.
Naturally a great curiosity possessed me to find out the girl who had
played the third part in the drama which had been enacted in the tower.
But I had not seen her face, nor heard her voice sufficiently to be able
to recognize it. There were several tall girls in the room, yourself
among the number, but naturally it never occurred to me--"
He stopped awkwardly, just as by inadvertence he was about to say that
which all along he had studiously refrained from suggesting.
"To suspect me," Edith Morriston completed his sentence with a smile.
"No," he continued frankly. "You would have been the last person to enter
my head in that connexion. And then Kelson came out of the passage from
the tower with Miss Tredworth, to whom he had just proposed. He
introduced me in a way which suggested their new relationship, and we had
just began to chat when to my horror I noticed what to my mind went to
prove that she was the person for whom I was looking. There were dark red
stains on the white roses she wore on her dress. It was an unpleasant
shock to me, placing me, as it seemed, in a terribly difficult position.
For, at the first blush of my discovery, it all seemed to fit in. Clement
Henshaw had been, I imagined, in love with Miss Tredworth before Kelson
appeared on the scene. She had thrown him over for my friend, and
Henshaw, taking his rejection in bad part, had threatened to expose some
questionable incident in her past. Now that is all happily explained
away, and I won't retrace the steps by which my imagination led me on;
but you see how painfully I was situated with respect to my friend.
"That is my story, Miss Morriston. Had I known what I know now I should
not have kept it to myself so long; but up to a certain point, until the
last few days, there seemed no reason for making the dangerous secret
known to any one. Now, when it appears necessary to protect you from this
man, Henshaw, the account of the part I played in the tragedy must be
told in your interest."
Edith Morriston drew in a deep breath as Gifford ceased speaking. "It is
very kind and chivalrous of you, Mr. Gifford," she said in a low voice,
"to run this risk for me, although your telling me the story shall never
involve you in danger."
"I am ready for your sake to face any danger the telling of my secret may
hold for me," he responded firmly.
"I am sure of that, as I am sure of you," she replied. Then added with a
change of tone, "You were certain for a while that Muriel Tredworth had
not only been guilty of something discreditable in her past but had
stabbed to death in your presence the man who knew her secret."
"I'm afraid there seemed to me no alternative but to believe it," he
acknowledged.
"When you found out that you were mistaken in her identity and that she
had nothing whatever to do with the tragedy you would naturally transfer
the opinion you had held of her to--to the other woman--the one who was
actually there?"
The question was put searchingly and was not to be evaded.
"That would be a natural consequence," Gifford admitted frankly. "But
there was in my mind always a growing doubt whether the wound had not
been given accidentally. And that doubt became almost certainty when the
real identity of Henshaw's victim became apparent."
Edith Morriston looked at him steadily. "You know it--for certain?" she
asked almost coldly.
"Naturally I cannot fail to know it now," he answered sympathetically.
She gave a rather bitter laugh. "I shall not deny it to you, Mr. Gifford,
even if I thought it could be of any use. But, knowing so much, you owe
it to me to hear my explanation of matters which look so black against
me, and above all to accept my absolute assurance that so far as I am
concerned Clement Henshaw's wound was quite accidental. Indeed I never
dreamt that he had been hurt until his body was found."
Gifford seized her hand by an irresistible impulse.
"Miss Morriston, if you only knew how glad and relieved I am to hear you
say that!" he exclaimed.
"When you hear my story," she said, composedly but with an underlying
bitterness which was hardly to be concealed, "the story of a long
martyrdom of persecution--for it has been nothing less--you will acquit
me of being guilty of anything disreputable. What I did was innocent
enough and it moreover was forced upon me."
"Tell me," he urged tenderly.
"I must tell you," she returned, "if only to set myself right in your
eyes who have been witness of the terrible sequel to it all. But not
to-night; it is too late, and the story is long: it must be told at
length. Dick will be home by this and I must go. I would ask you to come
in, but there would be no opportunity for private talk there. Will you
meet me to-morrow morning at half-past ten by the summer-house near the
wood that runs up to James' farm? You know it?"
"Well. I will be there."
"It is rather a long way for you to come," she said, "but there are
reasons for avoiding the big wood with the rides."
"I know," he replied. "Henshaw might be on the look-out there for you."
Then he added in answer to her quick look of curiosity, "I happened once
by accident to see him there with you."
"Ah, yes," she admitted with a shudder, "I will tell you about that."
"I think I can guess," he said quietly. "Now in the meantime you will
take no notice of this man if he writes or tries to see you. He will
probably be exasperated by your not keeping the appointment this evening
and may determine to put the screw on."
"Yes," she agreed with a lingering fear in her voice.
"Leave him to me to deal with," Gifford said reassuringly. "And do make
up your mind that all will be well."
"I will, thanks to you, my friend in need."
And so, with a warm pressure of the hands, they parted.