pride. “Though I don’t know they’re much better than our own
detectives. You’ll tell him you saw me, will you, and I asked you not
to go to the house unless you had business?”
Evidently these were the policeman’s instructions; Gilder promised
faithfully to supply this exoneration, and continued up the drive.
There was nobody to meet him when he pulled up before the old carved
porch, but he had hardly alighted when a long-armed, queer-faced man
came from nowhere.
“Good-morning,” said the visitor.
“Good-morning, Mr. Gilder,” said Puttler. “Mr. Alford has had to go to
town.”
“I want to see Miss Gwyn,” said Gilder, watching the man closely.
If he had expected an experienced detective-sergeant to betray
himself, he was to be disappointed. Puttler did no more than fix him
with his melancholy eyes.
“Want to see Miss Gwyn, do you? I’m afraid she’s not at home either.”
“Then perhaps I could see Miss Wenner?”
The sergeant scratched his chin.
“She’s not very well,” he said; “in fact, she’s lying down, and the
doctor says she’s not to be disturbed.”
“Is there anything wrong with her?”
“No, there’s nothing very much wrong with her. At the same time,” said
Puttler juridically, “there’s nothing very much right with her! It has
rather got on her nerves sleeping in this place, and I can’t very well
blame her.”
“Do you know where Miss Gwyn has gone?”
Puttler shook his head.
“No,” he said truthfully, “I can’t tell you that; she didn’t tell me.”
“Perhaps you will answer this question,” said the exasperated man:
“Has anything happened to her?”
“So far as I know,” said the imperturbable officer, “nothing whatever
has happened to her. Are you a friend of hers?”
“I am her fiancé,” said Gilder, on the spur of the moment.
Here he had the satisfaction of seeing that the sergeant was startled.
“Oh, yes, of course, you’re the gentleman she isn’t going to marry.”
It was said in all innocence, without any trace of impertinence, but
Mr. Gilder went red and white.
“You see, Mr. Gilder,” the sergeant went on, “I’ve heard quite a lot
about--affairs in this neighbourhood; in fact, I’m an authority upon
all the gossip and scandal for the past twenty years. And I’m very
glad you came, because there are one or two questions I wanted to ask
you. For example, I wanted to know how it came about that you placed
your cottage at the disposal of an ex-convict. Thomas Luck--so
called.”
But here Gilder was ready with his answer.
“I had no idea the man was an ex-convict,” he said. “He told me he had
been discharged from the Manor, and as I wanted a caretaker, and he
offered to come for a very small sum, I employed him. I was terribly
surprised and shocked to hear of his death, but even more shocked to
learn of his character.”
Puttler was politely interested. But if he thought that he was going
to get rid of Gilder so easily, it was because he did not know the
man’s pertinacity.
“I think I must see Miss Wenner before I go,” he said. “At any rate,
I’d be glad if you’d send up my name----”
Puttler shook his head.
“It can’t be done, Mr. Gilder,” he said almost cheerfully. “Just now
I’m a combination of the Earl of Chelford and the family doctor. In
other words, I’m in charge during Mr. Alford’s absence. If you care to
wait until he comes back, the drawing-room is at your disposal, but
you understand, Mr. Gilder, that you are not in any circumstances to
question the servants. I am a great admirer of amateur detectives in
my leisure moments, but this is one of my busy days and I can’t afford
to have any interference in this case, however well meant it may be.”
Gilder had to accept this invitation. He was determined not to leave
the house until he had learned the truth about Leslie Gwyn. The
detective conducted him to the drawing-room, the long windows of which
were open.
“I’ll ask you not to leave here until Mr. Alford arrives,” he said.
“If you require anything, perhaps you will ring?” And, seeing the
light in Gilder’s eyes, he added: “One of my men, who is a first-class
footman, will attend to you.”
He had not long to wait, as it happened. Dick, who had torn up to
town, breaking every speed rule, and so intent upon the object of his
visit that he had forgotten even that he had put the bag in the boot,
was lucky enough to get through with his interview in a quarter of an
hour. It was a very important interview: one on which his own future
very largely depended; and there were too many things to think about
for him to give a thought to the bag and its contents. His car, white
with dust, sped up the drive and came to a halt in the wide space
before the porch. He identified the other car and recognized it as the
machine that had nearly brought about a nasty accident that morning.
“Gilder, is it?” he said, as he got down.
“Gilder it is, and full of interrogation marks. You saw the
secretary?”
Dick nodded.
“Yes. He was very kind, but rather vague. He has given me twelve hours
to find Harry, dead or alive.”
“Did you tell him about Miss Gwyn?”
“He wasn’t even interested,” said Dick, with a hard laugh. “Harry, the
estate, the title--everything except Leslie! That was the burden of
his conversation. In twelve hours I must find him--and believe me,
Puttler, in twelve hours I will!”
He went into the drawing-room and greeted Gilder curtly.
“You wanted to see me?”
“I wanted to know what has happened to Leslie Gwyn,” said Gilder.
“I wish to God I knew!” said Dick.
The man stared at him.
“Nothing bad has happened?” he asked in a low voice, and Dick forgave
him everything for the sincerity of his concern.
“I’m afraid it is something very unpleasant,” he said, and told the
story.
As he did so, he saw the man’s face change and a sceptical smile
curved his lips.
“I’ve got something to say to you, and I’d like to say it before a
witness, Alford.”
“To me?” said Dick, in surprise, and called over his shoulder to
Puttler, who was passing the door. “Mr. Gilder has something he wants
to say--I presume it’s something of an unpleasant character,” he said.
“Perhaps you had better listen to this, Puttler.”
“Alford has just told me that Miss Gwyn has disappeared, and the
inference is, of course, that the Black Abbot has spirited her away. I
think that is extremely likely, because the Black Abbot has every
interest in holding fast to that young lady.”
“Sensation,” murmured the detective, but Gilder did not notice the
interruption.
“For some time past there’s been a queer spook haunting this
countryside, an object of terror to Lord Chelford, designed, if
anything, to cover the series of outrages which have recently been
committed. Chelford’s a weakling--you know that, Alford--but weaklings
have children, and once a child is born to Harry Chelford your hope of
succession went like that!” He snapped his fingers.
“What are you suggesting?” asked Dick steadily.
“I’m suggesting that you are the Black Abbot!”
Not by so much as a flicker of his eyelid did Dick betray himself.
“I not only suggest it, but I’m prepared to prove it. On your way to
town this morning you nearly collided with my car. As you skidded,
your bag fell out of the dickey. I picked it up, threw it in the car
and found it was open. In that bag was the robe of the Black Abbot,
well worn, often used! Do you deny that?”
“You’ve got to bring proof of this.” It was Puttler who spoke.
“Proof!” cried the other triumphantly. “I’ll give you proof!”
He walked rapidly through the hall to where his car was, the two men
following him. He had left the bag under a rug at the back of the car.
“There is the bag,” he said, as he pulled the rug from its place. “And
here”--he snapped open the bag----
It was empty!
“And here?” said Puttler encouragingly.
“It was there a few minutes ago: I saw it before I came into the
grounds. Somebody has taken it. You!” he accused Dick.
Dick smiled.
“Sergeant Puttler will testify that I came straight from my car into
your august presence,” he said sarcastically.
“Why don’t you accuse me?” asked Puttler. “I was out here all the
time.”
The baffled man looked from one to the other. It was impossible to
believe that these two were in league. He knew Puttler by name to be
one of the best officers Scotland Yard had ever had. He shrugged his
shoulders and dropped his hands to his sides.
“You’ve beaten me, Alford,” he said, “for the time being. But I’m
satisfied the girl is within a mile from this house, and I’m not going
to rest until she is found. Heaven knows why you’ve done it--she’s
fond of you, and there was no need----”
“Don’t be a fool, Gilder,” said Dick roughly. “If you want to help,
help! But you’re not going to help by thinking that I’ve raised my
hand against Leslie Gwyn. I don’t care whether you’re a friend or
whether you are an enemy, but if you can help us bring her back safely
I will go on my knees to you!”
Dick’s voice was trembling, vibrant; there was a look in his eyes
which not even Gilder, for all his prejudice, could mistake. He held
out his hand and Dick Alford took it with a grip that made him wince.
LIII
Despite all her gloomy prognostications as to her sleepless night,
the head of Miss Wenner had hardly touched the pillow than her
breathing became regular and even noticeable. Leslie Gwyn smiled to
herself as she turned over and stealthily extinguished the candle. She
had not been lying ten minutes before she realized, from past
experience, that many a weary hour would pass before her eyes closed
in sleep.
She had the alternative of relighting the candle and reading, or
counting myriads of sheep, and the first plan was somewhat hampered in
its achievement by the fact that there was nothing in the room to
read, and she dare not disturb the sentry, because that would probably
wake Mary. So she lay perfectly still, overcoming a mad desire to turn
every few minutes, trying to make her mind an absolute blank.
With so much to occupy her thoughts, with the past twenty-four hours
and all the terrible shocks they had brought, her effort to turn her
mind into a cabbage was a hopeless failure.
She heard a distant village clock striking the half-hours and the
hours and was grateful when one o’clock chimed, for she felt she had
turned the hill of the night and was approaching the blessed day.
There were queer creaks and noises in this old house: strange,
stealthy footsteps that seemed very real; fingers brushing along
wainscotings, queer little chatterings as of laughter. In spite of her
courage, Leslie got up and lit the candle again and felt happier.
She lay on her back, gazing at the ceiling, striving to concentrate
upon one little crack that ran from corner to corner; and it seemed as
though, as she looked, the room went perceptibly darker, and was
filled with a strange unearthly light.
And then she saw behind the door a great steel clothes hook that she
did not remember having seen before; and attached was a cord and a
shapeless something that hung with terrible limpness… a woman! She
opened her eyes wide, almost screamed, but put her hand before her
mouth in time.
She had been dreaming, she realized, and she reached out for her
handkerchief to wipe her damp face. There was no hook behind the
door--nothing. She shivered and turned on her side, looked for the
twentieth time at her watch. Twenty-five minutes past one.
_Tap, tap!_
That was distinct enough. It came from the room which Mary Wenner was
to have occupied.
A silence, and then the unmistakable sound of gravel being thrown
against a window. Perhaps it was Dick and he wanted to see her. She
slipped out of bed, pulled a dressing gown about her, opened the door
of the dark room and went in. The windows were closed, but as she
entered the room she was startled by a third handful of gravel that
sounded with terrifying distinctness.
With trembling hands she pulled up the catch and pushed the casement
open. A man was standing down below, and for a second she did not
recognize him. And then everything went round; she had to grip the
window ledge for support.
It was Harry Chelford!
“Is that you, my dear?” His voice was little above a whisper but
remarkably clear.
She managed to answer:
“Yes.”
She was so dumbfounded that she could not ask one of the thousand
questions which crowded to her lips.
“Harry! And alive!”
“You are in terrible danger,” he said. “Will you come down? I can get
a ladder.”
Before she could answer he had disappeared, and presently he came
back, carrying a triangular-shaped ladder, and planted it against the
side. The top came within a foot of the window ledge.
“I can’t come, Harry; I’m not dressed. Besides, Miss Wenner is here.”
He raised his finger to his lips.
“Don’t wake her,” he said.
He had a little roll of something in his hand and she noticed that he
was bareheaded.
“Can’t you dress? I must see you.”
“Shall I call Dick?”
“No, no.” In his energy he almost raised his voice and looked back
over his shoulder. “That would spoil everything, and it would endanger
his life. Dress quickly, my dear.”
What should she do? Her first instinct was to run to the door and tell
the guard what she had seen; her second was to obey him. His
earnestness and the terror in his voice made her yield to his
suggestion. Quickly she dressed by candlelight, hoping and praying
that Mary Wenner would wake up. Once she knocked against the girl’s
bed, but Miss Wenner slept peacefully, a seraphic smile on her
good-looking face, and the only notice she took of the disturbance was
to murmur, “Dick!”
It needed that ludicrous interlude to restore Leslie’s courage; for
she could not be amused and afraid at the same time.
Perhaps Dick was waiting below, she thought, and swinging herself over
the sill, she reached out her foot, found the top rung of the ladder,
and came down. Harry was standing on the grass plot, curiously alert
and watchful.
“What is it, Harry?” she asked in a low voice, but he put his finger
to his lips again and led her, not, as she expected, toward the front
of the house, but by a wide circuit, keeping to the shadow of the
trees, until they went past the rosary and near to the stables.
A dog barked as they passed in silence.
“I can’t go any farther, Harry.”
“You must, you must!” His voice was urgent, compelling. “I tell you
that not only my life, but your own is in danger.”
“But what of Miss Wenner?” She drew back.
“They will not touch her. My mother’s spirit will watch that poor
girl--she died in that room.”
Leslie gasped.
“Your mother?” she asked, in an awestricken whisper.
“Come!” He was impatient, caught her by the arm and led her farther
down, until she saw near at hand the gleam of the Ravensrill.
“But, Harry, I can’t go any farther.” She stopped resolutely. “I’m
sure you’re mistaken. Where have you been all this time? Everybody has
been looking for you and Dick has been terribly worried.”
He laughed. (It was the laugh that the watchman heard.)
“Dick is worried? That is rich!”
And now, as the challenge of a distant voice came to her, she saw his
face in the moonlight. He was unshaven, unkempt, grimy of face and
hands; he wore no collar, and stood, a collarless man in a long frock
coat with a wild appearance. Slowly she drew back, dread and fear on
her face, and then he clutched her by the wrists.
“If you scream I will throw you into the river and kneel on you until
you are dead,” he whispered in so calm and matter-of-fact a tone that
she could not believe he was serious.
And yet she had an extra sense which told her that he was not only
serious, but that she was in deadly peril. He kept hold of her wrist,
or she would have taken to flight, though she would have little chance
of escaping one who in his school days was a noted sprinter.… She
remembered something else now and felt sick. Harry Chelford had
captained his public school team at Bisley and had carried everything
before him. This pale, anæmic youth was the greatest shot of his
time. The greatest shot! She remembered the bullet that was meant for
her, and he felt her dragging on his hand but said no word. She must
not lose her nerve at this moment of crisis.
They were making for the ruins. Near the edge of the cutting, Puttler
had told her, were stationed two men; they must see her soon. But
Harry went no farther than the broken tower, and here he paused and
pulled the block of stone aside.
Now she knew; they were going down to that dreadful underground cavern
where Dick had taken her. Dick Alford knew his brother was there! She
knew this long before she saw the basket, still filled with food, that
stood at the bottom of the steps.
LIV
Harry had lit a candle, and, guided by this, she went down the steep
circular stairway.
“He brought me that, food--the devil!” He pointed his shaking finger
to the basket.
“Dick brought it?” she faltered.
He nodded.
“Poisoned,” he said. “But he didn’t catch me. Poisoned every bit of
it!”
He carefully unwrapped a white napkin and showed a dainty pile of
sandwiches, took one and opened it.
“You can see the crystals glittering on the meat,” he said, in so calm
and matter-of-fact a tone that she almost thought she saw something
glitter on the white flesh.
Then he lifted the bottle and looked at it with a smile.
“It was too childish. Nobody but a fool would have dreamt I could be
deceived.” He put the bottle and sandwiches back again carefully and
covered them with the napkin that had been over the basket.
“Come,” he said, and they went farther into the apartment.
She saw a big gap in the floor and a stone standing straightly up from
the centre.
“I have a lamp below. I prepared this place a very long time ago
against such an emergency. Light and food--and all the water you want.
Will you go first?”
He was very courteous and polite, took her hand to guide her, and held
the light so that she could see the stairs, and came down immediately
after, stopping to swing the stone into place.
“Will you hold the candle?” he asked.
She was trembling so violently that her fingers were soon covered with
hot grease, but she did not feel the smart of the boiling wax; her
eyes were fixed upon the man, fascinated.
He was lighting a new storm lantern which burnt, she guessed, paraffin
gas, and it took some time before a brilliant bright light illuminated
the room in which she found herself. It was twice the size of the
apartment above, and neither the walls nor the floor had fallen into
decay. It was almost as new-looking as it had been when the Norman
builders had handed it to the Black Fathers of Chelfordbury.
The first unusual things she saw were two sporting rifles that stood
in a corner of the room. Following her eyes, he smiled.
“I shall not sell my life without a struggle,” he said firmly.
The furniture consisted of a very old refectory table, the top of
which must have been at least four inches in thickness, a long form,
and a high chair that looked like a bishop’s throne. There were no
visible windows, but the ceiling did not quite reach the wall, and
there seemed a space all round the room where air was admitted.
“Excuse me,” he said.
He took the thing he had been carrying, unrolled it, and to her
astonishment, kissed it passionately before he carried it to a
truckle-bed that she had not noticed before and tacked it to a beam
which showed between the stone courses and was in truth the only wood
she had seen in the building.
She looked in amazement, and knew the picture instantly. It was the
head of his mother.
“How lovely!” he sighed. “How wonderful! Do you know, I feel that
nothing matters now, Leslie!”
He smiled at her, and looked at that moment so happy that she could
have cried.
“Richard hated her,” he went on. “He never lost an opportunity of
speaking ill of her. I am told that in my absence he used to bring the
servants into the library and together they would laugh and gibe at
this beautiful martyr.”
“How absurd, Harry! You know Dick would do no such thing,” she said,
stirred to his defence.
But he was not angry, nor did he show any resentment at her
championship.
“You don’t know Dick,” he said simply. “Dick, of course, is the Black
Abbot. I only found it out a week or two ago, when I went into his
room and discovered the costume in a box. He had forgotten to put it
away.”
She did not believe the only truth he had told her so far but she felt
that it would be undiplomatic, to say the least, to argue with him.
“Harry, I can’t stay here, you know,” she said. “There is only one
room, and I have a weakness for a daily bath----”
He walked across the room and pulled aside a sacking that hid one
corner, and pointed dramatically.
“You will find everything you require here,” he said. “This room is
yours. I shall sleep upstairs, only coming below at the first hint of
danger, either to you or to me. The position calls for courage and
patience, and I know that my wife-to-be has those qualities to
excess.”
He was his old, smiling, genial self.
“By-the-way, there are plenty of books to read--I brought some away
from the house. They were rather heavy and I had to drag them a little
bit, but thank heaven I got just what I wanted.”
She noticed them now for the first time, piled at one end of the
refectory table. He took up a volume and turned the leaves lovingly.
“You do not read German? I think you told me that before. It is a
pity, because this is a very fascinating narrative, told by an
outsider of the Chelfords of the period. You will be pleased to learn
that I have located the treasure. It was not difficult. I knew all the
time that it was behind the second door in the room above.”
“Have you known this place for long?”
He nodded.
“For six years,” he said. “I found it on the twenty-first anniversary
of my dear mother’s death. I think I ought to say ‘murder,’ for there
is no doubt that my father, who had all the worst qualities of Dick,
killed her--hanged her.”
Her face contorted with horror.
“In that room?” she said, in a strained voice. “Behind the door?”
He nodded.
“The thing was hushed up. My clever father was too great a man to be
put on trial for his life and the story was circulated that she had
died by her own hand.”
Every word he said was a lie, as she knew, but he believed it. He
explained quite rationally how the light was worked; showed her the
little wash place with the stream of water running from the raw rock
through a cavity into some invisible deeps; even gave her a short
résumé of the history of the place. It had been built by the Black
Abbot himself for his own especial purpose.
“My first idea was that there was another exit here, or rather an
entrance for those peculiar friends of his, but that I have failed to
discover.”
He took up one of the rifles, shot back the bolt with the air of an
expert, and, going up the steps, unfastened the heavy oaken bar that
kept the stone in place.
The slab pivoted round, and she had a wild idea that when it was
closed she would fasten it; but he was evidently prepared for this,
for she heard him drag a paving-stone to the edge of the hole and
place it so that the trap could not close.
“Good-night, Leslie,” he said, peering down at her through his
spectacles. “You will not mind my light? I want to read a chapter
before I sleep.”
For a quarter of an hour no sound broke the silence. She sat on the
bed, her hands clasped on her knees. And then she heard him move and
her breath came faster, but he had only a question to ask.
“Tell me, Leslie, did Thomas leave any relations? I should like to
provide for them. The man annoyed me, but I really do not regret
killing him. But I should not like to feel that his relatives were
suffering through my act of justice.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said, and it did not seem to be her voice.
LV
It seemed an interminable time before his light went out. Was he
sleeping? Should she attempt to escape past him? From where she sat
she could see his hand, which lay over the edge of the pit, and she
remembered Dick telling her how light a sleeper he was. Systematically
and without moving, she searched the place with her eyes, foot by
foot. In one corner of the room square tins of every shape were piled.
She supposed they were preserved provisions and she wondered how he
got rid of the débris. She examined the wash place, cupped her hands
and drank of the cool, refreshing water, afterward bathing her face.
The touch of the cold spring water refreshed and invigorated her.
How long she sat there motionless, she could not tell. She was in a
kind of coma, paralyzed by a sense of helplessness. It must have been
hours before she heard him move and, his blanket over his arm, and
rifle in hand, he crept down the steps and fastened the slab.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t speak--it is he!” he whispered, and sat down by her side, his
hand on her shoulder.
She heard the sound of footsteps above.
Dick!
She had to bite her lips to prevent the cry that came to her lips.
Harry was watching her--a scream and she would be dead. Dick could
never break open that trap in time, even if he could locate the sound.
Presently the footsteps went away and she felt the hand on her
shoulder relax.
“Sorry to disturb you.”
He picked up blanket and rifle and ascended the steps--she watched him
pull the paving-stone forward and after a while there was quietness.
There must be some exit, if the legend of the disreputable Black Abbot
were true. She took off her shoes and walked noiselessly over the even
floor, examining it stone by stone. The walls were obviously
impenetrable; the vaulted ceiling was decorated with the lines of a
St. Andrew’s Cross that met in a great stone rosette in the centre.
He had left a box of matches and a candle on the table. This she lit
and carried it into the tiny cavern where the water ran. She could see
no roof; she guessed it stretched up the full height of the tower, and
that somewhere above was the edge of the circular staircase that had
brought her down to the first cavern.
Holding the light above her head, she strained her eyes upward and
presently she saw great iron D-shaped projections fixed at intervals
of a foot; they reached to the top, and, most blessed sight of all,
she saw above her head a star.
And yet she was puzzled. The Abbot had a reputation for gallantry, and
it was hardly likely that the visitors who shared his solitude would
make their entrance by so precarious a means. She reached up, but her
hand was three feet from the nearest rung, and there was nothing in
the room on which she could stand. She went back to her bed
noiselessly and pulled out one of the sheets; she took the remaining
rifle and, by dint of great exertion, managed to push one end of the
sheet through the nearest rung. After ten minutes’ work the end came
down and she had a rope. She knotted together the sheets at the end,
and tested her weight. The staple held, and, springing up, she climbed
hand over hand to the lowest rung. Her arms were almost pulled from
their sockets; she was breathless, but she held on, and, reaching up,
caught the third rung and pulled herself up until her feet rested on
the first. She waited a little while to gain breath and began to
climb. Higher and higher, and then her heart sank. Above her, she saw
a steel grille, fixed immovably across the exit. It was impossible
even to put her arm through, the meshes were so small, and with a
bitter sense of disappointment, she descended again and slid down the
sheet to the floor.
There was no escape this way. She unknotted the sheet and replaced it
in her bed, stained with rust and torn at the edges. She brought the
rifle back with her. She was an enthusiastic miniature target shot and
knew the mechanism of the weapon. Pulling out the magazine, she found
it loaded to its full capacity. Here, then, was something; her
confidence grew, though she prayed she might never have to use this
weapon upon the madman who slept so quietly above. The weapon might be
used to terrify him in an emergency.
She went back to the wash place and looked up. Day was breaking, and
she took a sudden resolve. The man had been almost his normal self, as
she had known, and she guessed that this was but an interlude and that
there were periods when she must shoot to save her life. Stealthily
she crept up the stairs, rifle in hand, and she heard him stir, and
presently his shrill voice asked:
“Where are you going? Stay where you are, you vixen----”
She brought the butt of the rifle and smashed past the paving-stone
that prevented the trap from closing. The stone thudded down, and
instantly she swung round the heavy bar that kept it in place. She
heard him stamping and screaming above; heard, with a shivering
horror, the threats that, as she thought, no human tongue could frame;
staggering down the steps, she fell.
LVI
A high official from Scotland Yard had arrived and was interviewing
Dick in the library.
“I am wholly responsible. I have always known my brother was queer,
and about a year ago I was certain that the horrible taint of madness
which his poor mother transmitted to him was developing in a way which
could only have one end. I begged of him to see a medical man, but he
hated doctors. I brought down the best alienists from London in
various guises, sometimes as bailiffs, and occasionally as prospective
buyers of our property, but in their presence he behaved so rationally
that it was impossible that I could get a certificate.
“My own position was a very delicate one. I am, as you know, the heir
to the property. Any step I took meant that the estate came into my
hands, and that eventually, when poor Harry died, as one doctor told
he must die in a few years, I should be branded with the stigma of
having put him away, and I was anxious to save the family name. My
chief anxiety was that he should never marry.”
“Wasn’t it easy enough to take the girl into your confidence?”
Dick was silent for a while.
“Not in this case. There were reasons why----”
And the official, dimly understanding, changed the subject.
“Then you were the Black Abbot?”
“Mostly,” confessed Dick. “My brother was terrified of the Abbot and
would never go out if there was a rumour that the Black Abbot was
about. I was especially anxious to keep him in the house, where, under
my eye, there was no chance for him to indulge in these extraordinary
paroxysms that have really alarmed the countryside. The man whom the
villagers feared and whom they call the Black Abbot, is really Harry.
I was a very silent Black Abbot,” he smiled faintly, “and I had no
other purpose than to keep Harry indoors. I’m going to say I did not
always succeed.”
“I’m afraid the truth will have to come out now,” said the official,
shaking his head.
“I wish it had come out last week,” replied Dick bitterly.
“Do you think your brother is responsible for the disappearance of
Miss Gwyn?”
“Undoubtedly. He must have attracted her to the window and persuaded
her to come down into the grounds. He was very plausible; no man would
dream that he was not sane, only I, who have seen”--he drew a long
breath--“what I have seen. I’ll tell you this, Colonel,” he said, with
sudden vehemence, “not all the lordship of Chelford, not all the
estates, not even the Chelford treasure, would make me live again my
life of the past five years! There are times,” he said, his voice
trembling with passion, “when I feel I would like to dig up the Abbey
and scatter its stones in the dust, raze this house to the ground, and
turn the place into a public park.” He laughed at his own excess. “I
am talking like an idiot. This place belongs to a family that knows
not Harry. He is just a terrible accident. My dear mother often told
me how worried my father was about Harry, his queer, secretive ways.
And yet in a way he is a sportsman, one of the best shots in England
as a boy, a great runner, and a wonderful fellow over a country, until
about eight years ago, when this treasure bug got into his brain and
he shut himself away from us all and gave his mind and his soul to
this wild chase.”
“The gold?”
Dick shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If it were only the gold, that would have been an
intelligent interest in life.”
He described Harry’s search for the elixir, the famous Life Water of
which the ancient Chelford had written in his diary.
“It is probably no more than a flask of a native wine--Arac or the
like,” said Dick. “Poor Harry!”
Miss Wenner had intended to leave by the early morning train but had
changed her mind. Possibly the arrival of Fabrian Gilder had been a
factor. She had one solution for Leslie’s disappearance.
“Have you searched the Abbey?” she asked, not once but a dozen times.
Dick was weary; the Abbey had been his first thought. He had suspected
this was Harry’s hiding place, and with his own hands had taken a
basket of provisions for him, but this, he saw, was untouched.
There was one possibility about the underground cavern, and that was
the second door, and he had ordered the blacksmith and his assistant
to be at the stone tower at two o’clock that afternoon, with
instruments, one of which had to be procured from London.
The presence of Miss Wenner was not as distasteful to Gilder as he
thought it would have been. To use a phrase of childhood, she was “on
his side.” In very truth, Miss Wenner was on anybody’s side if that
person happened to be agreeable to her.
They were walking through the rosary before lunch, and certainly the
trend of Mary Wenner’s remarks was very comforting to a man who had
been so badly rebuffed.
“If I had my way, Fabrian, dear”--she assumed all the rights and
privileges of an engagement which was somewhat illusory and he made
only a feeble resistance--“if I had my way I’d put you in charge of
this case. After all, you are the very man to solve this mystery and I
must say you could have knocked me down with a feather when you told
me you were fifty--you don’t look a day more than thirty--and you’ve
got experience, you’re a lawyer, you’re up to all kinds of
artfulness----”
“Not to all kinds,” said Gilder with a grim recollection of a certain
blank check.
“Well, to most kinds,” conceded Miss Wenner. “And what are they all
doing? This Dick Alford and this so-called detective? They’re just
standing around, scratching their heads, whilst you could go, as it
were, to the real heart of the mystery. Don’t deny it--I’m sure you
would, Fabe.”
“Don’t call me Fabe, Mary,” he asked gently. “If you want to call me
by my Christian name, let us have all the three syllables.”
“You’re a man of the world, Fabrian”--she accentuated the word as she
would have done “Mary Ann”--“you understand the ins and outs of
everything. Why don’t they come to you like men and say, ‘Mr. Gilder,
what is your opinion of this mystery?’ Instead of which, they don’t so
much as ask you if you’ve got a mouth!”
“Perhaps they know that,” said Gilder in good humour.
He lifted his head suddenly, a frown on his face. He had heard a shot;
more than a shot, the whirr and whine of a bullet.
“What----”
Something fell at his feet with a “plop!” He saw a little hole, and,
stooping, dug out a bullet with his fingers.
“Where on earth did that come from?”
He looked up at the sky, but the aëroplane which was later to make an
appearance, and which had nothing to do with this mysterious shooting,
was not yet in sight.
Dick had heard the shot and was running across the lawn.
“Did you----” he began.
_Plop!_
They heard it again, and presently Dick saw leaves fall from a laurel
bush and heard the thud of an impact. One of the police who were still
patrolling the grounds shouted to him, but he could not hear what he
was saying, and raced across to him. Nearer at hand, he saw that the
man was pointing to the ruins.
“It came from there,” shouted the constable, and Dick changed
direction.
He was flying up the slope when the third shot sounded, and this time
he located it with fair accuracy. Somebody was shooting from the
tower.
Happily, he had made preparations for the blacksmith’s visit, and
there was an assortment of lanterns near the entrance. He stopped long
enough to light one, and, slipping back the catch with his knife, he
pushed aside the stone corner piece and ran down the stairs. The room
was empty. He tried the mystery door; that, too, was closed. Somebody
shouted his name from the landing above and he answered:
“Come down, Gilder. There’s nobody here.”
Gilder descended the steps gingerly and looked round with his keen,
shrewd eyes. And then he remembered and pointed to the slab.
“Have you tried that? I meant to tell you before.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I rather think that the stone turns on a pivot. If
that is the case, there are pretty stout supports underneath that will
want cutting through.”
Gilder sprawled flat on the floor, his ear to the crack.
“There’s nothing there that is audible,” he said. “Can’t you smell
anything?”
He put his nose to the crack.
“There’s a petrol light burning down there, or else it has been
burning recently.”
Flat on his face, Dick sniffed.
“Yes,” he said, and called: “Leslie!”
There was no answer. He called again, with a like result.
Gilder went up the stairs and searched amongst the tools that had been
brought in readiness for the afternoon’s investigation. He selected
two saws and a second lantern, and, lighting this, he descended to
Dick’s side.
“It is pretty sure to be an oaken support; these old builders seldom
used iron,” he said.
Throwing off his coat, he rolled up his sleeves. The thin blade of the
saw worked down between the stones and after a while he began sawing
gingerly.
“It’s wood,” he said. “You’ll find yours is the same.”
They both worked at one end, for, as he pointed out, there would only
be one bar, the other end of the stone being bevelled to meet the edge
of the floor. The wood was like rock, and both men were hot before
they had half-sawn through the support. Presently Dick drew out his
saw. He had gone through the oak and had heard the loose end fall
below. A few seconds later, Gilder’s saw passed through the last
obstruction. Gingerly he put his foot on the edge and pressed down,
and the stone trap swung open.
They looked down into a dark vault; and now the smell of the burning
lamp was very pungent. Dick lowered the lantern and peered down. He
could see no sign of human life. He caught a view of the end of a bed,
a table, and, on the floor, a rifle. He reached the bottom and,
swinging his lantern round, called:
“Leslie!”
A mocking echo came back to him from the little cavern at the far end
of the apartment. The place was empty; the man and woman who, five
minutes before, had fought in a death struggle, had disappeared.
LVII
“Leslie!”
He called again, his voice hoarse with anxiety. He had seen two little
shoes by the side of the bed. Her hat was on the floor, crushed into a
shapeless mass. Picking up the rifle, he felt the barrel; it was still
warm, and under the tower there were four empty cartridge cases. And
then, holding his lantern high, he saw the rungs in the rough face of
the wall, and jumped to the conclusion that she had escaped that way.
Within a minute he leapt up, caught the lower rung and ran up the
ladder to the top, oblivious of one or two ominous cracks as his man
weight came upon the old ironwork. The grille at the top stopped him.
He had seen it, but thought it might be movable.
“They couldn’t have gone that way,” he said breathlessly as he came
down to the ground.
Gilder rubbed his gray hair.
“Then where on earth have they gone?” he asked irritably.
They searched every inch of the long room, pulled the bed from the
wall, but beneath was solid stone pavement. The table seemed fastened
to the floor; they could not move it.
“Do you notice anything about this floor?” Gilder asked suddenly. “It
is not level.”
And when Dick looked, he saw this was true. The floor sloped gradually
down from the wash cavern to the wall behind the steps. Gilder went in
search of a hammer, and the two, now reinforced by Puttler and the
Scotland Yard man, went over every inch of the wall and flooring,
tapping and sounding. They struck no hollow place. The four men took
hold of the side of the table and tried to drag it from its
foundations, but they might as well have tried to move the wall
itself. It had a thick oaken base, from which ran three pillars
supporting the enormously heavy top.
It was very clear to Dick what had happened. The girl had been
attacked, and, having discovered this opening to the sky, had procured
a rifle by some means and had fired up the shaft to attract attention.
Then she had been overcome and--what?
The water ran down through a crevice in the solid rock about six or
eight inches wide. It was impossible that any human being could have
gone down that narrow slit, but, to make sure, he had the edges of the
water-worn rock broken away. The blacksmith by this time was waiting
above. Dick had him brought down with his tools; the second door might
yield some sort of solution.
For half an hour they worked with jacks and levers, and presently,
with a deafening crack, the lock parted and the door was pushed open.
There was revealed a room similar in shape and size to that which Mary
Wenner had discovered; with this exception, that there were no stone
benches, and in the centre of the apartment was a circular hole. Dick
knelt by the side and held down his lantern; he heard the faint “clug”
of water, and saw the light reflected at a considerable depth.
“A well,” he said. “All these old places have an interior well.
There’s one in the Tower of London, in the centre of the dungeon.”
This room had been used as a prison at a distant period. At intervals
along the walls hung rusted chains, with leg-irons attached. In one
corner he saw a heap of rags, glimpsed a milk-white bone, and
shuddered. What was the history of this poor wretch who had been shut
away from the light of God’s sunshine, to die miserably in this dark
and dreadful place?
“Well, there’s nothing there,” said Gilder, peering over.
Dick tied his lantern to the end of a cord and let it slowly down to
the depths. Thirty feet below, as near as he could judge, the bottom
of the lantern touched water. The old builders had builded splendidly.
The green, weed-grown sides of the well seemed intact. And then his
heart almost stood still. A hand was thrust out, seemingly from the
solid brickwork of the well; a white hand on which flashed and
sparkled a single diamond that he knew well. And from below he heard a
muffled voice and in his agitation the cord which held out the lantern
slipped from his hand into the water.
He cursed aloud in his rage at his own criminal carelessness.
“Give me the other lantern!” he called and pulling the other hand over
hand, he untied it and flung it aside, fastening in its place the
lighted storm lamp that Puttler handed to him. “And get a
rope--quickly!”
But there was no rope nearer than Fossaway Manor, and he fumed in his
impatience and would have made an attempt to slip down the treacherous
sides of the well if Puttler had not restrained him.
After an eternity one of the detectives came running back carrying a
rope and, dropping the free end, they fastened the other to a crowbar
and placed this across the open doorway. Dick slipped down the rope,
the handle of the lantern between his teeth. The sides were wet and
slimy and presently he came to the place where he had seen the girl’s
hand.
It was a small air hole about six inches by four. He tried to look
through with the aid of his lamp, but he could see nothing but a rough
rock wall. He called the girl by name, but no answer came and the word
“Leslie” came echoing back from the interior.
And now he saw that these little apertures occurred at regular
intervals. The first two were hidden by overhanging water weeds, but
from below they were visible. Some sort of natural stone gallery
existed on the other side of this stonework, and he remembered having
heard at some remote period that the Abbey had been built upon an
early English catacomb. In all probability each of those apertures
represented a distinct “landing” or a place where some natural winding
staircase touched the wall in its revolutions.
He had made a rough loop for his foot, and they passed him down a
crowbar at the end of a cord. With this he attacked the hole in the
wall, but found himself engaged in an impossible task. Nothing short
of an explosive could blow these holes larger. He was almost exhausted
by his efforts, and they had to haul him to the top for a rest.
Puttler was anxious to go down, but Dick insisted upon being lowered
again. This time he took with him a rod, to the end of which a small
electric bulb had been attached. The flex ran along the rod, which was
a bamboo cane, and terminated in a small battery in his pocket. He
switched on the light and pushed the bulb through the opening. He
could see now that the wall, which he thought was natural rock, had
been roughly hewn, but he could not see the floor nor more than a foot
in either direction. Withdrawing the rod, he put in his hand and felt
around, but could touch nothing but the outer facing of the well.
“Look out!”
The warning shout was Gilder’s and came from above. He drew out his
hand quickly.
“Away from the wall--push with your feet!” yelled Gilder.
He had a glimpse of a grimy hand thrust out from one of the square air
holes, saw the flicker of steel and felt the rope giving as strand
after strand was slashed. Then, with a crack, the rope parted, and he
went down, down, until the bitterly cold waters engulfed him.
He struck the bottom with his feet and paddled up to the surface
again. He was instantly chilled to the marrow. He saw the lantern come
down toward him, and heard Gilder say:
“Hold to the cord just enough to keep you afloat.”
Dumbly he obeyed. His eyes were fixed on the airhole. So, too, were
the eyes of Puttler, who, flat on the ground, his head and shoulders
over the edge, covered with his revolver the place where the hand had
emerged.
The cut end of the rope was passed down to him. By reaching up he
could just grip it, but not sufficiently to obtain a sure purchase.
Cramp had attacked his legs. The paralyzing coldness of the water was
astounding, and in one moment of fear it seemed that his life was to
end miserably in this dark hole. There was no foothold on either side,
and unless help came quickly he knew he could no longer keep his
senses.
Almost within reach was the lowest of the small apertures, but it did
not seem worth while to reach for that. The cord of the lantern served
to keep him afloat, the warmth of the burning wick was the only
comfort he had.
“Dick!” He heard his name whispered with a fierce intensity. “Dick,
take my hand!”
It came out of the lower air hole, and with an effort he reached and
found his wrist gripped. And then his senses left him.
When he came to himself he was lying in the open air. The warmth of
the sun’s rays made him sleepy.
“Where is Leslie?” he asked, struggling up on his elbow.
They looked at him blankly, thinking that he was in a delirium.
“How did I get out?”
“Gilder went down for you when he saw you drop.”
“But Leslie caught me by the wrist,” he said wildly. “She was
there--didn’t you see her, Puttler?”
Puttler shook his head.
“I saw you holding on to the side just as the new rope came, and
Gilder went down for you.”
Dick was ghastly.
“You didn’t see her? You didn’t hear her?”
Struggling to his feet, he passed his hand wearily across his
forehead. Had he been dreaming? Was that part of the delirium of the
death that nearly overtook him? But he was sure, as positive as of any
human experience he had had. Leslie’s hand had come out from the wall
and caught him by the wrist. He had seen the diamond scintillate in
the light of the lantern and then he could remember nothing more. But
it had been Leslie. He could still feel the pressure of her fingers
about his wrist. He had not been dreaming. Somewhere in the deeps of
the earth was the woman he loved, and he was helpless to save her. He
covered his face with his hands and for a while his shoulders heaved.
LVIII
Leslie had no doubt that the wooden bar would hold. She could afford
to sit, covering her ears to shut out the hideous noise above, until
his paroxysm had subsided. It must have been in such a mad fury as
this, after the killing of Thomas, that he had wreaked destruction
upon his room before, in a sudden fit of panic, he had got out of the
window and, taking his books from the library (she saw the torn and
soiled pillow case in which he had packed them) had escaped to this
lair of his. She took her hand from her ears; he was moaning
dreadfully, but somehow she could endure that. Fortunately, she had
put on her wrist-watch when she dressed, and this marked the passage
of the hours. Noon came, there would be people about the estate now,
though it was not likely that Dick would come again to the ruins
unless he was attracted there.
The plan she had made she now proceeded to put into execution.
Standing under the shaft, she fired a round into the air. The third
shot struck the iron grille and ricochetted with an angry buzz that
sounded like the drone of a bee. No sound came from the room above. If
she could only attract Dick to the ruins, she could indicate her
position. But Harry had a rifle! She went cold at the thought. She may
have lured him to his death.
For one mad moment she thought of opening the trap and forcing her way
out at the point of the rifle. But it was too late now. And then she
heard his voice, sounding hollowly and faintly.
“Leslie!”
She went up one of the steps so that she could hear him better.
“They’re coming, Leslie. You will tell them I haven’t hurt you, won’t
you?”
“Yes, yes,” she replied eagerly.
He said nothing after that, until there came a shuffling and stamping
of feet above her head, and then she heard him say:
“Hullo, Dick, old man! I hope I haven’t given you any trouble.”
From below she heard a deep rumble of sound which might have been a
voice, but in her eagerness she was tugging at the oaken support, and
in another second the stone fell behind her and she scrambled up
through the trap. She could see nothing; the place was in darkness.
“Dick!” she called.
And then a hand gripped her, and she realized with horror that all the
shufflings of feet and the conversation had been so much acting on his
part.
She was still holding the rifle, but before she could raise it he had
gripped the stock and wrenched it from her hand. She heard it fall
with a clatter on the stone floor below.
Half swooning in her fear and terror, her struggles grew weaker. He
was holding her in his arms and his strength was surprising.
“We are going below, my sweet,” he whispered in her ear. “At last I
know the truth! So it was Dick you wanted! Dear Dick!”
He was chuckling softly to himself as he carried her to the top of the
steps.
“Will you walk down, or must I throw you?” he asked, in a tone so even
and rational that he might have been uttering some commonplace of
everyday life.
With trembling knees she walked down the steps into the lighted room,
and he followed, pausing to close the trap and secure it firmly.
“Sit down.” He pointed to the settle by the table and immediately she
sat down. Her face was ghastly; her last reserves of courage were
almost sapped. “You have hurt me beyond forgiveness, Leslie,” he said,
his solemn eyes fixed on hers. “Do you realize what you have done? You
have treated with contempt Harry Alford, Eighteenth Earl of Chelford,
Viscount of Carberry, Baron Alford.…”
With the solemnity of a child reciting a lesson he repeated the titles
he held, even to a remote barony of Aquitaine which the Chelfords had
held in the dim past. She had a queer feeling that she was standing
before a judge, listening to an indictment of some hideous crime she
had committed.
“You have attempted to endanger my life; you have conspired with those
who hate me; you have treacherously held communication with and given
comfort to my enemies.…”
There were other charges, that would have sounded ludicrous at other
times, would have aroused her to fury, but she listened now,
husbanding all her strength for the coming struggle.
His rifle leant against the steps, but he barred her way effectively.
Looking round for some weapon, she saw nothing but the lamp and that
was too heavy for use.
“For you,” he said, in tones of deepest gravity, “there can be only
one punishment--death!”
His voice trembled. She felt that, in his queer, crazy way, he was
sorry for her, and regretted the necessity. She tried to rise, but her
limbs refused her office. She put out an appealing hand, and then,
with a sudden leap, he was on her. His hand closed about her throat
strangling the scream. And then, up above, there was the unmistakable
sound of footsteps and a deep voice. It was Dick. She tried to call
out, but he held her tight. With one hand he reached over and
extinguished the lamp; and now, in a final desperation of fear, she
threw him backward and for a second he released his hold.
But before her tortured throat could utter a sound he was at her
again; pressing her back against the edge of the table. She tore at
his hand, but it was immovable.… This was death! A loud ringing in her
ears, a fiery light before her eyes; she was losing consciousness… and
then she felt the table move, at first slowly and then so rapidly that
she lost her balance. The big refectory table was sliding lengthways
toward the end wall. His grip relaxed and in that instant he dropped
away from her, and, reaching out her hand, she could feel nothing. She
heard a thud and a groan and stepped forward--into space. She did not
see the yawning cavern before her. One desperate effort she made to
recover her balance, caught at the hard edge of the floor as she fell,
and went slipping and sliding down stairs that cracked and broke
beneath her, until her feet struck something soft and yielding.
Overhead there was a deep rumbling sound, a soft thud, and silence.
LIX
Harry was unconscious. She felt his face and her fingers touched
something warm and wet.
She could see nothing; the darkness was impenetrable. No sound came
from the room from which she had fallen. The floor was thick, the
heavy oaken base of the refectory table gliding, she guessed on
rollers that worked as truly as they had when, hundreds of years
before, the Black Abbot found this exit so valuable, had slipped back
into its place. If she only had some sort of light! It occurred to her
to search the unfortunate Harry. Presently she found a silver box
containing matches. She struck one and looked around. They were lying
at the foot of what had once been a wooden stair. The treads were
broken, the heavily carved handrail had rotted, leaving two wide gaps.
Half the treads had vanished, the other half were now broken by her
fall.
Harry was lying in a recess carved from the solid rock, and left and
right ran a narrow passage streaming with water. She left the alcove
and struck another match. The passage curved and twisted so that only
a few feet in either direction was visible. Pools of still water
filled the hollows of the floor; long bunches of gray fungus,
grape-like in its formation, hung from the roof. Yet the air was sweet
enough. She felt a gentle draught coming from the left-hand passage,
but as yet she could not explore and she returned to Harry.
His eyes were closed, his lips bloodless, and through the grime his
face was gray. With a gasp of horror she thought he was dead, but when
she put her hand under his waistcoat she could feel the faint flutter
of his heart. He had an electric torch somewhere in his pocket, he had
told her, and she began to search. It necessitated moving him slightly
and as she did so he groaned. The lamp was in the tail pocket of his
frock-coat, a square, flat lamp, of a type usually to be found in
every room of Fossaway Manor.
She thought at first that the unconscious man carried two, but found
that the second package was a spare battery. Switching on the light,
she examined the roof above the broken stairs. She saw it was the
underside of a slab of wood. From here she could see the rollers on
which the table ran; stout things of wood. Near the head of the stairs
two large wooden grips projected downward, rather like the butts of
huge Browning pistols, and she guessed that by this means the table
was drawn back from below.
When she looked at Harry again he was staring upward with wondering
eyes.
“What happened?” he asked.
“We must have fallen through a trap,” she said. “Do you think you
could reach those handles?” She pointed to them.
He rose unsteadily to his feet, replaced his spectacles which had been
knocked off in his fall, and looked at the butts. Only two of the
treads remained intact. He tried one, but it broke under his feet and
the supporting posts were sagging.
“I can’t reach that,” he said. “It must be twelve feet high.”
Then she noticed his wound and made him sit down while she dressed it
with a strip of silk torn from her skirt.
“How on earth did we get into this beastly place?” he asked,
wondering. “Where are we?”
“We’re under the Abbey,” she said, and his frown ended in a grimace of
pain.
“Where is Dick?” he asked.
“He is up there, I think,” she said.
And yet why should Dick be there? He would not know his way into the
lower chamber, she thought, with a sinking heart.
“Do you think you can walk?”
He looked round in dismay.
“I can walk all right, but whither?”
“Let us try the left-hand passage first,” she suggested, and he was
agreeable.
The left-hand passage, they found, was a steep ascent which turned
continuously to the left. It was like one of those corkscrew tunnels
through which she had travelled in Switzerland, where the train
burrows its way upward in the heart of the solid rock. Was it above
Montreux or on Pilatus? She was too tired to think.
At the first turn she stopped. She had seen a glimmer of light, and,
making an inspection, she found a square hole, cut apparently in the
rock; the further end was covered with hanging weeds, and through
these she saw the light distinctly, a faint yellow glow. They
continued their climb, and presently came to another small opening.
Here, then, was one of the sources of air supply, though little came
this way, for when she lit a match before it the flame scarcely
wavered.
“How much farther are we going?” asked Harry faintly. “I’m nearly all
in.”
“We must go on,” she said. “This probably brings us to the open air
somewhere.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, and, walking slowly, they made
another complete turn of the winding passage, and this time they found
an air hole that was not weed-covered. The light was stronger now,
and, looking through, she thought she saw a swaying cord. And she
heard something, too--voices. It was not an illusion; somebody was
talking at an immense distance away, it seemed. She looked again. The
cord seemed very near, but when she thrust her hand through the
opening and tried to grasp it, she knew that she had been the victim
of an optical illusion. She called out but there was no answer. She
must have imagined the voices.
And then she heard a faint shout and the yellow light which had shone
through the entrance went out.
“I can’t go any farther.” Harry collapsed against the wall and slid
down into a sitting position, his head on his breast.
“Do you mind if I leave you in the dark?” she asked.
He shook his head wearily, and, leaving him, she continued the climb,
and presently found herself in a straight, narrow passage. At some
period an attempt had been made to dress the sides with stone slabs.
The wall was littered with crumbling fragments of stone, and gaps
showed where age and the action of the damp had detached the dressing
from the walls. As near as she could judge, she was moving away from
the Abbey in the direction of Fossaway Manor.
This latter was a guess. It was impossible that it could lead toward
the cut road to the north of the estate. Then the explanation came to
her: she was passing under the Mound, the high bank that fringed the
Ravensrill. What light feet had trodden this way, she wondered? What
fears or hopes, desire or despair, had sped along this rough stone
floor? Unconsciously she was reconstructing an ancient cause and
effect. The effect brought her to a standstill. Right across the
passage a wall had been built; a solid barrier of masonry which
checked all further movement.
Though she did not know and could not guess, here was the obstacle
that the revengeful Lord of Chelford had set up after his assassin had
gone forth to slay the man who had dishonoured him. No more would the
light steps of frail womanhood trip along this secret passage, and
since Yvonne of Chelford had died of a broken heart no woman’s foot
had stirred this dust.
Leslie turned back, her courage failing. Approaching the spot where
she had left Harry, she heard his soft chuckle and her skin crept.
“Leslie. Leslie!” he whispered eagerly. “You have no idea what a bit
of good luck I’ve had!”
And when he came into the light of her lamp, he was his old exalted
self.
“What do you think happened?”
She was conscious now of voices. She heard somebody shout and a faint
answer, but faint as it was, she recognized the voice. It was Dick’s.
“What has happened?” she asked quickly.
He doubled up with silent laughter and could not speak for a minute,
and then he showed her a knife.
“With that,” he said complacently. “I saw him go down… and then the
rope came near… I could have touched it. Then I remembered I had my
knife and I reached through and before they could pull it away I’d cut
it.”
She gazed at him in horror.
“Was somebody on the rope?” she gasped.
He nodded gravely.
“The arch-enemy of the human race,” he said in a sober tone. “Richard
Alford.”
Petrified with terror, she put her ear to the hole and heard Dick
speaking. Then without a word she fled down the slope. Round and round
the circular passage she went until she was almost dizzy. Presently
she reached the lower air hole, put through her hand and tore away the
veiling weeds.
“Dick, Dick!” she called.
She could see him now, for the air hole was just above water level.
His face was gray and drawn.
“Dick!”
She thrust out her hand and presently closed about his ice-cold wrist,
and at that moment Harry’s hand fell on her shoulder and she was
dragged backward. She felt the wrist slip, she heard the splash of
water as Dick Alford fell, and fainted.
LX
She woke and it was so dark she could not believe her eyes were open
until she felt the lids. There was no sound. She was lying on the
hard, uneven floor where she had fallen, she thought, but when she put
out her hand to feel for the air hole, her fingers touched rough rock.
Groping round for the flash lamp, she found nothing. Presently,
however, she touched a smooth, cold surface. It was Harry’s knife, a
long-bladed clasp knife.
And then she remembered clearly. Dick was in the water, drowning. She
struggled to her feet, trembling in every limb.
Dead perhaps.… She staggered blindly forward and came in contact with
the wall. Gripping her hands till the nails cut the palm, she strove
to regain her self-control. He would be rescued; there were men with
him, she told herself, and became calmer and again sat down, so her
back was to the wall, and waited, the open knife on her lap. Feeling
in her pocket for a handkerchief, her hand touched the matchbox, and
she took it out with a sense of gratitude.
She was weary to the point of exhaustion. The rough flooring had
slashed the soles of her silk stockings to ribbons and her feet were
terribly sore. She waited for some time before she struck her first
match, for the box was already half empty. She saw that she was in a
part of this underground system which was unfamiliar to her. The roof
was higher; the walls bulged in like the sides of an hourglass, and
the floor had been roughly paved. At intervals there seemed to be
niches, alcoves in the wall, and again she thought of the Swiss
tunnels with their safety niches. There was no sign of the lamp;
evidently Harry had carried that with him when he had gone off. It was
not like him to leave her; even in his delirium he would not have done
that, she thought.
As the match burnt out she heard halting footsteps re-echoing down the
passage, and, closing the knife, she slipped it into her jacket pocket
and waited. He must have been a long way from her when she first heard
him; the passage acting as a huge speaking-tube.
“Are you all right, Leslie?” He was normal again. “I’m sorry I had to
leave you, but this place rather rattles me, and I had to go along and
see if I could find an exit.”
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I carried you down that wretched circular arrangement
and you were fearfully heavy,” he added, so naïvely that the girl
laughed for the first time in that period of horror. “Do you know,
Leslie,” he squatted down on the floor by her side--“I have an idea.
Do you remember those holes we looked through?”
“Yes, I remember them,” she said, wondering what was coming next.
“Do you know that they are placed in the side of a well of some kind?”
Not a word about Dick. He had forgotten the rope cutting and the
horror that followed.
“Has it occurred to you,” he went on, “that the treasure may be at the
bottom of that well? It only struck me a few minutes ago. If we could
get out and have a talk with Dick, he’s such an ingenious devil that
I’m sure he would find the opening of the well, which may be inside
the old Abbey itself. Most of these mediæval buildings have a well in
the centre and kept their water supply enclosed.”
“You didn’t find an exit?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I got into a sort of labyrinth and I thought I should
never get out again. Good heavens! Look at your feet!”
They were indeed in a sorry plight, swollen and bleeding. In an
instant he had pulled off his own shoes.
“Put them on,” he said authoritatively, and when she demurred, he
seized her foot and slipped her toes into the shoe. “I was a great
runner in my day,” he said, with a hint of pride, “and barefooted
running was my specialty--to use a horrible theatrical word.”
The shoes were much too big for her, but the comfort of them after
walking barefooted on that rough floor!
“There’s one place I haven’t explored, and that is the little side
passage to the left. There has been some sort of a fall there and the
rock looks rotten. I don’t like to attempt an exploration. By the way,
what made you faint?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t know--nerves, I suppose,” she said.
It was useless and even dangerous to tell him of what had happened by
the wall of the well.
“I thought it might be that,” he said. “If you feel fitter now we’ll
go along.”
He walked ahead, switching his lamp on and off at intervals. He wanted
to save his batteries, he told her, which had shown signs of running
down. All the time he kept up an incessant chatter. He had plans about
the future of the Abbey and grew enthusiastic when he expounded his
scheme.
“This is not even a Saxon-English burrow, but probably goes back to
the days of the original inhabitants of Britain,” he said. “We are
walking in paths that were originally cut by cavemen. Doesn’t that
thrill you, Leslie?”
“Terribly,” she said, with unconscious irony.
“I’ll have the place wired and lit; it will be necessary to increase
the electric supply, but Dick will see to that. I may present it to
the nation or to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners--I’m not certain
which. There is no doubt from an archæological point of view.…”
So he talked on and she followed him, sometimes listening, sometimes
her mind occupied with the agony of thought. Was Dick safe? She was
sure that he was not alone; there were men at the top of the well and
they would save him. It was not possible that Dick Alford should die
in that dark place, that his splendid life should be ended so
tragically. The walking was tiring, for they were climbing all the
time.
They must have covered about a quarter of a mile when he stopped.
“Here is the side passage,” he said, and warned her: “Don’t go into
it; the stones are still falling.”
He put his light into the hole--it was no more--and she saw a great
heap of fallen rock in the middle of the path. There was just room
between the top of the heap and the roof to crawl through. But what
she noticed instantly was the strong current of air that fanned her
cheeks when she stopped to look through the aperture.
“This must be the way, Harry,” she said instantly. “Can’t you feel the
air?”
“I noticed that,” he agreed, but was reluctant to enter this
unpromising byway.
“We must go, Harry. There’s no other way out,” she said. “We are
getting farther and farther down, away from the Abbey, and, as you
say, beyond here is only a labyrinth that brings you back to the place
from where you started.”
“All right,” he agreed, with evident distaste. “I had better go
first.”
He crawled gingerly over the pile of stones and slid down on the other
side.
She heard his voice.
“It is all right here,” he said, and then the light of his lamp showed
and she followed him.
The passage was very high; it was a natural fissure in the rock. Yet
the hand of man must have been here, for the floor had been levelled,
and there was evidence of animal life. A long black shape scudded
across the path and disappeared through a hole. The girl gave a little
scream and shrank back.
“It is only a weasel,” said Harry calmly. “Where a weasel can get, we
can get.”
The passage had widened and now the work of man became evident. They
were in a square chamber with two entrances on either side. The roof
was of vaulted stone that seemed to bulge downward as if it supported
a weight beyond its capacity, but this was hidden by the long
stalactites that flashed in the light of the lantern. And she
shivered. It was extraordinarily cold, almost as if they had come into
an ice house.
“No door. I wonder what the idea of this place was.”
It was the first man-made chamber they had seen. The walls were
running with water; wet and shining; the roof dripped incessantly, but
only one small pool of water gathered on the floor; the rest ran off
in a central chamber and apparently into the solid rock.
“The dripping of water wears away stone,” quoted Harry, and pointed to
the floor with its tiny saucer-shaped depression.
There was no sign of door at either entrance and he went ahead of her
through the farther entrance, covered a few yards, and stopped,
looking upward.
“Daylight!” he said.
The first thing of which she was conscious was that, away from the
little room, she was warm again.
The shaft that worked upward was a natural fissure. They could see the
rough edges of rock jutting out at intervals. In some places it was
wide enough to hold a full-sized man; in other places it was so narrow
that only an arm could have reached through. But there it was, the
clear, uninterrupted view of the sky, and the girl beheld a phenomenon
with which miners are familiar, the view of a white, winking star in
broad daylight.
“That is where the air comes from,” said Harry. “Now we’ll try where
this passage leads.”
It led to a blank wall of solid rock, he found. They stared at each
other in the darkness.
“We must try back,” said Harry.
Hardly were the words out of his mouth than there was a distant rumble
and roar, the ground beneath their feet shook, and down the passageway
through which they had reached the Cold Room swept a cloud of flying
dust.
“Wait,” he said, and flew along the passage.
He was gone a few minutes before he returned. She could not see his
face except from the reflected light he threw upon the floor to guide
him on his way.
“The roof has fallen in,” he said, and there was a tremor in his
voice. “I am afraid, Leslie, we are finished!”
LXI
A hot bath and a meal, though every morsel seemed to choke him,
restored Dick Alford to something like himself. There was hope--faint
indeed, but still hope. He had despatched his bailiff in search of
explosives, but explosives cannot be bought over the counter like
cheese and bacon. He had a telephone message from the man to say that
he was on his way to London and would return with the necessary
apparatus. Dick’s plan was simple; even then a derrick was being
rigged over the well; his plan was to dynamite the wall of the well
and to get into the gallery.
“For a long time I’ve been suspicious that the rock on which the Abbey
was built was honey-combed with passages. My father told me something
about it and I’ve seen an old plan that shows an elaborate system of
corridors, though the family has always thought this was largely
imaginative on the part of the artist.”
“Have you the plan now?” asked Gilder.
Dick shook his head.
“Harry took everything of that nature away with him the night he left
the house.”
“It is not amongst the books you found in the underground room?” said
Puttler, and a search was made of the library, but without success.
They were on their way to the ruins when Puttler saw the aëroplane in
the sky. It circled twice and then began to dip steeply.
“I believe that fellow is coming here,” he said.
And so it proved. The machine roared its progress for a hundred yards
or more, and then dropped. Presently they saw a man get down. Though
he wore an airman’s helmet, Dick recognized him. It was Arthur Gwyn.
He met Gilder’s scowl with a little laugh.
“I’ve got some money of yours, Gilder,” he said, and dragged with some
difficulty a huge packet from the pocket of his leather coat. “That is
more or less the amount I owe you, unless the franc has depreciated in
value since I left Paris. And now you can do your damnedest!”
Gilder took the packet without a word and Arthur turned to Dick
Alford.
“I read about Leslie in the French papers,” he said simply, “and so I
came back. Has she been found?”
Dick shook his head.
“Have you any idea where she is?”
Dick told him all that had happened that afternoon and Arthur Gwyn
listened in silence. When Dick came to speak of his plan, he shook his
head.
“I had my early training as an engineer before I went into the law,”
he said surprisingly, “and I tell you, from my elementary knowledge of
the science, that you’re likely to blow in the whole well, and if
there’s anybody on the other side, God help them!”
He accompanied them to the lower room and was swung down on the
derrick to make an inspection. When he returned to the surface his
report was not very promising.
“So far as I can see,” he said, “whilst you may enlarge the opening of
any of these air holes, you may also bring about a fall of the rock
inside. You’re dealing with surfaces which have been exposed to the
chemical action of the air.”
He went down and made an inspection of the lower room, which was new
to him, and, as they had done, tried to pull the table aside. And then
he did what they had not attempted; he pushed at the table at one end
and felt it move, at first slowly and then quickly, as though he had
set in motion a counterweight. He had just time to swing himself on
the table and grip its edge when the aperture appeared under his feet.
Dick saw the broken stair, and, sitting on the edge of the hole,
dropped through to the rocky floor just as the table slid into its
place. They pushed it back again and propped it, and Arthur and Gilder
joined him below carrying lanterns. He saw a piece of something dark
on the floor and picked it up. It was a strip of silk.
“This is the way,” he said quietly. “I’ll work to the left; you go to
the right, Gilder.”
Arthur made a rapid mental calculation.
“The left passage will lead you to the well, and unless I’m very much
mistaken you will find the air holes on your right-hand side. If you
don’t mind, I’ll go with you.”
The men ascended the treacherous slope and came to the first of the
air holes, continued up until they reached the straight passage down
which Leslie had made her fruitless journey. They, too, were brought
to a halt by the wall barrier, and returned the way they had come.
There was no sign of Leslie or Harry, but when Dick passed the alcove
down which he had dropped from the Abbot’s room he found a burnt match
stalk.
He ascended again, a long, steady climb.
“We’re near the surface of the ground,” said Arthur.
Ahead of them the star lamp of Gilder showed. He was coming back to
meet them.
“This passage ends in a sort of maze,” he reported. “There is a side
passage, but that’s entirely blocked by stone.”
They went back with him to the place and Arthur Gwyn examined the
débris.
“The roof has fallen in here,” he said. “How long ago, it is
impossible to tell. This stone is old, but I should think that the
fall has been going on for years.”
They returned dispirited, and accompanied Gilder on his exploration of
the maze. Though they tried passage after passage, they invariably
found themselves back at the place where they had started. Dick made
another inspection of the fallen roof. It had collapsed a few feet
from the entrance; and, though he did not know this, there was twenty
yards of crumbled rock between him and the little chamber where Leslie
Gwyn was waiting for death.
Dick came out into the light of the setting sun, his haggard face
white with dust. Arthur sat on a stone, his head in his hands, the
picture of despair. Even Gilder was shaken from his habitual calm,
could do no more than stare tragically at the ruin which hid so much.
The broken arch of the window, red in the light of the setting sun,
was more than ever like a query mark. There was something devilish
about it, something which epitomized the spirit that leered and mocked
at them.
“Come back to the house,” said Dick steadily, and, to the bailiff who
approached him: “No, I sha’n’t want the dynamite--yet.”
They walked dispiritedly along the mound, Arthur Gwyn, the most
dejected of all, walking in the rear. Suddenly they heard him shout,
and turned. He was pointing across the river.
“What is it?” asked Dick, hurrying back to him.
“The wishing well--have you thought of that?” gasped Arthur.
“The wishing well?”
And then Dick remembered that rendezvous of the country swains, the
unfathomable crevice in the earth down which, as a boy, he had dropped
stones, listening to hear them strike from rock to rock until they
grew fainter.
“That reaches somewhere,” said Arthur excitedly. “We can but try it.”
Dick ran down to the bank, plunged into the water and waded through to
the other side. The two men followed him, and something whispered in
Dick Alford’s heart that this was his last hope.
LXII
“What time is it?” asked Harry.
He had not spoken for two hours, but had sat, clasping his knees, his
head thrust forward, engaged with his wild thoughts.
“Lend me the lantern.”
She passed the lamp back to him.
“A quarter to seven,” she said. “Harry, I feel so hungry.”
“Do you?” he asked in surprise. “I don’t feel hungry, I feel--I don’t
know.”
Presently he spoke again.
“How did we get here?” he asked. “I know the roof fell in, but how did
we come into this beastly place?”
“You’ve been very ill,” she said gently. “You came here whilst you
were sick.”
“Did I really?” He seemed amazed at her reply and did not speak again
for fully five minutes. “I seem to remember now that I have been ill.
I sleep so badly and have such horrible dreams. Poor old Dick was
always ragging me about my patent medicines… queer bird, old Dick, but
one of the very best.”
He spoke so heartily, with such enthusiasm, that her heart ached for
some unknown reason.
“We shall have to get out of here,” he said.
She did not answer him.
For the tenth time he turned on the light of his lamp and examined the
roof.
“It is vaulted,” he muttered. “I hope nothing happens here.”
She felt him shivering.
“Nothing is going to happen, Harry,” she said soothingly. “We’re going
to get out and we’re going to have a big dinner to celebrate our
rescue.”
He chuckled softly.
“We shall never get out of here,” he said cheerfully. “This is the end
of the House of Chelford.” He thought a while. “By Jove, no! Of
course, Dick will inherit the estate. Isn’t it queer, Leslie, that he
never wanted me to marry? That’s the only thing about Dick I cannot
understand, because he’s not a jealous man or an envious man, but a
good, big-hearted fellow--and yet he didn’t want me to marry. Doesn’t
that seem strange to you?”
“I don’t think you’re right, Harry,” she temporized. “Only he didn’t
want you to marry the wrong woman.”
“But he didn’t want me to marry you,” said Harry in a tone of
indignation. “And if there’s a better girl in the world than you, I’d
like to find her! Of course, I’m a terrible slacker, but…”
“Hullo!”
The booming voice seemed to come from somebody in the chamber. She
felt him start, and again his frail body quavered in a fit of
trembling.
“What was that?” he asked huskily.
“Hullo!”
The voice came again. She seized the lamp from his hand, ran out of
the cavern to the place where she had seen daylight.
“Is that you, Dick?” she called at the top of her voice, and heard a
husky “Thank God!”
And then from the Cold Room came a burst of demoniacal laughter. There
was yet the gravest danger of all to overcome. She was alone with a
madman!
LXIII
She could see no daylight, and thought that night must have fallen,
until a patch of golden red appeared high above her.
“Is Harry with you?”
“Yes,” she replied. “One moment.”
She went back to find him cowering against the wall, and gripped him
by the shoulders.
“Harry,” she said pleadingly, “they have found us!”
He scowled up at her.
“Who have found us?”
“Dick--everybody. We sha’n’t have long to wait now.”
He licked his lips.
“Dick and everybody,” he said dully. “That is strange… found us!”
She flew back to the little shaft.
“Are you hungry?” boomed the voice.
“Very,” she answered. “But that doesn’t matter--I can live without
food for another twelve hours. We’re in a sort of underground room.
The roof of the passage has fallen in.”
“How long is the passage?” asked Dick quickly.
She thought a moment.
“About forty yards, I think. It cannot be much less.”
“How far from your end is it blocked?” and when she told him, she
heard him groan.
“Leslie.”
“Yes?”
“I’m sending something down to you at the end of a string. It is a
pocket compass. Will you tell me exactly the bearings?”
It reached her at last, battered, its glass broken. She put the little
instrument on the floor.
“Put it where I can see it,” he said. “Have you a light?”
She flashed the lamp upon it.
“Where is the north? Just touch the place with your finger. Wait, I
will send for field glasses.”
Ten minutes passed, and then he said again:
“Now show me.” And when she had indicated the north, he asked her
where the cavern was.
“Exactly west,” she said with tremulous triumph. “Will it be a long
time before you reach us?”
He made no answer to this.
“Tell me how many paces you are from the compass,” and when she had
paced it off and had told him, he groaned.
By this time the consulting engineer to whom he had telephoned in the
afternoon was on the spot.
“The cavern is exactly under the bed of the river,” said that
official.
“Could we enlarge this hole?” asked Dick.
The surveyor shook his head.
“Impossible. It would take you the best part of a month to blast a way
down. There’s a long fault in the rock here which accounts for the
river’s course,” he added. “Both banks are solid; I can assure you on
that point, because my predecessor bored for water for your respected
father.”
Dick groaned. He could keep the girl alive for a month, but the strain
of it would kill her. Then there flashed simultaneously to two minds a
solution.
“Why not break the dam of the Ravensrill?” he said, and Puttler, who
had the words on his lips, nodded.
“That’s the idea,” he said. “Undo the work of your ancestor! Turn the
course of the river to the Long Meadow--there’s a natural bed for it!”
Ten minutes later the telephone at Fossaway Manor was busy, and here
Mary Wenner was a heaven-sent helper. Every great contractor within
twenty miles had his instructions, and within an hour charabancs,
motor-cars, omnibuses, crowded with horny-handed workmen, were
lumbering up the drive. Car succeeded car, and disgorged the
fustian-clad navvies. They had been taken from alehouses, from their
homes, from workmen’s clubs, drawn even from the cinemas of distant
Brighton, and every hour the number swelled, until there were a
thousand men working by the light of naphtha flames on the great dump
behind Fossaway Manor.
At ten o’clock the omnibuses and lorries were still rolling up the
drive; trolleys laden with wheelbarrows and tools were being rapidly
unloaded at the side of the dump. All southern Sussex worked to cut
the dam of the Ravensrill, and the big dump grew smaller and smaller.
Presently, as the water rose, it spilled into the bed that it had left
for hundreds of years and flowed its irregular course, sweeping aside
barns that had been hastily evacuated, lapping the walls of one
cottage, the inhabitants of which had been removed in time. Little by
little the water in the old bed sank and sank until it was a dark mass
of weeds and silvery shapes that leapt up and down _in extremis_.
Water voles, trout, pike were shovelled to the bank, and the bed of
the river attacked by men who worked at fever pace, being relieved
every half hour.
“If there is rock there,” said the surveyor, “we are dished. My own
belief is that there’s nothing but sand.”
“And shingle?” suggested Puttler.
“No, sir, there’s no shingle. It is a curious fact that we’ve never
found shingle in the Ravensrill. They’ve struck the sand now,” he
said, looking down into the hole, which the men were shoring with logs
of timber. “And I’m glad there is no shingle--sand is much easier to
work.”
He had hardly spoken the words before the foreman shouted:
“We’ve struck shingle here, governor!”
“Shingle?” The surveyor went down the ladder into the hole.
“It is only a layer,” he said when he came back, “but even that is
rather surprising. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”
Dick did not listen. The value of shingle to a county surveyor was of
no more interest to him than the value of sand to a grocer.
The work was now heavier. A derrick and windlass had to be rigged to
move the heavy loads from the cutting, and that took a considerable
time, during which he paid frequent visits to the “wishing well.”
It was after the shingle had been discovered that Harry’s voice
answered him.
“Is that you, Dick? What are you fellows doing up there?”
The voice held all the old irritation and fretfulness. Briefly Dick
described what was happening.
“Couldn’t you send me something down so that I could work below?”
asked Harry. “I’m perfectly sure I could make it much easier for you.”
To humour him, Dick Alford found a light crowbar and with great
difficulty lowered it. Because of its shape and size, the operation
was a painfully slow one, and Harry fretted and fumed below.
“Hurry, for heaven’s sake!” he shouted. “You don’t suppose I want to
stay down here, do you? I’ve a tremendous lot of work to do--you know
that, Dick, very well.”
Dick did not answer, but his anxiety increased. He knew Harry and his
symptoms all too well to be under any illusion as to what would follow
if his irritation grew beyond the power of restraint, and it was with
a sigh of thankfulness that he felt the crowbar caught in the eager
hands of his brother.
“Be very careful how you use this,” he called. “The men are working
from above and you may have a fall unless you take the greatest care.”
But he was talking to the air. Harry had gone and it was Leslie who
answered him.
“How long will you be, Dick?” she asked.
“I don’t know, my dear. A few hours, not longer. Are you all right?”
A little hesitation.
“Yes, I’m all right.”
“Is Harry?”
A longer pause.
“I think so. Is it possible to send something down that he could
take?”
Earlier in the evening Dick had tried to pass the end of a thin rubber
tube to the imprisoned pair, but the attempt had been futile.
“I’ll try,” he said, and went in search of one of the two doctors who
had been summoned.
From him he obtained two small brown pellets, and these, wrapped in
paper and weighted, were dropped into the wishing well.
“Thank you,” said her low voice. “I don’t know how I can use them, and
for the moment he is very busy.”
LXIV
There was no question as to Harry’s activity. He had rolled a heavy
boulder from the débris in the passage and, placing it in the centre
of the floor, he could reach the stone roof, which was in six
petal-shaped sectors. The lens of his lamp had been removed so that
the light was diffused, and she had a better view of the room.
There were little holes at intervals that looked as if they had once
held hat-pegs, though why anybody should come into these depths to
hang up his hat, she could not imagine. And then the real value of
this peculiar chamber occurred to her. She found against the wall a
long, rusty hook, so thin that she could break it. This had been the
meat storeroom of the Abbey, the mediæval equivalent to a
refrigerator. The atmosphere was deathly cold. It seemed a very long
way from the Abbey, but in reality it was not more than a hundred and
fifty yards. The old monks had found this cavern, had dressed and
strengthened it, had lined and converted it to their own use. That
explained why this chamber, so far distant from the main building, had
received the ancient architects’ attention.
Harry was in his shirt sleeves, which were rolled up, revealing his
thin but sinewy arms. He had managed to get the claw of the crowbar
between two of the stones, and was working at them gradually, talking
the while to himself in an undertone. Her anxiety increased. The
paroxysm, when it came, would be short, but what would be the end of
it? Her mouth went dry and she felt for the knife she had put in her
pocket and stealthily opening the blade, thrust it through the lining
to keep it in place.
Presently Harry paused, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with
his arm, and looked down at her. His horn-rimmed spectacles had
slipped down his nose and he stopped to adjust them.
“Dick has no intention whatever of rescuing us. I think that you ought
to know that.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken, Harry,” she said.
But opposition only made him worse and he snapped down at her.
“You’re a fool! All women are fools! I tell you it is a plot. Dick has
no more intention of rescuing us…”
He stopped suddenly and passed his hand across his eyes.
“I wish I had brought the picture,” he muttered, and glared at her.
“But for you I should have taken it with me, and now I’ve left it
behind for that swine to jeer at!”
She looked up at the roof.
“You’re doing splendidly, Harry,” and, his attention distracted, he
attacked the roof again.
“You can trust me, Leslie,” he said. “I am the only person in the
world you can trust. You have no enemies. The Black Abbot is dead! I
killed him, and I am very proud of the fact. Every Chelford should
kill at least one Black Abbot, and I have had the approval of my
illustrious ancestor.”
By this time the claw of the crowbar had been worked deep into the
crevice he had made, and he began to lever slowly. As she watched him
she saw the stone move. It dropped suddenly an eighth of an inch, and
he raised an excited shout.
“You see, you see!” he said, in his shrill voice. “Dick never dreamt I
would be able to do that, or he would not have allowed me to use this
crowbar.”
He got down from the stone, scooped up two handfuls of water from the
worn channel, and drank, dashing the remainder of the water into his
face before he leapt again on the stone and went to work with renewed
vigour. Backward and forward he levered the jemmy, and again the stone
dropped, until it was perceptibly out of place.
“You must be careful, Harry,” she warned him. “That may come down with
a rush and hurt you.”
He was sensible enough to see this, changed the position of the stone,
and worked from the other angle. And then, without warning, all that
she had predicted happened. He leapt aside into the open doorway as
with a crash the sector fell and broke into fragments on the stone
pavement.
“You see, you see!” he screamed. “I’ve done it!”
A steady shower of shingle was falling. He struck upward with the
point of his crowbar and the shower increased until it made a heap on
the ground.
And then he saw the edge of a box.
“Look, look, look!”
His trembling hands could scarcely hold the tool. With the energy of
dementia he dug away at the shingle beneath it, and presently,
gripping it by the edge, he pulled it clear. It was a tiny chest, a
miniature of those she had seen at Fossaway Manor, six inches in
length, four inches broad and as deep. With his crowbar he pried open
the lid and the rusted iron hasp parted with a snap. Inside was what
appeared to be a bundle of discoloured cloth. He lifted it out.
“There’s something heavy here,” he said hoarsely, and his hands shook
so, that in pity she came forward and helped unwrap the thing that the
box held. Presently it came to light: a long flask containing a
colourless fluid. The bottle was heavily sealed at the top.
He snatched it from her hand; a frenzied gleam in the staring eyes.
“The elixir!” he croaked. “The Life Water! Oh, God be thanked!”
She tried to take it from him, but he snarled round on her like an
angry dog.
“You devil!” he screamed. “You’re in league with Dick! You’re trying
to rob me of life! But you sha’n’t, you sha’n’t!”
The flask was corked with a piece of wood that had swollen. He dragged
at it with his teeth and presently extracted the stopper.
“I shall live eternally! But you shall die! He shall find you here
dead, and realize…”
He put the flask to his lips and drank. She covered her eyes with her
hands, then, as he moved, gripped the knife.
And then she heard something drop with a heavy crash to the floor and
looked. The shingle was still sliding down like sand in an hourglass,
but now something big and heavy thudded to the ground. It looked
ludicrously like a yellow candle, but its weight was such that the
first bar struck the pavement and the impact bent it hook-shape.
Another followed. She watched, fascinated, as they came, first slowly,
then in a stream, from the triangular space in the roof--scores,
hundreds of yellow candles thundering down in twos and threes amidst
the flow of shingle.
“The gold, the gold!” screamed Harry. “But he shall never have it!”
He lifted the lamp, but as his arm rose she stooped swiftly. The crash
of the lamp as it struck the wall came to her and she crouched back
toward the wishing well. She heard a loud crash in the chamber; a
sector of the roof had given under the strain, and now, with a hiss
and a rush, shingle and ingot were falling until they almost filled
the room. They flowed about her feet like a heavy stream. She
struggled to get it underfoot and became more and more engulfed.
“Dick, Dick!” she screamed, but he did not hear her.
He had reached the broken roof of the Cold Room and was slipping and
sliding down the heap of shingle under which lay a man who was dead
before the torrent of stone was loosened. Later they found him,
gripping a crystal flask in his hand. What it had contained, no man
ever knew.
LXV
When Leslie Gwyn woke, the sunlight was peeping round the edges of
the drawn blinds. She sat up suddenly and her head went round and
round. And then she remembered and her eyes closed, as if to shut out
some horrible sight.
“Oh, you _are_ awake?” said Mary Wenner, bustling in. “Dick sent me up
to see how you were. Everybody’s most fearfully anxious about
you--even Fabe, though I’m not of a jealous disposition, as everybody
knows.”
“What is the time?”
Then, with a shiver, she remembered that somebody else had asked her
that. How long ago? An eternity!
“Twelve thirty-five,” said Miss Wenner, consulting her watch. “I’ve
been out looking at the workmen. Really, my dear, it’s more like a
Desirable Residential Estate than the grounds of Fossaway Manor.
Wheelbarrows and navvies and goodness knows what! They say it’s cost
his lordship twenty thousand pounds.”
Leslie looked at her in wonder.
“His lordship?” she said in a hushed voice.
“I mean Dick,” said the calm Miss Wenner. “The King is dead, long live
the King! That’s my motto every time.” And then, in a more sober tone;
and rather ashamed of herself for her heartlessness: “Poor boy! It was
a mercy for him. Fabe’s gone back to London.”
“Who is Fabe? Oh, Mr. Gilder!” said the girl, smiling faintly.
Miss Wenner dropped her eyes modestly.
“We are engaged. It was all his idea, because, as you know, Leslie
darling, I’m not the sort of girl to throw herself at any man’s head.
But he’s persuaded me.” She sighed heavily. “I suppose I’d better. I’m
getting on in years, and a girl can’t always be pretty.”
Leslie brought her feet to the floor and stood up. She was still a
little unsteady and the pain in her feet was atrocious, in spite of
the dressing that the doctor had applied.
“I must say that Arthur took it very well,” said Miss Wenner as she
assisted the girl to dress. “It was naturally a great blow to him.”
“What was?” Leslie was a little dazed.
“My engagement,” said Mary. “You didn’t know----” she sighed. “Arthur
was very fond of me, I’ll admit it. But in the circumstances I don’t
think it would be nice to marry a gentleman who’s bad friends with my
fiancé, do you, Leslie?”
“I had no idea that there was anything between Arthur and you,” said
Leslie truthfully.
Again Miss Wenner sighed.
“Very few people knew anything about it. Perhaps it is all for the
best. Arthur thinks so. It isn’t as though I’d thrown myself at him,
so there’s no harm done one way or the other.”
Leslie was wearing a pair of man’s slippers when she came down the
broad stairs. Dick’s study door was open and she saw him sitting in a
deep cane chair on the lawn outside, a pipe between his teeth, a heap
of documents on his knees which he was examining slowly one by one. He
looked round, rising from his chair at the sound of her voice. She saw
his face and was shocked.
“Dick, you look a hundred years old!”
“I feel a thousand,” he said, and guided her to the chair. “Sit down.
Well, that’s the end, Leslie--and the beginning.”
She nodded.
“I think we’ve managed to keep the ugliest part of it out of the
newspapers. Poor old Harry!” There were tears in his eyes which he did
not attempt to hide. “Poor old victim!”
“Victim of what?”
“Of his mother,” said Dick. “There never was a time when she was sane.
My poor father did not discover this until after the child was born,
and her death removed one of the greatest sorrows from his life. The
other was--Harry! Well, now you know the secrets of us all, what do
you think, Leslie?”
“Who was the Black Abbot?” she asked, and then, to her amazement:
“I was,” he replied quietly, and told her all he had told the high
official from Scotland Yard.
“The queer thing was that he must have seen the gold before he died.
What fools we were! The Diary told us as plainly as anything could
that the old Lord Chelford who hid his treasure chose the bed of the
river. It was a year of drought, the river was quite dry, and probably
he found a deep hole in its bed, hid the gold and covered it with
shingle that would not wash away.”
“You are very rich now, Dick?”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes--I suppose I am. There are a few minor trials and troubles for
us, Leslie dear,” he said, “but when those are all over and everything
is settled we will go abroad for a year and forget all about these
ghastly days and nights.”
She took his hand between her two palms.
FINIS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ frock-coat/frock coat,
paving-stone/paving stone, shirt-sleeves/shirt sleeves, etc.) have
been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Adjust the chapter numbering (the source text had two chapter XLIs).
Add ToC.
Punctuation: fix some missing periods and quotation mark pairings.
[Chapter I]
Change “such _aws_ the gloom in the library” to _was_.
[Chapter XIII]
“he said, and his voice was _kusky_ with emotion” to _husky_.
[Chapter XX]
“then went _downstars_ to his own room” to _downstairs_.
[Chapter XXI]
“moved stealthily toward the bed, _feeeling_ for the brass rail” to
_feeling_.
[Chapter XXIV]
(“Do you know that _Robison_ Crusoe was a German?”) to _Robinson_.
[Chapter LVI]
“and _occasionlly_ as prospective buyers of our property” to
_occasionally_.
[Chapter LXIV]
“Her mouth went _dray nd_ she felt for the knife she” to _dry and_.
[End of text]