UNDERGROUND.
Lionel Westford was resolved to lose no time in putting into
execution the plan which had been suggested to him by his interview
with the housekeeper.
He determined to explore the secret passages and cellars, and the
deserted chambers of the northern wing, in the dead of the night,
while the household at Wilmingdon Hall was wrapped in slumber.
It was a bold determination; for it needs a stout heart to brave the
unknown and mysterious. The perils of a cavalry charge seem little
to many a young Englishman, when compared to the mystic terrors of a
haunted mansion.
But, once convinced that duty called for prompt action, Lionel
Westford was the very last to flinch from any trial that lay
before him. He had much of his father’s spirit--the spirit of the
true-hearted sailor, who is the first to face death and danger, the
last to succumb to failure or defeat.
Lionel left Mrs. Beckson’s apartment at eight o’clock, after
gratifying the old housekeeper by his friendly interest in her
conversation.
Eight o’clock; and he knew the habits of the household well enough to
be aware that at eleven every member of the family would have retired
to rest.
He returned to his own apartment. A pair of wax candles, newly
lighted, were burning on the table. One of these he extinguished. He
would have need of light during his examination of the northern wing,
and he did not know what length of time that examination might occupy.
He seated himself by the table, drew the one lighted candle towards
him, and took up a book; but he found it quite impossible to
concentrate his attention upon the page before him. His mind was
haunted, his whole being was possessed by the thought of the work he
had to do.
The task was, indeed, a terrible one. Alone, in the dead of the
night, he was to explore a long range of deserted chambers, in search
of some evidence of a foul and mysterious deed which he believed to
have been committed in the northern wing of Wilmingdon Hall.
The longer he deliberated upon all he had heard, the more conclusive
appeared the evidence which pointed to the banker’s guilt.
A stranger had come to the Hall on that oppressive summer evening,
more than a twelvemonth ago, and had never been seen to leave the
house or grounds.
This much was clearly to be inferred from the housekeeper’s account
of the matter. It was just possible that this stranger might have
left the house unseen; but in so large a household the chances were
very much against his departure being unobserved.
Then there had been something in the manner of the clerk, Jacob
Danielson, peculiarly calculated to excite suspicion.
Had he been the witness of a crime, or the accomplice of a criminal?
His conduct had been, at any rate, a part of the mystery which was
dimly revealed in Caleb Wildred’s wandering talk.
Lionel Westford sat musing thus, with the book in his hand, through
the long tedious hours between eight o’clock and midnight.
And ever and anon, when his reverie was darkest; when the shadow of
an assassin, with vengeful countenance and arm lifted to strike,
loomed before his mental sight, a second image--the image of a
beautiful woman--would arise, as if to mock the dark horror of his
thoughts.
He was in love, honestly and truly in love, with Julia Godwin; and a
dull despair gnawed at his heart as he reflected that the work he
was now engaged in might bring misery and shame upon her.
And yet honour forbade that he should abandon his task. Come what
might, he must go on to the last, even though the performance of that
work of duty should entail upon him a lifetime of misery.
At last the great stable-clock struck twelve. One by one the
solemn-sounding strokes tolled out upon the stillness of the summer
night. Lionel Westford opened the window and looked out.
There was no vestige of light from any other window in the long range
of rooms. The household had evidently retired for the night.
“I will wait half an hour longer before I venture to leave this
room,” the young man thought.
He feared to run the smallest risk of interruption. He had carefully
thought out his plans, and his only dread was the hazard of his
footsteps being overheard by any light sleeper as he made his way
through the inhabited portion of the house.
Once in the grounds, he feared nothing. Not all the terrors of the
northern wing could stir his breast with one coward thrill, now that
his course of action was fixed. The dauntless spirit of the sailor’s
son was aroused; and Lionel Westford was worthy of the true-hearted
father whose noblest pride had centered itself in his children.
At half-past twelve the watcher flung aside his book--that book which
had served so little to distract him from his own cares--he took the
unlighted candle, put on his hat, and went out of his room.
With slow and cautious footsteps he made his way along the corridor,
descended the stairs, crossed the hall, and entered the dining-room.
He knew that the great hall-door was locked every night by the old
butler, who made quite a state ceremony of the business, and who
always carried the keys to his own apartment.
Lionel’s only mode of exit from the house was by one of the
dining-room windows. These were secured by massive shutters and heavy
iron bars; but the bars might be removed by strong and skilful hands.
To remove them silently was a critical task; but Lionel succeeded in
accomplishing it, and stepped out upon the broad gravel walk before
the windows.
The cool night air blowing upon his fevered brow gave him fresh
vigour. He crossed the lawn with rapid footsteps, and entered one of
those long laurel-avenues so familiar and so dear to him; for it was
in those dark and gloomy alleys he had been wont to meet Julia Godwin.
The moon was young as yet, and there was only a faint glimmer of
wan silvery light; very different from the mellow radiance which
sometimes glorifies the midnight landscape.
In the laurel-walk there reigned impenetrable darkness. Lionel groped
his way to the end of the arcade, and entered the grotto. He found
the archway described by the housekeeper, and, feeling with the point
of his foot, discovered the topmost step of the narrow stairs leading
to the cellars. Before he commenced his descent he took a fusee-box
from his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle he had brought with
him.
He was not far from the house; but he was at the back of the northern
wing, and he knew that no restless watcher was likely to see the
glimmer of that light.
Slowly and cautiously he descended the slippery stone steps, stooping
all the while, for the arched roof was too low to admit of his
remaining upright.
On every side he saw the evidence that this hidden staircase had
been disused for years: spiders’ webs brushed against his face, and
scared reptiles started under his foot and crawled away from before
him as he advanced. With every step he took he seemed to disturb
some living creature that had lain in its nook unmolested hitherto.
A palæontologist might here have discovered extinct races--forgotten
tribes of newt and adder, spider and toad, and divers curious
specimens of the genus rat.
Withered and rotten leaves of many bygone summers strewed the broken
and crumbling steps; the moss grew green upon the roof and walls;
and it was with difficulty that Lionel preserved his footing on the
slippery stones beneath his feet.
The housekeeper had not misled him. He found the secret passage, and
groped his way along it until he came to an arched doorway. The door
was studded with great iron-headed nails, and was deeply set in the
solid masonry. This door Lionel knew must be the entrance to the
first of the cellars.
But here he felt that his task would most likely come to an abrupt
termination. What was more probable than that the cellar-door would
be securely locked against him?
He pulled a rusty iron handle, and to his surprise the door yielded.
He forced it open with an effort that required all his strength, so
stiffly did the hinges move from long disuse and entered the first
cellar under the northern wing.
He knew that he now stood beneath the first room at the western angle
of the deserted wing. The seventh window from this western angle was
the one to which Caleb had pointed when he talked of the foul deed
that he had witnessed within.
Lionel had ascertained that there were two windows in every room on
this lower floor, and only two. The seventh window must therefore
belong to the fourth room, counting always from the western angle of
the building.
Pausing, with the candle raised above his head, to look round the
first cellar, Lionel Westford saw nothing but a black and empty
vault, festooned with cobwebs, and littered with fragments of wood
that had once been stored there.
The door between this cellar and the next stood open. The second
cellar was as empty as the first; but the walls were lined with stone
bins which had once held wine, and the floor was thickly covered with
damp, mouldy-smelling sawdust.
The third door was shut, but not locked. Lionel pushed it open, and
entered the third cellar.
He was now drawing very near to the room with the seventh window.
The third cellar was different from the two others. There was a
massive iron safe in one angle of the wall; and a narrow stone
staircase in an opposite angle wound upwards.
The cellar was to all appearance empty.
Lionel Westford ascended the winding staircase, and found himself
upon a small square cupboard-like landing, with a narrow door. He
felt tolerably certain that this door must lead into the fourth
room--the room with the seventh window.
But here, where he was most eager to examine further, his
investigation was brought to a sudden stop; for when he tried the
door he found it firmly locked against him. He paused; baffled and
bewildered by the small result of his labours.
He had taken infinite trouble to procure his information; and in the
dead of the night had braved the ghostly terrors of the northern wing.
And what had he found? Only three empty cellars, and a door locked
against him.
“Thank Heaven that I have found no more!” he thought. “My best hope
is that the old gardener’s horrible fancies may have been no more
real than a feverish dream.”
He was standing on the topmost of the stone steps as he mused thus,
and was about to turn away from the locked door, when his eye was
caught by a fragment of stuff which hung from a jagged nail in the
edge of the panel.
He extricated the fragment from the nail, and examined it by the
light of his solitary candle. It was a piece of bluish cloth, torn
from a man’s coat--a narrow strip some six inches long. But the
bluish colour was partly obscured by a dark stain. Some dark liquid
had dyed that torn fragment of cloth, which felt stiff between
Lionel’s fingers.
A thrill of horror ran through his veins. Something whispered to him
that the black stain upon the cloth was the stain of human blood. He
put the torn fragment in his breast-pocket, and then began carefully
and minutely to examine the stone steps on which he was standing.
It was not the scrap of blue cloth alone that had been disfigured
by that hideous stain. Dark splotches appeared on every one of the
stone steps--black and terrible blots, which made themselves plainly
visible, even on the damp-stained stone.
At the bottom of the steps a great pool of blood had soaked into the
worm-eaten wood which formed the flooring of the cellar.
Caleb was no idle dreamer. There was little doubt that he had watched
through the chink of the shutter, and had indeed witnessed the
commission of some most horrible deed.
A murder had been committed. The blood of the victim remained--a dark
and damning stain, a fatal and overwhelming evidence against his
murderer.
Lionel’s heart sank within him with a dull sense of despair. Julia
Godwin’s father was an assassin, and Providence had appointed him as
the instrument of that assassin’s detection.
“How she will hate me!” thought the young man; “how she will curse
the day on which the purest feelings of her nature prompted her to
interest herself in my fate! But it is my duty to denounce this
wretch--even though he is her father.”
The examination of the cellar was not yet completed. Lionel Westford
paused to think, endeavouring to penetrate the mystery of the place.
The torn coat-sleeve steeped in blood, the traces of blood on
every step, the great black pool on the floor--all pointed to one
conclusion.
Rupert Godwin’s unknown victim had been hurled down the stairs after
the commission of the murder. The body had lain bleeding at the foot
of the stairs, and must have remained for some time in the same
position, for there were no traces of blood in any other part of the
cellar.
But when and where had the body been removed?
Doubtless in the dead of the night, by that secret passage, the
murderer had returned to the scene of his guilt, and had dragged away
the corpse of his victim.
To conceal it----where? In a grave dug stealthily in some remote and
desolate corner of the grounds.
“But the murdered victim will not rest in his hidden grave,” thought
Lionel; “the Hand that has led me to the scene of the crime will lead
me to the grave of the dead. The Hand that has pointed to this cellar
will point further yet upon the dark road I have been appointed to
tread. Providence is stronger than man, and I, who of all others
would wish to think well of Julia Godwin’s father, am destined to be
the discoverer and denouncer of his guilt. The Eumenides, who forced
their direful work of retribution upon Orestes, are only typical of
the Providence which appoints the task of the Christian avenger.”
The young man did not leave the cellar until he had found a new
evidence of the banker’s crime. The light of the candle revealed
some dark object lying in a corner of the cellar. Lionel stooped and
picked up a glove--a glove of tanned leather.
He put this in his pocket with the fragment of cloth. By this time
he had been nearly an hour in the cellar, and his search had been a
most minute one. There was nothing more for him to do but to return
by the way he had come to the inhabited part of the Hall, only too
terribly convinced that the father of the woman he loved was one of
the vilest of mankind. He went back through the cellars and along
the subterranean passage, looking right and left as he went, and
awe-stricken by the thought that he might at any moment come suddenly
upon some trace of the corpse that must be hidden somewhere within
the precincts of Wilmingdon Hall.
But no such evidence of the banker’s crime met his eyes. He returned
to the grotto, and emerged once more into the gardens. The pure
breath of the night-air was strangely welcome after the charnel-like
atmosphere of the cellars below the northern wing,--those cellars
which, from the moment of his finding the dark stain upon the scrap
of cloth, had seemed to Lionel to be tainted with the odour of blood.
He crossed the lawn, where the night-dew lay thick and heavy, entered
the dining-room, and barred the shutters. Then with a stealthy
footstep he ascended the staircase, and returned unheard to his own
apartments. As he stole upward in the darkness, he could not but
picture to himself the assassin creeping thus stealthily through the
silent house to remove the body of his victim, and to deposit that
most fatal evidence of his crime in some secure hiding-place.