Clifford King sat up in bed when the door had closed with a flicker
of dim light and a rush of cool air, shaking from head to foot with
excitement and horror which made him cold and sick.
Was she a thief, then, a common thief, this blue-eyed, pink-cheeked
girl who had infatuated him the evening before? This Nell of the soft
voice and the bright hair, to whose pretty talk he had listened with
delight, whom he had been ready to worship for her gentleness, her
affectionate kindness for her rough old uncle? No, it was impossible.
He had been dreaming. He would wake presently to find that the
experiences of the last few minutes had been a nightmare only.
With a wish to this effect so strong that it was almost a belief, he
thrust his hand under his pillow and felt about for his watch and his
purse. But they were gone, without the possibility of a doubt.
He sprang out of bed, groped his way to the window and drew back the
heavy curtains. The dawn was breaking, and a pale, golden light was on
the sea. The rain of the night before had made the air cool and fresh,
and Clifford’s brain was as clear as it could be as he threw open the
window and had to confess that the visit of the woman with the soft
hand had been a terrible reality. He observed by the dawning light that
it was nearly four o’clock. He examined his clothes, saw that they
had been disarranged, and then he went to the door, turned the handle
softly, and looked out.
The landing was small and narrow, and two doors opened upon it besides
that of Clifford’s room. A steep and very narrow wooden staircase led
up to the top of the house, and looking up, Clifford could just discern
that at the top there was one door on either side.
He went back into his room, dressed himself, and sat by the open
window in a state of great agitation. Far from yielding at once to
the apparently inevitable conclusion, Clifford fought against it with
all his might. Quickly as his passion for the girl had sprung up, it
was strong enough to make him ready to accept any hypothesis, however
improbable, rather than accept the evidence of his own senses when that
evidence was against her. He was ready to believe that there was in the
house another woman with a hand as small, as soft, as smooth-skinned as
the one he had held in his hand when he bade Nell good-night. And then
the desperate improbability of this supposition struck him with the
force of a blow. He remembered the stalwart, red-handed country wench
who had been helping the landlord in the bar, and he was forced to
admit that the hand which had taken his watch and purse was not hers.
But mention had been made of “Old Nannie,” a personage whom he had not
seen, and he told himself that this might be a nickname, and that the
bearer of it might prove to be young enough and fair enough to be the
owner of the thievish fingers.
Although this explanation of the theft was a very unlikely one,
Clifford hugged it with desperate persistency until the dawn of another
suggestion in his mind. This was a better one certainly.
Was pretty Nell a somnambulist? If so, it only wanted a good, hard
stretch of Clifford’s imagination to picture the girl as continually
haunted, both by day and night, with the idea of helping and enriching
her uncle, until at last her wishes ran away with her and took shape
in her sleep in actual thefts on his behalf. Clifford had read tales
of this sort, which he had indeed looked upon as highly imaginative;
but now his love made him snatch at this or at any way of escaping the
dreadful possibility of having to acknowledge that Nell was a thief.
The sleep-walking notion had brought him some comfort, and he felt
quite hopeful about clearing up the mystery, when a faint noise outside
his door made him start up and listen. He peeped out upon the landing,
but there was no one to be seen. However, he kept his door ajar and
watched.
In a few minutes he felt a rush of cold air from the ground floor of
the house, and dashing quickly out upon the landing, he came face to
face with Nell herself, as she ran up the stairs.
Now if it had not been for the strange occurrence of the night Clifford
would have thought nothing of this early meeting. People rise early
in the country, and Nell had the live stock to attend to, as she had
herself told him, taking her turn with the servants. The fact of there
being a visitor in the inn, too, would have explained satisfactorily
the care she took not to make any noise.
But with his mind full of the agony of unwilling suspicion, the young
man could not help noticing that Nell looked guilty and frightened,
that the color suddenly left her cheeks, and that she stammered in her
efforts to give him greeting.
“You--you get up very early. I--I had not expected to see you down
before eight o’clock,” she managed to say at last.
And there was in her eyes, as she looked shyly up at him, an
unmistakable anxiety which made his manner, as he answered, short and
cold.
“I was disturbed in the night,” he said, stiffly.
And he avoided her eyes as steadily as she avoided his.
“Dis--turbed!” exclaimed Nell, faintly.
And then she looked up quickly in his face with a glance so full of
inquiry, of fear, that, against his wish and his will, Clifford’s own
eyes met hers with a suspicious frown.
“What was it that disturbed you?” asked the girl.
He hesitated. Surely this candid anxiety was a proof of innocence, not
guilt! Surely a thief would have been ready with a glib speech, with a
look of overdone surprise. He looked away again, absolutely unable to
frame, to her, the story of his adventure.
“Oh, I don’t know. It was nothing, I suppose,” he answered, confusedly.
He felt that the girl’s eyes were upon him, but he would not meet them.
He must speak about his loss, of course, but it should be to her uncle,
not to her.
“What are you going to do with yourself till breakfast-time?” she
asked, pleasantly. “We have no nice garden where you could walk about
on a pleasant lawn and pick roses. Will you go out over the marsh and
bathe in the sea? I could show you the way to the ferry. Or would it be
too slow for you to watch us turn the cows out?”
Innocence! Surely this was innocence. Clifford only hesitated for a
moment. During that moment he told himself that he would conquer his
feeling for the girl, that he would not run the risk of becoming more
infatuated than he was. But the next moment the girl conquered, and
looking down into the fair, sweet face, he was ready to think that his
own senses had lied to him, that the hand which had robbed him could
not be Nell’s.
So he followed her out into the fresh morning air, helped her to
turn the bolts and draw the bars to let out the cows for their day’s
wanderings over the marsh, and to look for the eggs which lay warm in
the nests of the fowl-house.
Long before breakfast-time the occurrence of the night had become a
half-forgotten nightmare, and Clifford was enjoying Nell’s unaffected,
lively chatter as much as on the previous day. Only when his hand
touched hers, as she took the basket of eggs from him, did Clifford
remember, with a shudder, that it was the same touch which he had
felt in the night, the same smooth, soft skin, the same slender little
fingers; so that he was bound, before he met the landlord, to come back
to his old theory that Nell was a somnambulist.
It was a disagreeable business, that of making known his loss to George
Claris. But it had to be done, and as soon as he had had his breakfast
Clifford followed the landlord to the front of the house, where he was
taking down the shutters, and told him he had something unpleasant to
relate to him.
The young man at once perceived, by a sudden change to sullen
expectancy in the landlord’s manner, that he was not wholly unprepared
for the sort of story to which he was listening. He heard with
attention the whole story, and only looked up when Clifford described
how he had actually touched the hand as it was withdrawn from under his
pillow.
“You touched it, you say?” said George Claris, sharply. “Then why on
earth didn’t you hold on and shout?”
And defiantly, incredulously, the man, with his red, honest face full
of sullen anger, turned to face his visitor.
Clifford hesitated. He had said nothing about the sort of hand it
was, and he began to feel that he would rather lose all chance of ever
seeing watch or money again than formulate, however euphemistically,
the fearful accusation.
“It was--it was a shock, you know!” he stammered, meekly. “The hand was
snatched away as soon as I felt it.”
“Well,” grumbled Claris, with apparent suspicion on his side, “it seems
to me a strange thing that a man should feel a thing like that without
calling out! It’s the first thing a man would do as wasn’t quite a born
fool, to jump up an’ make for the feller.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Clifford, sharply.
George Claris looked at him with a deepening frown. “What do you mean,
sir?”
“That I am not sure--that I’m very far from sure--that the intruder was
a man.”
“Who do you think it was, then? Who do you think it was as took your
watch an’ your money? Speak out, sir, speak out, if you dare!”
The blood rose in Clifford’s face. The man’s surly, defiant tone seemed
to show that he had either some knowledge or some fear of the truth.
But again there rushed over the young man an overwhelming sense of
shame, which prevented him from being more explicit.
“I have spoken out,” he said, simply.
For a few minutes the men stood silent, each afraid to say too much.
Then Claris, as sullenly, as fiercely as ever, beckoned to Clifford to
follow him into the inn.
“Come an’ see ’em, come an’ see ’em all. Search ’em if you like,” said
he, bluntly. “And look over the house an’ see if there’s a way in it or
out of it that anybody could have got in or out by. Come and see for
yourself, I say.”
Clifford followed him in silence into the little bar, allowed Claris to
point out to him that the window was still barred and had evidently not
been tampered with. And so in turn they examined together the windows
and the doors of the whole house; and Clifford saw that, unless Claris
himself had been in collusion with the thief, no one could have got in
from the outside during the night. But then Clifford himself had not
suspected a thief from the outside.
As for the persons who had slept in the house that night, George
Claris said they were five in number. Himself, his niece, Clifford,
the servant whom Clifford had seen in the bar, and old Nannie, a woman
between sixty and seventy years of age, who slept in a small room,
which was scarcely more than a cupboard, on the ground floor, because
she was too infirm to go upstairs.
Clifford made the excuse of wishing to converse a little with the old
woman, that he might have an opportunity of examining her hands. They
were withered and lean, rendered coarse by field work, and enlarged at
the joints by rheumatism. Without a doubt it was not the hand of old
Nannie which had taken his watch and purse.
When he left the kitchen, where he and the landlord had thus
interviewed the staff of the establishment, Clifford followed Claris
again into the road in front of the inn.
“Now,” said Claris, defiantly, “you’ve seen every blessed creature as
was in the house last night. Which of them was it as you think took
your things?”
Clifford hesitated.
“I have an idea,” he said, “and I want you to listen quietly, since
if it is correct, it takes away all suspicion of any one having acted
dishonestly. Is there in your house a--a--woman who walks in her sleep?”
“Not into folks’ bedrooms to steal their money, anyhow,” answered
Claris, surlily. “And I’ve never heard of no sort of sleep-walkin’ by
either of them.”
“Either of the servants, you mean?” said Clifford with a slight
emphasis.
[Illustration: “THIS MAN, THIS ‘GENTLEMAN,’ SAYS YOU’RE A THIEF, MY
GIRL.”--_See Page 43._]
“Yes, of course. Why, man alive! You wouldn’t sure dare to say as my
niece, my lovely Nell, was a thief to take your dirty money!” shouted
the landlord, with sudden fury, all the more fierce that, as Clifford
could see, he had heard whispers of the same sort before. “Here, Nell,
Nell! Where are you?”
And, not heeding Clifford’s angry protests, Claris rushed into
the house, and almost into the arms of his niece, who, apparently
suspecting nothing, came running quickly in from the garden at the
sound of her name.
“What is it, uncle?”
She still wore her hat, but it was pushed back; and her pink and white
face, glowing with the wholesome sting of the fresh morning air, smiled
at the hot and agitated faces of the two men.
“This man, this _gentleman_, says you’re a thief, my girl! Says you
went into his room last night and stole his watch and his money and
that he caught your hand in the very act. There, my girl, answer him
yourself. Tell him what you think of a cur that tells such lies as them
of my bonny Nell!”
The man was genuinely agitated, indeed almost sobbing with rage and
disgust. As for Clifford, he was inarticulate; he could only look at
the girl, as she grew deadly white, and seemed to lose the bloom of her
beauty in horror and amazement as she listened.