If ever guilt was written on a human face, surely it was written on
that of Nell Claris when, seized roughly by her uncle, she stood
shaking and stammering in his grasp, just inside the back door of the
inn.
So thought Jack Lowndes, the friend whom Otto Conybeare had sent down
in the capacity of amateur detective, as he stood shivering, dripping,
with chattering teeth and starting eyes, before her.
“What were you doing out there, lass? What were you doing out there
at this time o’ night?” roared her uncle, with an earnestness which
convinced Lowndes of his innocence of the attempt at theft.
“I--came out--to see--what was the matter!” stammered the girl, whose
voice was weak and tremulous. “I--I--”
Her uncle stared fixedly at her, as if a doubt of her had begun
to darken even his mind. It was in a different tone, almost
apologetically, that he turned to the stranger. “Well, and that’s a
reasonable answer enough, surely! For I’m sure by the noise you made,
it might ha’ been the parish church afire!”
But the shivering man was beginning to feel that dry clothes and a fire
outweighed everything else in his mind.
“Let me get inside,” stammered he, “and when I’m dry again, I’ll talk
to you.”
But this speech caused Claris to look at him with more attention, and
he then perceived that Lowndes was dressed.
“There’s something to be explained here!” he exclaimed, with sudden
suspicion. “You haven’t been to bed. Who are you?” he asked, in a
different tone, barring the entrance to the house with his burly
person. “Who are you? And what did you come here for? Now, out with it!
Were you sent here to lay traps for honest folks? Speak out, man, or
back you shall go into the river again!”
And Claris seized the unfortunate Lowndes in his powerful grasp, and
forced him a couple of steps backward in the direction of the little
river.
By this time Nell had partly recovered her composure. She now spoke to
her uncle in a calmer voice.
“Let him come in, Uncle George,” she said. “Let him come in and change
his wet clothes. And then make him give an account of himself, if he
can.”
With apparent reluctance the innkeeper took his niece’s advice, led
Lowndes up to his room as if he had been a prisoner, locked him in, and
kept watch outside the door until he was ready.
Jack Lowndes could hear the uncle and niece in whispered conversation
on the landing, and murmured some imprecations against the “artful
little hussy,” as he detected by the rising anger in George Claris’s
tones the fact that the girl was “working him up.”
A thundering knock at his door, which threatened to bring it down as
easily as Lowndes himself had brought down the door of the upstairs
room, warned him that it was time for him to come out and face the
indignant pair.
“Now, sir,” roared Claris, barely leaving Lowndes the time to get
downstairs before beginning his attack, “what have you got to say for
yourself? It seems you had the ---- impudence to batter in the door of
my niece’s room, and that you went flying out through the window like
a madman. Now, what have you got to say for yourself? Do you remember
anything about it, or not?”
And George Claris, who had lit a candle, the pale rays of which looked
sickly in the struggling light of the dawn, peered curiously into the
haggard face of Jack Lowndes.
“Remember? Of course I remember. How should I know it was your niece’s
room? I only came into the house last night for the first time. I
followed the woman, and she went in there. She turned the key in the
lock, so I had to burst it open.”
As he mentioned the word “woman,” a cry burst from Nell’s lips, a cry
so piteous that Lowndes turned to look at her, and was struck with
bewilderment. Believing thoroughly in her guilt as he did, having come
down as he had come to unmask her, he was at that moment converted
to an absolute belief in her innocence. And yet he could not have
explained how it was that the sight of her face, the sound of her voice
as she uttered the cry, had this instantaneous and decided effect upon
him. So deeply absorbed was he in contemplation of this new aspect
of the matter, that at first he did not hear, or did not heed, the
innkeeper’s next words.
“Woman! What woman? You said nothing about a woman.”
“I don’t know myself what woman it was,” answered Lowndes, in a tone
in which a change to doubt and hesitancy could be detected. “But some
woman came into my room in the night”--George Claris moved impatiently.
“I don’t say I was unprepared for this, but I can swear that she came;
and when she took up my clothes and I heard the chink of the loose
money in my pockets, I started up, and she ran out of the room. I was
not unprepared, as I say, and I ran after her, saw her go into the back
room at the top, heard her lock it, burst it in, and saw her getting
out of the window just as I got into the room. I got out after her, saw
her once more when I got to the ground, and the next thing I knew was
that I was in the water.”
“Well, it sobered you, at any rate,” said George Claris, shortly.
“And now there’s nothing left to do but to tell us how much money she
took. Don’t be bashful; make it a hundred, or say two. We’ve been bled
before; no doubt we can stand bleeding again.”
There seemed to Lowndes to be something pathetic in the rough irony of
the man’s tone; he began to feel heartily sorry and ashamed that he had
allowed himself to be persuaded into this adventure. The pretty, pale
girl, standing mute behind her uncle; the uncle himself with the dull
perplexity in his eyes, seemed to him in the ghostly light of the early
morning so utterly broken down, so bewildered, so miserable, that he
wanted to slink away without exchanging a further word with them. But
this, of course, was out of the question.
“I have had nothing taken,” he said, hurriedly. “Nothing whatever.”
“You think the woman was maybe only taking a look round by way of
passing the time?” suggested Claris, still in the same grim tone.
Lowndes was silent.
“And, pray, if I may make so bold,” went on the innkeeper, in a
threatening tone, after a few minutes’ pause, “what was she like, this
woman?”
“I couldn’t see. It was dark, you know.”
“But you’re sure it was a woman, of course?”
There was, perhaps, a note of interest in Claris’s irony this time.
“Yes,” answered Lowndes, with a little more decision, “I am sure of
that. She moved like a woman, and had a woman’s head, and a woman’s
skirts. I saw her head as she got out of the window. I saw her skirts
moving about before me when I got down to the ground.”
“And that’s all you’ve got to say? Now, Nell, tell us what _you_ saw.”
And he turned triumphantly to his niece.
Nell was standing opposite the window, and the gray light of the
morning came over the top of the shutters full on her face. It was
white, weary, and there were dark lines under the eyes, which were
heavy and lusterless. Every word she uttered bore--so the young man
thought--an odd stamp as of truth and sincerity.
“I woke up suddenly, hearing a loud noise. I saw the door fall in and
some one rush through and get out of the window. I sprang up and looked
out, and saw this gentleman sliding down from the roof of the outhouse
on to the ground.”
“I didn’t see you,” interrupted Lowndes, sharply, with another doubt.
“You did not look up,” replied the girl, with composure. “You ran away
through the garden to the right. I dressed quickly, and ran downstairs
and out by the back door to see what was the matter. When I got out you
had scrambled up the bank and were talking to my uncle.”
Lowndes said nothing; there was nothing to say. But, although it is
true that he had not given much attention, when he burst into the upper
room, to anything but the window and the escaping figure, he felt
convinced that if there had been a person in bed in the room, he should
have seen her, or heard some cry, some word, to indicate her presence.
“Now you’ve heard another story. And, begging your pardon, I’d sooner
take her word than yours.”
“But,” suggested Lowndes in a conciliatory tone, “do the two stories
contradict each other? All this young lady says is that she did not see
the woman pass through her room.”
“No, nor any one else, either,” burst out George Claris, as if his
patience was at last exhausted. “An’ look here--I won’t stand no man
coming down here to spy about, and taking fancies into his head, and
breaking into the rooms of my house--not for nobody; and so, sir, you
can just go upstairs and pack your portmanteau and clear out between
this and breakfast-time. Not another bit nor drop will you be served
with under my roof. And you may just tell the three young scoundrels
that sent you that whatever they likes to call themselves, they’re no
gentlemen. I--I know them, you see. I know you were put up to this by
Jordan, King and Co.”
“Uncle! uncle! No; Mr. King never sent him. I will answer for that!”
And Nell’s face became suddenly crimson with a blush which betrayed her
secret.
Lowndes was touched.
“You’re right,” he said to her, very simply. “Mr. King knew nothing
about my coming.” He turned to Claris. “Let me have my bill,” he said,
“I will go at once.”
And the young man, ashamed of his own action, but more perplexed every
moment, as he considered, from every point of view, his singular
adventure, left the Blue Lion within the next twenty minutes, and
returned to town to relate his experience to Otto Conybeare and Willie
Jordan.