THE WATCHER IN THE SHADOW
But if Merriton slept, the others of the little party did not. After his
door had closed upon him they appeared from their rooms, and met by
arrangement once more in the study. Doctor Bartholomew--a little late at
having waited and listened for the outward result of his drug in Nigel's
comforting snore--joined the group with an anxious face. There was no
laughter now in the pleasant, heated smoking room. Every face there wore
a look that bordered closely upon fear.
"Well, Doctor," said Tony West, as he entered the room, "what's the plan?
I don't like Wynne's absence, I swear I don't. It--it looks fishy,
somehow. And he was in no mood to play boyish pranks on us by turnin' in
at the Brelliers' place. There's somethin' else afoot. What's your idea,
now?"
The doctor considered a moment.
"Better be getting out and form a search party," he said quietly. "If
nothing turns up--well, Nigel needn't know we've been out. But--there's
more in this than meets the eye, boys. Frankly, I don't like it. Wynne's
a brute, but he never liked practical joking. It's my private opinion
that he would have returned by now--if something hadn't happened to him.
We'll wait till dawn, and then we'll go. Nigel is good for some hours
yet. Wynne always had a bad effect on him. Ever noticed it, West? Or you,
Stark?"
The two men nodded.
"Yes," said Tony, "I have. Many times. Nigel's never the same fellow when
that man's about. He's--he's got some sort of devilish influence over
him, I believe. And how he hates Nigel! See his eyes to-night? He could
have killed him, I believe--specially as Nigel's taken his girl."
"Yes." The doctor's voice was rather grave. "Wynne's a queer chap and a
revengeful one. And he was as drunk as a beast to-night.... Well, boys
we'll sit down and wait awhile."
Pipes were got out and cigarettes lighted. For an hour in the hot
smoking-room the men sat, talking in undertones and smoking, or dropping
off into long silences. Finally the doctor drew out his watch. He sighed
as he looked at it.
"Three o'clock, and no sign of Wynne yet. We'll be getting our things on,
boys."
Instantly every man rose to his feet. The tension slackened with
movement. In comparative silence they stole out into the hall, threw on
their coats and hats, and then Tony West nervously slid the bolts of the
big front door. It creaked once or twice, but no sound from the still
house answered it. West swung it open, and on the whitened step they
quietly put on their shoes.
The doctor switched on an electric torch and threw a blob of light upon
the gravelled pathway for them to see the descent. Then one by one they
went quietly down the steps, and West shut the door behind them.
"Excellent! Excellent!" exclaimed Doctor Bartholomew, as the gate was
reached with no untoward happenings. "Not a soul knows we're gone, boys.
That's pretty certain. Now, then, out of the gate and turn to the right
up that lane. It'll take us to the very edge of the Fens, I believe, and
then our search will commence."
He spoke with assurance, and they followed him instinctively.
Unconsciously they had made him captain of the expedition. But--no one
had heard them, he had said? If he had looked back once when the big gate
shut, he might have changed his mind upon that score. With white face
pressed close against the glass of the smoking-room window, which looked
directly out upon the front path, stood Borkins, watching them as though
he were watching a line of ghosts on their nightly prowl.
"Good Gawd!" he ejaculated, as he discerned their dark figures and the
light of the doctor's torch. "Every one of 'em gone--_every one_!" And
then, trembling, he went back to bed.
But the doctor did not look back, and so the little party proceeded upon
its way in comparative silence until the edge of the Fens was reached.
Here, with one accord, they stopped for further instructions. Three
torches made the spot upon which they stood like daylight. The doctor
bent his eyes downward.
"Now, boys," he said briskly. "Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne
must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He
wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way--if he
was bent upon going there at all.... Hello! Here's the squelchy mark of a
man's boot, and here's another!"
They followed the track onward, with perfect ease, for the marshy ground
was sodden and took every footprint deeply. That some man had crossed
this way, and recently, too, was perfectly plain. The footprints wavered
a little that was all, showing that the man who made them was uncertain
upon his feet. And Wynne had left the house by no means sober!
"It looks as though he had come here after all!" broke out Tony West,
excitedly. "Why the track's as plain as the nose on your face."
They zig-zagged their tedious way out across the marshy grassland, their
thin shoes squelching in the bogs, their trousers unmercifully spattered
with the thick, treacley mud. They spoke little, their eyes bent upon the
ground, their foreheads wrinkled. On and on and on they went, while the
sky above them lightened and grew murky with the soft cloudiness of
breaking dawn. The flames in the distance began to pale, and the vast
stretch of Fen district before them was shrouded in a light fog, misty,
unutterably ghostlike and with the chill lonesomeness of death.
"Whew! Eeriest task I've ever come across!" ejaculated Stark with a
grimace as he looked up for a moment into the dull mist ahead. "If
we're not all down with pneumonia to-morrow, it won't be our own
faults!... Some distance, isn't it, Doctor?"
"It is," returned the doctor grimly. "What a fool the man was to attempt
it!... Here's a footprint, and another."
Yes, and many another after that. They staggered on, wet, cold,
uncomfortable, anxious. The doctor was a little ahead of the rest of
them, Tony West came second, the others straggled a pace or two behind.
Suddenly the doctor stopped and gave a hasty exclamation:
"Good Heavens above!"
They ran up to him clustering around him in their eagerness, and
their torches lent their rays to make the thing he gazed at more
distinguishable, while another mile away at least, the flames twinkled
dimly, and slowly went out one by one as though the finger of dawn had
snuffed them like candle-ends.
"What the devil is it?" demanded Tony West, getting to his knees and
peering at the spot with narrowed eyes.
"Charred grass. And the end of the footprints!" It was the doctor who
spoke--in a queer voice sharp with excitement. "There has been a fire
here or something. And--Wynne went no farther, apparently. The ground
about it is as marshy as ever, and my own footprint is perfectly
clear.... What the dickens do you make of it, eh?"
But there was no answer forthcoming. Every man stood still staring down
at this strange thing with wide eyes. For what the doctor said was
absolute truth. The footsteps certainly _did_ end here, and in a patch of
charred grass as big round as a small table. What did it mean? What could
it mean, but one thing? Somehow, somewhere, Wynne had vanished. It was
incredible, unbelievable, and yet--there was the evidence of their own
eyes. From that spot onward the ground was wholly free of the footprints
of any man, woman, or child. No mark disturbed the sodden mud of it. And
yet--right here, where the grasses seemed to grow tallest, this patch was
burnt off and withered as though with sudden heat.
Tony West straightened himself.
"If I didn't think the whole business was a pack of lies spun into a
bigger one by a lot of village gossips, I'd--I'd begin to imagine there
was something in the story after all!" he said, getting to his feet and
looking at the white faces about him. "It's--it's devilish uncanny,
Doctor!"
"It is that." The doctor drew a long breath and stroked his beard
agitatedly. "It's so devilish uncanny that one hardly knows what to
believe. If this thing had happened in the East one might have looked
at it with a more fatalistic eye. But _here_--in England, no man in his
senses could believe such a fool's tale as that which Nigel told us
to-night. And yet--Wynne has gone, vanished! Never a trace of him,
though we'll search still farther for a while, to make sure!"
They separated at once, radiating out from that sinister spot and
searched and searched and searched. Not a footprint was to be found
beyond the spot, not a trace of any living thing. There was nothing for
it but to go back to Merriton Towers and tell their tale to Nigel.
"Old Wynne has gone, and no mistake," said Tony West, as the men began
slowly to retrace their steps across the marshlands, their faces in the
pale light of the early morning looking white and drawn with the
excitement and strain of the night. "What to make of it all, I don't
know. Apparently old Wynne went out to see the Frozen Flames and--the
Frozen Flames have swallowed him up, or burnt him up, one or the other."
"And yet I can't hold any credence in the thing, no matter how hard
I try!" said the doctor, shaking his head gravely, as they trudged on
through the mud and mire. "And if Wynne isn't found--well, there'll be
the deuce to pay with the authorities. We'll have to report to the police
first thing in the morning."
"Yes, the village constable will take the matter up, and knowing the
story, will put entire faith in it, and that's all the help we'll
get from _him_!" supplemented West with a harsh laugh. "I know the
sort.... Here's the Towers at last, and if I don't make a mistake,
there's the face of old Borkins pressed against the window!"
He ran ahead of the others and took the great stone steps two at a time.
But Borkins had opened the door before he reached it. His eyes stared,
his mouth sagged open.
"Mr. Wynne, sir? You found 'im?" he asked hoarsely.
"No. No trace whatever, Borkins. Where's your master?"
"Sir Nigel, sir? 'E's asleep, and snorin' like a grampus. This'll be a
shock to 'im sir, for sure. Mr. Wynne--_gone_? 'T ain't possible!"
But Tony had pushed by him and thrown open the smoking-room door. The
warm, heated atmosphere came to them comfortingly. He crossed to the
table, picked up a decanter and slopped out a peg of whisky. This he
drank off neat. After that he felt better. The other men straggled in
after him. He faced them with set lips.
"Now," said he, "to tell Nigel."