THE HAUNTED BARN AND ITS STRANGE INHABITANT
With the discovery that the servant from the Dene was without doubt a
man in disguise, the mystery surrounding the house adjoining the
Squire's residence was considerably deepened instead of being in any way
solved.
Laurence Carrington, as, smarting under the burly housewife's blow, he
conducted his companion back to the Manse, hardly fulfilled his duties
as host in silently meditating as to his next step. Suddenly he
recollected himself.
"Excuse me, Miss Scott," he said apologetically. "This discovery has
rather alarmed me, and for the moment I almost forgot that I was not
alone. Come, it is getting late, and your aunt will be worrying about
you. You must try and forget all about this skeleton in father's
cupboard. It will be giving you bad dreams, and that would never do."
But if the young man charged Selene to think no more, for the present,
about the uncanny state of affairs, he was unable, or did not intend,
to allow this first reverse to put an end to his attempts at the
solution of the mystery. Having wished Miss Scott and her aunt
"good-night" on their departure to bed, he lighted his pipe and stepped
out through the French windows of the dining-room on to the lawn.
Fumbling unconsciously in one of the pockets of his shooting-jacket,
which he had worn during the day and donned after dinner before starting
off for the village, his hand came in contact with the small pistol
which Head, the gardener, had found amongst the hay in the barn.
So many and varied had the events of the day been that he had almost
forgotten the incidents of the stolen dinner and the rustling in the
hay. Now it appeared to him that here was the most important clue he had
as to the identity of the attempted murderer of the Squire. It seemed to
him extremely possible that this was the weapon used by the unknown
cyclist, for whose else could it possibly be, when no one in any way
connected with the Manse carried firearms, except the Squire, whose
blunderbus was certainly not to be mistaken for this? Careful
examination of the pistol failed, however, to reveal any sign of the
maker's name, and the hope which had risen in Laurence's breast gave way
to a feeling of disappointment.
But a question of deepest importance that suggested itself to the
amateur investigator was how it was that, if the strange cyclist came
from the adjoining house, he had ventured into the barn which stood well
within the Manse grounds. Had he been some chance enemy--the poacher,
for instance, whom Laurence had already set down as a possible
suspect--there was nothing more probable than that he should have taken
refuge in the barn, but in the other case it was hardly likely.
One thing was undeniable, he had been there. Whoever the mysterious
person was, he had stolen the gardener's plate of dinner and likewise
his old coat. It certainly seemed improbable that Major Jones-Farnell,
would-be murderer or no, should stoop to the robbery of old clothes and
food. The poacher idea rose in the young man's mind, but was at once
dismissed as out of the question. The Squire's secret had to do with
something or somebody more mysterious by far than a mere poacher.
If the intruder had been in the barn at lunch-time, it was possible that
he might be there still, though he had certainly disappeared completely
before the gardener's manoeuvres with the pitchfork.
At any rate, Laurence decided to have a look round before going to bed,
and consequently strolled down to the barn and crept noiselessly inside.
The moonshine peeped in from a roof window, lighting up the whole of one
side of the fine old rambling building as though it were broad daylight.
Puffing silently at his pipe, Laurence glanced round, peering up into
the rafters, down on the floor, and into the loosely piled hay that
surrounded him.
Suddenly, by that strange instinctive intuition that comes at times to
us all, he became aware and convinced of the fact that he was not
alone--that some one was looking at him!
Strive as he might to dispel the eerie idea from him he was unable to do
so.
Under such circumstances, and bearing in mind the incidents of the last
two days, any ordinary person might have turned tail and fled. But
Laurence was no ordinary person, and he was as keen on the scent of his
father's enemy as the traditional bloodhound. Thus it was that, instead
of taking to flight from what was only an imaginary fear, he struck a
match and held it above his head, gazing round him again for any trace
of the person who he instinctively felt was watching him.
A second and a third match revealed nothing; but by the light of the
fourth he scanned what was perhaps the darkest and remotest corner of
the Cromwellian building. As he did so he fancied he saw something move
on a ledge on which a roof support was fixed. In order to test his
suspicions, he picked up a "stone," used for sharpening scythes, which
happened to be on the ground in front of him, and flung it with all his
athletic force and precision of aim at the indistinct mass which he
believed to have moved a moment before.
A sudden shrill scream, about which there was something that (to use a
well-worn phrase) froze the young fellow's blood with horror, broke upon
the stillness of the great building, a scream which Laurence at once
recognised as being exactly similar to that which the unknown cyclist
had uttered when the lash of the carriage whip had caught him as he had
fled away into the darkness.
And as that weird sound rent the air, the man who had caused it saw
indistinctly in the gloom (for his last match had burnt itself out) a
figure leap from the dark corner, and, with ape-like agility and speed,
clamber up the rafters until it almost hung from the roof. Then, seizing
some loose hay that had lodged in a cranny in the beams, it flung it
down on the upturned face of the astonished spectator of this feat.
When Laurence had brushed away the hay from his eyes, the figure had
disappeared, and, incredible though it may seem, no trace of it
remained but the memory of that echoing, inarticulate shriek to prove
that the apparition was not a mere phantom of the imagination.