He dropped more and more into the dreamy – and rather contented – stage. He was looking forward to a very pleasurable time before him when the year should grow and mellow into glorious spring and golden summer. The sound of footsteps overhead had ceased now, and that for some time. She was asleep, and had forgotten her uncanny imaginings. He found himself looking forward to the morrow when she would be with him again – her sweet, quick, animated face, and the golden hair shining in the sunlight.
And then? – What was this? A sudden pounding of feet overhead – a strange, half stifled cry – a rush down the old creaky stairs. In a fraction of a second he was at the door, and as he opened it, framed against the dark background of passage and staircase, Melian was standing, her face set with a strange horror that seemed to turn the spectator’s blood to ice, the blue eyes dilating in a wild stare, as though they saw – or had seen – something not of the earth earthly.
Chapter Thirteen
The Stone again
“Well? What is it, dear? Forgotten something?”
With an effort he had put on a light, matter-of-fact tone. He pretended not to notice her perturbation.
“No. But – ”
She looked genuinely distressed, worse still – genuinely frightened. She almost pushed past him in her anxiety to get into the full light, and he noticed a quick movement of half turning the head as though to look behind her.
“But – what? I think it’s that bit of fried plum pudding; still, the touch of burnt brandy on it should have counteracted its effects,” he went on, keeping up the rôle. “Nightmare of course. And our solemn discussion before you turned in would make that way.”
“No, no,” and she shook her head, decisively. “I wish it was. As sure as I sit here, Uncle Seward, there was a Something in the room. I heard it – first – heard it moving, but for the life of me I dared not move myself, not even to light the candle. It was the sound of steps – of light steps – coming towards the bed. Oh, it was horrible – awful?” she broke off, with a quick, scared glance around as though still expecting to see something. “And then – wait a bit,” seizing him by the wrists. “Something cold and clammy touched my face, just touched it – like the feel of dead fingers. I could see something shadowy too in the light of the fire – and then I just dashed out of bed and came straight down here.”
“Melian, pull yourself together child,” he said gently. “You’ve had a bad dream, coming on top of what we were talking about.” But the look on her face was that of one who had had a very bad scare indeed, and somehow Mervyn had been under the impression that his niece was the sort of girl who would take a great deal of scaring. “Here, put this down. It’ll pull you together.”
“This” was a glass of port, which he had got out of the sideboard. She sipped a little, and looked as if she didn’t like it, then a little more, and felt better.
“That’s right,” he went on. “Now, look here, you’ve been using that room for over a fortnight, and have never thought of bothering about anything of the kind. Why I slept in it myself for several nights before you came.”
He had meant the assurance to be reassuring, but hardly had he made it than Mervyn saw he had made a false step.
“But why did you sleep in it, Uncle Seward?” said the girl, quickly.
“Eh? Why to see that it was comfortable – not damp and all that sort of thing.”
He wondered if she accepted this explanation. In his heart he doubted it.
“The cold touch on your face was probably a bat,” he went on. “Do you sleep with your window open?”
“Oh yes, always.”
“There you are then. I think we’ve got at the solution. Now let’s go straight up and look for the bat.”
He had as yet not gauged the extent of his niece’s knowledge of natural history, and would have given much to have had a real live bat in his possession at that moment, that he might privily have set it loose when they gained the room. She, however, seemed not inclined to question the probability of bats hawking around at large in what was nearly mid-winter!
“Now,” he said, holding up the light, and making a careful inspection of the room, “we’ll find him probably, hanging on somewhere in the corner. No,” after an exhaustive search. “Oh well, he’s probably gone out by the way he came. Better keep the window nearly up to the top – then he can’t get back again.”
“Do you think it was really that, Uncle Seward?” Melian asked.
“Why of course,” he answered with the uneasy consciousness of skating on thin ice. “Unless it was a common or house mouse which had found its way in through somewhere. But now you go to bed again, child, and I’ll come up and turn in too. Then you’ll know there’s some one right near you, and all you’ve got to do is to knock on the partition in case you get another scare. It’s not a very thick one, and I shall hear at once. But you mustn’t get another scare, if only that there’s nothing on earth to get scared at. Look – you can see all over the room now. It’s just an ordinary room – old, but with no secret panels or anything of that kind, and I’m only just the other side of that partition. You’ll sleep like a humming top now, I should think.”
“I believe I will,” she answered, feeling more reassured by his tone of decisive confidence, the recent glass of port, to one unaccustomed, contributing largely to that end. “Tell me, Uncle Seward, do you think me an awful fool? I wouldn’t like that?”
“My dear child, of course I don’t. All women get nervy at times – not only women either – for the rest the plum pudding,
and
the subject of conversation. Now good-night, darling, you’ll be as jolly as Punch in the morning. And remember, there’s only the partition between us.”
Even as her uncle had predicted, the girl laid her head on the pillow perfectly reassured and calmed, and in no time was breathing softly and evenly in a dreamless sleep. But this did not fall to Mervyn’s lot. The incident had banished all sleep from his mind. He had laughed off the situation, and effectually soothed Melian – in fact he was surprised to think how completely he had succeeded. But what if something of the sort recurred, and he found that it got too much upon the girl’s nerves, and that, too, just as he flattered himself that everything was going on so well? There were reasons why he did not want to leave Heath Hover; reasons over and above his undoubted attachment to the place – and they were very vital reasons indeed; perhaps not wholly unconnected with Inspector Nashby.
He put up the window sash and leaned out. The night, was wild and rather heavy, and a moist earthy odour came up from the saturation of the fallen leaves in the wet woodland. Away on the bank, up towards the head of the long pond, a fox barked several times. He liked the sound, he liked all the sounds of the lonely night, and when an owl floated out on noiseless pinions and hooted beneath the murky sky – he could just make out its shadowy shape – that too, fitted in with his mood. There was a moon, a feeble one, and concealed behind the prevailing mistiness, but in such light as it afforded he could pick out the boardings which held up the steps of the footpath leading up to the sluice. And on one of these the round stone stood out just discernible.
Just discernible! To his gaze – to his then mood – it seemed the one thing discernible – it and the thing that it held – the thing that it entombed. And the pointed roundness of that thing seemed to rise from the earth and gleam dull white in the lack-lustre of the night.
There it had lain for weeks, and for weeks, almost nightly, as now, he had gazed out upon the tomb of it – just as he was doing now – with a strange, uneasy, but wholly compelling fascination. Why had he left it there all this time? Any chance movement, on anybody’s part, might dislodge the stone. Why, his niece had slipped on it, the first day she had been at Heath Hover! The time had come to bury this thing – this accursed thing – far away from any possibility of it being unearthed – at any rate in his lifetime. After that it would not matter.
A stout bag, a stone or two, and the deepest centre of Plane Pond would custody it until the crack of doom. And yet – and yet – somehow he had never been able to bring himself to touch it again. Was it that some instinct moved him to decide that the best hiding place for anything – or anybody – was the least likely hiding place? If so, the middle of that path stairway assuredly was that.
The observation, of which he had spoken laughingly, contemptuously to his niece, was another factor in the situation. All shut in as the place was, Mervyn knew that he could never absolutely count upon a single moment when he could safely declare himself free from such observation. In the day time he certainly could not. In the hanging woods, on the road, anywhere, there was always the possibility of the presence of those who could see him while he could not see them.
But what about the dark – the night time?
Simple enough – doesn’t it seem? But there was that about the thing that he wanted – or might have wanted – to remove – that rendered the effecting of that process in the dark out of the question. Yet, all things considered, as he told himself here, to-night, not for the first time – why should he trouble his head about it at all? Why should he not let well alone?
A life of solitude and self-concentration breeds a – well, a not altogether satisfactory state of mind; which for present purposes may be taken to mean that this thing had got upon Mervyn’s mind. It was too close – too near to him altogether. He would fain have known it farther away. Furthermore, there were all sorts of possibilities shrouding around the fateful thing which were wholly outside of such considerations as Inspector Nashby, and other people – up to date. And since the advent of his niece, with her youth and brightness, and above all, affection – which he had seen growing day by day to irradiate his life – the necessity of getting rid entirely and completely of this fateful horror had been growing upon him more and more.
He listened. No sound came from the other side of the partition. The girl had gone to sleep then, comfortably, calmly, as he thought she would. Some impulse now drew him to effect what he had long been contemplating, to remove that sinister thing beyond all chance of human eye ever falling upon it again. Everything favoured this. The night was here, and the night was not too dark, while just dark enough. Another instinct told him that now was the time, now was his chance.
He pulled out a drawer – noiselessly, then another drawer. Yes – here was what he sought – a pair of thick gloves; but – it was an old pair, and the ends of some of the fingers were in holes. He looked at them dubiously. There was a great deal underlying the fact of those gloves being in holes, it seemed. Then he put them on.
He listened again – intently. Still no sound on the dead, soundless night. He fancied he could hear the girl’s soft, regular breathing, in tranquil slumber, through the partition. That was just what he wanted. He had told her he would be there, if she had occasion to call him; but now, what he wanted to effect would take some time, nearly half an hour perhaps. What if she were to awake suddenly, in an agony of fear, and to call for him, and he were away in the dark woodland path up towards the pond head! Well, there were chances in everything.
He listened again – then opened the door silently, and went down the stairs, keeping to the end of each step to minimise the chances of it creaking. As noiselessly as possible he opened the hall door, then listened again.
All was still. He could hear the ticking of the clock in the living-room, and to him it sounded loud. But for the rest nothing was audible. He went out, and the faint puff of the night air wafted round his face. All was still. Not even the ululating voice of an owl, in or over the dark woods, floated out to break it. Mervyn realised that his nerves were somewhat athrill as he placed his first step on the path stairway. And yet – and yet – at his age, and with his experience, why should they be? It was ridiculous.
There was the stone. One wrench, and what he wanted would be in his hand. He looked around, not quickly nor directly, but in a casual manner; taking fully a minute over the process. But as he turned to the stone again a kind of influence seemed to spring from it, almost assuming the tones of a voice. “You cannot. You dare not,” it seemed to say. Then came reaction.
“Oh, can’t I? Daren’t I?” he repeated scornfully to himself. “We’ll see.”
He bent over the stone now, at the same time drawing the finger ends of his holed gloves as far forward as possible, as though to cover as far as might be, the defects of those same holes. Then he stood upright again, and continued his stroll up towards the sluice. For ever so faint a sound had caught his ear.
“Good evenin’ Mr Mervyn, good evenin’ sur. Fine evenin’ to get the air, sure-ly.”
“Ah, good-evening, Pierce. Yes. A breath of air makes you sleep better in this February weather, eh?”
Sir John Tullibard’s head keeper had been looking up the pond. Now he turned, the glow of the bowl of his short clay pipe showing dull red in the gloom.
“That it do, sur. But I could sleep middlin’ without that,” answered the man, with a grin.
“I’d say something about a pint of ale, Pierce,” went on Mervyn, “but I don’t want to risk disturbing Miss Seward. She sleeps light, and – well, do you know, I’m afraid she’s getting a bit of a scare on about the old place. I only hope no one has been chattering over all the old silly yarns about it to her, eh?”
“That haven’t I, sur,” answered the man.
“Well, get the pint to-morrow instead of to-night,” said Mervyn, and something changed hands. “Still, I believe she must have overheard some one chattering; yet I’ve rubbed the fear of the Lord into old Joe about it.”
“Thank’ee sur. No, I don’t know as how anything of the sort could have been nabbled around. Folks have been mighty careful since the strange gent’s affair, sur. They won’t talk – not they. Think maybe they’ll be ‘pulled’ over that.”
“Do they. Well, long may they go on thinking so at that rate. But, do you know, I’m rather getting fed up with that business myself, and am always wishing to Heaven the poor chap had picked out some one else’s hospitable roof to go and end up under, or that I hadn’t heard, and had left him where he was in the first instance. It would have come to the same thing in the long run – or rather the very short run – and would have saved me no end of bother.”
“Why, yes, sur, it would have done that sure-ly. Thank’ee again, sur, and good-night.”
Mervyn had judged it time to go in. And as he walked back over the fateful stone again he found himself wondering whether the keeper’s presence there was really accidental after all. Was Nashby privily employing the whole countryside – or such of it as was trustworthy – to keep watch on him – tireless watch by night as well as by day? Further, had Pierce actually seen him stop and bend over the stone? That would finish things. Mervyn’s head and forehead were not quite dry as he noiselessly re-entered his front door, and that in spite of the now chilly atmosphere of the night.
Chapter Fourteen
The Coming of Helston Varne
“I’m thinking we can about decide to give up the Heath Hover business as a bad job,” said Inspector Nashby to his auxiliary, one night as they sat over whisky and water and pipes, in the inspector’s snug private quarters in Clancehurst.
“Are you?” said the other, in a matter of fact way.
“Why, yes. There’s nothing in it, absolutely no clue whatever. So far, no one has come forward to make even so much as an enquiry as to the identity of the dead man, and, if you remember, he looked foreign. Mervyn, too, said he talked with a slightly foreign accent. Now all that goes to show the thing couldn’t well have concerned Mervyn. Where’s the motive? That’s what I want to locate. I’m all for motive. Show motive, and it won’t be long before you get your case right home. That’s what I say – always have said.”
“Motive – eh?”
“Yes. Motive. Now what the deuce motive could Mervyn have had for doing away with this chap? First he fishes him out of the ice, in the middle of a dead cold snow-stormy night, at some risk to himself; then he takes him in and does for him in the most hospitable manner.”
“‘Does for him’ – Is that a joke, Nashby?”
“Well, no. But what I’m getting at is – supposing Mervyn had a motive for wanting this fellow in Kingdom Come, all he had to do was to leave him in the water. See? He needn’t have gone to the bother of hauling him out at all.”
“So Stewart seemed to think,” was the answer. Stewart had been the speaker’s predecessor in the private investigation of the case, but had come pretty much to the same conclusion that the local police official had, that it was hardly worth while going on with. This man had then appeared on the scene to take it up, rather to Nashby’s astonishment. To the latter he was an “outside” man, but he had come properly accredited. To tell the truth, he had come as rather a nuisance. Nashby wanted the discovery of whatever there was to discover to his own credit. He did not relish any one from outside coming in to benefit by his gleanings.
“I don’t want to say anything against Stewart,” went on the last speaker. “I expect he’s an excellent man, in his line. In fact, from what I hear, I’m sure he is – in his line.”
“Well, but – what the devil good are any one of us if it isn’t in his line?” said the inspector, feeling rather nettled, but pushing the cut glass decanter – an ingredient of an appreciative public testimonial Tantalus – towards the other as though to cover it. The said other might have smiled pityingly – he felt like it – but did not.
“That sounds conclusive,” he answered. “But – it’s just when you get off your ‘line’ that you make discoveries. Now you know I’m not talking through my hat. I’ve had experiences – not in this country – that most of you here never get. I don’t say it to brag, mind, but as a bald statement of fact.”
“I know that, Mr Varne,” said Nashby, deferentially. “Well, we don’t get ’em, and it’s not our fault if we don’t.”
“Of course it isn’t. It’s all a question of opportunity. There are at least ten men in the world who would stretch a point to get me put out of the way, and at least four more who are vowed to do it. Out of these at least one will succeed sooner or later. But in that case it will puzzle you, and all the Yard, to find the motive.”
“You don’t say so!” said the inspector, gazing at the speaker, with a new access of veneration. “As we’re alone I don’t mind admitting I’m only a plain man who’s worked his way up, but – sink me if I wouldn’t rather be out of the force than have so many desperate scoundrels sworn to do me down some time or other. Here, you see, we run some one to earth – he does his stretch and there’s an end of it. No malice borne – and all that.”
The man who had been named as Varne could not repress the smile this time, at what to him was the simple grooviness of this country policeman, as he defined him in his own mind. But he managed to make the smile a good-natured one.
“Ah, well, there are shaggier parts of the world than this, Nashby,” he said, mixing his glass again. “Here’s to the Heath Hover mystery.”
“And its unravelling,” answered Nashby, raising his own glass.
“I’ve been here – let’s see, how long have I been here? Three days – and a half, to be strictly accurate, and I’ve made one discovery, but only one.”
“What’s that?” said the inspector, brisking up.
“Well, it’s what I came in to tell you about. But – don’t let it go to the rest of the Force.”
“Not me,” was the emphatic reply.
“Well then, Mervyn is hiding something.”
“Hiding something? Not the thing that did the job? Why there was no trace of any injury about the man.”
“No doubt. But Mervyn is hiding something. When I find that something we shall have the key to the whole mystery.”
“Well, we didn’t search the whole house,” said Nashby. “It would take about a week to do that, and only three or four rooms were used at all. We searched that weird old family vault of a cellar though. There’s nothing loose there. It’s firm everywhere. He showed us over it himself.”
“Of course he did. He’d have been a fool if he hadn’t. But what he’s hiding isn’t in the house at all. It’s outside.”
“Outside?”
Helston Varne nodded.
“Has a smack of that Moat Farm affair,” said Nashby, “only there they had something definite to find – a body. Here we’ve nothing. But how did you get at that for a clue?”
“I’ve been down here three days – and a half, to be strictly accurate; there’s nothing like accuracy. Yet I’ve hit upon that much. The other day I thought I’d hit upon everything, but I hadn’t quite. It was just one of those exciting moments when you miss a thing just by a hairsbreadth, as it were. But it’s getting very warm – very warm indeed.”
Nashby filled a fresh pipe and said nothing. He was looking at the other enviously. Helston Varne’s reputation, among the secret few, was prodigious. If the scent was really getting very warm from his point of view, why then the mystery was as good as solved. But then, Nashby wanted the credit of solving it to be his own.
He wondered if Varne would manage things so that it might be. There was a good deal of the amateur about Helston Varne he had been given to understand, clever, marvellously clever as he had proved himself. At any rate, he was independent of material emolument, or at any rate seemed so. He seemed good-natured too. Perhaps whatever discovery he made he would contrive to let him – Nashby – get the benefit of some appreciable share in it.
The other smoked on in silence, the lamplight full on his strong, sun-browned, clear-cut face – a sun-brown that showed he had won his reputation in tougher climates than this – as he had hinted to the inspector. Moreover, there was a marked difference between the two men which defined class distinction at a glance.
“Anything more known about this young lady who’s stopping at Heath Hover, Nashby, beyond what you told me?” said Varne suddenly.
“Why, yes. I got at something fresh to-day, only to-day.” And the inspector began to bristle up with a sense, as it were, of renewed importance. “Yes, only to-day, and I was going to tell you, but I was waiting to hear what you had to say first, Mr Varne,” he added deferentially. “She’s Mervyn’s niece right enough, on her mother’s side. Her father suicided. Jumped off a train, after taking a couple of thousand pound accident insurance tickets, which he handed to her, with a joking remark, overheard unfortunately for him – for them – by a station inspector on the platform. Railway company repudiated liability, and there you are.”
“Clumsy – very,” pronounced the other, musingly. “Lord, what fools there are in the world, Nashby. Why, there were half-a-dozen ways of working that trick, perfectly successfully and carrying far more money with them too.”
“Then she went as a music teacher in a suburban villa, and got cleared out; I suppose she was too pretty, and the old woman got jealous.”
“I don’t know about that part of it, but she certainly is pretty,” said Varne. “She’s more. She’s lovely; and so absolutely uncommon looking. Well?”
“Then she went to stay with a girl friend – and got ill. Her uncle heard of her, and got her down to keep house for him. So there you are again. I heard the particulars only this morning. The Yard can find out everything, you see.”
Whether the other saw or not, he smiled, enigmatically. Perhaps he was wondering whether “The Yard” knew as much about what his then colleague had been telling him as he did himself.
“She wasn’t there at the time of the – happening,” he said. “No, not till – what? Nearly a month afterwards? And now she has been there over a fortnight. No, Nashby. Whatever the Yard can find out – or can’t,” – again that smile came forward, “you can rule Miss – er – Seward out of this business altogether.”
The inspector felt a trifle disappointed. He thought he had found a new, and complicating, and rather interesting element in the case. He was a little inclined to feel rebellious against Helston Varne’s opinion, but then he had a very considerable respect for Helston Varne.
“The tale about Heath Hover – it’s rather interesting,” went on the latter. “I might have said extraordinary, but then, I don’t know. I’ve met with just such extraordinary cases in the course of my experience, and have been the means of unravelling at least two of them. Now I’m going to try and see if this one will hang up at all on the same peg as our mystery, but – I don’t know, I don’t know.”
He had subsided into a meditative, almost dreamy tone, gazing into the fire, and emitting slow puffs of smoke. Nashby was eyeing him with a touch of increased veneration – likewise expectation. He was hoping to get those narratives before their evening had closed.
“Have another whisky,” he said, jumping up with alacrity. “I’m sorry, I’m sure. I ought to have seen you were empty.”
“Thanks. By the way, do you mind telling me again what is precisely the source of scare that hangs round Heath Hover?”
Inspector Nashby looked as if he rather did mind, for he seemed to hesitate.
“Oh, it’s only a lot of countryside superstition,” he said. “But no one who took the place has ever been able to stick it long. I don’t know either, that any one has ever
seen
anything. I think they only
hear
.”
The other nodded.
“Just so. Reminds me of one of the cases I was just now referring to, one I was instrumental in clearing up. That was a matter of sound. I think I shall really have to obtain entrance to Heath Hover. You say this man gets it rent free?”
“At a nominal rent, yes.”
“Well, why doesn’t the owner pull it down, and run up another house on another site?”
“Because – to put the matter nakedly – he’s afraid to.”
“Afraid to?”
“Yes. Afraid it would bring him bad luck – fatally bad luck. Old Sir John Tullibard’s a bit of a crank, and believes in that sort of thing. What’s more, he’s rather proud of owning a place with that kind of reputation.”
“And that door – what did you say it does?”
“Why, it opens of itself, when something is going to happen. It’s a curious thing that Mervyn should have sworn it did thi