Bertram Mitford (continued 3)

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 this very thing the night of this double barrelled event. But he did—and stuck to it.”

“Yes. It’s certainly curious. Mervyn doesn’t strike me as the sort of man who’d decline to believe his eyesight. He’s rather a hard-headed looking chap I should say, and I can’t get anything out of the surrounding yokels about it. I’ve expended—let me see—at least two half crowns in the neighbouring pubs during the three days—and a half—since I came, trying to make them talk. But they shut up like steel traps when you try and get them on the subject of Heath Hover.”

“So they would,” said Nashby, “and for the reason that they hold it to be dead unlucky even to talk about the yarns that hang around the place.”

“Oh,” and Varne smiled. He had noticed that very reluctance about Nashby himself.

“Do you believe there’s anything in all that?” he said, facing the other with a very direct look. “You, yourself?”

“Well, the fact is, Varne—and there’s no denying it—very curious things do happen in some places. Things that there’s no explaining or clearing up.”

“I agree with you, Nashby—as to the first. Very curious things do happen in some places—yes, very curious things. But as to there being no explaining them, or clearing them up—why I don’t go with you there. Now look here—I don’t say it to brag—but given time, and no interference, and it being made worth my while, I undertake to dis-ghost every haunted house in England.”

His keen face had lighted up. Nashby looked at him rather admiringly. The latter was an ordinary square-headed, broad-built policeman, who, unarmed, would have advanced to arrest an armed criminal without the smallest hesitation or wavering. But he was country born and bred, and country superstition is an ingrained thing.

“Well, Mr Varne, at that rate there’s a new line in front of you, and no mistake, and it ought to be a paying one,” he rejoined. “Why not begin on Heath Hover for one?”

“Because none of my conditions would apply to it. Time—that might—no interference, that certainly would not, for I should have to stay in the house for a while. And—making it worth it, would apply less still, since this Mervyn is only a tenant, doesn’t seem to care a damn about the haunting part, and is poor into the bargain you say?”

“Yes. He’s hasn’t got too much rhino. He was something in India and retired on a pension. He commuted about half of it to run an invention which he thought would make his fortune, and it didn’t.”

“Of course not. Inventions have been known to make fortunes, but practically never for the inventor. Now how could I get a look in at Heath Hover? It wouldn’t do as being concerned in this case, you know.”

“Oh Lord, no,” said the other, with some alacrity. “Why, it’s supposed to be dead and forgotten, and that’s just the stage at which we expect to be able to get something out of it—if we ever do at all, that is.”

“Hasn’t he got any old oak in the place? Panelling, doors—that sort of thing? Might work in on the connoisseur, scientific lay, don’t you see?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. Yes, now I think of it there’s rather a rum old fireplace. It’s in the room where the door is, too, and, now I think of it again, the door itself is rather a quaint affair, with a curious handle, and lock, and all that. You could ‘make up’ a bit. You know—look like a sort of scientific professor, and all that.”

“No. I don’t think I’ll make up. I’ll just chance it as I am. And I think, Nashby, that within the next day or two I shall have found out all about the inside of Heath Hover—as far as it concerns our case.”

Chapter Fifteen.

Overreachings.

It might have been somewhere in the middle of the morning, or a trifle earlier, that Mervyn, from his bedroom window descried a well-looking, comfortably-dressed stranger leisurely descending the stair-like path which led down from the sluice, and him he eyed with curiosity, for visitors were scarce.

He himself, being unseen, was able to take in every detail of the new arrival’s outward appearance with all the more ease and accuracy. He noted for instance that the other had a keen, clear, sunburnt face, and a light, firm, easy step, that showed the very pink of condition, that he was tall, and carried himself well, and then he fell to wondering who the devil he was and what he wanted. Some friend of Melian’s perhaps, possibly a former admirer—and somehow the idea of such a contingency seemed unpalatable. Here they were—the two of them—as jolly as possible together; he, at any rate, didn’t want any interloping nuisance from outside.

But from that his mind flew off to another conjecture—one less palatable still. He had had about enough of mysterious strangers, he told himself. What if this one had come on the same sort of errand, and with the thought he slipped his Browning pistol into a handy pocket, and made up his mind to keep the other man carefully in front of him. Likewise he took his time about admitting the said other man.

“I’m afraid I’m taking rather a liberty,” began the latter. “The fact is, Mr Mervyn, I’m particularly interested in old houses, old furniture, old panelling, and such like, and I have heard a good deal about Heath Hover in that line. Allow me to introduce myself,”—tendering a card.

“Yes? Come in, Mr—Helston Varne,” said the other, having glanced at it. “There are odds and ends of old sticks, but they are for the most part stowed away in unused rooms that would take about a week’s dusting to render fit for entrance. That’s a quaint old fireplace, if you notice.”

“I should think it was,” answered Varne, vividly interested. And then he expatiated in technical terms, which increasingly bored his host and made the latter wish him at the devil more heartily than ever. That was the worst of these collectors and antiquarians and people, they were always ramming their jargon down unappreciative throats. It was a pity Melian was not on hand, he began to think. She had an eye to all that sort of thing, and could answer with knowledge. And then he suddenly decided that his own boredom was the lesser evil. The stranger was a well-looking man—a fine looking man—and spoke with a pleasant voice and refined accent. Her uncle preferred Melian fancy free, at any rate for some time to come. Were she here, these two would be finding out tastes in common. Yes, on the whole, he was glad she had driven into Clancehurst with old Joe after breakfast. Up till then he had not been glad; in fact, hardly was she out of sight than he had regretted not having accompanied her. It was rare indeed that he failed to accompany her anywhere; but that morning he had felt somewhat out of sorts.

The stranger passed from one thing to another, admiring the panelling and discanting thereon. Then he said:

“I should like to take another view of the house from outside, Mr Mervyn. It’s marvellously picturesque as seen from the road, and now I’ve seen the interior I shall be able to read new beauties into it.”

“Certainly,” assented Mervyn, beginning to think the speaker was a little over enthusiastic, or a little cracked—only he didn’t look the last. “We’ll go up to the road. The path you came down is the shortest.”

They went up, Mervyn contriving that the other should lead. When they gained the sluice, Varne stood expatiating afresh, on gables and old chimney stacks. His host was more bored than ever, and was wishing to this and to that he would straightway take himself off as he had come. Would he?

“That’s a curious old door I noticed in the corner of your room, Mr Mervyn,” he said, when he had exhausted his instructive technicalities, which Mervyn had defined to himself as a damned boring prosy lecture. “If I might venture to trespass upon your kindness for a minute or two further I should so greatly like to examine it. The fact is,” he went on, “I’m quite a stranger in these parts, I found a homely little pub quite by the merest chance, The Woodcock, at Upper Gidding, homely but clean—you know it, I dare say—and I concluded to rest there for a day or two, and look around this lovely bit of country. I’ve got a bicycle with me, but I walked over here to-day.”

“Oh,” groaned Mervyn to himself. “That means I shall have to ask the fool to stay lunch, I suppose.”

“The fool” had turned, and was looking up the pond.

“Is this—excuse me, Mr Mervyn, it must be. Is this the place they were telling me about where an unknown man was bravely rescued from drowning under the ice in the middle of the night, by—by, I am sure, yourself?” And he turned to his host with a pleasant suggestion of admiration in his eyes.

“This is the place you mean, Mr—Varne. But I don’t know there’s anything particularly ‘brave’ in shoving out a ladder for the other fool to claw hold of.”

He spoke shortly—almost rudely. This he recognised in time.

“I’m afraid I’m rather abrupt, Mr Varne,” he explained. “If so, excuse me. The fact is, I’ve been more than ‘fed-up’ with that particular episode, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, I’m dead sick of the barest references to it. It was fairly unpleasant to me having the poor devil dying in my house, and all the nuisance of inquest and police investigations, and the rest of it—as you can imagine. Now the whole thing’s a thing of the past, and I want to forget all about it.”

“Quite so, Mr Mervyn, quite so. It is I who must apologise.”

“Oh, no need for that. If you’re ready I shall be happy to show you that door.”

“That will be very good of you.”

They went down the path again, Mervyn still contriving that his visitor should lead the way. Halfway down, the latter stopped short.

“Here is another point that hitherto has escaped me,” he said. “That foreground of chimney stack, thrown out by the background of tree-masses, leafless now, but even with a characteristic beauty at that—‘wine-coloured woods’ some one called it—I forget who—now there’s a picture for you, one that a Yeend King for instance, would be at his best with, and still more so when it’s a soaring wall of foliage.”

“No doubt,” agreed Mervyn. And then he felt glad that the stranger had his back turned full towards him, for even he could hardly restrain a sudden, if ever so slight change of colour caused by that which now set all his pulses humming. For the said stranger’s right foot as he stood, was planted, firmly planted, on a stone, a rounded stone half embedded in the earth, and that foot was obviously, though stealthily, trying whether that stone was easily movable, or not movable at all. And with this consciousness a sudden resolve had come upon Mervyn.

“Yes, it’s all you say,” he went on, in an equable tone. “Are you an artist, may I ask, as well as a connoisseur in antiquities?”

“Oh well, only as amateur. I have done a little with the brush—but, only as an amateur.”

They had re-entered the house, chatting lightly, easily. Then the visitor made a set at the door in the corner.

“Yes. That’s something of a bit of old work,” he pronounced admiringly. “Why there are connoisseurs who would give tall prices for that bit of wood, I can tell you, Mr Mervyn.”

“Then I wish to the devil ‘that bit of wood’ belonged to me,” returned Mervyn, with something of a sour grin. “They could have it and welcome. One door’s as good as another to me, as long as it shuts tight and keeps draughts out. I’d much rather have the ‘tall prices.’ Will you take a whisky and soda?”

“No thanks. I rarely touch spirits in the daytime. A ‘nightcap’ before turning in is a very good thing. But—you’re very kind.”

He was feeling the graining of the door with his finger nails, then he turned the handle. This he held admiringly.

“Why, what a splendid piece of antique. This handle is worth a lot. And, what’s on the other side?”

“Only a black hole of a cellar, where I don’t keep anything. It’s too damp, for one thing. Like to see it?”

“Immensely.”

“Right. I’ll get a bit of candle and the key.”

Having done both, Mervyn opened the door.

“Mind the steps,” he said, holding the candle over the head of the other and still contriving that he should be in advance. “There are ten of them.”

“All right. I can see—What the—?”

He broke off, turning to rush back. But it was too late. With the soft but quick closing of the door above and behind him, Helston Varne realised that he had made a fool of himself—as Nashby had not done; but this he did not know, for Nashby had not told him quite everything. Now he stood in dense, impenetrable pitchy blackness—and feeling very damp and chill at that.

“Well I’m damned?” he ejaculated to himself. “Well I am damned.” And sitting down on a cold stone step he began to think the matter out.

His gaoler the while, saying nothing, calmly withdrew the key from the lock and put it in his pocket. Then he went leisurely to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of anybody moving on the strip of lonely road above. He stood apparently unconcerned on the sluice, but in reality, listening intently. There were twitterings of small birds and the sweet singing of an early thrush, but of human footsteps or voices, or of wheels, there was no sound. Then he descended, equally leisurely. On one of the earth steps he paused; then, drawing out his handkerchief, blew his nose. The handkerchief dropped, by accident. He stooped to pick it up; was equally leisurely over the process too. Finally, when he did pick it up, he stood for a moment, stamping as though in the most natural way in the world to warm his feet—or one foot—upon a stone. Then he returned to the house, but he had forgotten to return his handkerchief to his pocket. He was carrying it—in a somewhat absent minded manner—in his hand. Incidentally, he was thinking that it was not an unmixed evil that old Judy should be suffering from a return of her “roomatics” that day, and should have remained “to whoäm.” There was no one at Heath Hover but himself—and his prisoner.

The latter, meanwhile, was beginning to experience what the expression “outer darkness” meant, for assuredly he was now in it. No glimmer of light—not the very faintest, was there to relieve it. Black as impenetrable pitch. He waited till his eyesight should have been accustomed to the change to see if any stray dim thread came in from anywhere; a grating, a ventilator, what not? But none came. The door itself might have been cemented into the wall for any thread of light that came from it. But Varne felt no alarm. He was unarmed, but on that account felt no misgiving; “What was the game?” was the thought that held possession of his mind.

He struck a wax vesta and looked around. He was about halfway down the flight of stone steps. The walls of the vault glistened with slime and damp in the flickering light. Nashby had described the place exactly. He struck another. Yes. It was all solid, massive masonry—hard, unyielding. But here he was—at about twelve midday—entombed in a dungeon of blackest night. He began to feel interested. But, meanwhile, it was cold—devilish cold.

Then, being there, he thought he might as well take a look round this—cellar, Mervyn had called it—on his own, and to this end he cautiously descended to the bottom of the stone stairs. But of wax vestas he had only a limited supply, and it behoved him to be careful with them. Still he managed to obtain a good reconnaissance of the floor and walls, enough to bear out Nashby’s description of the place.

He returned up the steps. The door, he noticed, was quite smooth on this side, with no handle, and—no key hole; so that any one shut in, as he was, might shout or call till the crack of doom. It fitted its aperture like a slab.

For the first time Varne began to feel a little uneasy. He was also feeling more than a little cold. The place had almost the temperature of an ice-vault. What if Mervyn had purposely shut him in and proposed to leave him here until cold and starvation had done their work? After all, he could pretend he had done the thing for a practical joke, and it would be difficult to prove the contrary. And the worst of it was he—Varne—had given nobody the slightest idea as to where he intended going. Even Nashby would not have occasion to miss him—not for some days at any rate. But it certainly was getting most confoundedly cold.

He thought he would try the effect of knocking, and to this end got out the hardest thing about him, a substantial pocket knife to wit. Surely the rat-tat-tat would carry through the door. He also called out several times. But—no answer.

He began to feel resentful—grim. Had he carried a pistol he would have felt himself justified in blowing the lock of the door away—if he could locate it, that is. But he had not. Really, this was past a joke. And—the cold!

A very unpleasant idea now struck Varne. What if this vault really were a secret refrigerating chamber, in which, for purposes of his own, his “host” now intended to reduce him to frozen meat? He had taken pretty accurate stock of Mervyn during their brief intercourse, and had formed the conclusion that he was a man who would be quite capable of such a thing, given an adequate motive. It was a rotten way of ending a startlingly successful, though not much blazoned career, decided Helston Varne, sitting there in the inky blackness, his teeth now chattering like the proverbial castanets. But he almost told himself that he deserved it for being such a poisonous fool as to allow himself to be entrapped in so transparently callow a fashion.

The shadowless ink of the atmosphere weighed him down more and more, and strong man as he was, he felt that it was affecting his nerve. And the cold! His theory of the refrigerating chamber had now become a fixed idea. Oh, for light—for warmth! He must have been hours in that dreadful vault.

He would make another trial. With the handle of the pocket knife he hammered again and again upon the door with all his might. Also he shouted, but his ordinarily strong voice sounded in his now appalled ears a mere quavering rumble. A moment’s pause to listen, and—the door opened.

Mervyn was standing looking at him with a faintly enquiring, half-amused expression on his face, Helston Varne almost staggered into the blessed light of day.

Chapter Sixteen.

Another Light.

The two men stood looking at each other, and their expressions of countenance would have furnished a study.

“Well, Mr Varne?” began Mervyn: “I hope you’ve effected a thoroughly exhaustive and satisfactory investigation.”

“Fairly, thanks,” said the other, pretending to enter into the humour of the thing, while in reality feeling grim and resentful. “But it’s rather cold in there, you know.”

“Yes, I do know. I was admiring your scientific enthusiasm in the cause of ‘old stones,’ as my niece calls them, that induced you to stick it all that time.”

“Induced me? Why I couldn’t get out,” was the short reply.

“No. You can’t open that door from the inside. It’d be the most deadly place to get shut up in if no one knew you were there. Rather.”

There seemed a latent meaning in the words, at least, so Helston Varne found himself reading them.

“Well, you’d better have a whisky and soda now, or at any rate a copious mouthful of three star—that’ll warm you up more,” went on Mervyn in the most matter of fact way, and diving into a sideboard he produced both. This time Varne did not decline. The revivifying warmth, the blessed light of day, were fast counteracting his resentment. Still, not altogether, for he said in a half amazed, half joking manner:

“I suppose I must congratulate you on carrying out a practical joke thoroughly when you do undertake one, Mr Mervyn. But at the same time it might prove dangerous with some people. According to British law turning a key on an independent fellow-subject is a ground for action for false imprisonment.”

“Law—did you say?” returned Mervyn, in a gouty, gusty sort of way. “Why, I was administering law what time you were being smacked in the nursery—or ought to have been.”

This was a pretty nasty one for Helston Varne, somewhat famed clearer-up of mysteries. But he took it equably. The other eyed him not in the least kindly.

“Who turned any key on you?” he said abruptly.

“Well, I was locked in there, wasn’t I?”

“Not by me—and certainly no one has been in here since,” answered Mervyn. “Just try that door handle, will you?”

“I don’t know that I will,” laughed the other, again becoming alive to the importance of keeping up his character of artistic—and unprofessional stranger. “I think I’ve had about enough of it. There’s something uncanny about it. I’d better keep away from it.”

“All right then. Look here,” Mervyn went to the door and turned the handle—there was no key in the lock—then opened it slightly.

“That’s all right, Mr Mervyn,” answered the other, with a jolly laugh. “I wasn’t serious in what I said. Besides, I can take a joke as well as anybody. Don’t you worry about that.”

“I thought it only the thing to leave you undisturbed while you made your investigations,” rejoined Mervyn, “but seem to have left you too long. And now, if you’re ready for lunch—so am I. It’s later than usual, but there’s no point in waiting any longer.”

Varne glanced at the clock opposite. It was nearly two. When he had entered his recent prison it was just half past twelve. He had spent an hour and a half nearly, down there in the cold and darkness. Heavens! and it seemed eight times that period. His resentment partially revived with the recollection, and he was about to refuse, when a sound struck upon his ears, the sweet, clear, full voice of a girl. That decided him.

“Well, thanks, Mr Mervyn, I think I am too, after my morning’s experiences,” and he laughed again.

“We’re late, Joe. I told you we should be,” the voice was saying. “You’d much better have let me drive. Now bring in the things—you can put up the trap afterwards.”

The visitor, listening, thought he had never heard quite such a voice. And then its owner appeared.

She came into the room mapped in large warm furs. The day, though bright, carried a sharp tinge in the wind, and had imparted a delightful pink glow to her cheeks, and the blue eyes were dancing. The visitor did not miss the effect of the straight firm walk, the erect carriage of the golden head, crowned with an exceedingly becoming toque.

“Just fancy, Uncle Seward,” she began—and then stopped short as she became alive to the presence of a stranger. Her uncle introduced them. No stiff or conventional bow, but out went a long, gloved hand, in frank, easy fashion, and the straight glance of the blue eyes met those of the other, in which surprise and admiration would hardly be dissembled. Helston Varne remembered his pronouncement upon her when talking with Nashby. “She’s lovely, and so uncommon looking.” Now it came home to him, that if possible, he had even then hardly done her justice. A new light seemed likely to lead away from the Heath Hover mystery.

“I suppose you’ve been into Clancehurst, Miss Seward,” he said. “Do you find the shops there fairly satisfactory?”

“Oh yes—on the whole. It’s a jolly little place and has a ripping old church.”

“‘Old stones,’” thought the guest to himself, with a smile. Then aloud, “I hear you’re a great antiquarian, Miss Seward.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’m awfully keen on old architecture, and old art in general.”

“You’ve got a kindred spirit then, dear,” said Mervyn. “Mr Varne has come over to look at some of our antiquities. He went into ecstasies over the door,” with a nod behind him in that direction, and a very humorous look crinkling round the corners of his eyes.

“Did you?” turning to the stranger, in her bright, brisk, natural manner. “Yes, it’s awfully quaint—but—there’s a something about it. Did you go into the old cellar? You did?” as she read the affirmative on the faces of both men. “Well, didn’t it give you the cold shivers? I can tell you it did me, the two or three times I’ve been into it. There must be a spook hidden away down there, but thank goodness that door is thick enough and heavy enough to keep it there.”

“But I thought spooks were traditionally independent of such trifles as bolts and bars, Miss Seward,” said Varne with an amused smile.

“Of course. It’s the moral effect, I suppose, for it’s difficult to imagine anything being able to get through such a solid mass of oak as that. But it’s a splendid old door.”

She had shed her outer furs and had sat down to table. Helston Varne was watching her keenly, though of course not seeming to do so. Whatever mystery Mervyn was mixed up in, this girl was entirely outside it, even as he had imparted to Nashby, and more than ever now was that opinion confirmed. And with that sop to professionalism he dismissed the same, and fell to giving himself up to studying the rare, fascinating personality, thus unexpectedly unfolded before him. But he turned the conversation on to what he saw was a very congenial topic with her, and soon she got launching Ruskin at him; and, glowing with her subject, talked not a bit as though she had never known of his existence half an hour ago. Mervyn, the while, his sense of humour thoroughly tickled—although somewhat grimly so—was observing the pair, with an inward twinge of dissatisfaction, which, as his said sense of humour entirely enabled him to realise, was essentially selfish. For his guest was an exceptionally good-looking man, who talked with knowledge, and well, moreover; and had—what for want of a better definition he defined as—a way about him. And thinking thus, the side of the other’s visit which had been with him all the morning and up till now, seemed to slide into a back seat. What had ousted it was the consciousness of how Melian seemed to be “cottoning” to the engaging stranger.

Then in the glow of a discussion which she was thoroughly enjoying, she got up suddenly to move some of the things.

“The old woman who usually looks after us is shamming again, Mr Varne. At least, she isn’t really shamming, but I always tease her by telling her she is,” Melian explained. “So I’m afraid it’s a case of taking things as they are.”

Helston Varne at once scented a chance of further insight. Now he could get, at first hand, what was rumoured at second—the reason why Mervyn never kept indoor servants. But immediately he felt ashamed of the thought. Professionalism under these circumstances could go hang; under them, if he couldn’t sink the “shop,” when could he? In fact, if it came to that he would.

Just then, taking advantage of the door being open, the little black kitten made its way in and jumped up on Melian’s lap as she sat down again.

“No, no, pooge-pooge, not on the table,” she said decisively, restraining a move on the part of the little thing to jump up there. “Uncle Seward has got you into bad ways—in fact, thoroughly spoiled you—and now you’ll have to get out of them.”

“What a jolly little fluffy ball,” said Helston Varne, thinking what a picture was here before him, these two graceful creatures, the human and the animal, every movement on the part of either one that of perfect prettiness and grace.

“Do you like them, then?” Melian asked, flashing her bright glance at him.

“Yes, if only they would stay small.”

“I’m so glad. But I think this one will, there are kinds, you know, that never grow large, and I like them best that way myself.” And then she launched forth into another favourite topic, and here again Varne met her on her own ground, and with knowledge. And here again Mervyn was observant, and had misgivings.

Now all of a sudden something he had been puzzling over took light, and it was caused by a casual remark on the part of this somewhat strangely formed acquaintance.

“Have you been in India?” he interrupted, abruptly.

“Yes, a little.”

“Where?”

“In the North West Provinces, and the Northern border.”

“Strange how things come back,” went on Mervyn. “Now your name is a bit uncommon, and I’ve been racking my brain box over it. Do you happen to be related to Varne Coates, who was Commissioner at Baghnagar?”

“Yes. He’s rather a near cousin of mine.”

“Look at that now. He used to be one of my greatest friends. Small world this after all.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Well, Mr Mervyn, that only adds to the pleasure of making your acquaintance—in such an accidental manner.”

For the life of him Mervyn could not restrain the ghost of a queer smile, for he knew there was nothing at all accidental about the matter, and the worst of it was the other knew that he knew it. As for that other he greatly rejoiced over this discovery, for he owned to himself that Melian Seward’s personality was almost unique in his experience; and, in short, and done into plain English, he wanted to see her again. As regarded the matter to clear up which he had come there, why it could go hang, or if he went on with it at all it would be simply and solely for his own satisfaction and in nowise to help Nashby or any of his kind. As to which he was in nowise bound—for as we have said before, he had come there in the light of an “outside” man, and was responsible to nobody.

And then, in the light of this newly discovered mutual acquaintance, a new sense of good fellowship, of cordiality seemed to spring up between the two men—likewise the conversation was now transferred to them. Mervyn warmed up with old recollections of places and people; most of the former and some of the latter of which were known to his guest, and Melian perforce had to do listener, which she did not in the least mind. It was not until the fading of the afternoon light that Varne suddenly awoke to the fact that in the capacity of unknown stranger he might have been there quite long enough.

“Oh no. Make your mind easy of that head,” Mervyn answered, as he said as much. “Look in again if you’re prolonging your stay. Have another ‘peg’ before you start. No? A weed then?”

Helston Varne lighted a cigar, and they went with him as far as the sluice. Mervyn, walking behind, did not fail to observe that this time no notice was taken of that one stone. The other did not even step on it. This, to his mind, suggested two solutions. Either his guest was off the scent, or, in the capacity of a new friend he did not intend to follow up his investigations. Whichever solution it was that held good it was equally satisfactory to Mervyn.

“Well, what do you think of that for a specimen?” he said, as Melian and he turned back to the house.

“He’s rather a good sort, and miles out of the ordinary,” answered the girl. “He can talk.”

“Yes. You’ve met your match in that accomplishment, certainly.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean in that way. I mean he can talk sense. Talk about things, and all that, and it’s more than can be said for most people one runs against. I wonder if he’ll come over again.”

“I don’t.”

The dry meaning of the tone, the quizzical look, earned for the speaker a playful pinch on the arm.

“Don’t be prophetic, Uncle Seward, especially with regard to a perfect stranger.”

“Perfect—eh? H’m—ha! Still I think we haven’t seen the last of—Perfection. Good name that. Meanwhile, I shall have to find out something about him over and above his relationship with my old pal Varne Coates, before asking his intentions.”

This earned for the speaker another pinch—a harder one this time, and the chaff and raillery flowed on. And John Seward Mervyn was conscious of feeling very happy, very contented. This element of youthfulness and bright spirits was just that in which his solitary life had been lacking. Then it had been supplied; and again and again, every hour of late he had blessed the chance which had supplied it.

But with this complacent consciousness, there was this evening ever so slight a misgiving, and—while he candidly owned to himself his motive was a selfish one—he hoped their newly found acquaintance would, for any reason or none, come no more.

Chapter Seventeen.

Of some Talk on a Road.

The year had dawned more and more into daylight if not correspondingly into warmth, and for Melian life had become more of a settled thing at Heath Hover. So far she was content, but a dreadful suspicion was coming upon her that she might not be always content. She had a sort of instinctive longing for work again, and that for its own sake—to be doing. And in this quiet, rather lonely life, there was no scope for such.

She had no friends of her own age or sex. Two or three of both had called, on learning of her presence at Heath Hover, but with the best intentions there was nothing about them to appeal to the girl from any point of view. They were just well-meaning, commonplace people of the most ordinary and commonplace type.

To a certain extent—a large extent—her uncle made up for the want of such companionship. He was a companionable man, given intelligent and sympathetic company, and this he found to the full in her. There was hardly a subject under the sun that they did not thresh out together, and grim old haunted Heath Hover seemed to shake its dry bones into new life with the constant stream of talk and laughter which now echoed from its walls.

“Why, you’ve put back the clock a quarter of a century for me, dear,” he declared. “I feel that much younger. Isn’t that something for you to have done?”

And she had agreed, wholesouledly; and yet, there would obtrude that thought, of late, that she was doing nothing with her life.

By this time her uncle had come to regard her with a sort of idolatry. His capacity for affection had become utterly atrophied for want of an object upon which to expend any of it. Such few acquaintances or relatives as he had he cared nothing about. If he had been well off they would have discovered fast enough that they cared about him, he used to tell himself cynically; and who shall say untruly. He had become self-centred, even morose at times—just content to groove on through life to the end; thankful—if he ever thought of being thankful for anything at all—that there was nobody to worry him. He had allowed himself to be worried at times in his life, and looked back to such times with a mental shudder, which was when the spirit of thankfulness was evolved.

But now here was such an object, and it had promptly captured the whole of his capacity for affection and was expanding it every day. There was everything in it that appealed—the sweet, refined beauty of the child, the sunny lightheadedness, the naïve untrammelled appreciation of all that appealed to him—the sheer youthful enjoyment of life—well, he had not lived in vain. And he made an idol of her more and more every day.

So they rambled together, drove long drives together, talked together; indeed, not a wish of hers was left ungratified where it lay within his power to gratify it, and she, knowing the extent of such power, never dreamed of looking beyond it. And the curious part it of was that he, watching her with furtive and solicitous jealousy, found that she was by no means tiring of this mode of life.

Once or twice he had suggested she should ask some girl friend to come and pay her a visit, as a relief from one incessant old fogey, but she had not been in the least responsive. There was no such “relief” required, she had answered spontaneously. She was quite happy as they were. She would like to get Violet Clinock, when the latter could come, but that would not be yet. Meanwhile she was quite jolly as they were.

To Mervyn this reply came with an undashed feeling of relief. Stay—not altogether undashed perhaps, for he was old enough to know that a year or two at the outside in the ordinary course of things would be all that should remain to him of this idyllic time. Why, only to look at the child! Were all the best years of her life to be wasted, mewed up in a lonely old country corner! And with this idea came one that had just hooked itself, not altogether pleasantly, on to his mind—and it spelt Helston Varne.

For the latter had availed himself of his invitation to “come again.” He had “come again,” only to the extent of three times, but Mervyn had not been slow to mark a certain very complete sympathy, as of ideas in common, that had sprung up between him and Melian, and that from the very first. They talked animatedly on every subject, several outside his own sphere of knowledge, and in short, seemed thoroughly to have taken to each other. And Helston Varne was a remarkably fine looking man.

Mervyn had set afoot enquiries with regard to Helston Varne, and in the result had elicited that whatever line the latter was pursuing at the present moment—and he very much more than supposed the nature of that line—at any rate he was not dependent upon its results in any way. He was, in fact, well off—almost wealthy. The inducement to take it up at all was probably the sheer sporting instinct. So far, this conclusion was, from a certain point of view, satisfactory. And Helston Varne was a near relation of his old and intimate friend, Varne Coates of Baghnagar.

Personally, he liked the man. John Seward Mervyn was a shrewd, keen judge of character, and studying this one closely, his verdict was “quite all right.” He noted too with a modicum of dry amusement that the “investigation” element was entirely absent during his subsequent visits. Incidentally, what Inspector Nashby thought of it was quite another matter, as to which Mervyn did not give two thoughts. And after those three visits, Helston Varne had left the neighbourhood, now some three weeks ago.

This afternoon, Melian was walking up the hilly road in the direction of that which, crossing it at right angles, led to the hamlet of Lower Gidding. There was a sharp north easterly wind blowing, which brought the colour to her cheeks, tingeing them with the glow of health, and lending an unusually clear brightness to the blue eyes. She revelled in the exercise, walking straight from the hips with a firm elastic step. On her left was a sombre oak-wood, its gnarled leafless boughs showing a hundred fantastic—almost threatening shapes in its twilight depths. On the right a high hedge showed through its bare leaflessness and gaps here and there, a wide sweep of view over the valley beneath. Even that far inland a sea mist was creeping up from beyond the distant downs, partially blotting the fast setting sun into a blood red disc. A cottage with its low eaves and picturesque chimney stacks stood out against the murk. Then the sudden loud ting of a bicycle bell made her look up with something of a start, for she was deep in her own thoughts.

The rider was coming down the hill on the free wheel. At sight of her he clapped the brakes on sharp; so sharp, as well nigh to earn catastrophe—for himself. In a moment he was standing in the road.

“Miss Seward! Why this is an unexpected and delightful meeting, I was on my way to look up your uncle.”

“Were you? He’ll be glad. Well, we can walk back together, Mr Varne—unless, of course, you’d sooner ride,” she added, mischievously.

“Why of course I would,” he answered, in the same vein.

“Where are you from now. The usual Woodcock, Lower Gidding?”

“No. The Queen’s Head, Clancehurst, this time. You know how we used to wrangle over the shortest way out. Well, I’m still inclined to think there isn’t a hundred yards to choose between them. The one you always use seems the straightest.”

“All serene, I still stick to my opinion. The Cholgate way is the shortest,” she answered, merrily mischievous.

“Then the Cholgate way is the shortest, and there’s no more to be said,” answered Varne in the same spirit, and as he looked down into the dancing blue eyes, he came to the conclusion that he was looking upon the sweetest, most entrancing vision of girl loveliness he had ever looked upon in his life.

“Well, and what have you been doing with yourself all this time?” she said as they walked down the steep, rather stony hill.

“H’m! Various things,” he answered, unconsciously shading off his lightness of tone a little, as the ugliness of a particularly grim affair which he had been engaged upon investigating, obtruded unpleasantly at such a moment.

She sent a quick look at him, and did not pursue the subject.

“Look. There’s old Broceliande—still in the same place.”

This was a reference to the dark oak-wood, now on their right as they retraced their way. Melian was a great reader of Mallory, and during one of Helston Varne’s previous visits she had taken him for a walk through this wood, pointing out its imaginary resemblances to that legendary forest.

“Yes. It wouldn’t have moved in between, and the British Isles don’t come within the zone of seismic disturbance,” he answered. “And you haven’t discovered the ghost of old Merlin plodding about it yet?”

“No. I’ve tried to—in the dusk of a dismal evening. But that old crowd seem to have lived in sunshine and moonlight for the most part. What on earth they did with their armour and silken pavilions when it rained is a puzzler.”

Helston laughed. “Oh, one got rusty and the other draggle-tailed, I suppose,” he said. “Now, if I had made that remark you’d have been down on me like a hammer as a Goth and a Vandal, and a profane person who’d sold his birthright—for a plate of porridge, incidentally.” Then, more seriously, “And how have you been getting on?”

“Fine. This country is too perfect for anything. I just revel in it.” But then, that misgiving which had been tugging at her mind on the way out somehow recurred, and the bright, animated, speaking face was bound to show something of it. Equally, her then companion was bound to see it, and he—even he—of course was bound to put it down to the wrong cause. Had there been any further development in the mystery—in its latest form—which overhung Heath Hover, he thought? However, he answered:

“That’s right. Why you are looking twice the girl you were the first time I saw you. You have put on colour, and look in altogether splendid form.”

“Thanks. Glad to hear I’ve improved,” she answered, with a laugh. “That’s always a satisfactory item of knowledge.” Then she subsided into silence. She was thinking of two or three strange things which had happened since she saw him last—occurrences which had frightened her, utterly intangible, even more so than on that night when she had rushed downstairs in a state of scare to her uncle. But with an effort she had refrained from saying anything to the latter about them. He would only laugh at the whole thing as he had done before and suggest bats or rats, or something of the kind as an explanation. But this man somehow she felt a longing to confide in. There was something about him that seemed to render him in her eyes a very tower of strength and reliability. Had she known what his real line was she would not have hesitated—let alone could she have heard his light, easy, confident boast, when talking with Nashby: “Given time, and make it worth my while, and I’d undertake to dis-ghost every haunted house in England.”

The twilight was merging into darkness now. From the sombre oak-wood with its gnarled branches which had led her to christen it Broceliande, came the crow of a belated pheasant fluttering up to roost, and the surface of Plane Pond, coming into view beneath, stared white, a long, slit-shaped eye. More than ever she felt moved to confide in him. And as if to strengthen her towards this course he suddenly said:

“Something is troubling you. I wouldn’t obtude for the world, but—you have something on your mind.”

“Why do you—why should you think that?” And the half-startled look in the wide-opened eyes, meeting his in their straight glance, confirmed him in his theory.

“Never mind,” he replied, and she was quick to notice the world of sympathetic reassurance in his tone. “I won’t press you for confidence. But remember—if at any time you feel like making it—and I don’t say it to brag, but those who know me would be able to tell you that you might make it to plenty of people who could be of less use to you. Well, if at any time you should want a friend, no matter what the nature of the worry is, you won’t hesitate to apply to me. Will you promise me that much?”

She darted a quick look up at him in the gloaming. More than ever did he seem as a very tower of strength. And then the sheer contrast seemed to suggest bathos. How absurd her shadowy imaginative fears must appear to a man of this stamp. Why, he would smile them down as a mere girlish scare of bogydom. Of course. And yet—why not chance it?

“Well? Won’t you promise that little?”

“Yes. I promise. But—”

She was on the point of keeping that promise then and there, of telling him all, the haunting fear that hung over her in the lonely old house down yonder, at times. At times—not always—that was where the strange part of it came in; and, stranger still, not only during the hours of darkness. Sometimes in broad daylight, when she was alone, would come the chill, shuddering consciousness that there was another Presence beside her, even the stealthy sound of steps, the whisper of voices. But it would come so sporadically, with long intervals between, and otherwise life was so good, that such a strange manifestation did not avail to effect a lasting impression.

“But what?” he said.

She hesitated a moment, then the opportunity was gone. There was a clink of stones on the roadway just in front and below, then a cough, followed by another.

“Hallo, Uncle Seward!” cried the girl, as a figure loomed in sight in the fast deepening gloom. “You oughtn’t to have come out at the very dampest part of the whole day.”

“Oh don’t blow me up, child,” chuckled Mervyn, “I came to meet you. Why—who’s this? Varne, by George. You’re quite a stranger, Varne. Come along down and take pot-luck. Eh?”

“Delighted, I’m sure. I nearly collided with Miss Seward free wheeling down that abominably stony hill. I was coming over to look you up but I’ve got to catch the last train up from Clancehurst. Got something important to attend to.”

Mervyn emitted a half chuckle and turned it off into a cough. What affair was Varne on to now, he wondered? At any rate he hoped it would turn out more satisfactory than the one which had brought him down here, his own to wit.

“Oh well, Business is—biz,” he answered, “only I can’t send you over in the trap because there’s no one to drive. But there’ll be a moon. What if you get punctured, though? Eh?”

“Can’t. I’ve got unpuncturable tyres. I never take risks.”

“Quite right. Quite right. Well, here we are, I’d got a touch of sciatica, and a bit of a choke thrown in,” he went on, “and have been sticking in all day on the strength of it.”

“And then coming out at the coldest, dampest end of it,” supplied Melian severely.

Every temptation to the contrary the guest was as good as his word, and it needed some strength of mind to tear himself away, comparatively early, from that cosy lighted room with its great fire roaring up the width of the wide chimney—more so still, indeed, from the entrancing vision of that bright presence with the mass of gold-crowned hair gleaming in the lamplight. But Helston Varne was nothing if not strong.

Yet as he wheeled along under a clear moon, heading for Clancehurst, now darting through a gap of road between the blackness of sombre woods, now skimming over high, open heath, with the dimming vista of wide country spreading out beneath and beyond—of a truth he was thinking a great deal more of that same bright presence than of the important matter before him which he was hurrying back to unravel, and whereon hung tragedy. But he promised himself that it would not be long before he revisited Heath Hover.

Wherein becomes manifest the strange discrepancy that the astute never failing unraveller of mysteries, known as Helston Varne, forgot to take count of the greatest mystery of all—that of the Future.

Chapter Eighteen.

Shock—All Round.

The master of Heath Hover had just drawn up the blind of his bedroom window, and was gazing out upon a morning of unrivalled and cloudless beauty, for the year had grown apace, and now the tender green of the spring leafage gladdened the eye in every direction. Through the open window floated the scents of spring—late spring—likewise its sounds, the hum of winged insects, the cry of coots from up yonder on the pond, the carolling of innumerable thrushes and the ever welcome call of the cuckoo. It was a morning on which, all things being even, it was good to be alive.

Came also to his ears another sound, sweeter than even the sweet sounds of spring—the sound of girl voices, the high, clear notes of Melian’s voice rising above that of Violet Clinock, who had arrived the evening before on a few days’ visit. Nearer and nearer drew the voices, and then their owners came in sight, and began leisurely to descend the path leading from the sluice. A delightful picture they made, in their youth and freshness—thought the onlooker, whom as yet they had not seen.

They had paused about halfway down, and Melian was descanting volubly on some favourite subject—and then the said onlooker’s face went white and clammy, and he thought he could hardly keep his footing, for something bright and shining had caught his glance, and it was in Melian’s hand.

The whole outlook seemed to sway and rock before Mervyn’s eyes. Was it real or was he dreaming? This dreadful thing, this hateful thing, held carelessly in the long white fingers! Why, he would about as soon have found her caressing a hooded snake. What should he do, what should he say—and would she unhesitatingly obey him? In the horror of the moment even the power of speech seemed to fail him. But some sort of an exclamation must have escaped him, for now they looked up.

“Drop—that—thing—instantly,” he managed to jerk out, and his voice seemed far away and raucous. “Obey me—without—question, Melian.”

If ever two startled girls stood staring, it was these two in the middle of the sluice path. The ghastliness of the face up there at the window, the fearful, unnatural voice. That her uncle had suddenly gone mad was the solution which first presented itself to Melian’s perplexed mind. But she obeyed. An immense sigh of relief escaped the onlooker.

“Don’t move,” he said, “until I come down.”

His hands trembled so that he could hardly tie the tasselled cord which girded his dressing gown, and he almost stumbled down the stairs in his haste to arrive. Even in that flash of time, he was thinking—What if they should take advantage of his momentary disappearance from sight to pick up that thing again? But he must pull himself together, and even as he emerged he felt partially relieved to notice that they were standing just as he had seen them last, but staring at him in round-eyed amazement.

“Why, Uncle Seward, whatever is it? You look as if you had seen all the ghosts in the world.”

“Here, child, show me your hands—quick!”

Still marvelling, she extended them. He seized them in his, and subjected them to a long, close scrutiny, first with the palms upward, then all over. The colour returned to his ghastly face as he emitted a long deep sigh of relief.

“Yours now, Miss Clinock.”

Violet extended hers, feeling in secret rather frightened. What strange mystery was this which had been effective so violently to upset her ordinarily so equable and self-contained host—this was not her first visit to Heath Hover. She could not but notice, while the same process was repeated, that it seemed to be slightly less prolonged in her case than in that of Melian.

“What does it mean, Mr Mervyn?” she asked.

“Any one would think that that rum little shining thing would bite,” said Melian, mischievously.

The two pairs of bright eyes, the dark and the blue, brimming with mischief—eke curiosity—fixed upon his face, served to brace Mervyn. He was himself again, or very nearly. And then to him came the thought as to how he should account for his agitation. It had been so palpably real that he was at his wits’ end to think how he should explain it away; and it must be explained away. Women were gifted with such singularly clear-sighted instinct—and, worse still, perhaps—with such a fund of curiosity. A forestalment of this promptly came out.

“But—what is the thing, Uncle Seward?” went on Melian.

He looked at her for a moment, wondering what answer to make.

“Perhaps I was upset about nothing,” he said, regaining his equability with an effort. “The fact is it brought back to my mind a very curious and uncanny experience—not in this country, but I’ve been among strange scenes and people in other parts of the world, you know. There’s a great deal in association of ideas, and there are strange happenings all the world over, as you two children may—or may not—find out by the time you get to my time of life. Where did you find—that—by the way?—No—leave it where it is.”

This last quickly, as Melian stooped over the thing as though to pick it up again.

“Why, just where the path begins to come down from the road,” she answered, wondering.

“On your way back?”

The question came out abrupt, staccato. Some of the first agitation seemed to show itself again. And then, with the affirmative answer, both girls noticed that he looked greatly relieved.

“Well, I suppose you’re both ready for breakfast,” he went on in quite a normal tone. “I’m not, but you’re not obliged to wait for me. That would be too great a tax on your ravening young appetites, wouldn’t it? Eh, Miss Clinock?”

Violet, thus appealed to, laughingly disclaimed impatience on that head, but Melian thoroughly and emphatically disagreed with her.

“Well, you’d better go and hurry old Judy up,” said Mervyn. “I shall have to go and get dressed first.”

But he did not re-enter the house with them, nor, indeed, did he hurry to re-enter it at all. Both girls were rather silent and wondering, and in the minds of both was the same thought, though neither cared to voice it to the other, and the thought was a disquieting one; perhaps to Melian the more disquieting of the two. For to her clearer insight, and with the knowledge of her uncle’s character, which she had had some months of opportunity to gain, his explanation of the incident did not somehow carry conviction. There was more, far more beneath it than a mere matter of evolved recollection; of that she felt fully convinced. He was not the stamp of man who would be upset by such, and the practical side had come out in the very real fear—the agony of fear almost—which he had manifested over the discovery of that harmless looking star-shaped trinket. Trinket? Well, that for want of a better word. The thing, after all, might have been a trade mark of sorts which had come detached from a biscuit box or a tin of specially boomed blacking. No. There was more in this than met the eye.

Then she remembered that her uncle had spent his life in strange, out of the way parts of the world, mostly among strange people. What if there was nothing accidental about this shining pointed thing being left just where he could find it. What if it were some sort of a sign, some sort of a manifesto? What if some danger were overhanging him? And by a curious back twist in her mind the thought of Helston Varne came back to her. A tower of strength seemed that thought—and then came that which seemed to cut under its foundations.

They were both halfway through breakfast by then, when Mervyn entered—clothed and ready for the day before him. All trace of agitation seemed to have disappeared. He was even in unusual good spirits.

“By the way,” he said, in the course of conversation, which he had somewhat cleverly led up to, “I suppose you two children are old enough to know how not to talk. For instance—your find this morning. I particularly wish no word to be said about it to anybody—anybody. Not only round here, but anywhere. Perhaps some day—though I don’t absolutely promise that—I may give you an explanation; but only on condition nothing is said about it now.”

Both pairs of eyes sparked up. But Melian’s dropped. She could not take Helston Varne into confidence now.

“Why, Mr Mervyn,” answered Violet, readily, “of course we shan’t say anything about it.”

“You’ll greatly oblige me if you don’t,” he said, somewhat earnestly. “The fact is that there are quite enough ‘old wives’ fables’ hanging about this place. We don’t want to pile on to them. By the by, there’s another thing, which is perhaps a harder thing to ask. Don’t talk it over with each other—in short, don’t dwell upon it. Forget it.”

“Aren’t you rather asking us impossibilities, dear?” said Melian. “Two mere women! And our curiosity screwed up to boiling over point.”

“Why, it smacks of a magazine yarn,” declared Violet. “Never mind, Mr Mervyn, I’ll promise to remember your wishes.”

Both fancied he looked relieved, though not entirely at ease.

“That’s perfectly all right, then,” he returned. “Anybody who was such a friend to this little one when she was in straits as you were, is safe on a promise, I’ll swear.”

“Steady on, Mr Mervyn, and spare my blushes,” protested the girl, looking pleased all the same. “I did no more for Melian than she’d have done for me, and we people who have to work have to stick by each other when a pinch comes.”

“And very much to the good that is,” said Mervyn. “Knocks a lot of the essentially feminine nonsense out of women and develops the good.”

“Well said, Mr Mervyn. That’s capital, isn’t it, Melian?”

“Not bad,” was the reply, with a dash of affectionate impudence underlying it.

“Not only that, but it was owing to you entirely that I became aware—almost of the existence, I was going to say—of this child here,” he went on. “That counts on the credit side of obligation.”

“Oh, go it, Uncle Seward. Butter seems to be getting cheap,” said Melian, equably. “We are getting more than we can do with, Violet. Eh—what?”

“Now what would you children like to do with yourselves this morning?” asked Mervyn, when the laugh had subsided.

“We were going to show Violet how to catch some fish. Old Joe has been digging out worms, and he’s coming with us to bait. You know, Violet, the part I can’t stick about this bait fishing is the worm part of it, so I take Joe to do that, and look the other way while he does it. There are some good perch in Plane Pond, but the big ones will hardly ever bite. The smaller ones you can get plenty of, but the pounders won’t come to the scratch, like the ‘oldest oyster’ in the Walrus and the Carpenter.”

“All right, then,” said her uncle. “You two will be quite happy on your own, and I’ve got some letters to write. I haven’t often, which is one of the compensating advantages of being a lonely man. So shout up Joe when you want him.”

He saw them start off presently; bright, happy, laughing. He did not go with them as far as the boat house, which nestled in the thick, wooded bank of the great pond near the further end of the same. John Seward Mervyn had a good deal on his mind that radiant cloudless morning of late spring, while all the woods were ringing with birdsong, and the sweet, young, clear voices of his niece and guest died fainter and fainter away among the solemn tree boles.

Two cyclists skimmed along the sluice-road, taking the next steep acclivity with all the rush they could get out of their headlong free wheel down the steeper, and somewhat dangerously winding, hill before. They looked to the right at the pond, and to the left at Heath Hover. One seemed half inclined to stop and dismount to take in the picturesque effect of it, but did not. Then a waggon loaded up with floury millsacks rumbled by, and then another cyclist, a motor one this time, and the spitting throb of his abominable engine and the reek of petrol seemed to hang on the glorious, radiant, spring air like a corroding cloud, long after their producer was out of sight. But there seemed an unusual amount of traffic on that not much used road to-day, thought Mervyn—and then he fell to wondering what if the shine of that mysterious disc deposited at the top of the sluice path, had caught the eye of any of these? Well, that was not his affair, he thought, grimly, but—something more might have been heard of it. And the thought brought back something of that awful heart-numbed blood-freezing moment, when he had descried Melian coming down the path, holding that symbol in her bare hand.

How had it got there—there where she had found it? It? Yes, but—had it? To set this doubt at rest—not much “rest” about it, he told himself with a mirthless ironical laugh—he had been glad to see the last of these bright young presences for an hour or two. Old Judy he could hear now clattering about with pots and pans and firestoking implements in the kitchen. He was entirely alone—at last.

He went upstairs. The landings, uneven and cranky with age, gave and creaked beneath his tread. The long narrow passage which led to the disused part of the house was darkened with dust and cobwebs on the neglected casements, and as he went along, he was drawing on that same old pair of gloves. He passed several doors, then turned the handle of one. It opened into a mouldy room, partly stacked with ancient and worm-eaten furniture. He moved aside an old sideboard, which seemed to manifest an inclination to fall to pieces in the process. Between it and the wall something gleamed at him, something white and shining. He bent down as though to touch it, then changed his mind.

“Good! That’s there,” he said to himself. “Now for the other, if it is there?”

He went out again and shut the door, removing the gloves as he threaded the passage; and putting them in his pocket, he went to the front door and out. The fresh open air—yes, that was life—the pure sweet breath of wood and water, the joyous song of birds. Afar down the long pond, came another joyous sound, that of rippling laughter. It came from the boat, wafted over the water—wondrous sound conductor—and although nearly half a mile away he could distinguish Melian’s clear note from that of her friend. Lightheartedness, silvery lightheadedness, running side by side, parallel with tragedy! A strange world! Then he dived into a close woodland path which led down at a steep angle below the house.

Soon he stopped, listening—looked around without seeming to do either. A runnel of water trickled down a stony course, partly under the stones; in hot weather it was dry. He moved aside two stones, casually as though thinking of something else. In the solemn silence of the gnarled oak-wood he could see nobody, but it did not follow that nobody could see him.

But—something could—something did. The round, white, eye-like disc, with its five star points, stared up at him—stared with baleful—almost human, or rather demoniacal glance, from its damp bed, where he himself had placed it months before. It should have been red with rust—yet it was not. This too struck him, and he began to feel himself hopelessly enmeshed. That other, its counterpart, who had placed it there? He had been cherishing a faint and utterly unreasonable thought that in a moment of aberration, he himself might have removed it from the original hiding place to which he had consigned it during Helston Varne’s temporary imprisonment. But no. There was the other, in the disused part of his house. He had just put it there, and he had just left it there. He could not get away from that.

The beauties of the glorious woodland were around him as he retraced his steps, the networking of the sunlight through the tree-tops, the cool, moist fragrance of underfoot moss, the tap-tap of a woodpecker coming in chastened echo through the columns of tree trunks, then the gurgling trill of a thrush. Everywhere peace, the sweet English woodland peace of a cloudless late spring or early summer day. Yet John Seward Mervyn went up that woodland path wearing a grey, ashen face, and carrying something very like utter despair in his heart.

As he arrived at the house, the two girls were coming down the path. A clear, laughing hail of welcome greeted him.

“We’ve been in luck, dear,” cried Melian, taking a fishing basket from old Joe, who was walking behind. “Look at this.”

She displayed eight or nine perch—two quite big ones.

“Violet caught those,” she went on. “I’ve never caught any as big. I don’t believe there are any bigger ones in Plane Pond; eh, Joe.”

“They be middlin’ fish, Miss Melun—they be middlin’ fish, sure-ly,” answered the old rustic.

“Why, I’m sure the big ’un must be over a pound,” rattled on the girl joyously. “And didn’t Violet just prick her fingers over his spines.”

Here again Mervyn conjured up another picture as he contemplated the great spiny dorsal fin and black stripes of a really finely conditioned perch. She had pricked her fingers with something very harmless that time, he thought, grimly.

“We have had such a jolly time, Mr Mervyn,” said Violet, animatedly. “I’ve enjoyed it no end.”

He felt that she was looking curiously at him. Her delighted tone seemed to tail off suddenly.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” he said, throwing off his mood and striving to join in theirs.

“Over a pound. I’m certain it is,” went on Melian, who was still wrapped up in contemplation of the “take”. “Come along and let’s weigh him.”

And the two, aglow with life and spirits, headed for the kitchen and the weighing scales.

“Contrast—again?” thought Mervyn, as he followed.

So did another person, who, unseen, had witnessed the whole of the morning’s doings from their very commencement.

Chapter Nineteen.

Interim—Quiet.

Even as Violet had said, to put such a superhuman strain upon the curiosity of two mere women seemed scarcely fair, and perhaps the hardest strain of all was Mervyn’s injunction not to talk about the matter between themselves even; however, they followed it out with a tolerable show of loyalty; in fact, as great a one as could be expected of their sex.

On Melian, of course, the strain fell the hardest. She was quick to recognise that the finding of that strange object had affected her uncle far more than he would allow to appear. Not only that, but as day followed upon day, there was no lessening of the effect. Then, too, what had he done with the thing when they had gone inside leaving him alone. Buried it—thrown it into the pond, or what? She, too, began to feel as though living under the spell of a fear. Perhaps it had been an error of judgment on her uncle’s part, to enjoin so strict a silence upon them, she more than once thought—and the worst of this was that it precluded her from consulting Helston Varne.

She had been impressed by the promise that he had exacted from her that she would so consult him in the event of finding herself in any difficulty; in fact, under just such a contingency as had occurred; but she was debarred by her subsequent promise. There were other mysterious happenings she had considered the expediency of laying before him; more even than when we last saw her on the point of doing so; for she had since gained more than an inkling as to his real line in life and the discovery increased her interest in him well nigh to the pitch of vividness.

There was another matter as to which she had gained more than an inkling, and that, the ill-repute which was said to surround Heath Hover. She remembered how on her first arrival she had suggested that it looked like a haunted house, and the way in which her uncle had scoffed at the idea and turned away the question, struck her in subsequent lights as a trifle overdoing the part. One circumstance, however, seemed more suspicious still.

She was chatting with old Joe one day, and enjoining upon him the necessity of fixing a board over a pane of glass she had broken in her bedroom window, until it could be properly mended.

“I don’t want any more bats coming in and flicking me in the face, Joe,” she appended, “like that night just after I got here.”

The old man dropped the handles of the barrow which he was just about to trundle, and stared at her queerly.

“What time might that ha’ been, Missie?” he said.

“Why, a few days after I came.”

“That warn’t no flittermaouse,” he said. “Yew won’t see none o’ they for—come weeks and weeks. They be all asleep they be.”

“But it might have been a stray one.”

The old rustic grinned pityingly and shook his head.

“That warn’t no flittermaouse,” he repeated.

Melian’s eyes opened wider.

“What was it, then?” she said.

But the old rustic seemed suddenly to become alive to the fact that he had said too much; in short, had been betrayed into overstepping his employer’s explicitly imposed injunctions.

“What war it? Narthen. You’d been dreamin’, Missie, for sure. That’s what it war.” And old Joe had picked up the wheelbarrow handles and trundled off then and there with an energy which bade fair to put a stop to any further questioning.

But his statement had rendered Melian decidedly uncomfortable. If her acquaintance with natural history was defective, she had had ample opportunity of discovering that that of her uncle was not; in fact, eminently the reverse, and that he of all people should have been so hard put to it as to invent a bat flying about on a mid-winter night, showed something loose somewhere. Should she tax him with it under the form of chaff? But she decided not to. He might not like it, and again, he would almost certainly be angry with old Joe. On the other hand it looked as if he himself were not so sceptical as he made out.

She had also become aware that nobody had been able to inhabit Heath Hover for a long time past until her uncle had come; that is to say, do more than give it a very brief trial, perhaps one of fewer weeks than he had given it months. Well, as to that, he seemed quite comfortable there, and since her arrived, happy. She was letting her imagination run riot too much, she told herself—and certainly, she had never seen anything since her arrival. Strange sounds might be produced by any cause, and as for “influences”—well, imagination might be a factor again.

Helston Varne had not been near them since that visit when they had met unexpectedly on the dusking road, and as a matter of hard fact Melian felt just a little sore with him for not having been. He had sent her a few lines—short, straight, and to the point—reminding her of his willingness to assist her at any time or at any moment, reminding her also of her promise not to be behindhand in claiming such aid. This note she had carefully kept. But he had not been near them again, and she had found herself very much wishing that he would come. There was something so refreshingly out of the ordinary about his personality—about his conversation—and then, too, the high intellectual talent which must go to make him such a success in the line of life he had adopted; the suggestion of mystery blended with power was just the element to appeal strongly to a girl of her character and temperament. The fact is, that during the intervening time—getting on for three months as it was—Melian had been thinking a great deal about Helston Varne.

Everything was favourable to introspection of the sort. The life she led, amid free, open, congenial surroundings, into the charm of which she had entered from the very first, and which had grown upon her more and more with every change of the advancing season—and yet the personality of the man seemed subtly to pervade it all. There were spots they had visited—a casual stroll along a woodland path, or a breezy, uphill climb to this or that point whence rolling views of some of the loveliest rural expanse in England swept away on either hand; and she could remember all that was said, and exactly where it was said, during their exchange of ideas, which were, for the most part, thoroughly in sympathy. And then, too, in her moments of shadowy fears in the mysterious ill-omened old house—small wonder that taking all things together she should have thought a good deal about Helston Varne during that intervening time.

It was the last day of Violet Clinock’s visit, and on the morrow she would be returning to town and work. She was a cheerful contented soul, but the contrast between this glorious early June day, paradisical in its cloudless beauty, the air fragrant with spring flowers and melodious with the song of soaring larks; every meadow a golden sea of buttercups; and soft masses of new leafage on high, irregular hedges, or towering hugely heavenwards from this or that noble wood—the contrast between this and the stuffy air and blackened chimney stacks which formed the sole and shut-in outlook from her own modest dwelling of all the year round was too marked even for her. She felt anything but lighthearted.