William Le Queux (continued 4)

“I’ve invited Frank to lunch. I told them you were coming. Frank has something important to tell you, he said.”

“Did he tell you what?”

“No. At least it had reference, he said, to the Château d’Uzerche, or to something that has been found there. To tell the truth, I was thinking of something else when he told me.”

“Dearest,” I said, some minutes later, my arm about her waist, “you remember my telling you I had taken a few of the coins I found in your father’s house. Well, yesterday I had them tested. They are not counterfeits. They are genuine.”

She looked at me curiously. Then, after a pause, she said—

“What made you think they might be counterfeit?”

“What made me think so? Seeing that I discovered with them a number of implements, etc, used apparently in the manufacture of base coin, my inference naturally was that the coins must have been false.”

Still she looked at me. Gradually her expression hardened.

“Dick,” she said at last, “you are deceiving me. You have deceived me all along. You told me you knew my father’s secret. Now you don’t know it—do you?”

“Indeed you are mistaken, quite mistaken, dearest,” I exclaimed quickly. “I know it well enough, but I don’t, I admit, know that part of it which bears upon these coins. I never pretended to know that part.”

It was a wild shot, but I felt I must say something in my defence.

I hated deceiving Vera in this way, as, indeed, I should have hated to deceive her in any way, but, playing a part still, I was driven to subterfuge. After all, I had never said I knew her father’s secret. She had jumped to the conclusion that I knew it, that day I had found her locked in the upper room in the house in Belgrave Street, and I had not disillusioned her. That was all.

The door of the sitting-room opened at that moment, we sprang apart as Faulkner and Violet entered. The pretty girl, in a blue serge coat and skirt, looked radiantly happy, and the happiness she felt seemed to increase her great beauty. I confess I had not before fully realised what a lovely girl she was.

“Ah, Dick, my dear fellow,” Faulkner exclaimed, grasping me by the hand, “I want you to congratulate me, old chap.”

“Oh, I do, of course,” I said at once. “I congratulate you doubly—on becoming engaged, and on breaking off your engagement.”

He made a quick little gesture of impatience.

“Oh, I don’t mean congratulations of that kind,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t ask you to waste your time in congratulating me upon anything so commonplace as an engagement of marriage. I want you to congratulate me upon something you don’t yet know.”

“Well, what is it?” I said impatiently. “Have you come into a fortune?”

“Right the very first time!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I have. I’ve inherited, quite unexpectedly, a very large fortune. But the odd thing is this. My benefactor is, or rather was, unknown to me. Until yesterday I had never even heard his name.”

“How wonderful! But how splendid!” I cried out. “Do tell me more about it. Tell me everything.”

“I will. And now prepare to receive a shock. The will leaving me this fortune was found in the safe discovered among the débris of Château d’Uzerche, after the fire?”

Chapter Twenty Four.

A Further Tangle.

Certainly, this was a most remarkable development. I listened without comment.

Yet when Faulkner had given me, at the luncheon table, all the details by way of “explanation,” as he put it, the tangle seemed even greater than before he had begun.

The will, dated three years previously, had been drawn up by a well-known firm of London lawyers. It was quite in order, and the testator’s name was Whichelo, Samuel Whichelo, formerly of Mexico City, merchant, but then resident at Wimbledon Common. The testator, who had been unmarried, left a few legacies to friends and servants, but practically the whole of his fortune he bequeathed entirely to Frank Faulkner, “in return for the considerable service he once rendered me.”

Faulkner had handed me a copy of the will—it was quite a short will. When I came to this sentence I naturally looked up.

“Ah!” I said, “then there is a method in the testator’s madness. But I thought you told me you had never even heard his name.”

“Until yesterday I never had heard it.”

“Then what was this ‘considerable service’ he says you rendered him?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Years ago, when I was knocking about the world—I was then about twenty—I chanced to find myself, one night, in the China Town of San Francisco. I had a friend with me, about my own age. Foolishly, we were exploring at night, alone—that is, without an interpreter or guide of any sort, which is about as risky a thing as any ordinary unarmed European can do in San Francisco, where you may still, I believe, find the scum of all the nations. Suddenly we heard a cry. A man was calling, ‘Au secours! Au secours!’ Without stopping to think, I rushed in the direction whence the cry came. It was repeated. It was in a house which I recognised, at a glance, as an establishment of doubtful repute. I must tell you that when I was twenty I was considered a first-rate boxer, and it may have been the confidence I felt in my ability to defend myself that made me rush, without hesitation, into that Chinese den. Cards and chits were scattered about the tables and on the floor, and nine or ten Chinamen were in the room, struggling furiously with a tall, dark man of powerful build, who was being rapidly overcome owing to the number of his assailants. Chinese oaths were flying about freely, and I saw a knife-blade flash suddenly into the air.”

He paused for a second, then continued—

“My blood was up. I felt as I feel sometimes now, that I didn’t care for anything or any one or what might happen to me. I rushed at the nearest Chinaman like a maniac—I believe he thought I was one. My first blow knocked him silly. Then, right and left I hit out. I was in perfect condition at that time. Down went the Chinamen one after another, as my blows caught them on the chin—I used to be famous for that chin-blow, I ‘specialised’ in it, so to speak. I detest boasting. I tell this only to you, because I think it may amuse you and explain my windfall. In less than two minutes I had stretched five of the Chinamen senseless with that chin-blow, and the remaining three or four, seized with panic, fled.”

“What then?” I asked.

“At once I led the man who had called for help out into the street. I saw he was pretty badly hurt, so with the help of my friend, who had now joined me again, I got him out of China Town, expecting to be set upon at any moment by friends of those Chinamen, thirsting for revenge. Though he had called ‘Au secours!’ he was not French, it seemed. He was British Portuguese, though he lived in Mexico, he told me later. We got him to the hospital. ‘I must have your name—I must have your name,’ he exclaimed quite excitedly, as I was leaving, I remember. ‘You have rendered me a service I shall never forget—never. You must come and see me to-morrow.’ I told him I could not do that, as I was leaving early next morning for Raymund, on my way to the Yosemite Valley. But I said I hoped we might meet again some day, and, as he insisted upon my doing so, I gave him a card with my address—my London club address. It was at the club that I found, yesterday morning, the communication from his lawyers.”

“And by Gad!” I exclaimed enthusiastically, “you deserve this ‘bit of luck,’ as you call it, Frank. I think you acted splendidly!”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake don’t become emotional, old chap,” he said hurriedly. “If you knew how I hate gush, you wouldn’t.”

“It isn’t gush,” I answered. “What wouldn’t I have given to see you buckling up those Chinamen one after another. Splendid!”

I turned to Violet.

“I congratulate you,” I said, taking her hand, “on marrying a real man. I think the two of you are the pluckiest pair I have ever met. It will be long before I forget that incident on the roof of Château d’Uzerche. But for you, neither Frank nor I would be alive to-day.”

“Nor the Baronne, nor Dago Paulton,” she added mischievously. “Oh, yes, I am a heroine! A heroine to save such very precious lives!”

“Are you not grateful to the Baronne?” I asked quickly. “After all, she did adopt you, and bring you up.”

“Yes,” the girl answered, with a swift, reproachful glance, “she adopted me and brought me up, but only that I might help to further her own ends. She didn’t adopt me out of affection, I can assure you.”

I saw that I had again trodden upon thin ice, so I quickly changed the topic.

“But the great mystery,” I said, addressing Faulkner, “is not yet solved. How on earth did Whichelo’s will, leaving you this fortune, come to be in the safe in Château d’Uzerche, in the Basses Alpes? When did Whichelo die?”

“Four months ago. The lawyers distinctly remember him making a will, but he had never returned it to them, and, since his death, they had been trying to find it. They even advertised for it.”

“To whom would his fortune have gone, had he died intestate?” I inquired suddenly.

“To his younger brother, Henry. From what the lawyers tell me, this brother of his must be a peculiar man. His life appears to be a mystery. He is, however, known to be intimate with your friend, Sir Charles Thorold. Sir Charles and he were in Mexico together ten years ago, the lawyers tell me, and were there again about three years ago.”

“Who are the lawyers who wrote to you?” something prompted me to ask.

“You mean about the will? Oh, a firm in Lincoln’s Inn, Spink and Peters.”

Instantly I thought of old Taylor.

“Ah,” I said, “I have heard of them. Thorold has had some business dealings with them. By the way—who opened the safe?”

“The French police. It seems, that since the fire, neither Dago Paulton nor the Baronne de Coudron have shown any signs of life. Even the insurance people have not been written to by them.”

“Paulton and the Baronne are probably afraid of being arrested,” I said at once.

We talked a little longer, but Faulkner seemed unable to throw any further light on the mystery of the will being found in the safe, and the lawyers were equally in the dark. Probably they would never have heard of the will had the French police not communicated with them.

“Oh, I have another bit of news for you,” Faulkner said suddenly. “Sir Charles Thorold is to return to Houghton.”

“My father going back to Houghton!” Vera exclaimed, amazed. “Why, who told you that? I’ve heard nothing of it.”

“Read it in the newspaper this morning,” Faulkner answered. “I have the paper here—in my pocket.”

He tugged out of his coat-pocket a copy of a morning paper, unfolded it, and presently found the announcement.

“There it is,” he said, passing the paper to her, with his finger on the paragraph.

The announcement ran as follows—

“We are able to state that Sir Charles and Lady Thorold have decided to return to their country residence, Houghton Park, in Rutland, which has been vacant since the mysterious affair when the body of Sir Charles’ butler was discovered in the lake at Houghton, and the chauffeur from Oakham was shot dead by an unknown assassin. The news is creating considerable interest throughout the county.”

“What an astonishing thing!” I exclaimed. “Really, one may cease being surprised at anything. I wonder how ‘the county’ will receive them. I prophecy that the majority of Rutland society will cut them dead, after what has happened.”

“Why should they?” Faulkner asked, in surprise. “There’s no reason why they should,” I answered “I only say they will. You don’t know Rutland county people—or you wouldn’t ask.”

Vera’s lunch-party had proved a great success. The four of us had been in the best of spirits. And yet, once, at least, during the meal, Paulton’s face, dark, threatening, floated into my imagination, and again I heard that ominous threat he had uttered in Paris that night, the last words I had heard him speak—

“I shall be even with you soon, in a way you don’t expect.”

Where was he at this moment? What plot was he hatching? Had he left Paris? Was he in London? Would he and the Baronne try to get Violet away from Faulkner by force?

Though now we were all so light-hearted, I could not help thinking of Paulton and the Baronne, and wondering what their next clever move would be. It was not to be supposed they would remain dormant. They were probably lying “doggo,” in order to spring with greater force.

During the same week I looked in again at Rodney Street on my policeman, who expressed himself delighted to see me. Some days had now passed since I had forced my way into the house in Belgrave Street during the night. I was wondering what had happened there since; whether lights had been seen again; whether anybody else had been into the place; or if the body and the gold had been removed.

When he had pushed forward his most comfortable chair, and I had seated myself in it, the constable said: “I have some news for you to-day, sir.”

“News?” I exclaimed. “What kind of news?”

“Well, simply this, sir. All them sacks of money has been removed, but the mummy has been left just where it was. The police have possession of it now.”

“When did they take possession of it?” I asked quickly, starting up.

“Yesterday. Mr Spink, in whose hands the house is during Sir Charles Thorold’s absence, went there. I see him when he comes out, and I never in my life see a man look so white and scared. He found the body lying there, of course, also all the furniture pushed about, and the great hole cut in the ceiling. When he came out he was as terrible pale, and shivering with excitement. It was about three in the afternoon. He called me at once, and I went in with the man on point-duty. Everything was much as when you and me saw it, sir, only there wasn’t no money.”

“Then of course Whichelo and Sir Charles have taken it away. I wonder at their leaving the body, though. Such a give-away, isn’t it? Did the police find out how the men entered and left the house?”

“I found that out, sir—quite by charnce. There’s a way into a cellar we didn’t know of, and that cellar leads into the cellar of the house adjoining, which is empty. That’s the way they went in and out. It was easy to see as how somebody had been to and fro that way.”

“Do the police know anything of the money?” I asked. “Didn’t they see any sign of it at all?”

“No, sir. Nor Mr Spink didn’t neither.”

“Do they suspect who has been into the house?”

“No, sir, they ain’t got no idea. And about the body and how it got there, they are quite at sea.” Sauntering along Victoria Street, Westminster, half-an-hour later, the thought occurred to me to look in on my doctor, David Agnew, who was also my old personal friend.

For some days I had not been well. A feeling of lassitude had come over me, also loss of appetite. Agnew was generally able to prescribe for my simple ailments.

He was a bright, genial fellow, and merely to meet him seemed to do one good. None would have taken him for the celebrated bacteriologist he was, for I—and I think most people—usually picture a bacteriologist as a cadaverous, ascetic, preternaturally solemn individual, with a bald head, wrinkled brow, and large, gold-rimmed spectacles. It was Thorold who had introduced me to Agnew many years before, and many and many a time had the three of us dined together.

At first I was told that the doctor was “not at home,” but upon sending in my card, I was immediately admitted.

The shock I received upon entering Agnew’s consulting-room, I am not likely to forget. Instead of the hearty greeting I had expected, I was faced by a man whose staring eyes spoke terror. It was Agnew, but I saw at once that something terrible must have happened.

He was pacing the room with his handkerchief to his mouth when I entered. He turned at once, and came over to me.

“Ashton,” he said abruptly, taking my hand in both his own, and gripping it so that I almost cried out, “I have an awful thing to tell you—you are the one man in whom I can confide in this crisis, and I am truly glad you’ve come. I feel I must tell some one. I shall go mad if I don’t.”

His expression appalled me.

“What is it? What?” I exclaimed. “For Heaven’s sake don’t look at me like this!”

“I must tell you, I must,” he gasped. “Our mutual, our dear friend, Charles Thorold, was in here an hour ago. I had been called out for five minutes, but he said he would wait. As I had a patient in here, Gregory, my man, showed Thorold into the room upstairs—my laboratory. In an open box on the table were several little glass tubes containing bacilli—different sorts of bacilli that I’ve been cultivating. It seems that Charles, with fatal curiosity, picked up one of these tubes to examine it. The glass of the tube is very thin. One of them broke in his hand—ah! What catastrophe could be more complete? It’s terrible... horrible!” He stopped abruptly, unable to go on.

“Well? Why so terrible! Tell me!” I exclaimed.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

“That tube contained a cultivation of pneumonic plague,” he exclaimed huskily, “one of the deadliest microbes known. The blood-serum in which I had grown the germs fell upon his hands. Not suspecting the danger, he actually wiped it off with his handkerchief! I did not return until a quarter of an hour afterwards. The evil was then beyond remedy. He became infected!”

“Phew! What will happen now?”

“Happen? In a few days at most he will be dead! There are no recoveries from pneumonic plague—that most terrible contagious disease so well-known in Eastern Siberia and Japan. There is no hope for him. None. You hear—none!”

“By Gad!” I gasped, horrified. “You can’t mean it. Where is Thorold now?”

“In isolation at St. George’s hospital. I sent him there at once. Oh! Heaven, it is too terrible to think of—and my fault, all my fault for leaving the tube there!”

I tried to calm him, but he was quite beside himself.

I halted, astounded at the gravity of the situation.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Towards the Truth.

Though I hated to cause pain to Vera, I realised that I must immediately tell her. The thought of breaking the terrible news to her upset me, yet the thing had to be faced.

Never shall I forget those awful moments. I had tried to break the news gently, but how can such tragic news be broken “gently”? That conventional word is surely a mockery when used in such a connexion.

She was devoted to her parents. What seemed to trouble her now more than anything else, was the fact that we did not know her mother’s whereabouts, and so could not inform her of the frightful contretemps.

“Try not to worry, dearest,” I said, placing my hand tenderly upon her shoulder, and kissing her upon the lips in an endeavour to soothe her. “We are bound very soon to find out where she is.”

“Yes,” she retorted bitterly, “and by that time—by that time poor father may be dead!”

She was silent for a few moments, then she said—

“The only thought that comforts me, dear, a little, is that, if he should die, the living lie will die with him. He is so good, so kind, so self-sacrificing, that I think he would be quite ready to die if he thought his death would relieve us of the fearful tension of these last horrible years. My dear, dear father! Ah, how stormy has his life been! Does he know what you have just told me—I mean, that he cannot live?”

“No,” I replied.

She began to weep bitterly again, and I did my best to calm her, and kissed her again. I told her he did not know the danger, which was the truth. Agnew had only told him the germs would probably make him very ill for awhile.

The house-physician at the hospital had not broken the actual truth to him—the truth that, infected with such deadly germs he was doomed to death. Perhaps I ought not to have told Vera the whole ghastly truth. Yet, upon carefully considering the matter, I had decided that frankness would be better.

“I will telephone to St. George’s,” I said, a little later, “and ask for the latest news. You’d better not go to see him until the house-physician gives you leave. He asked me to tell you that.”

The reply was satisfactory. Sir Charles was not in pain, the hall-porter said. He was slightly feverish. That was all. What grim consolation!

Two eager days passed. Still Lady Thorold showed no sign of life. I had telephoned to Messrs Spink and Peters. Also I had telegraphed to Houghton Park, as it was said Lady Thorold intended to return there. But to no purpose. One thing that surprised me was that Whichelo had not been to the hospital. Where was he during these days? Had he, too, not heard of the calamity?

“You have not heard the exciting news,” I said to Faulkner, when I met him outside the Devonshire on the way to his club.

“What exciting news?” he inquired, in his cool phlegmatic way. “You get excited so easily, Dick, if you will forgive my saying so.”

He listened with interest to the news, and when I had done talking, he said quite calmly—

“Curious to relate, I saw the Baroness, Paulton and Henderson not ten minutes ago.”

“Saw them!” I gasped. “Where?”

“In Piccadilly, not thirty yards from here. They turned up Dover Street, and went down in the tube lift.”

“Are you positive?”

“Quite. I couldn’t well forget them. They were walking together, laughing and chatting as though nothing were amiss. I admire that kind of nerve.”

Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of the remarkable discovery of the mummified man in Sir Charles Thorold’s house in Belgrave Street. The hole cut in the ceiling gave rise to all sorts of wild surmises.

It did not, however, occur to any of the reporters that the body might have been hidden between the ceiling and the floor.

What the newspapers worried about most was the mummy’s age. Experts put their heads together, and put on their spectacles. Some were of the opinion that it must be centuries old. Sir Charles, the one man who might have thrown some light upon it could not, of course, be questioned. Only one medical expert, an old professor, differed from his confrères. A wizened little man, himself not unlike a mummy, he maintained, in the face of scientific ridicule, that the mummy found in Belgrave Street had been dead “less than twenty years.” Further, he pronounced that the method of embalming was a process uncommon in this country or in Egypt, but still in vogue in China and in Mexico. He believed the body to be, he said, that of a man of middle-age, a Spaniard, or possibly a Mexican.

The news of Sir Charles’ condition was more satisfactory that evening, inasmuch as the sister at the hospital told me, when I called, that he was still no worse. Perhaps, after all, Dr Agnew had been mistaken. Oh, how I hoped he had been, for my own sake, almost as much as for my darling’s.

“I think,” I said to Vera, whose spirits rose a little when she heard my report, “that to-morrow morning I will run down to Oakham, to have another look at Houghton.”

“What on earth for?” she exclaimed, in a tone of surprise. “I intended asking father to-day, when I saw him at the hospital, if the report that he intended returning to Houghton were true. He seemed so hot and restless however, that I decided not to ask him until to-morrow. I do believe he is going to get better, don’t you? But now, tell me what good do you think you will do by going out to Houghton?”

“Good?” I answered. “I don’t expect or intend to do good. No, it is merely that something—I can’t tell you what—prompts me to go again to see the place.”

“How silly!” Vera declared, as I thought rather rudely. Modern girls are so dreadfully outspoken. I do sometimes wish we were back in the days when a matron would raise her hands in dismay and exclaim: “Oh, fie!” or “Oh, la!” when a young girl did aught that seemed to her “unladylike.”

Yet, in spite of Vera’s remonstrance, I caught a train to Oakham early next morning. Sir Charles had had a restless night, the hospital porter told me on the telephone, before I started, but his condition was surprisingly satisfactory.

Then I rang up Dr Agnew.

“Don’t you think he may, after all, recover?” I inquired eagerly.

In reply the doctor said he “only hoped and trusted that he might.” More than that, he would not tell me. I gathered, therefore, that he still had serious fears.

I arrived at the Stag’s Head, in Oakham, in time for lunch. Directly after lunch I started out for Houghton in a hired car.

What a lot had happened, I reflected, as in the same car in which the chauffeur had been shot, we purred down the main street, since I had last set out along that road. What a number of stirring incidents had occurred—incidents crowded into the space of a few weeks. But at last they seemed to be coming to an end. That thought relieved me a good deal. Ah, if only—if only Thorold would recover!

The drive to Houghton from Oakham was a pretty one, past woods and rich grazing pastures until suddenly, turning into the great lodge-gates, we went for nearly a quarter of a mile up the old beech avenue to where stood the old Elizabethan house, a large, rambling pile of stone, so full of historic associations.

On pulling up at the ancient portico, I found to my surprise, the front door ajar. I pushed it open and entered. There was nobody in the big stone hall—how well I remembered the last day when we had all had tea there after hunting, and that fateful message from the butler that “Mr Smithson” had called to see Sir Charles. I made my way into the drawing-rooms, then into the morning-room, and afterwards into the dining-room. The doors were all unlocked, but the rooms were empty. It was while making my way towards the kitchen quarters that I heard footsteps somewhere in the house.

They were coming down the back stairs.

I waited at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight. They were firm, heavy footfalls. A moment later, a tall man stood facing me.

It was the dark giant I had first met at dinner at the Stag’s Head, when we had shared a table on the night of the Hunt Ball—the man whom I now knew to be Henry Whichelo.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Mr Smithson again.

He gave a hardly perceptible start on seeing me. Then he extended his big hand and grasped mine in the most friendly way.

“Well, this is a real surprise—a very pleasant surprise, Mr Ashton,” he said, looking me full in the eyes. “I have often thought of you since the evening we met and had that pleasant meal together, and I told you my name was Smithson, because I knew the name would puzzle you. And what are you doing here? Making an ocular survey—as I am?”

The ready lie rose to my lips. It is very well for moralists to tell us we should always speak the truth. There are occasions when an aptitude for wandering into paths of falsehood may prove extremely useful. It did so now.

“No,” I answered, “I’m not. I am on my way to my little place about twenty miles from here—it is let now, but I think of returning to live there—and it occurred to me to look in at Houghton again. I saw it mentioned, in some paper the other day, that the Thorolds are returning.”

“Yes, that is so,” Whichelo answered. “Sir Charles has instructed me to see to everything, and make all arrangements. I have only to-day heard that he is very ill at the hospital. Have you seen him?”

I told him the latest bulletin. Then I asked him if he had any idea of Lady Thorold’s whereabouts.

“All I know,” he answered, “is that she was abroad when last I heard of her.”

“Abroad? Was that lately?”

“About a week ago. She was then somewhere in the Basses Alpes. Has she not been to see Sir Charles?”

“No. We don’t know where she is.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?”

“Vera Thorold and myself.”

“That’s strange,” he said thoughtfully. “Oh, of course Lady Thorold can’t have heard of his illness. She would have come at once, or at any rate have telegraphed, if she had.”

We talked a little longer—we had strolled into the morning-room, and sat down there—when Whichelo said suddenly—

“That discovery of a mummy in Sir Charles’ town house is curious, eh? How would you account for that, Ashton? And for the hole in the ceiling?”

“I don’t account for it at all,” I replied quickly, trying to look unconcerned beneath his narrow, scrutinising gaze. “What is your theory with regard to it?”

“Oh, I never theorise in cases of that kind,” he replied. “What is the use of theorising? One is almost certain to be wrong.”

“You must, however,” I said with some emphasis, “have some view or other as to the mummy’s age. Do you think it is an ancient mummy, or a modern one?”

He smiled, showing his wonderfully white teeth, which contrasted strangely with his crisp, black beard.

“I am not a ‘mummy expert,’ so I won’t venture an opinion,” he replied. “I should say the best thing they can do is to bury it, or give it to some museum. I’m sure Thorold won’t want it.”

“Don’t you think,” I said, speaking rather slowly, “Thorold may know how it came to be concealed there?”

“What a ridiculous idea, if you will pardon my saying so,” Whichelo answered quite sharply. “What on earth can he know about it?”

“After all,” I said, in the same even tone, “it was found in his house. Now, I have a theory. Shall I tell you what it is?”

He could not well say “no,” though I noticed he was not anxious to listen to the expression of my views or theories on the subject.

“Well,” I continued, looking at him steadily, “I have a theory regarding that strange hole in the ceiling. Can you guess what it is?”

“I’m sure I can’t,” he said, rather uneasily. “What is it?”

“My belief is that the mummy has been for a long time hidden in that ceiling—between the ceiling and the floor above. They lifted the boards of the upper room to get the mummy out, when the ceiling, rotted by decay, fell down. That’s my belief. You will, I think, find in the end that I’m right, though the idea does not seem, as yet, to have occurred to anybody else.”

Whichelo laughed. It was obviously a forced laugh.

“By Jove! you have a vivid imagination, Ashton,” he said, “only I fear you won’t find many, if any, to agree with your theory. Why should the mummy have been hidden in the ceiling? Who would have hidden it? People usually have some reason for doing things,” he ended, with a touch of malice.

“They have,” I answered significantly. Then, unable to resist the impulse, I added with affected carelessness: “I suppose, if a man hid a bag of gold, he would have some reason for hiding it, especially if he hid it in a ceiling. What do you think?”

The man’s countenance blanched to the lips. His mouth twitched. He seemed unable to utter a word.

“What do you know?” he suddenly exclaimed hoarsely, clutching the arm of his chair with trembling fingers. Then he added, in a threatening tone: “Tell me!”

I remembered that I was alone with him in there, miles from everywhere. When standing, he towered high above me, a veritable giant, and I knew that, if he chose to attack me, he must overcome me with the greatest ease. At all costs I must pacify him.

“Perhaps now,” I said calmly, “you think there is more in my theory than at first appeared. Listen to me, Mr Whichelo,” I went on, forcing my courage, “from what I have said, and hinted, you probably guess that I know—well—something. It remains for you to decide whether we are to be friends—or not. Personally, I am willing to be friendly with you. Thorold and I are friends, and have been for years. In addition, I am to marry Vera, so, naturally, I should prefer to remain friendly with her friends. Why not take me into your confidence, and tell me all you know? I’m not a man to talk, I assure you.”

I knew I had done right to take him in that way, and to be quite frank with him. Had I shown the white feather at all, even by implication, he would have pounced down upon me. That I felt instinctively.

Our eyes met sharply. During those brief moments something passed between us that revealed our true characters to each other. I had never really mistrusted Whichelo, though on that night we had dined together at the Stag’s Head in Oakham, his manner and his mode of speech had puzzled me a good deal. Now I instinctively knew him to be a man upon whom I could rely.

“Tell me all you know,” he said, in a low tone, glancing about him to make sure we were alone.

At once I came to the point.

“First, I know,” I said slowly, “that the body was hidden in the ceiling. Secondly, I believe the old professor’s theory which you have probably read in the newspapers, that the mummy has not really been dead very many years. Thirdly, I know that you and Thorold entered that house by way of the cellar of the house adjoining—and I don’t mind telling you that it was I who frightened you and Thorold out of your lives by giving vent to that screech in the room above.”

“You!” he gasped, surprised.

“Yes, but don’t interrupt me,” I said. “You and he brought the body to light and intended to smuggle it out of the house in a packing-case.”

I stopped. Then, with my eyes still set on his, I said—

“I saw those implements for coining, which afterwards disappeared. More than that—I saw the bags of gold!” Then I paused. “What has become of them?” I added meaningly.

Whichelo held his breath.

“By Heaven!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Then you know everything! How did you find this out?”

I made a random shot.

“If you will boldly advertise,” I said, “what else can you expect? ‘Meet me two.’”

My shot hit its mark. At once I saw that the advertisement really had reference to the affair.

“Surely,” I said, “there was no need to advertise? You could have communicated by post, telegram or telephone!”

“Ah! you are mistaken,” he answered quickly. “We had reasons for advertising—but I cannot explain them now. Tell me, knowing all that you know—how you discovered it I don’t attempt to guess—but what are you going to do?”

“Do?—Nothing. It’s no concern of mine.”

“But—but—”

“There is no ‘but,’” I interrupted, “except that, having told you what I know, Mr Whichelo, I expect your full confidence in return.”

“And you shall have it, Ashton,” he exclaimed at once. “Oh, I can assure you, you shall have it.”

“Then perhaps you’ll tell me first,” I said abruptly, “how that will of your brother’s came to be found in the safe among the ruins of Château d’Uzerche after the fire. Had it not been found, you would, I understand, have been sole heir to the fortune your brother left to Frank Faulkner.”

“Yes, you are quite right,” he answered, with a quiet laugh. “I should have been. That will was stolen from my brother.”

“So I guessed. But by whom?”

“By Paulton and the Baronne, his companion.”

“Stolen by Paulton and the Baronne!” I echoed. “But in what way could they benefit by stealing it, as the money would have come to you had the will not been found? Why did they not destroy it?”

“Well—to tell the truth, they have a hold over me,” he went on quickly, “just as they have over Thorold. Probably they refrained from destroying it, intending to get Faulkner into their clutches.”

“I don’t follow you,” I said. “Even if they have a hold over you, as you say, they could not have benefited by you inheriting this money.”

“Ah! You are mistaken,” he answered. “They would have benefited considerably. Had I inherited that fortune, it must all have gone to them. I can’t say more than that.”

“Blackmail?” I asked.

He nodded.

“And do they blackmail Thorold in the same way?”

Again he nodded in the affirmative.

At last I seemed to be really on the verge of unravelling the mystery which had puzzled me so long—also on the way to discovering the closely-guarded secret of the Thorolds.

After a brief pause, I put another question to him.

“Is all that French gold I have seen, genuine?” I asked. “I know some of it is, because I had some tested.”

“How many?” he inquired, in a tone of surprise.

“Three. They were all good.”

“Most of them are base coin,” he said. “A small proportion only are coin from the French mint.”

“Then Thorold—and you, also, I take it—have had to do with uttering base coin.”

“You are wrong—in a sense. It may appear so to you. It would seem so to most people, most likely. In point of fact we are both innocent. We have been made a catspaw—how I cannot explain. You see, I am wholly frank with you. That is because I trust you, Ashton—and I don’t trust many men, I can assure you.”

This was getting interesting.

Whichelo, finding how much I knew, had unreservedly thrown off all pretence. I suppose he thought it his safest plan, as indeed it was. I had given him my word I would hold my peace if he dealt with me openly, and evidently he believed me.

From the morning-room we had strolled towards the back premises, and this conversation had taken place in the butler’s pantry, quite a big room. The only door was immediately behind us. All the time we had been conversing—and we must now have talked for over an hour—the door had stood half-open. Now, happening, for some reason, to turn round, I noticed that it was shut.

“Hullo!” I exclaimed, starting up surprised. “Why, I thought that door was open!”

At once we dashed over to it. I turned the handle to the right and tugged at it; then to the left and again tugged. It had been locked from the outside—shut and locked so carefully, that we had not heard a sound.

I bent down to examine the lock.

The key was still in it—on the outside!

I drew back, and held my breath. What did it mean?

Chapter Twenty Seven.

In the Shadow.

Whichelo was at once practical.

He turned, and glanced quickly at the long window. It was securely barred, horizontally, as well as vertically. Then he pushed a table forward, clambered upon it, and exerting all his strength, endeavoured to wrench one, then another, of the bars from its socket.

A silly action. He could not stir one of them.

“Paulton has locked us in,” he said, as he stood again beside me.

“Paulton!” I echoed.

“Yes—or Henderson. They and the Baroness—for whom I believe the police are seeking—are in hiding somewhere here. I thought it likely they would end by coming, as this is about the last place the police will be likely to search. They arrived yesterday, little knowing that I was in the vicinity. They’re hiding in here. I happen to know this, though they don’t know that I know it.”

“But why can they have locked us in?”

“I can’t say. Probably they’re up to some of their old rascality. They are full of ingenuity, and defy the police at every turn. The first thing we have to do is to get out.”

He looked about the long, narrow pantry. Soon his gaze fell upon a long-handled American fire-axe, suspended in a corner against the wall, beside a portable fire-extinguisher. He smiled, and crossed the room.

“When I lived abroad,” he remarked, as he took down the axe and felt its balance, “I was rather a good tree-feller. Now, this I call a really beautiful axe.”

Drawing himself to his full height as he spoke, he held the axe out at arm’s length, admiring it.

“Its balance is perfect, and there’s not an ounce of useless weight anywhere, either in the head, or in the stem. That is where American axes outclass our British axes entirely. Your axe of British manufacture is a clump of block steel stuck on the end of a heavy, clumsy stem. ‘Sound British stuff,’ it is, so the ironmonger will tell you. ‘Last a lifetime. Last for ever.’ And that is just what you don’t want, Mr Ashton. In these days we don’t need axes, or agricultural implements, or machinery, or anything else made to ‘last for ever.’ We want things made to last just long enough to give something better, time to be invented, and some improvements to be made, and no longer. That practice of the British nation of making things to ‘last for ever,’ has been the curse of our declining country for the past fifty years.”

“But what do you want the axe for?” I asked, anxious to stop his sudden flow of oratory.

“What do I want it for?” he exclaimed. “Stand back, and I’ll show you.”

He stepped towards the door, and measured his distance from it with the axe-stem. Then, without removing his coat, or even rolling up his sleeves, he gripped the stem by its extreme end with both hands. With a “whizz” the axe described a complete circle over his head, then descended. The blade, striking the lock in the very middle, wrecked it completely. Another “whizz,” another blow, and the lock fell in fragments on to the floor, with a metallic clatter. A third blow, and the door flew open.

I was about to go out into the passage, when Whichelo caught me by the shoulder and pulled me back.

“Scatter-brained Englishman!” he exclaimed, half in jest. “Doesn’t it occur to you that Paulton may be, and probably is, waiting with a gun?”

I confess it had not occurred to me.

“Then how can we get out?” I asked quickly.

“Just wait,” he answered, “and I’ll show you.”

At this moment we heard voices in the house, apparently in the large entrance-hall—men’s gruff voices. Also there was a tramp of many footfalls. The murmur approached. A door opened and shut. Some of the men were coming along the passage in our direction.

They stopped abruptly, as they reached the pantry where we now stood. At once we saw they were policemen—plain-clothes men, in golf-caps and overcoats, yet by their cut, unmistakably policemen. They looked us up and down suspiciously. Then one of them spoke.

“Where are Paulton and his accomplices?” was the sharp inquiry.

“Somewhere in this house,” Whichelo answered. “I haven’t seen them yet.”

“Not seen ’em! Then why are you here?”

Whichelo produced a card, and handed it to the speaker. Then he unfolded a letter he had withdrawn from his breast-pocket, and handed him that too. This letter was from Thorold, dated some days previously. It contained a request that Whichelo should go to Houghton and begin to make arrangements for his return there.

Satisfied with our bona fides, the police-officers looked inquiringly at the smashed lock.

“Well—and whose work is this?” one of the rural constables asked.

“Mine,” Whichelo answered. “Some one, probably the men you want, locked us in. The only way to get out was to smash the lock. And so I smashed it. I advise you to be careful in your search. Most likely they are armed, and probably they will be desperate at finding themselves entrapped. How did you find out they were here, officer?”

“Two men and a woman, all answering the circulated description of Paulton, Henderson and the woman Coudron, were seen to alight at Oakham station from the last down express last night. They were followed. They hired a conveyance. Its driver was cross-questioned. And so we soon discovered their whereabouts.”

Whichelo had, indeed, done well to warn the police-officers to exercise caution in their search—as it afterwards proved. For a quarter of an hour no trace could be found of the “wanted” men and woman, though the cellars, as well as all the rooms on the ground floor, on the first floor, and the second floor were searched.

In all, there were seven policemen. Whichelo and I accompanied them on their search, and I began to feel excited.

“What about the attics?” Whichelo suggested at last.

“I don’t think they’ll be there,” the police-inspector answered. “I expect they’ve got off into the woods. Still, we may as well go up and see.”

The attics, which constituted the servants’ sleeping-rooms at Houghton, were very large and airy. A long, narrow corridor ran between the rows of rooms. Facing the end of this corridor was a door. This was the door of the largest room of all.

Some of the doors were locked—some not. Whichelo had keys belonging to all the rooms. The door at the end of the corridor the searchers approached last.

Whichelo eagerly tried two or three keys, but none of them fitted. He was forcing in a fourth key, when suddenly, with a deafening roar, an explosion took place within that room.

At the same instant something crashed through the upper panel of the door, leaving a torn ragged hole in the wood, and riddling the wall at the further end of the passage. Everybody sprang back with a cry. Then, to our amazement, we realised that nobody had been hit by the charge of shot, which had travelled straight along the passage. It seemed a miraculous escape. The charge must have grazed Whichelo’s shoulder-blade as he bent down to fit the key.

Scarce had we recovered from our fright, when the barrel of a gun was pushed through that hole. Those inside meant business. The barrel pointed swiftly to the right. There came a blinding flash, another deafening report. It turned quickly to the left, and a third shot echoed through the house. Wildly we had thrown ourselves flat upon the floor. The charges had swept over us, cutting great furrows in the wall on either side.

“Look out! It’s a repeater!” I shouted, as I noticed the magazine beneath the barrel. “Keep back! Keep well away, all of you!”

The barrel swept from left to right, and right to left. It was resting on the smashed panel, and I guessed that whoever held it, had the butt pressed to his shoulder, and was endeavouring to discover our whereabouts before firing again. The fact that we might all be lying flat upon the ground, close to the door, apparently had not occurred to the man handling the gun.

Truly, that was a most exciting moment. Suddenly Whichelo moved. He was whispering into the ear of the constable crouching beside him. Swiftly the latter produced his truncheon, and Whichelo took it. Cautiously, noiselessly, he scrambled on all fours, then up to his feet. Now he stood upright, the truncheon firmly clenched in his right hand. Then, suddenly, grasping the protruding gun-barrel with his left hand, he dealt it a terrific blow close to the muzzle with the long, heavy, wooden truncheon.

And that single blow did it. The barrel, badly bent, was useless.

Quickly we all sprang to our feet and ran pell-mell down the passage. Though an ignominious retreat, it was the only move possible. Nor were we too soon. Hardly had we reached safety, round the corner of the passage, when another shot rang forth, and the wall facing the door was again riddled with pellets.

“They seem to have a battery,” the inspector said, when we were once more in the hall. “We shall need to starve them out,” he observed later. “There’s no other alternative that I see. I’ve never seen such a thing as this before in all my years in the Rutland constabulary.”

“Starve them!” I exclaimed. “And how long will that take? For aught we know, they may be well-provisioned.”

“It’s the only thing to do, sir,” he repeated doggedly. “We can’t smoke them out; and we can’t very well burn them out; and I doubt if the law will let us shoot them, though they shoot at us.”

“That may be so,” Whichelo cut in quietly. “But I tell you this now—I’m going to take the law into my own hands.”

The officer looked alarmed.

“You can’t,” the inspector exclaimed, as if unable to believe his ears. To your average police-officer the thought of a man’s audacity to “take the law into his own hands,” seems incredible. “You can’t, sir,” he repeated. “You can’t, indeed!”

“You think not?” Whichelo said, coolly, gazing down upon them all from his great height. “Come along, Ashton,” he called to me. “I’m going to teach a lesson to those vermin upstairs.”

I followed him out to the back premises, and thence along a passage to the gun-room, the door of which stood open. As we entered, Whichelo uttered an exclamation.

And no wonder, for the room had been ransacked. The glass front of the gun-rack had been smashed, several shot-guns had been removed—I remembered there had always been three or four guns in this baize-covered rack, now there was only one—and about the floor were empty cartridge-boxes, their covers lying in splinters, as though the boxes had been hurriedly ripped open. The repeating-gun that had been fired at us was probably the Browning which Sir Charles used for duck-shooting, for this was among the missing weapons.

“They intend to hold a siege,” Whichelo said, after a pause. “They’ve provided themselves with a stack of ammunition. This is going to be a big affair, Ashton, a much bigger affair than even we anticipated.”

Carefully he took down the only gun left in the rack.

“This is of no use,” he said, looking at it contemptuously. “It’s a twenty-eight bore.”

The outlook certainly was very black. True, there were nine of us. Had we been twenty, however, the situation would hardly have been better. For there, up in that attic, in a position commanding the full length of the corridor, were two desperate men, armed with guns, and provided with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which, as we knew, they would not hesitate to use. The question which occurred to us, of course, was: how were they provisioned? Given food and drink to last a week, and who could say what damage they might do?

I went with Whichelo out into the Park. The woods were looking glorious. It was a perfect evening, too, soft and balmy, with that delightful smell of freshness peculiar to the English countryside and impossible, adequately, to describe in print.

We were perhaps ninety yards from the house, with our backs to it, as we strolled towards the copse. All at once a double shot rang out behind us on the still, evening air. At the same instant I felt sharp points of burning pain all over my back and legs. Whipping round, I saw a figure on the roof, outlined against the moonlit sky, just disappearing.

Whichelo too, had been badly peppered. Fortunately we wore thick country tweeds, and these had, to some extent, protected us.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

The Unknown To-morrow.

Take it from me. It is not pleasant to be wounded, even in a good cause.

To be shot in the back by a man standing upon a roof, with a scatter-gun, is not merely physically painful; it is, in addition, humiliating, because it also wounds one’s amour propre.

At once I decided not to tell Vera what had happened. She was kind, sympathetic, and for many other things I loved her, but instinctively I knew that she would laugh if I told her the truth, and I was in no fit state then to be laughed at.

Indeed, merely to laugh gave me pain—a great deal of pain. It seemed to drive a lot of little sharp spikes into the holes made by the pellets.

Doctor Agnew—for I had returned to town that night, being extremely anxious to see Thorold again—to whom I exposed my lacerated back, made far too light of the matter, I thought—far too light of it. He said the pellets were “just under the skin”—I think he murmured something about “an abrasion of the cuticle,” whatever that may mean—and that he would “pick them all out in half a jiffy.” I hate doctors who talk slang, and I hinted that I thought an anaesthetic might be advisable.

“Anaesthetic!” he echoed, with a laugh. “Oh, come, Mr Ashton,” Agnew added, “you must be joking. Yes—I see that you are joking.”

I had not intended to “joke.”

“Joking” had been the thought furthest from my mind when I suggested the anaesthetic. But, as he took it like that, and spoke in that tone, naturally I had to pretend I really had been joking.

Agnew picked out all the pellets, as he had said he would, “in half a jiffy,” and I must admit that the pain of the “operation” was very slight. I should, in truth, have been a milksop had I insisted upon being made unconscious in order to avoid the “pain” of a few sharp pin-pricks.

Next day I went to see my love, and found her in tears.

Her father was, alas, worse, His temperature had risen. At the hospital they feared the worst. All the previous night he had been delirious. The sister had told her that he had “said the strangest things,” while in that condition.

I tried to comfort her, but I fear my efforts had but little avail.

“Did they tell you what he said while he was delirious?” I asked quickly.

“They told me some of the things he said. He kept on, they declared, talking of some crime. He seemed to see things floating up before him, and to be trying to keep them from him. And he talked about gold, too, they said. He kept rambling on about gold—gold. The nurses didn’t like it. One of them, I saw, had been really frightened by his wild talk.”

This was serious. That a crime had been committed, in which Sir Charles Thorold had, in some way, been concerned, I had felt sure ever since that discovery in the house in Belgrave Street. It would be too dreadful if, while delirious, he should inadvertently make statements that might arouse grave suspicion.

Statements uttered by a man in delirium, could not, of course, be used as evidence in a Court of Law, but they might excite the curiosity of the hospital staff—they had, indeed, already done that—and though I am no believer in the foolish saying that women cannot keep a secret, I do know that a good many nurses are strangely addicted to gossip.

“We must, at any cost, stop his talking,” Vera declared very earnestly. “What can we do, Dick? What do you suggest?”

What could I suggest? How deeply I felt for her. It would, of course, be possible to keep him quiet by administering drugs, to deaden the activity of his brain, but the doctors would never agree to such a proposal. Besides, such a suggestion would arouse their curiosity; it might make them wonder why we so earnestly wished to prevent the patient talking.

They might jump at all sorts of wrong conclusions, especially as they knew Sir Charles to be the man whose name had recently figured so prominently in the newspapers on two occasions.

No, the idea of drugging him, to keep his tongue quiet, must be at once abandoned.

We had just come to that conclusion, when somebody knocked. A page-boy entered with a telegram, which Vera opened.

“No answer,” she said, and handed it to me.

The messenger retired. Scanning the telegram, I saw it ran as follows—

“Just heard terrible news. Also where you are. Returning at once. Engage rooms for me your hotel.—Mother.”

The telegram had been handed in at Mentone.

Vera seemed a good deal relieved at the thought of seeing her mother again. At this I was not surprised, for, in a sense, she had felt herself responsible for Lady Thorold’s evident ignorance of her husband’s mishap and illness. She had felt all along, she told me, that she should have kept in touch with her mother.

“If my father dies, without my mother having heard of his illness, I shall never forgive myself,” she had said to me once.

Lady Thorold arrived at the Grand Hotel next evening. She had travelled by the Mediterranean express without stopping, and had hardly slept at all. Nevertheless, she insisted upon going at once to the hospital, to see her husband.

He was a little better, the doctor told her. He had recovered consciousness for a short time that evening, and his brain seemed calmer. Several times, while conscious, he had asked why Lady Thorold did not come to him, and where she was. Her absence evidently disturbed him a good deal.

On leaving the hospital, I looked in at Faulkner’s club. He was in the hall, talking to the porter, and just about to come out.

“Ah, my dear Dick,” he exclaimed, “you’re the very man I want to see. How is Sir Charles?”

“A very little better,” I answered. “I have just come from the hospital. Lady Thorold is with him now.”

“Good. By the way, have you seen the tape news just in?”

“What news?”

He led me across to the machine at the further end of the hall, picked up the tape, and held it out at arm’s length. The startling words I read were as follows—

“The men whom the police are trying to arrest at Houghton Park to-day, shot three policemen dead, and seriously injured a fourth. A reinforcement of police has been summoned. Thousands of people have assembled in the Park, which surrounds the house, and hundreds are arriving hourly on foot, on bicycles, in carriages, and in cars.”

While we stood there, the machine again ticked. This was the message that came up—

“Houghton Park. Later: A number of bags of gold coin, mostly French louis, have just been found at Houghton Park. They were discovered by the police, concealed between the rafters and the roof. There are said to be several thousand pounds worth of these coins.”

So the mystery was slowly leaking out. I felt that everything must soon be known. How did those sacks of gold come to be hidden in the roof at Houghton? Who had concealed them there? Could it be the same gold I had seen in the house in Belgrave Street? And if so, had Whichelo...

I felt bewildered. What chiefly occupied my thoughts was the news of those policemen. Poor fellows! How monstrous they should not have been allowed to fire upon the murderers.

Too furious to speak, I left the club with Faulkner, and together we walked along Piccadilly, towards Bond Street. As we sauntered past the Burlington, a pair of laughing, dark eyes met mine, and at once I recognised—Judith!

“Ah, mon cher ami!” she cried, revealing her white teeth as she extended her well-gloved hand. She was gorgeously and expensively dressed, in the height of Paris fashion, and I noticed that all who passed us by—men and women alike—stared hard at her.

“Did you come back with Lady Thorold?” I asked—why, I hardly knew—when we had talked for some moments.

“Mais, oui,” she exclaimed. “We were together in Mentone, when I read in a newspaper about this dreadful affair. I had just heard from a friend here that Mademoiselle Vera was staying at the Grand Hotel, so I told Lady Thorold. She was désolée at the news about Sir Charles—pauvre homme—and said she must return at once to see him, and asked me if I would come with her. So I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ And here I am. Do you remember our evening together at the ball in Monte Carlo?” she ended, with a rippling, silvery laugh.

“Where are you staying?” Faulkner asked.

“I? At the Piccadilly Hotel. You must come to supper with me there. What night will you come?”

We made some excuse for not arranging definitely what night we would have supper with her, and I laughed as I thought of the two louis I had given the girl as a bribe to remove her mask, and of the sum I had afterwards paid her to take me to Vera. And now she was staying at the Piccadilly Hotel, and giving supper parties—the girl whom I had once believed to be Lady Thorold’s maid!

How strangely wags the world to-day!

As we all three emerged into Burlington Gardens, boys came rushing past with the latest edition of an evening paper.

“Ah, gran’ Dieu!” she cried, as she caught sight of the contents bills. For this was what we read on them—

HOUGHTON PARK.

SACKS OF GOLD DISCOVERED.

AMAZING STORY.

She snatched a paper from the nearest boy, but it contained only the news we had just read on the club tape.

Judith seemed more upset at the news of Sir Charles’ condition, I thought, than about the “Houghton Siege,” as the papers called it. She said she must go at once to Lady Thorold, and, hailing a passing taxi, left us.

As I looked at the pictures of Houghton Park, in that paper we had bought, I could not help wondering what the Rutland people must be saying.

Only a month or two ago, the sudden flight of the Thorolds from Houghton, and the events that had followed, had brought that exclusive county notoriety, which I knew it hated.

Then there had been the mystery of old Taylor’s death in the house in Belgrave Street, and quite recently the mystery of the mummified remains, both of which events had again brought Rutland indirectly into the limelight of publicity, the Thorolds and myself being Rutland people.

Now, to cap everything, came this “Siege of Houghton Park,” to which the newspapers, one and all, accorded the place of honour in their columns. It was the “story of the day.” This final ignominy would give Rutland’s smug respectability its deathblow. Never again, would its county families be able to rear their proud heads and look contemptuously down upon the families of other counties and mentally ejaculate—“We thank thee, O Lord, that we are not as these publicans.” Henceforth, proud and exclusive Rutland would bear the brand of Cain, or what “the county” deemed just as bad—the brand of Public Notoriety. Yes, there is amazing snobbishness, even yet, in our rural districts. Yet there is also still some sterling British broad-mindedness—the old English gentleman, happily, still survives.

Faulkner had asked me to go to a theatre with him. He knew, he said, he could not ask Vera, with her father so ill, but Violet de Coudron would be there. He would try to get a fourth, as he had a box. There was no good in moping, he ended, sensibly enough.

I returned to King Street to dress, intending to telephone first, to the hospital, to inquire for Sir Charles. On the table, in my sitting-room, a telegram awaited me. Somehow I guessed it must be from Vera in her distress, and hurriedly tore it open—

“Father sinking fast,” it ran, “and beseeching for you to come to him. Come at once. Most urgent—Vera.”

I rang for my man. The telegram had been awaiting me about half-an-hour, he said.

Telling him to telephone to the hospital, to say I was on my way, and also to Faulkner, to tell him I couldn’t go to the theatre, I hurried down the stairs, dashed out into the street, and hailed the first taxi I met.

Was the actual truth at last to be revealed?

Chapter Twenty Nine.

A Strange Truth is Told.

I went straight up to the side-ward in the hospital where Thorold lay, the hall-porter, in his glass-box, having nodded me within. At the door of the ward I met the sister, in her blue gown.

“I am so glad you have come, Mr Ashton!” she exclaimed. “He wants so much to see you, and I fear he has not long to live.”

The dark-eyed woman, with the medal on her breast, seemed genuinely distressed. Thorold, for some reason, had always attracted women. I think it was his sympathetic nature that drew women to him.

I waited in the corridor. Suddenly Vera came out, a handkerchief saturated with antiseptic before her mouth, to avoid infection.

Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes red from weeping. On seeing me, she began to sob bitterly; then she buried her face in her hands.

I did my best to comfort her, though it was a hard task. At last she spoke—“Go in to him—go in to him now, dear,” she exclaimed broken-heartedly. “He wants you alone—quite alone.”

The invalid was quite conscious when I entered, a handkerchief similar to Vera’s having been given me by a nurse. He was propped up with pillows into almost a sitting posture. The other bed in the side-ward was unoccupied, for it was being used for isolation. After what I had been told, I was surprised at his appearance, for he struck me as looking better than when I had last seen him. A faint smile of welcome flickered upon his lips as he recognised me. Then he grew serious.

Without speaking, he indicated a chair beside the bed. I drew it near, and seated myself.

“We are quite alone?” he whispered, looking slowly about the room. “Nobody is listening—eh? Nobody can hear us?”

“Nobody,” I answered quickly. A lump rose in my throat. It was dreadful to see him like that. Yet, even then, I could hardly realise I was so soon to lose my valued and dearest friend, who had been such a striking figure in the hunting-field.

He put out his thin hand—oh, how his arm had shrunk in those few days!—and let it rest on mine. It felt damp and cold. It chilled me. The moisture of death seemed already to be upon it.

“Listen, Dick, my boy,” he said very feebly. “I have much to tell you, and—and very little time to tell it in. But you are going to marry Vera, so it—so it’s only right that you should know. Ah, yes, I can trust you,” he said, guessing the words I had been about to utter. “I know—oh, yes, I know that what I say to you won’t make any difference to our long friendship. But even if it should,” he said, grimly, “it wouldn’t matter—now we are so very soon to part.”

I felt the wasted hand grip more firmly upon my wrist.

“I have known you for half your life, my boy,” he said, after a pause, “and I’ll tell you this. There is no man I know, whom I would sooner Vera married, than yourself. You have your faults, but—but you will be good to her, always good to her. Ah! I know you will, and that is as much as any woman should expect. And Gwen is glad, too, that you are going to marry Vera. But now, Dick, there is this thing I must tell you. I—I should not rest after death, if I died without your knowing.”

Again he paused, and, in silent expectation, I waited for the old sportsman to speak.

“You have lately come to know,” he said at last, “that there is to do with me, and with my family, a mystery of some kind. Part of my secret, kept so well for all these years, I believe you have recently discovered. The rest you don’t know. Well—I’ll tell it—to—you—now.”

With an effort, he shifted his body into a more comfortable position. Then, after coughing violently, he went on—

“Dick, prepare yourself for a shock,” he said, staring straight at me with his fevered eyes. “I have—I have been a forger, and—and worse—a murderer!”

I started. What he said seemed impossible. He must suddenly be raving again. I refused to believe either statement, and I frankly told him so.

“I am not surprised at your refusing to believe me,” he said, calmly. “I don’t look like a criminal, perhaps—least of all like a forger, or a murderer. Yet I am both. It all occurred years ago. Ah! it’s a nightmare—a horrible dream, which has lived with me all my life since.”

He paused, then continued.

“It happened in the house I had then just bought—my house in Belgrave Street. The governor had left me money, but I was ambitious—avaricious, if you like. I wanted more money—much more. And I wanted it at once. I could not brook delay. I had travelled a good deal, even then, and I was still a bachelor. During my wanderings, I had become acquainted with all sorts and conditions of people. In Mexico I had met Henry Whichelo, and on our way home to England on the same ship, we became very intimate. Another man on board, with whom I had also grown intimate, was Dan Paulton—or Dago, as his friends called him. A man of energy and dash, and of big ideas, he somehow fascinated and appealed to me. Well—he—he discovered my ambition to grow rich quickly and without trouble. He was a plausible and most convincing talker—he is that still, though less than he was—and by degrees he broke it to me that he was interested in, and in some way associated with, a group of ‘continental financiers,’ as he called them. Later, I discovered, when too late, that really they were bank-note forgers! He talked to me in such a way that gradually, against my will, and quite against my better nature, I became interested in the operations of these men. And, as he had thus ensnared me by his insidious talk, so, in the same way, he had ensnared our companion, Whichelo.”

And he paused, because of his difficulty in breathing.

“It was about this time that I married. Within a year after my marriage, I found that blackguard Paulton was doing his best to steal Gwen from me,” he went on, in a half-whisper. “He was talking her right round, I found, as he seemed able to talk anybody round. By this time, I had discovered him to be a far greater scoundrel than I had ever before suspected. Then came a revulsion in my feelings. I had come suddenly to hate him. My mind became set upon revenge. Already I had become actively interested in Paulton’s continental schemes for making money, the forgery of French bank-notes, and by manufacturing coin. My fortune was already more than doubled. Alas! It was too late to draw back. Some of the base coin had actually been moulded and finished in my house in Belgrave Street. The rest was made abroad. The coins, perfectly made by an ingenious process, were nearly all French louis and ten-franc pieces, these being the coins most easy to circulate at the time. Paulton’s plan for issuing the coin we made, was ingenious and most successful. It seemed impossible—of—of—discovery. And—”

Once again he was compelled to pause, drawing a long and difficult breath. Then he continued—

“It was the year before I met you that the tragedy occurred. Paulton, Whichelo, Henderson, and also a half-brother of Paulton’s named Sutton, who was nearly always with him, and myself, were gathered in the room on the second floor, in my house in Belgrave Street, the room that was found recently with a hole cut in the floor. It was late at night, and the place was dimly lit. We worked in silence. The work we were engaged upon I need not trouble to explain to you—I expect you can guess it. My mind was in a whirl. I was thinking all the time of my wife, wondering how far her intrigue with Paulton had already gone. Then and there I would have assaulted Paulton, turned him out of the house, but I had so far compromised myself that I confess, I dare not. I could not do anything that might incur his enmity—he had the whip-hand of me completely—I, who had recently bought a knighthood, just as easily as I could have bought a new hat.

“Suddenly, some one knocked. Ah! How we all started! I was the first to spring to my feet. In a few moments all tools and implements we had been using, had been spirited away. They had disappeared into receptacles in the floor and in the walls, made specially for their concealment. Then I unlocked the door. Gwen entered. She had been dining out with friends, and had returned much earlier than she had expected. Her bedroom was far removed from the room in which we were at work, but she had noticed a faint light between a chink in the shutters, and so, on entering the house, she had come up to that room.”

And he was seized by another fit of coughing, and pointed to a glass half-filled with liquid, which I placed to his lips.

“How surprised and startled she looked, at finding us all there, apparently reading newspapers and smoking!” he went on. “That was the first time she began to suspect—something. The glance she exchanged with Paulton, brought the fire of jealousy to my brain. I believe at that moment I went mad, for I loved her. I have a furious, a most awful temper. You have never, in all these years we have known each other, my boy, discovered that—and yet I say the truth. Yes—it—it got the better of me that night. Without an instant’s forethought, I sprang across the room, crazed, beside myself with jealousy. I slammed the door and locked it. Then rushing at my wife—God forgive my having done it—I seized her by the arms, and flung her to the ground, charging her with infidelity, vilifying her most horribly, hurling blasphemy upon Paulton who, pale as death, glared at me. Then—ah, shall I ever forget that moment!” he cried, in agony of mind. “Then he sprang at me. I dodged him, and he slipped and fell. Instantly recovering himself, he made a second rush. This time his half-brother, Sutton, came at me, too, with a drawn knife. In my frenzy I picked up the nearest thing handy, with which to defend myself. It was a short iron bar, used for opening boxes, the only tool we had, in our haste, overlooked when hiding the implements. With one bound, Paulton was upon me, his half-brother just behind. As I aimed a terrific blow at him with the iron rod, he ducked. The blow meant for him struck Sutton just below the ear. The man collapsed in a heap upon the floor. He never spoke again. He died without a cry!”

The dying man moaned again in mental agony, and moved feverishly upon his pillow.

“Don’t—don’t tell me any more,” I urged in distress, seeing how it upset him to recall what had happened.

“I must. By Heaven, I must!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You must know everything before I die. I shall never rest unless you do. Never!”

He breathed with increasing difficulty, then went on—

“And—and seeing what had happened, Paulton, I truly believe, went mad,” said the prostrate man. “It took Whichelo, and Henderson and myself, all our strength to hold him down. Gwen was on the sofa, in hysterics. What surprised me was that nobody in the street outside was attracted by the uproar. I suppose they couldn’t hear it through the double windows. I won’t go into further details of that awful night. I can’t bear to think of them, even now. But from that night onward, Paulton had me in his power. It was Whichelo who suggested embalming Sutton’s body and hiding it in the house. He would himself perform the embalming. He had embalmed bodies in Mexico, and understood the process.”

He remained silent for some seconds.

“And so that was done,” he continued. “Paulton and Henderson had left the house, the former satisfied at the thought that he could now use me as his cat’s-paw—and by Heaven! he has done so! The coin we had in the house, some genuine, but most of it base, we hid away with the body between the ceiling and the floor. None knew our secret but my wife, Gwen—who almost revealed it during an attack of brain fever, which resulted from the shock she had received—Paulton, Henderson and myself. Vera was not old enough to know, but when she reached her seventeenth year, we decided to tell her the whole story, deeming it wiser, for various reasons, to do so. And now you understand.”

“And during all the years I have known you,” I said, “where has Paulton been? What became of Whichelo, and of Henderson? I met Whichelo for the first time in my life, just after you had left Houghton so mysteriously. Yet you say you have known him all these years.”

“Whichelo joined his brother in Mexico City, and remained there for many years,” he replied. “Paulton and Henderson continued their clever work of money-making, though mostly in Rome, and in Barcelona, where they had a number of accomplices. And I was bled—blackmailed by Paulton to the extent of nearly all my fortune—month after month, year after year. My wife, as you know, has her own fortune, and there were reasons why he could not touch that without incriminating himself, so for years I have had to live almost entirely on her means. Some years ago, Paulton and Henderson were both arrested in Paris on a charge of forgery of Russian bank-notes. They were tried, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. At the end of seven years, they were released. Paulton returned to England, and began once more to blackmail me. Worse, he had seen Vera, and at once told me he should marry her. If I refused my consent he would, he declared—”

The poor fellow who had once bought a knighthood, stopped, gasping for breath. I laid my hand upon his arm, as I thought to soothe him, but he pushed it off quite roughly.

“Some months ago he sent me an ultimatum. If I still refused to let my girl marry him, he—would call before the last day of—March—and—”

“Yes? Yes?” I exclaimed, unable now to restrain my curiosity.

“He declared he would disclose all he knew, take Vera from me by a plan that he explained, and that I saw I could not frustrate, and encompass the death of any persons to whom he thought I might have revealed the secret concerning him. Also he would tell the police the truth about the murder of his half-brother. He believed that you and I being such intimate friends, I had told you about him. Also he believed, for some reason, that my butler, James, knew something. He said he would kill you both. One of his accomplices was Judith, whom, a year ago, Gwen unsuspectingly engaged as maid. She, it seems, had kept Paulton posted in all that was happening in Houghton. I was driven to my wits’ ends—entirely desperate—though—you—you never suspected it.”

“But the photograph,” I exclaimed, as I noticed a curious change suddenly come over him, “that photograph of Paulton—why was it at Houghton?”

“We always kept it there, that Vera might never fail to identify Paulton, should she ever meet him. When we told Vera, in her seventeenth year, all that had happened years ago, we showed her that portrait for the first time. It was my idea to set it in the morning-room recently, so that my poor girl might never forget what the man looked like who had sworn to take her from me.”

“Could you not have removed the—that hidden body?” I exclaimed, anxious to get from him as many facts as possible, in the short time he had still to live. “What proof could he then have had—?”

“Don’t—ah! don’t!” he interrupted. “There were reasons—of—of course, had it been possible, I—a water-pipe had burst in my house—it had caused the body to stain the ceiling—and—also there were—” and his thin, bony fingers clutched at the air in frantic gesture.

His sentences were now disjointed, their meaning could not be followed. Now he was straining terribly his mouth gaped, his dry throat emitted a strange, rasping sound. I seized his wasted wrist. His pulse was almost still. Now his face was growing ashen, his eyes were staring into space—their intelligence was fading.

The nurse entered, and glanced at me significantly.

I sprang to my feet, and ran to the door.

“Vera! Vera! Lady Thorold!” I called. “Come—ah! come quickly, he is dying... dying!”

They rushed in from the corridor, where they had been awaiting me. In an access of despair, Lady Thorold threw herself upon her knees beside the bed, moaning aloud in a grief terrible to witness. My love stood beside her, gazing down upon her father—dazed—motionless. Grief had paralysed her senses.

Suddenly, his thin, white lips moved, but no words were audible. Quickly Vera bent over him. The shrunken lips moved again. He was murmuring. For an instant, his filmy eyes showed a gleam of intelligence once again.

“Dick—be good—to her—you—you will be good—to her!”

The voice was now, so faint, that I could barely catch his words. His dull gaze rested upon my eyes. I stooped down. My hand was upon his. Ah! How cold he was!

“Always,” I said aloud, with an effort, a great lump rising in my throat. “I promise that—I promise I will do all possible to make Vera happy—always—always!”

By the expression, that for an instant came into his dull, filmy eyes, I saw that he had heard and understood. Slowly the eyelids closed. He was turning paler still. The light died from his face.

A few seconds later his countenance was ashen, and I knew that he had breathed his last.

Speechless, motionless, I still stood there.

My hand was still upon his, as it lay upon the coverlet, slowly stiffening. The only sound audible was the bitter wailing of his widow—and of Vera. I made no attempt to comfort them. Better, I knew, let the passion of their sorrow read! its flood-tide, and allow the fury of their misery to exhaust itself. Words of sympathy, at such a time, would only be a mockery.

Later, I would do all possible to help them to recover from the awful blow which had so suddenly fallen upon them.

Chapter Thirty.

Contains the End.

For a quarter of an hour we remained there in the presence of the dead.

The grey light in the side-ward faded into darkness. The electric light had not been switched on. The sobs and lamentations of Lady Thorold and her daughter, locked in each other’s arms, began slowly to subside.

Gradually my thoughts drifted to the past, and all that had happened in those years I had known Thorold so intimately, and had loved him almost as a father. One thought afforded me most intense happiness. At last the time had come when I should be able to prove to Vera the intense love I bore her.

“Be good to her—you will be good to her—Dick—always,” had been her father’s dying request. Ah, how well I would obey my dear friend’s last request! Never again should unhappiness of any kind cross his child’s path, if I could prevent it. I would show her how, in my opinion, a husband should treat a wife.

My thoughts drifted to Houghton. What had happened there, I wondered. What was happening now?

Ah! What was happening! Had I known what was happening in those moments I should not, perhaps, have felt as restful as I did.

Next day the newspapers were full of it.

The “Siege,” as they had termed it, had in truth become a real and desperate siege. All attempts to dislodge Paulton, Henderson, and the woman with them, had proved of no avail. Several policemen had since been severely wounded. This was due to the fact that the police, under the impression that the besieged men were armed only with shot-guns, had approached, as they believed with impunity, rather close to the house. All at once, a murderous fusillade had been opened upon them from a shuttered window—only by chance, indeed, had the result not proved again fatal. The wounds the police had received had been dreadful, far worse than bullet wounds, for the assailants had, by cutting the paper cases of the shot-cartridges round the middle with a knife, caused the charge of shot to travel like a bullet, which burst open when it struck.

“It was late in the afternoon,” ran one newspaper account of the conclusion of the siege, “when a big body of police arrived from Oakham, armed with revolvers and rifles, to fire upon the besieged men, and in a few minutes the rattle of musketry rang out, the reports echoing and reverberating in the woods around Houghton Park, and among the distant hills. In return, came shots in quick succession, fired now from one window, then from another. The men hidden in the house seemed to have plenty of ammunition.”

The reporter then indulged in half a column of descriptive writing. After that, he came again to the point—

“Finally, finding that all efforts to dislodge the besieged proved futile, and fearing they might, in their mad fury of revenge, set the house alight, the order was given to renew the attack. This was at once done. The combined fire played havoc upon the house for doors, windows, and shutters were quickly riddled, and even some of the chimney-pots were shattered. At last the return fire ceased entirely, and the order was given to rush the house. This was done, and only just in time. In one of the lower rooms straw, paper, wood shavings and other inflammable material had been piled up, and two paraffin-cans lay upon the floor, both being empty. Evidently it had been the intention of the besieged men to pour paraffin over the inflammable material, but they had found only empty cans. The material had been set on fire, but, not being well alight, was soon extinguished. At once a search was made for the besieged men—a risky undertaking, seeing that they might still be provided with ammunition and lying in concealment to open fire on the besieging party.

“It was in a shuttered room on the first floor that the bodies were at last found. The shutters had been riddled with rifle bullets. The two men and the woman were lying upon the floor, all three had been shot dead. Paulton had received no fewer than three bullet wounds.”

There was much more, but I had read enough. I let the newspaper drop from my nerveless fingers.

Somehow, in spite of these terrible happenings, I felt happy—strangely happy.

At the moment, I had no time to analyse my feelings and discover a reason for the sense of restfulness that had come over me at last, after those weeks of hot, feverish excitement. Later, I knew it was the knowledge that all who could harm my well-beloved had mercifully been removed.

Lady Thorold, Whichelo and Vera were the only people living, besides myself, who knew the grim secret of Sir Charles’ past life. No more would Lady Thorold, kind, gentle, sympathetic woman that she was, be haunted by the fear of blackmail, or terrorised by those human vultures who had so often threatened to reveal what had happened in the house in Belgrave Street in the dead of night years before. And, blessed thought, no more would my darling be harassed, bullied, or made to go almost in fear of her life.

And the gold—those bags of base coin found hidden so carefully at Houghton Hall, hidden there by Whichelo after their removal from Belgrave Street? And the mysterious body discovered in the house in Belgrave Street? Both had been pounced upon by the police.

But my only thought, my only care was of Vera—Vera, my beloved.

No doubt expert men from Scotland Yard were at that moment using all their intelligence, evolving endless abstruse theories, straining every nerve to pierce the mystery surrounding these remarkable discoveries.

I smiled maliciously, as these thoughts occurred to me, and I realised how fruitless all the well-meant endeavours must prove. For never, never now would any one find the true solution. The whole of the strange affair would be written down as a mystery.

Not until three months after poor Sir Charles had been laid to rest at Highgate, did our wedding take place, in Brompton Parish Church. And in the same week, at the same church, another wedding was solemnised. Frank Faulkner and Violet were married on the Tuesday, and I was present in the church beside Vera, who looked so sweet and smart in a pretty afternoon gown.

“Dick, dear, how happy they both are,” she whispered, as Faulkner and his handsome bride passed down the aisle after the service, while the great organ pealed forth the strains of the old, yet ever new and never hackneyed, wedding march of Mendelssohn.

“And how perfectly lovely Violet looks,” I answered.

Whichelo, who was beside us, and whose immense height had occasioned considerable comment among the invited guests, as well as some laughter amongst the crowd gathered together in the street, overhearing my remark, laughed aloud.

“A few more outbursts of unrestrained admiration of that kind,” he growled, in his deep voice, “and I may hear from Thursday’s prospective bride that my services as best man will not be needed!”

Well—what more is there to tell?

We were married two days later, at the same church as Faulkner and Violet—and spent a delightful honeymoon in Denmark and in Norway. Then we returned to dear old London, Lady Thorold having taken up her abode in a small house in Upper Brook Street.

Our most devoted friend to-day is Henry Whichelo—Harry, as he likes us both to call him. He knows everything of the past, yet no syllable of our secret will ever pass his lips. Not a week goes by but he dines at our table, full of his quiet humour, yet sometimes as we sit smoking together in the evening, the subject of those strange happenings—how fresh they still are in the memory of both of us—comes uppermost in our conversation.

“Ah, my dear old Dick,” Harry said to me the other night, as we talked incidentally of the fire at Château d’Uzerche, “how I should have loved to see you sliding down that rope! Young Faulkner has often told me of your really wonderful sang-froid!”

My “sang-froid in moments of crisis” is now a standing joke against me! Vera, it was, who first started it, I believe. Well—I forgive her. I brought it on myself entirely, and must bear the consequences of my overweening conceit in the past!

A warm evening in August. The end of a stifling day.

As I sit writing the final lines of this strange narrative in my cosy little study in our new home—no, our home is not in tiny Rutland, but overlooking Hampstead Heath, a part of London that my wife loves—the crimson sun sinks slowly in the grey haze lying over the great city below. Vera is here with me, in her pale pink dinner-gown, and her fair hair brushes my cheek as she bends over me. Now her soft cheek is pressed to mine.

The blood-red afterglow burns and dies. The summer light is fading. The only sound is the whirr of a car going towards the Spaniards. The air outside is breathless, for the day has been terribly oppressive.

I raise my smiling face to her sweet countenance, and now, all at once, she stoops lower still, until on a sudden access of emotion, she passionately kisses my lips.

“Vera, my love!” I exclaim, looking up into her great blue eyes. “Why—why, what’s the matter, my darling?”

Her eyes are brimming with tears. Her red lips move, but no words escape them. The corners of her mouth are twitching.

“My darling—my own darling, what is it?” I cry, rising to my feet, and folding my arms tenderly about her. Her head is upon my shoulder. She is weeping bitterly.

“Dick,” she exclaims, hardly above a whisper. “Oh, Dick—my darling, my own darling boy, I have been sitting here thinking—dreaming of the past, of all we have been through—of those awful days and nights of anxiety and of dread terror. And now,” the words came with a sob, “oh! I am so completely happy with you, my dearest—so absolutely happy. I can’t describe it. I hardly know—”

The twilight deepens. I hold her closely in my arms, but I cannot trust myself to speak. Our hearts beat in unison.

Dusk grows into darkness. Still no word passes between us. We are too full of our own reflections, of our own thoughts, of our perfect happiness, now rid as we are for ever, of the grim shadow of evil once placed upon us by “The Mysterious Three.”

The End.

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Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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