Burgo had not got as far as his own room before he was accosted by one of the servants. "Lady Clinton's compliments, and would Mr. Brabazon like a little light breakfast at once?"
Mr. Brabazon was much obliged to her ladyship, and, if it was quite convenient, he would like a cup of coffee and a rusk.
In five minutes they were brought him.
After that he tumbled into bed, slept like a top for four hours, got up, tubbed and dressed, after which, in his own parlance, he felt "as fresh as a daisy." He had ascertained overnight that his uncle never made his appearance downstairs before luncheon, and very often not then. So, without saying a word to any one, or troubling himself about breakfast, he quietly left the house on his way to the "yard" in search of Mr. Hendry. The jobmaster expressed himself as being very sorry for his own sake that things had turned out as they had; "but, of course, I'm very glad for your sake, Mr. Brabazon, that you and Sir Everard have come together again."
"For anything I can tell to the contrary," said Burgo--"for one can never be sure what turn affairs will take--you may see me back at the yard, with nothing to do, before either of us is very much older."
"You will always be welcome, sir, and I'll engage to find you a job at any time, should you be in need of one."
With that the two men shook hands and parted.
Burgo got back to Great Mornington Street just as luncheon was served. His uncle was downstairs, and certainly looking no worse than on the previous day.
There, too, were her ladyship and Signora Dusanti, and the signora's little daughter, a child of ten. Conversation was general during the meal, personal topics being avoided as if by common consent. Even Sir Everard was quite chatty, and once or twice laughed heartily at some remark of Tina, who seemed a most precocious child for her years. Burgo found it had been already arranged that he and his uncle should go for a drive in the barouche, while Lady Clinton and the signora went shopping in the brougham.
At the last moment her ladyship said to her husband: "If you have no objection, dear, I should like Tina to go with you and Mr. Brabazon. I'm afraid the poor child would find shopping very tiresome, and I am sure a good blow in the Park would do her far more good."
The corners of the baronet's mouth dropped for a moment; the next he said quite heartily: "Of course--of course. Let the child go with us, by all means."
A little later Burgo could not help asking himself whether Tina might not have been purposely sent with them in order to act as a check upon any confidential talk which might otherwise have passed between his uncle and himself in the course of the drive. At any rate, if that was her ladyship's intention, it proved thoroughly successful. The girl was such a shrewd little thing, and had so evidently been schooled into making good use of her ears, that both the men felt convinced that everything which might be said by them would be retailed to the signora, and would doubtless be passed on in due course to the person chiefly concerned. Consequently the talk was merely of such a kind as might have been overheard by the world at large. One remark which his uncle made gratified Burgo immensely. "Hoskins found a marked improvement in me this morning," he said; adding, with a laugh, "of course he gives all the credit of it to the particularly nauseous stuff I'm taking just now. But, and I would, I could tell him different from that."
Sir Everard shrank from the publicity of the Row. "I've only been once in it since my return," he said, "and on that occasion, if I was commiserated by one person on the score of my health, I was by twenty. It's an ordeal I don't care to face again. Let us take a quiet drive down Kensington way."
The rest of the day and evening passed as the preceding ones had done. After dinner came music and singing, and the baronet went so far as to indulge in one game of backgammon with his nephew. "It seems like old days come back," he remarked to Burgo, adding in a lower voice, "if only it will last! if only it will last!"
Soon after half-past nine he retired.
Burgo's second vigil was arranged on precisely the same lines as the first. His uncle slept well, only waking twice at irregular intervals, both times to find Burgo seated within a couple of yards of his bed, waiting patiently for him to open his eyes. In the course of this second night no conversation of what might be termed a private nature passed between them. More than once, when Sir Everard was sitting up in bed, Burgo saw him glance half-apprehensively, half-suspiciously at the door which opened into his wife's apartments, or rather, at theportière, which to-night was drawn completely across it. But whatever his thoughts or suspicions might be, he kept them to himself.
Next forenoon Dr. Hoskins's report was again a favourable one. "A few more days like this, my clear sir, and you will have made a big stride on the road to recovery," he said.
After luncheon her ladyship and the signora again went out together, ostensibly for shopping purposes, and again Sir Everard and Burgo, with little Tina for eavesdropper, went for a long suburban drive.
The third night of Burgo's sitting up was merely a repetition of the two previous ones. It was diversified by no incident worth recording, and again, as on the second night, the invalid confined such talk as passed between himself and his nephew to matters of little or no moment. It was evident to Burgo that he felt far from sure they were really alone, but he was doubtless unwilling to expose his wife to the ignominy of discovery, should it be a fact that she was playing the part of an unseen auditor.
Burgo did not feel himself at liberty to try the door as on the first night, unless requested by his uncle to do so; but, although since then his eyes had glanced at it times innumerable, after that first occasion he had seen nothing to lead him to suppose that it was otherwise than closely shut; still, so long as it remained half hidden by theportière, a doubt would inevitably make itself felt.
All this time Lady Clinton's amiability and graciousness towards Burgo had been eclipsed by no faintest shadow of change. She treated him as if he were there of right as a member of the family. That first interview between them might have had no existence, save in Burgo's imagination, for any hint or allusion to it which escaped her lips. Did she wish him to forget it? Was it her desire that he should consider the breach between his uncle and himself not merely as healed, but as if it had never arisen? It certainly seemed so, and under ordinary circumstances, no other conclusion would have been logically possible. But in this case the circumstances were not ordinary ones. There was his uncle's mysterious illness to be taken into account, and, above all, certain things which his uncle had said to him--phrases, as it seemed to him, charged with a terrible meaning. These were facts which it was impossible to ignore, or to put lightly aside as of little import. Then, again, some still, small, inner voice seemed to warn him against Lady Clinton. He mistrusted her instinctively, and in such cases he knew how useless it is to ask the why and the wherefore. Our likes and dislikes have their springs deeper than we can plumb, and constitute a part of that mysterious Ego which each of us calls Myself--which is at once our slave and our master, and which, even at the end of the longest life, we have only partially learned to know.
There was one very pertinent question which Burgo did not fail to put to himself, namely, "What change is there in me, what have I done between the date of my first interview with her ladyship and now, to cause her so radically to reverse her tactics towards me? She was as undoubtedly hostile to me then as she undoubtedly wishes me to believe her my friend now. Why this extraordinaryvolte-face?There must be a motive at the bottom of it; what is that motive?" He could only shake his head, and murmur, "Ma chère tante, what your little game is I don't in the least profess to know, but I believe you to be a snake in the grass, and a venomous one to boot, and I decline to trust you farther than I can see you."
He had time enough and to spare in which to turn these and sundry other matters over in his mind during his long hours of watching.
On this third morning he found his coffee and rusks waiting for him as usual on reaching his own room. The rusks he left untouched, but the coffee he drank off almost at a draught. It was nearly broad daylight outside, but the curtains were closely drawn so as to exclude it, and a couple of candles were alight on the dressing-table. After swallowing his coffee he sat down to smoke "just one" cigarette before turning in. As he lay back in his chair watching the grey spirals of smoke curl slowly upward, his thoughts reverted to a subject which had engaged them more than once already. Not a word had escaped Sir Everard with reference to that first interview between his nephew and Lady Clinton, and yet it was absurd to suppose that the arrangement was not of his own making, although probably due to his wife's instigation, or that the result of it had not been made known to him in due course. The cheque had been of his own making out, and that it had been scornfully rejected and torn up by his nephew was a feature of the affair which there could be little doubt her ladyship would be only too pleased to paint for his behoof in the most exaggerated colours. And yet he had never so much as alluded to the affair. It could not be that he had forgotten it. For anything Burgo had seen to the contrary his memory was nearly as good as ever it had been. What, then, could be the reason of his silence? Was it possible that her ladyship had stated the case as against Burgo in far blacker terms than the facts warranted, and that as a consequence Sir Everard was waiting for his nephew to apologise? But Burgo, feeling that he had nothing to apologise for, and that, in point of fact, he was the person chiefly aggrieved, had already made up his mind that if the subject were to be broached at all, his uncle must be the one to take the initiative. Perhaps, in the course of a day or two, Sir Everard might bring himself to speak of it. Well, in that case he, Burgo, would be quite prepared to--what was it he would be prepared to do? (The thread of his argument had unaccountably escaped him.) Why, to defend his own action in the--in the what? (How stupid of him!) Why, in the affair, of course. Yes, yes--that was it. He would be quite prepared to----
Where was he? What had come over him? His eyelids felt as if they were being pressed down by invisible fingers; every limb seemed weighted with lead; a deadly numbness had taken hold on all his faculties--never had he felt like it before. Was he going to be ill? Had some fever got a grip of him? Was he--was he----But at this point his brain refused to do his further bidding. He rose to his feet somehow and stood for a few moments with his hands pressed to his head, swaying about like a drunken man. Then, with his arms outstretched, as though to help him to balance himself, he staggered across the floor, and falling prone along the bed, remembered nothing more.
When he awoke to consciousness he knew neither where he was nor what had happened to him. The first thing he was aware of, and it probably helped to recall him fully to himself, was that he had a splitting headache. It was a dull continuous throbbing, as though some piece of clockwork in his brain were marking off each second as it passed. He strained his eyes and he strained his ears, but the darkness and silence were intense--profound. He stretched out his arms and cast about with his fingers, and presently made out that he was lying fully dressed on his back on a bed--so much was certain. He must take that as a starting-point and work mentally backward. What was the last thing he could remember? It was a question not to be answered off-hand, more especially when a man's skull seemed to be opening and shutting twenty times a minute. When he tried to think he seemed to be groping in a fog as thick as wool. The last thing he---- Ah! now he had it. It was---- No, it had escaped him. He shut his eyes tight and pressed his burning head between his hands, which, strange to say, were cold and clammy. He lay thus immovable for some minutes, chasing through vacant caverns and tortuous passages a will-o'-the-wisp which still eluded him.
The last thing he could remember! He kept murmuring the words under his breath. And then suddenly it was revealed to him in a dazzling flash, and the same instant he sprang up in bed. Yes, every incident, down to the most trifling, arranged itself in order before him. He saw himself, as though it were another he was looking at, leave his uncle's room and make his way yawningly, and with hands deep buried in his pockets, to his own room. The curtains were drawn, the candles alight, his coffee and rusks in readiness for him. The latter he did not touch; but he was thirsty, and he swallowed the coffee gratefully at one long draught. He called to mind that the bed had looked very inviting, but that the temptation of a cigarette had proved too much for him. Then, a few minutes later, there had crept over him a strange leaden numbness and lethargy, both of mind and body, the like of which he had never experienced before. He had stood up, dazed and stupified, had staggered across the floor, and flung himself on the bed, and then had followed an absolute blank.
Yes, he saw it all now. His coffee had been drugged! No other explanation was possible. Of what devilish plot had he been made the victim? And what black purpose lurked at the bottom of it?
He stood up, feeling faint and giddy, and had to steady himself for a few moments by gripping the ironwork of the bedstead, before he durst venture to stir. Then he groped his way carefully and slowly, like a blind man, till he reached the window and drew aside the curtains. In the street outside the darkness was absolute; a thick fog pressed softly against the window, and wholly absorbed the light from the lamp over the way.
"It was seven o'clock in the morning when I quitted my uncle's room," muttered Burgo, "so that I must have slept through one day, and far into the next night." Then he took out his watch and put it to his ear. It had stopped for want of winding up. Evidently the thing most needed was a light. He called to mind that after lighting his cigarette, he had placed his silver matchbox on the table close by where he was sitting. He now groped his way from the window to the table in search of the box, but nowhere could he find it. Then he proceeded to search his pockets, but to no avail. Had the box been purposely removed in case he should wake up in the dark and want to strike a light? Nothing seemed more likely.
He now made his way to the door, only to find that he was locked in; but, judging from what had happened to him already, he had expected nothing less. He had been drugged, and was now a prisoner; all he could do was to wait with such patience as was possible to him for the break of day.
He felt chilled in every limb, only his head still throbbed and burned; but, happily, the pain was less poignant than before. Drawing a counterpane off the bed, he wrapt it round him, and sat down by the window. Both inside the house and out the silence for some time remained unbroken, but by-and-by there came to Burgo's ear a faint rumble of wheels from the busy thoroughfare into which Great Mornington Street debouches at its upper end; then, before long, the sounds became more frequent, and, after a little longer, almost continuous. Then he knew that the dead time of the night was past, and that he should not have much longer to wait for the first signs of day.
But already he had become far less concerned about his own predicament than about what it might possibly portend to his uncle, for that Lady Clinton was at the bottom of the business he never for a moment doubted. That it had been conceived and carried out with the view of bringing about a climax, or a breach of some kind in the new and cordial relations between his uncle and himself, seemed, on the face of it, hardly open to question.
And yet, for the life of him, he could not see in what way drugging him, or making a prisoner of him for four-and-twenty hours (for, of course, it was absurd to suppose that he would allow himself to remain locked up there after daylight had fairly set in), could in any way conduce to whatever end her ladyship might have in view. But, in the absence of any foundation on which to build, surmise and speculation were futile, and the merest waste of time. He would put them resolutely aside, and indulge in them no more. It was an easy enough promise to make, but a difficult one to keep.
After what to Burgo seemed an interminable time, a faint ghostly light began to broaden in the reaches of the upper sky, and the silver lamps of night to be extinguished one by one, for with the coming of dawn the fog had vanished. And now Burgo began to listen for some signs and tokens of reviving life in the household below stairs. But time went on, and the daylight broadened, but all his listening remained in vain. Within doors no faintest sound broke the silence. It was unaccountable. How long should he wait before he rang the bell and summoned some one? What, however, if there was no one to summon? "But that's absurd," he told himself, with a shrug. "If the servants are not down already, they can't be long now. I'll wait another half-hour, and then----" His eyes had wandered to the bell-pull, or, rather, to the place where it ought to have been, for it was no longer there. It had been severed within a foot of the ceiling. As Burgo's eyes took in the fact, the blood for a moment or two seemed to curdle round his heart. More than all that had gone before it served to strike him with a chill dismay.
But it was no time for inaction. Not a moment longer would he sit there waiting for he knew not what. By this time daylight was sufficiently advanced to enable him to discern everything in the room. With Burgo necessity was the mother of contrivance. What he now did was to take off his braces, separate them at the joining, and tie them end to end.
Then, having dragged his bed, which ran on castors, into position, he placed a chair on it, and having climbed on to the latter, he found that he could just reach to knot one end of his braces to the severed bell-pull. Then, having descended from his somewhat insecure perch, he gave a vigorous tug at his improvised rope, and awaited the result.
Burgo crossed to the door and stood listening with bated breath and one ear pressed against it, but the silence indoors remained unbroken. After waiting for full two minutes, but which seemed to him nothing short of a quarter of an hour, he went back and gave a longer and a still more vigorous tug at the rope. Then he listened again, and presently he was rewarded by hearing the banging of a door somewhere in the lower parts of the house, followed by a peculiar thumping sound, faint at first, but which gradually came nearer as it quitted the flagged hall and advanced slowly up the oaken staircase, its approach being marked by a distinct tap on each stair, twenty-six in all. Burgo had counted them many a time when a boy, just as he had slidden many a time down the broad, polished oaken balusters.
As he stood listening his heart beat a little faster than common, and he told himself that had that sound broken upon his ear in the dead of night, he could scarcely have heard it without a shudder. Nearer it came till it stopped opposite the door of his room. Then the key was turned, and the door flung roughly open, and to Burgo's astonished eyes there stood revealed a short, thickset, blear-eyed old man, with what seemed to him a most unprepossessing cast of face, whose chief garment was a greasy, much-worn overcoat, which reached nearly to his heels. He was lame, and it was the tapping of the heavy iron-shod stick which he used to aid him in walking that had so puzzled Burgo.
For a few seconds the men stared at each other in silence. Then Burgo said: "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"Didn't you ring, sir?" asked the man. Burgo nodded. "Very well, then, ain't I come to let you out?"
"Who told you to come and let me out, as you term it?"
"My leddy."
"And where is her ladyship?"
"Gone."
"Gone! And where is Sir Everard?
"Gone too--they're all gone."
For a moment or two Burgo's brain reeled, and he had to steady himself against the doorpost. He was weak from want of food, and he had not yet recovered from the effects of the narcotic.
"And when did Sir Everard and Lady Clinton take their departure?" was his next question.
"Between seven and eight o'clock last night."
"Bound for where!"
The fellow favoured Burgo with a cunning grin. "It's none o' my business to answer that question, sir. Maybe I know, and maybe I don't, but if you ask no questions, you'll be told no lies."
Burgo smothered the execration that rose to his lips. To have vented his temper on such a fellow would have been absurd. Besides, he had not done with him.
"And who may you be, my friend, if the question is not an impertinent one?" he asked.
"I'm the caretaker appointed by her leddyship. Me and my old woman have got to look after the house while the family's out of town."
"What has poor Benny Hines done to be turned adrift?" queried Burgo to himself. Then aloud he said: "And so you were told by her ladyship to come and let me out when I rang, were you?"
Again the man grinned. "What I was told was, that there was a young gentleman upstairs what had taken more to drink than was good for him, and that he was sleeping it off, and that when he rang I was to go upstairs and unlock the door."
Mr. Brabazon laughed aloud; but it was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Oh, ma chère tante, que je vous aime beaucoup!" he exclaimed. The man was to come when I rang the bell, but care had been taken by robbing him of his matchbox and cutting the bell rope to delay the summons as long as possible.
For a few moments he stood considering, then drawing half a sovereign from his pocket and balancing it on the end of his forefinger, he said with a meaning look at the man: "Come now, I have no doubt that if you chose you could tell me where the luggage which the family took with them was addressed to."
The man glanced from the coin to Burgo's face, and then back again with a cunning leer. Then drawing a step or two nearer, he said in something between a whisper and a croak: "I don't mind telling you, sir, that I did make it my business--and why not, hey?--to see where her leddyship's big trunk was directed for.",
"Yes," said Burgo.
"Brussels was the word I read, sir, in letters a inch long."
Burgo tossed him the coin. The information was well worth it.
Half an hour later a hansom deposited him and his portmanteau at the door of his lodgings.
When he had had a bath and some breakfast he felt more like himself again. Then he lighted a pipe and sat down to consider.
His distrust of Lady Clinton, which not all her smiles and all her amiability had sufficed to eradicate, had proved to be but too well grounded. When she had found him, as the result of an accident, reinstated in Sir Everard's good graces she accepted the situation like the clever woman she was, but it had only made her all the more determined to carry out her own schemes, and she had done so with a boldness and a decision which gave Burgo a far higher opinion of her powers than he had held before. She had brushed him from her path after a fashion which not one woman in a thousand would have had either the brain to plan or the courage to carry out. Once more she had Sir Everard under her sole control, and there was no one to say her nay. What had heretofore lurked in the background of Burgo's mind as nothing more than a sinister shadow now took shape and consistency--grew and spread till it overshadowed him like a huge funereal pall, on which an invisible finger traced in letters of molten flame the one wordMurder. Burgo faced the word while he shuddered at it. By what purpose save one had she been actuated from the beginning?--and recent events clearly proved that she was still as firmly bent on carrying it out as ever she had been. What that end was it seemed to him there was no longer any need to ask.
One solitary gleam of comfort came to him, and one only. It was derived from his uncle's words: "I shall not die till after the 12th of October." Meanwhile he had been spirited away--whither?
"If her ladyship thinks she has finally choked me off she will find herself very considerably mistaken," said Burgo to himself with a grim smile, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "Ten o'clock to-morrow morning will find me in Brussels."
There were two people whom he told himself he should like to see before leaving town--to wit, Mr. Garden and old Benny Hines. So, leaving the packing of his portmanteau till later in the day, he now sallied forth with the intention of calling on the latter of the two first. He had not forgotten that the old man's niece was parlour-maid at No. 22, and it seemed to him, seeing how unlikely it was that Lady Clinton should have taken any of the servants with her, unless it were her own maid and her husband's valet, that he might be able to obtain indirectly, through Benny, some information with regard to the proceedings of the day before, which would prove serviceable to him.
On reaching the house he found there both Benny and the old man's niece, and as the latter had already exhausted her budget of news as far as her uncle and aunt were concerned, she was only too glad to have another listener, and that one a handsome young man, to what she could tell about the doings at No. 22.
It appeared that no sooner was breakfast over on the previous day than Lady Clinton summoned all the servants into the morning-room, with the exception of her maid and her husband's valet, and there told them that, in consequence of Dr. Hoskins having ordered Sir Everard to quit London with the least possible delay, the establishment would be broken up that very day, that they, the domestics, would be paid a month's wages each in lieu of notice, and that they must one and all be ready to quit by five o'clock that same afternoon. After that she (Polly) had been employed all the morning in packing trunks under her mistress's supervision. About mid-day the Signora Dusanti and her little girl had taken their departure. Somewhat later the servants had all been summoned again to the morning-room and paid what was due to them, with a little present to each over and above their wages. By six o'clock there was no one left in the house save her ladyship, Sir Everard, the maid, and the valet. And that was all Miss Polly had to tell.
Burgo, without in the least doubting the girl's good faith, was somewhat sceptical on the latter point. Details which to her might seem of no importance might be of vital consequence to him.
"And did nobody trouble to wonder what had become of me, Polly?" he smilingly asked, "nor why I had so mysteriously disappeared?"
"Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Vallance told us at breakfast that you had been called away in the course of the night to attend the deathbed of a near relation."
"Ah, then Vallanceisone of her ladyship's tools, as I suspected all along," was Burgo's unspoken comment. "My uncle probably suspected it too, which would account for his unconcealed dislike of the fellow." What he said aloud was, "It was a statement which reflected great credit on Mr. Vallance's powers of invention."
"Was it not true, then, sir?" asked Polly, with wide-open eyes.
"Not one word of it. But never mind that now. I suppose you did not see Sir Everard again before you left the house?"
"Oh, yes, I did, sir. The poor gentleman was much worse yesterday, and before Dobson, the butler, left, her ladyship asked him to help Vallance to carry Sir Everard downstairs into the drawing-room."
"To carry him down! Do you mean to say that he could no longer come downstairs with the help of Vallance's arm on one side and the balusters on the other, as he had lately been in the habit of doing?"
"He had to be carried down, sir, by the two men between them. As Dobson said, 'He couldn't put one foot before the other.' I just caught a glimpse of him and it was enough to make my heart ache. His face looked more like that of a corpse than of a still breathing man."
Burgo's heart ached too, but the grief he felt was largely leavened with indignation. That his uncle in the course of a few short hours should have changed so radically for the worse was to his mind consistent with one theory, and one only. Sir Everard had had some drug, or pill, or potion administered to him which had brought on a sudden relapse, and had thereby incapacitated him for protesting against, or offering any opposition to, whatever arrangements his wife might choose to make. Burgo cursed her ladyship in his heart as he sat there.
A minute or two passed before he could control himself sufficiently to question Polly further.
Then he said: "I suppose you didn't happen to overhear for what place her ladyship was bound? It would most likely be some place abroad--perhaps in Italy or the South of France."
"The label on her ladyship's trunk was directed to some place--it was a queer name, and I can't quite call it to mind--'near Oakbarrow station.'"
"What!" exclaimed Burgo, with a burst of amazement. "Are you sure of that, Polly?"
"I read it with my own eyes, sir."
"This is news indeed! Was the name of the place you can't quite call to mind Garion Keep?"
Polly considered for a moment or two with a finger pressed to her lips. Then she said with an air of conviction, "Yes, sir, that was it--I'm sure of it now--Garion Keep; and a very funny name I thought it."
"That old scoundrel at No. 22 lied to me in order to put me off the scent," said Burgo to himself; "whether of his own accord or by her ladyship's instructions does not matter now."
After a few more questions Burgo took his leave. Polly had nothing more of consequence to tell him.
From there he drove to Mr. Garden's office, only to learn, to his great disappointment, that the lawyer had gone for a brief holiday. He felt that he had never stood more in need of his counsel than just then. After a call on Mr. Hendry, the jobmaster, he made his way back to his lodgings.
The information furnished him by Polly with regard to Lady Clinton's destination had simplified matters for him exceedingly. Instead of following his uncle and her to Brussels--supposing them to have gone there--all he had now to do, so as at once to bring himself into proximity with them, was to book himself for Oakbarrow station by the night mail from Euston.
Burgo had been at Garion Keep for a couple of days with his uncle about six years previously, and only a short time after the latter had succeeded to the property--such as it was. It had been a bequest to him from a dear friend, an old bachelor without kith or kin, and he had run down from town, taking his nephew with him, to look at the place. It was an old-fashioned ramshackle structure, in a great state of disrepair, fronting the sea, and situated on a bleak and desolate reach of the Cumberland coast. Unfortunately the weather had been very cold and stormy during the time they were there, and Sir Everard, after a stay of forty-eight hours, during which he had never ceased to shiver, had been glad to turn his back on the place and to hurry southward again as fast as steam could carry him.
Now, it was quite conceivable to Burgo why Lady Clinton should be desirous of carrying off her husband to the Keep. There she would be able, so to speak, to immure him; there he would be lost to the world; there, without a creature to interfere with her, she would be able to slowly consummate her fell design. But what he could not understand was how her ladyship had become acquainted with the place and its suitability for her purpose. He could hardly believe that Sir Everard would have suggested it of his own accord, and yet Lady Clinton must surely have known something, nay, a good deal, about it before venturing with her invalid husband on so long a journey. From what Burgo had seen of her he took her pre-eminently for a woman who calculated each step before she took it, and made sure there was firm ground for her foot to rest upon.
As we have seen, it had been Burgo's intention to leave Euston that same evening by the mail train; but, in the course of the afternoon, in the act of leaping off a bus, he slipped and sprained his ankle so severely that for the next ten days he was a prisoner to his room, and compelled to divide his time between bed and sofa.
It was merely one instance more ofl'homme propose.
Mr. Brabazon did not make the most patient or sweet-tempered of invalids, if a man may be termed an invalid who is laid up with nothing more serious than a sprained ankle. As it happened, he had no one but himself and his landlady to vent his ill-humour on, and as the latter was in the habit of bursting into tears on the slightest provocation, he kept her at arm's length as much as possible. What made him especially savage was that his accident should have happened at a time when every hour was, or seemed to him, of infinite consequence. What might not be happening at Garion Keep--to what straits might not his uncle be reduced--while he, Burgo, was lying on his back, a helpless log, unable to walk across the floor without exquisite pain? A score times a day he ground out maledictions between his teeth at the untoward fate which had thus scurvily laid him by the heels.
Nor was his amiability increased when he one day read in theTimesan announcement of the marriage of Miss Leslie to Lord Penwhistle. That Mrs. Mordaunt would hurry on the match he knew full well, and for some time he had never opened a newspaper without half expecting to see the announcement, yet for all that, now it had come, it was like a sudden stab. That Clara was fickle, mercenary, and altogether lacking in stability of character, he had long ago made up his mind; indeed, there had not been wanting times when he had told himself he ought to thank his stars that, at whatever cost to himself, he had been hindered from uniting his fate with hers. Still, despite all this, it was inevitable that he should feel a lingeringtendressefor one around whom, only such a little while before, his imagination had woven the golden tissues of the fairest day-dreams his life had yet known.
Sadly and bitterly sped the next few days for Burgo. There was nothing for him to do, there was nothing he could do, save lie on his back and think--think--think. And what a pleasant and profitable occupation that is when we are possessed at once with a sense of our helplessness and a burning anxiety to be up and doing, some of us may unfortunately have learnt to our cost.
Still, despite his anxiety to follow up with the least possible delay the clue which Benny Hines's niece had furnished him with, he recognised how useless and foolish it would be to do so till he should be able to move about with some measure of activity. Consequently it was not till upwards of a fortnight from the date of his accident that he finally found himselfen routefor Oakbarrow station, and even then he was not able to walk more than a few yards without the help of a stout malacca.
Oakbarrow station is between two and three miles inland. On reaching there Burgo hired a fly to convey himself and his portmanteau to Crag End, an insignificant fishing hamlet about a mile and a half from the Keep, which lived in his memory as a spot where he and his uncle had been caught in a thunder-storm on the occasion of their visit six years before. There was only one tolerable inn in the place, and there Burgo alighted. Yes, they would be glad to accommodate him in their humble way, said the landlord. He could have a bedroom, and also the use of the upstairs sitting-room, except on market days, when the country folk and their wives looked to have the run of the house. Burgo, who was never exacting in minor matters, professed himself as being quite satisfied; and as things turned out he had every reason for being so.
Knowing how curious people in little country places are with regard to the names and business of strangers, Burgo wisely determined to supply the needful information about himself before curiosity had time to be hatched. His name was Lumsden, he told Tyson, the landlord; he was from London, and was by profession an artist. He had journeyed all the way to Cumberland partly in the hope of benefiting his health, and partly with the view of taking a series of sketches of the scenery and objects of interest in the neighbourhood for one of the illustrated papers. As it happened, he could sketch fairly well for an amateur, and he had been careful that his luggage should include the needful drawing materials, together with a portfolio containing sundry studies in chalks and pencil several years old.
His intention had been to take a quiet stroll with the help of his malacca in the dusk of evening in the direction of the Keep and reconnoitre it from a distance.
He wanted to familiarise himself with the features of the old place, with regard to some of which his memory was rather uncertain. But towards four o'clock the weather changed and it began to rain heavily, nor did it cease till night had fairly set in. It was undeniably annoying, but there was no help for it. "Mr. Lumsden" must perforce remain indoors till the morrow.
But it seemed to him that if he could not make use of his time in the way he had designed, he might perhaps be able to do so in another way. There were many things he was still ignorant of, many things which, figuratively speaking, he was dying to know, and he thought it not unlikely that his landlord might be able to enlighten him with regard to some of them. Tyson, if not a man of much education, was intelligent and well-mannered, and had nothing of the provincial boor about him. In his younger days he had been a gentleman's servant and had travelled--a fact which he was careful to impress upon all who were brought into contact with him. In that simple little community it gave him a certaincachet, and enabled him to speak with an air of authority on many subjects about which in reality he knew next to nothing. His trained eye had at once detected that "Mr. Lumsden" was notquitewhat he professed to be--that there was far less of the wandering artist than of the West Endflâneurabout him. Dress, voice, manner, and that elusive something which makes its presence felt but defies definition, all betrayed him.
"Don't tell me!" said Mr. Tyson to his wife, who had not spoken for the last five minutes; "he's a swell to his finger-tips, and I think I ought to know one when I see him. He's doing the artist dodge for a lark, or because he's quarrelled with his governor, or because his young woman's given him the go-bye. Anyhow, it's no business of ours, and if Mr. Lumsden thinks he has thrown dust in my eyes he's quite welcome to his opinion. Only, as I said before, I know a real swell when I see one."
It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that when Mr. Lumsden, after the candles had been lighted, complained of feeling a little lonely, and requested as a favour that the landlord would keep him company over a bottle of "John Jameson" (what wine there was in the house he had found wholly unthinkable), and some of Burgo's own cigars, that worthy should have complied with alacrity.
Burgo had the knack, when he chose to exercise it, which was not always by any means, of putting those who, in no offensive sense, might be termed his inferiors, at their ease, and in five minutes Mr. Tyson felt himself quite at home, while at the same time perfectly aware that there was an invisible line drawn between himself and the man seated opposite him which he must on no account attempt to overpass. But the landlord was one of the last men to have attempted anything of the kind.
A turf fire had been lighted which, if it did not throw out much heat, imparted an air of cheerfulness to the homely sitting-room, for in September on the Cumberland seaboard the nights often strike sojourners from the South as being unpleasantly chilly. On this particular evening a cold rain was falling outside, and the incoming tide had brought with it a wind which tore in fitful gusts down the village street and smote each diamond-paned window with a watery lash in passing. A couple of wax candles, reserved by Mrs. Tyson for very special occasions, in brass candlesticks of amazing brilliancy, stood on the oaken three-legged table, together with all the appliances for the manufacture of toddy after the most approved recipe.
When the landlord, at Mr. Lumsden's request, had mixed a couple of steaming jorums, the first thing he did was to drink his guest's health, and the second to help himself to a cigar from the latter's case. A comfortable hassock had been supplied Burgo on which to rest his lame ankle, and as he basked in front of the little fire he told himself that the "Golden Owl" was a bird of which he should retain a pleasant recollection as long as he lived.
"And which is the most picturesque and interesting mansion, castle, or ruin within an easy walk of Crag End, Mr. Tyson?" queried Burgo, after having duly tested the quality of his grog.
"Well, sir, I'm afraid we're rather destitute hereabouts of the things you speak of. After you've sketched Garion Keep you'll find nothing worth looking at nearer than Kippsley Castle, eight miles away."
"And this Garion Keep that you speak of, is it a ruin, or does any one live in it?
"It had been in a partially ruinous condition for longer than I remember it till about a year ago, when the present owner, Sir Everard Clinton, took into his head to have it thoroughly restored and made fit to live in."
"With the usual result, I suppose, of spoiling its old-time picturesqueness. But I seem to know the name of Sir Everard Clinton. Was he not married a few months ago to a lady much younger than himself?"
"The same man, sir. Report has it that he's a good bit over sixty, whereas the lady looks young enough to be his daughter."
"So I have been told: such things get talked about in London. And are Sir Everard and his wife now in residence at the Keep?"
"They came down about a fortnight ago, all in a hurry--at least they never sent word to Farmer Jellicoe, who had the keys and the looking-after of the place, that they were coming, and so, of course, nothing had been got ready for them. Next day, however, half a dozen or more servants followed them from London, though why the servants couldn't have been sent on first and have got things shipshape for their master and mistress is what I for one don't profess to understand."
But Burgo understood.
Polly's information had proved to be correct; his uncle had been brought to the Keep, and at that moment he, Burgo, was less than a mile away from him. For a few moments, although he seemed to be puffing placidly at his cigar, he was too inwardly agitated to trust himself to speak.
It was the landlord who first broke the silence.
"They do say there's no finer air anywhere than our Cumberland air," he remarked; "so let us hope it'll do the poor gentleman good and help to set him on his legs again."
"Sir Everard was ill when he arrived at the Keep, was he?"
"Mortal bad, sir. At Oakbarrow station he had to be carried from the railway carriage to Jim Wilson's fly--the same that brought you, sir--by Jim and his valet, and from the fly into the house when they reached the Keep."
"That was a fortnight ago. Do you know whether Sir Everard's health has improved in the meanwhile?"
The landlord shook his head. "They're very close up at the Keep--for one thing, perhaps, because the servants are all stuck-up Londoners, and very little news is allowed to leak out. It seems certain that the poor gentleman has never been outside the house since he was carried into it; but there's a roomy lawn between the house and the edge of the cliff, and a sea-wall with a sheltered walk behind it, and mayhap on fine days he might be found out there, if one really knew."
"Has he no medical man attending him?"
"Oh, yes, sir, Dr. Rapp was sent for the very day after Sir Everard arrived, and every morning he jogs over from Oakbarrow on his brown mare, passing here again on his way back about three-quarters of an hour later."
"But even if poor Sir Everard is too ill to leave the house, that seems no reason why his wife should not be seen out of doors now and then."
"She is seen out of doors now and then, sir; I never said she wasn't. The family brought neither horses nor carriages with them, but her ladyship has hired a barouche and pair from the King's Arms' at Oakbarrow, in which she and Miss Roylance take the air on most fine afternoons."
Mr. Brabazon pricked up his ears. "Miss---- I didn't quite catch the young lady's name."
"Miss Roylance, sir, who is said to be her ladyship's ward, or niece, or something of that kind. She arrived at the Keep a couple of days after the family, and has been staying there ever since."
Burgo had never heard Miss Roylance's name before which was scarcely to be wondered at.
"Almost on the heels of Miss Roylance another visitor, a gentleman this time, made his appearance at the Keep," resumed the landlord, "so like her ladyship both in features and expression, only that he must be several years the elder of the two, that one hardly needed to be told he was her brother. His name, sir, did you say? It's a foreign one; they say her ladyship is a foreigner born, though she speaks English as well as you or I. He calls himself Siggnor--Siggnor--hang me if I can remember the name! nor, if I did, am I rightly sure how to pronounce it. Anyhow, he's a fine-looking man, nobody can deny that, but with something in his face that made me say to myself the first time I clapped eyes on him: 'If you owed me a grudge, you're not the sort I should care to meet face to face in a lonely road, and you with a dagger hidden about you.' But of course that was merely a foolish fancy on my part; for no doubt the gentleman's as harmless as my pet canary. He seems fond of taking long walks on the cliffs, or across the moors, his only companions at such times being two big, fierce dogs of some foreign breed, which, carefully muzzled, follow him about wherever he goes. At night, however--so I've been told--they are unmuzzled and turned loose in the courtyard."
After this the men smoked awhile in silence.
It seemed clear to Burgo that he had picked up a lot of information which, even if it should ultimately prove of little real value, had at all events served to put himau courantwith affairs at the Keep so far as outsiders had any cognisance of them.
"You said just now," he presently remarked aloud, "that Sir Everard Clinton had caused the Keep to be put in thorough repair, but I suppose all that was arranged for some considerable time before his marriage?"
"Oh, yes, sir. It was some time in the spring of last year that he wrote to a firm in Whitehaven specifying what he wanted doing to the old house; but it was not till after he was married, that is to say, about three months ago, that he was at the trouble to come and see whether his orders had been carried out in a way to satisfy him. He and his bride--I heard they had only been married two or three weeks before--came down from London, staying a couple of nights at Oakbarrow, and driving over to the Keep during the day. It was then that the Baronet gave orders about the laying out of the grounds and the furnishing and fitting up of the old place, so that it seemed only natural to suppose he intended to make it his home for at least a part of the year."
Here was a point cleared up which had puzzled Burgo more than enough. When Lady Clinton decided upon bringing her husband to Garion Keep she had known quite well what she was about. That two days' visit had made her sufficiently acquainted with the place to enable her to judge how far it could be utilised for the furtherance of her secret designs.