XXV.The Flight of Parson Lolly(There ended my diary. Thenceforth I was to be like a man in a maelstrom. And now that circumstances have stayed my hand from its task for weeks on end, I have no confidence that I can record with due proportion and emphasis events which seem to have been fantastic and instantaneous as dreams. Frantic suspense, frozen horror, and the rest are now a whirling memory. But I hope, above all else, that whoever reads these lines may feel, as those who knew her did, the splendid nervous courage, the shrewd discernment, and the strange compassion and mercy, of Paula Lebetwood!)Make no mistake. The weary, faltering girl at my side—never, never for an instant did I suspect her.Yet while we lagged through a ruined fairyland, past the wreck of Sir Pharamond’s first hold, beneath branches where the rooks were brawling, and between the ordered files of the summer-house park—all the way my heart grew blacker, and the incubus weighed heavier on my soul. I feared for her, and fear pressed cold fingers against my lips.Blasphemous thoughts; they were not mine. I had no thoughts of her but reverence.They might have been the jangling voices of the birds themselves: “Look! Here comes the foreign woman who was pledged to the Kingmaker, but is going to marry his millions instead! Why has she never wept a tear for the man in his shroud?” What if the trees had voices, these grey and sombre sycamores? “We saw what happened in the two twilights. We know where the golden-haired girl was when Cosgrove met his fate. We know when she left the strawberry grove the day that Heatheringham rushed toward death. We saw her slip across the shadowed lawn—”No, no! If trees could speak, they would declare her innocence.Not trees but men would be her judges, cunning men, who might weave about her a web of suspicion with strands as fine and strong as silk.Scotland Yard might be waiting for us when we returned; that is, a brisk, clear-headed, observant, utterly unprejudiced investigator, a person whose mind as nearly as might be resembled an inductive and deductive machine. He would sweep the ground clear of the débris of false starts and idle speculations, and construct anew.The deaths: what would the lynx of justice discover immediately in respect of them? He would hear of a motive, money. How should he know better than to impute a sordid impulse to this high-minded girl? He would hear of a quarrel on the afternoon of Cosgrove’s death. How should he know that there had been more than mere anger in her mood when she parted from us, that there had been dignity, aloofness, a temper far above reprisal?But there was worse, much worse. She may have been with Cosgrove the moment he was struck down!Belvoir, coming toward the towers, had seen the Irishman with canvas lifted regarding the puny battle-axe. In the mixed light, Belvoir had not been positive hehadseen Cosgrove, but the likelihood was that he had attested to less rather than more than the truth. The American girl might have been beyond the Irishman at that moment, concealed partly by his bulk, partly by the darkness of her gown in the twilight. I, of course, had come past the spot afterward and found the lawn empty, but the two might easily have gone through one of the entrances of the House and re-emerged shortly after I had made my reconnaissance from the parapet. What brief, passionate scene could then have taken place, such as would have ended by Cosgrove’s turning away and her hammering him with a rough-and-ready chunk of rock snatched up from the rim of the flower-bed, I left to the professional imagination.In Heatheringham’s death, we knew her insistence that she had disobeyed his bidding, and her declaration of what she had seen. But, again, there was not a tittle of proof of her assertion that she had remained on the edge of the strawberry trees. Quite safely she could have slipped back into the House. I wondered, in spite of the arm thrust through the glass, if the detective might not have been outside the House when he pressed the trigger, and that straightway he rushed into the Hall (pursuing something?)—to meet his death. Who waited for him there? No one could have, save Paula Lebetwood.Black—it was black.I tried to gain comfort from the obscurities that would confront Scotland Yard if he tried to build up a theory in this wise. I recalled the bone, the laugh, the pig’s gore, and other unsolved conundrums. But Scotland Yard, being an experienced hand, would be sure to fit them in somewhere. I was sick at heart.Yes, I must protect her against the world, and, if need be, against herself. The proof would be in action. I began wondering whom I could trust.When we came to the fringe of the sycamore park and passed alongside the cypress trees, one first-storey window showed light in the northern wall of the House, and we could see radiance from others down the long façade.“Miss Mertoun has returned.” It was the only speech either of us had offered in two dark and desolate miles.“Millicent?” The American girl halted in surprise. “Did they make her go out, too?”“She volunteered like the rest of the ladies for searching in the Vale itself.”“Darling Millicent. I love her better than anything else on earth. She shouldn’t have tried to find me, Mr. Bannerlee. She isn’t strong, you know, and this has been a terrible, tragic week for her. She should never have come to Aidenn Vale, but I didn’t—understand then, as I do now.”Somehow we did not go straight on, but lingered there by the cypresses with their low-hung darkness.“But her week has not been as tragic as yours.”Her voice was sombre. “More, much more.”“What!” I came closer, peered into her face, where the dusk had erected shadows. “What do you mean?”“You haven’t wondered, I see, about Millicent and Sean.”“Wondered? Wondered what, in God’s name?”She spoke wearily. “You didn’t know Sean, of course. Neither did I, I suppose.”“What do you mean?” I cried again, with an intolerable heaviness in me, remembering Lib.“Religion and sensuality: they go together often, don’t they? I thought that if I recognized that—streak in Sean I might disregard it and it would be like a thing that never was. If that had been all. . . .”I caught up the silence. “You can never make me believe—that Miss Mertoun—”“Oh, of course not. She wasn’t like the others. . . . She hasn’t offended me; I’m the offender. . . .”“Paula, you mustn’t stop. Tell me what you mean.”“It’s beastly of me, I suppose . . . especially when someone else . . . I wonder why it is we confide in people we half-know instead of our closest friends. But it’s horrible to have a thing pent up in your brain . . . like a deadly growth.”“Tell me, Paula.”“If I hadn’t come along, Millicent would be Mrs. Cosgrove now. It sounds—almost grotesque, doesn’t it? But there it was, a fact that months and even years couldn’t kill. I never had the least inkling of it—oh, Millicent’s been a loyal friend to me—until we were all here and it was—too late. Millicent came, you see, since if she didn’t—I would never have had a Bidding Feast without Millicent, and she knew it. But I never guessed . . . until she told me, after midnight, the night you came.”“She—loved him still?”“No, hated him then. But the old heart-wound would break out during sleep. His music, as she called it, came to her through her dreams. Then she answered what she believed to be—his call.”A little wind came winding down the Vale and wrapped its chilly arm about us. She said, very low: “That was what I meant, partly, when I spoke of lost innocence a little while ago. I have changed toward people since I came here. I think I can never trust a person again.” Then quickly, “We must go in. They’ll be wanting to know I’m safe.”I followed where she made a road through the darkness.We reached the House at seven-fifteen. At the bottom of the stairs she turned. “Thank you—thank you more than I can say. May I have the campstool? I must go up now, really. I—I—have to—think over to-night.”I handed over the stool. “If ever—” I commenced, feeling my voice shake in my throat.The boy Toby, his hair all on end as usual, crossed the corridor from the dinner-room to the Hall. She called his name, and the lad reappeared, coming toward us bashfully. His eyes, turned on her, were filled with something like awe, and I remembered how she had made this seemingly lumpish lad her excellent and devoted scholar. He now carried a few yards of insulated wire.“Has Superintendent Salt returned?”“Yes, from the hills, Miss. He came back early, but he’s gone away again.”“Did he leave any message?”“He said you wasn’t to mind if he didn’t bring his friend from—somewhere—”“Scotland Yard?”“Yes, that’s right. He wouldn’t bring him to-night. He said you was to go ahead anyhow because the French womenfolks was coming with Constable Pritchard.”“French women!” I exclaimed in surprise and pleasure. “Does he mean that the sisters Delambre have been brought back?”“Sure to be,” said Toby.“By George, I’ll be tickled to see what they look like. But what does it all mean? No one could imagine—”Miss Lebetwood silenced me with a gesture and an eager question. “He was working here this afternoon, then, wasn’t he?”“Yes, Miss, but it was a secret or somefing. He put the maids out of the house at half-past three.”“Three-thirty!” I exclaimed again, indignantly now. “He didn’t waste much of his precious time in the search!” I asked the lad, “Why did he make the women-servants leave the building? He did, didn’t he?”“Yes, sir; he was going to use some gas from a little tank he had with him all over the ground floor of the House. He said it was a deadly poisonous gas, and unless they were looking for their deaths if they got a whiff they had better go down to New Aidenn for the rest of the afternoon. Wheeler was in the search; so I drove ’em all down to the bridge in the big car,” Toby recited with pride.“And did you come back for a whiff?” asked Miss Lebetwood, smiling faintly.“No, Miss; I went to my workroom in the stables and did some more on my radio. I only remembered about a quarter past six that I had to fix the lights in the Hall, and when I came to the House I met Mr. Salt and the constable’s brother that wasn’t here before coming out with the gas tank. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Tell ’em they can go anywhere they like now. I’ve sucked the gas back into the respirator; so there’s no danger for that matter of fact.’ And then he told me what I told you.”“I suppose most of our people have returned?”“Yes, Miss. The ladies are all upstairs or somewhere. There’s them back from New Aidenn, too, and Mr. Blenkinson and some of the others from the hills. If you wasn’t found by nine o’clock, they was going to ’phone up Penybont and Bleddfa and maybe get a bloodhound and have a grand search like they almost had for Sir Brooke Mortimer.”“Thank you, Toby,” said the girl, “and thank you again, Mr. Bannerlee. Ishallhave to do a bit of thinking now.” She went quickly, almost lightly, up the steps. Somehow, she had drawn comfort from Salt’s strange behaviour.I followed Toby into the Hall. Quite by chance I had found the person I could trust, one whose allegiance to the American girl might be as great as mine.He was upon a lofty step-ladder planted beneath the chandelier which hung some distance clear of the musicians’ gallery. Below him rested a bushel basket partly filled with electric bulbs.“Will you be there long, Toby?”“Only to take out the rest of the bulbs, sir, and connect a bit of wire with the wall-fixture in case they needs it. Only a minute or two, sir.”I drew close to the foot of the ladder and spoke very softly. “Toby—can you get an hour off before very late to-night—to do something for Miss Lebetwood?”“For Miss Paula?” His funny hair seemed to be a forest of notes of exclamation. “OfcourseI can, sir, for Miss Paula.”“Right! I knew you would. Come down here a minute, and I’ll give you directions. This is very secret, mind. If you should meet even Miss Paula herself, remember you’re not to show a sign you’re the wiser.”I laid the trappings of mystery on very thick, enough to make the souls of a dozen lads lick their lips. I explained how a message might be delivered at the House later on to-night that would make it necessary for Miss Lebetwood, and perhaps Miss Mertoun, to leave without word or warning to anyone by the eleven o’clock train. Secrecy and haste were the points I stressed. He fell into the plot with so much spirit that I felt a little ashamed of the deception I was practising. With eagerness that ran before my suggestions, he promised to be at New Aidenn station when it opened for the 9.40 train, and to purchase with money I gave him two tickets for London available by the late express. He would leave the tickets for mein the mail. We went into the armoury and agreed on a definite spot. He would also secrete two ladies’ bicycles, property of the Clays, beneath the bush opposite the third oak tree on the left-hand side of the drive after passing the gate-house. We went over that complex direction again and again.Yes, in these days of the many-tentacled police, the telegraph, and the radio, I was planning for Paula Lebetwood an escape by flight. With two hours’ clear start, for I would see that the telephone did not function and that the shaky bridge should go down behind the pursued, I could almost guarantee scot-freedom. For of course those tickets would not be used for getting to London, not when the express connected at Leominster with fast trains running both north and south. To what destination I would direct the fugitives, I had better not say, but it was one which would afford a refuge almost before the wires were singing with the alarm for her capture.At that moment Aire slipped in from the darkness through one of the french windows. His head was bare, his clothing was somewhat dishevelled, and he seemed to lack for breath. His mouth was set, with its thin blue-whitish lips drawn back from the teeth. He stared at us some time before speaking; then his voice, the first time I had known it to be so, was instinct with fear.“Bannerlee, seen Maryvale?”“I’ve just returned with Miss Lebetwood. What makes you ask?”“He’s—gone.”“He’ll come back.”“I’m sure he will. Come in here, Bannerlee.”Quite astonished by his tone, I followed him toward the library, turning at the door to give a pithy glance at the boy, whose hair now looked like a forest of query-notes. When I entered the library, Aire had thrown himself down in one of the big leather arm-chairs in a posture of complete relaxation, and was breathing heavily. Again it was some time before he spoke.“He’s gone, God knows where. He left me an hour ago while we were walking among the strawberry trees. Went snap off, like breaking a stick, while I was in the middle of a sentence.”“Why, Doctor,” I exclaimed, with a snort of assumed cheerfulness, “surely you’re making too much of this.”He sprang up, paced the breadth of the room, ugly wrinkles on his brow. “I hope I am. I hope I am. But I’ve bitched the thing so. And this afternoon he seemed in perfect possession of himself. I’ve been so damned optimistic that now the reverse— He seemed perfectly normal late this afternoon, you understand; in fact the two of us were planning—no matter. I must go out again.”“I’ll come along with you.”“No, thanks. I’ll have to manage him alone. It will be ‘Horse and Hattock in the Devil’s name,’ and I fancy I’m the only one who can play up to him.”“But you’ll be in danger.”He gave a short laugh. “I think not. I’m more afraid of the things that can’t hurt.” He looked out to the lawn. “Thank God for a clear night, and moonlight. You know, the trees seem to have faces in their trunks; they seem to be grinning and mowing in the wind. That’s the sort of drivel this thing’s brought me to. Well, I’m off.”He made toward the door, but paused with his hand on it. “Don’t say a word of this to anyone, Bannerlee. I’ll need a free hand if I’m to bring it off. Cheerio.”He plunged into the night. I saw him cross the silver carpet of the lawn and disappear between the gigantic jaws of the gate-house towers.A moment later in the corridor I met Harmony carrying a tray up to “the young ladies.” She told me that cold viands were laid out in the dinner-room for those lagging in from the hills. But in spite of my three hours’ struggle, I was in no humour for feeding, especially since I was bound to encounter the others and would have to repeat my adventures again and again.I asked the girl if there had been any fresh development during my absence.“Did you hear about what they dug up this afternoon, sir?”“Great Scott! You don’t mean another corpse?”“Lor’, no, sir, not human. In the garden, it was, where the dogs were scratching the place to pieces. Someone said get a spade and dig and see what’s there, and they found it.”“What did they find?”“A little pig, sir. And it was wrapped in some black cloth they said must be Parson Lolly’s gown, only it was all tore up and full of holes and had some funny bits of red paper pinned to it. They do say that Parson Lolly is too tall for a gown like that. We met Superintendent Salt when we were coming back from the town, and he was carrying it with him.”“So,” I remarked. “It looks to me as if the Superintendent took advantage of Miss Lebetwood’s absence to spend a busy afternoon down here.”“Lor’, yes, sir. He was using the gas-expirator and fair drove us out of the house.”“I’m glad he made such a thorough job of inspirating the gas again.”“Yes, sir, or it wouldn’t be safe. It’s that wonderful, sir.”“It is,” I agreed heartily, and cursed—to myself.She with her tray went down the passage while I went up the second flight, feeling not the shadow of a suspicion of my darling, but the certainty that before the night was past, she would be accused. I hurried past Maryvale’s portal with an aching heart.Yet such was the settled habit of the week that when I reached my own door, the turmoil of my mind was stilled. This lonely chamber, which had such baneful associations for me a week ago, had become a harbour of refuge. Whatever strife and doom might wait outside, here the ceiling aslope, the candle-bracket askew, the oaken chest, and the narrow window before my table invited me to my work.I fell to. I wrote steadily. I forgot to be hungry. Once the sound of a gong quivered through the House, but not until long after it had died away did I consider what it meant. Then I set down my pen. Mrs. Belvoir’s séance must be in progress, and Scotland Yard was doubtless there. I must attend.I secured my invaluable pocket light before setting out. Past Maryvale’s door forbid, down the long stairs, through the corridor of faces—until a murmurous voice reached me from the Hall of the Moth, a voice whose tone I recognized though the words were indistinct. Yes, Mrs. Belvoir was probing beyond the visible.Softly I opened the door behind the musicians’ stair, tiptoed over the threshold, and stood concealed within. Great curtains shut out the moonlight from the Hall, which was dark indeed, save for the circle of bulbs on the circumference of the chandelier. These, cased by Toby in paper, gave very little illumination, and that of a mysterious tinge. At the other end of the room wavered a lazy fire, composed for the most part of bluish flame.The people seated around the table, which had been placed not far from the musicians’ stairs, were so vague that I could not tell their attitude toward the proceedings. I observed at once that Mrs. Belvoir was not going to “bring the spirits and all,” not yet, at any rate. For on the table was spread some dark cloth above which I caught the faint glimmer of glass: a crystal sphere. The woman seated deep in her chair before the ball must be the pythoness herself.Her voice had lapsed when I entered, and a long silence ensued. Then she said: “It’s no use. I’ve lost it again,” and I saw a white arm reach up. Instantly a dazzling light shone above her head, from a special globe connected with the wall-fixture, and Mrs. Belvoir was gazing intently into the crystal ball. I now saw that the sphere was erected on a small tripod with legs of different-coloured metals, and that this structure stood upon a square yellow velvet cloth laid over a cloth of blue. A mouldy, triangular crust of bread was placed underneath the crystal, and some statement I had once heard or read, that “bread possesses a potent protective magic against evil forces,” occurred to me to explain its presence.Neither Salt nor any stranger was there. Mrs. Belvoir, attired in pale mauve ninon, a heliotrope band above her forehead, and an amethyst pin at her breast, was brooding over the crystal with eyes that widened and narrowed with the phase of her thought. Those pale sapphire eyes were darkened with intensity, and the customary indistinctness of her face—a mermaid-under-water look—was quite gone. Sometimes her hands clasped or slid about the sphere; sometimes her fingers rested on her temples or tapped them gently. Beyond a doubt, she was sincere.The assisting parties were either slightly embarrassed or strongly impressed, all save Belvoir, who sat opposite her; on his face lived a smile of scepticism. Up went the arm and the Hall was dim once more.“I have it now,” said the seeress: “I am in fog, deep fog.”“Good,” came asotto vocefrom the other end of the table, but the word was drowned in the current of her speech. Leaning back, but apparently still gazing at the sphere, in trance-life passivity, she seemed not so much to utter words as to let the words flow from her mouth.“I am in fog, thick fog; it clings about me.” Her hands made dim outward movements, as if pressing away the mist that enveloped her. “I am lost, and there is a malignant spirit nearby, but I am not sure I know that—yet. I sit down—on a rock. I am not very hungry, but since there is nothing else to do, I eat what I have brought with me. I wait for light to penetrate the fog. I wish to find something; perhaps I fear the malignant spirit that is near. I wish to find the ancient hermit’s cell. It is a place hallowed by good works and piety. The malignant spirit will not dare come near me there. I eat and wait. The mist clears partly away at last. I go on. The sun shines on me; I am glorified. . . .”I suddenly realized it was my story she told. There was nothing wonderful in this, to be sure, for the narrative of my afternoon on the hills had long been common property. I listened with care, to see if she included some detail proving her version to be a brain-picture really evoked by the crystal and having objective authority. But all she added to the fable was the “malignant spirit” hovering near me all the while, a presence which I certainly had no idea was dogging me on the hilltops.It became apparent that the seeress was not interested in me but in the spirit, and some time before the dénouement I had an inkling of how the story would end.“I am fleeing from the malignant spirit in its carnal shape. I allow it to overtake me—so far, no farther. We are approaching the brink of the cliff. I leap aside, and the animal plunges into the gulf. I am saved, and I hear the carnal shape of the spirit go thundering down, down, down. I am saved, and the bull is dead.”Silence. . . . When Mrs. Belvoir spoke again, her voice had lost its dreaminess and become positive. But she spoke with effort; the phrases seemed wrung out of her.“The bull is dead. . . . But spiritual force . . . is never destroyed. . . . The bull is dead. . . . The malignant spirit is living still. . . . It never ceases to operate. . . . It is localized. . . .”A small sound shattered the tension of that moment: merely the opening of one of the french windows.“My God, what’s that?” cried Eve Bartholomew, before someone reached above Mrs. Belvoir’s head and lit the bright globe once more. Mrs. Belvoir turned, intending angry remonstrance, but her voice was stilled by one look at Doctor Aire.He was coatless and collarless, and his shirt and trousers were miry. His small yellow head seemed to have turned almost white, save for a ragged cut across his forehead, and while he spoke the man leaned hard on the back of theBrocade de Lyonscouch as if in the last throes of exhaustion.Everyone was standing up; my presence excited no surprise.“Maryvale’s—somewhere near.”“Doctor! What’s happened to you?” cried Crofts.“I’ve had a bout with him on the tennis court. He was a few stone too heavy for me. I saw him heading for the House—probably wants something that’s in his room. I’m afraid—he’s insane.”“What shall we do, then?” asked Crofts, become very cool in the crisis.“Keep a watch at every entrance, enough of us at each place to tackle him safely.”“Stephen, you mustn’t go out again. You’ve done too much already,” said Alberta.But Aire, though he swayed, hung on grittily, and shook his head. “No, thanks. A stiff drink will put me right. Just have the men-servants in here, Crofts, and—”Miss Mertoun gave a shrill scream. A creature was looking at us through the open entrance behind Aire—a strange creature.The thing that looked at us was using Maryvale’s face, but it was not Maryvale any longer. The countenance, blank of any jot of humanity, had become a mere bag with features. It lingered there only for a moment, staring at us with incomprehension so complete that a pang of pity thrilled through me. A woman sobbed. The face was gone.Pell-mell the men were gone, too, in a wild chase scattering across the lawn, and I among them. Yet sorry as I was for Maryvale, he did not concern me now. I had sterner work even than trammelling a moonlight madman.I determined to risk the notice of my absence in order to make certain that the bicycles were properly waiting where Toby had promised to conceal them. Keeping under the shadow of trees where I could, I hastened across the southern lawn toward the oaks that guard the drive below the gate-house towers. I was just in time to see someone drag one of the bicycles from its bushy covert into the full moonlight and bend over the front tyre with a gleaming blade ready to slash. I sprang upon this man, mastered him more by the surprise of my leap than by main strength. He fell face upward, groaning. His knife lay on the grass ten feet away.“Morgan! What crazy work is this?”He thrashed about in my inexorable grip, and blurted out his words in speech that reverted toward the primitive. “The killers, the killers! They bikes was for them. I saw the lad fetch ’em and hide ’em, aye I did. ’E’s sweet on ’er since she took notice of ’im.”“What are you talking about?” I blustered. “What do you know about the murderers?”He struggled to rise, but I let my weight bear down, and he relapsed with another groan, though certainly not hurt. “I know who did the killin’. I’ve known all along.”I shook him roughly by the shoulders. “Don’t lie to me. Come, out with it, now, or I’ll throttle you.”“Mr. Blenkinson told us. It’s the sure truth.”“Blenkinson!” I bawled. “By God, Blenkinson’s got something to answer for to me. What lies has he been spreading?”“He has the proofs. It’s sure as if ’e saw ’em with ’is own eyes.”“Sawwhat? Sawwho?”“Saw the killin’s. The three Americans did ’em, and they’ll make shares of Mr. Cosgrove’s money.”My fingers itched for his throat, but black fear blazed in my heart. “Liar!” I screamed. “They’ll hang you sooner thanher! Don’t you know she won’t touch a penny of it until the killer’s found!”The man on the ground maintained a sullen obstinacy. “Sometimes them hangs as isn’t guilty, and them suffers as finds out. The milkman knew it was ’er, and look what ’appened to ’im.”“You poor, blind fool,” I exclaimed bitterly. “There’s jealousy and hatred in this somewhere. Damn Blenkinson. Why, there isn’t a particle of evidence—”“There is, there is,” he gasped. “There’s court evidence to ’ang ’er when Mr. Blenkinson comes out with it.”“What evidence? Tell me!”He writhed in my clutch. “The beetle-stone as she lost from ’er ring that day. She tried to keep it secret, but it got about. Mr. Blenkinson found it right in the same place as the stone she did the killin’ with. There wasn’t a foot between ’em.”I pressed my fists against his chest, with a downward thrust now and then for emphasis. “Your fine Blenkinson’s a liar, do you hear? His evidence, as you call it, isn’t worth a pin. And if he whispers a word of his slander, and it comes to my ears, I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life, do you hear? And the same applies to you—you contemptible—”I stood up quickly. Men were crowding out of the plantation near Whimble-foot and clamouring toward the House. Had the quarry turned? I must be present now at any cost.This man was cowed sufficiently. He still lay supine; I prodded him with my foot. “Remember!” I warned him darkly, and commenced running toward the mansion, stooping to seize the knife where it glittered on the turf.Once only I paused for a moment and looked back. Was there something—someone—moving stealthily toward the man, who was sitting up now and feeling himself for bruises? A moment later the figure of a woman emerged from the shadows, crossed quickly to Morgan, and seemed to lift him bodily from the ground. I did not immediately grasp that she had lugged him up by the ear. Now they were arguing, gesticulating, and though I had heard it seldom, I knew the prim voice of Miss Ardelia Lacy.Smiling to myself, I pressed on.The half-dozen men who reached the corner of the House more or less in a pack were in the nick of time to see the wretched Maryvale, driven from cover to cover like a hunted beast, drag his body, which had never before seemed ponderous, to the base of one of the gate-house towers. He carried what seemed a club with an enormous broadened head.He turned there at bay while we closed in upon him, and the awful wreck of his face with its glaring eyes and bared teeth in the moonlight will haunt me to my death. He was a beast. While we stood speechless, he began to climb.One hand gripped the queer-looking club, but grasping the ivy with one hand alone, he raised himself steadily. It was agony to watch this man-turned-ape mounting where none of us dared to follow. In the thick wavering growth that clung to the tower sometimes he swung pendulum-wise, sometimes was almost buried in the foliage, but his ascent was sure as if he climbed the stairs within. We cried out to him appeals and abuse; I do not think he heard us. Someone ran to the stables, shouting for a ladder.Maryvale reached the angle where the covered bridge meets the wall of the tower. Here the ivy thins, and the man made a wide stop to the roof of the bridge. Then, surely, I felt the supreme horror, when Maryvale, using the base of a window-slit for foot-rest, lifted himself over the edge of the turret-roof and carefully but expeditiously crawled up the slope of stone toward the pointed top.We held on shouting, some of us, in sheer desperation. Pendleton made a frenzied effort to climb the ivy, failed. Maryvale crept on, his whole body flat against the roof, save for the arm which held the club-like mass. He reached the pinnacle and lifted himself to a precarious standing posture, one foot firm on the very apex, the side of the other foot pressed against the slope.For a few moments he bent over the object he had carried; then when he straightened his body, his arm above his head brandished a flaming, sizzling torch, and he uttered the only words I had heard him speak that day. He called out to the night at large:“Lolly, Lolly, Parson Lolly!” His voice gloated above the hiss of the torch. “Who’s the Parson? I’M THE PARSON! AND NOW I’M GOING OVER THE HILLS: PARSON LOLLY FLIES!”The torchlight danced in his face while he laughed shrilly. Then he launched himself into the air in an enormous leap.He fell almost but not quite clear of the sloping roof. Striking it all awry, he dashed against the roof of the bridge and on down. Mercifully, he was hurled toward the wall of the tower, and his foot caught for a second in some loop of the ivy-twine twenty feet from the ground. His swinging body struck the wall a terrific blow, and he hung head downward for a moment; his torch, which had drawn a flaming mark across the night, now blazed upward enveloping him with its flames. Only for an instant, however. The impact of the collision with the wall had stunned him, and the torch fell from his hand. The ivy gave way, and the madman, part of his clothing afire, fell insensible to the ground at our feet.
(There ended my diary. Thenceforth I was to be like a man in a maelstrom. And now that circumstances have stayed my hand from its task for weeks on end, I have no confidence that I can record with due proportion and emphasis events which seem to have been fantastic and instantaneous as dreams. Frantic suspense, frozen horror, and the rest are now a whirling memory. But I hope, above all else, that whoever reads these lines may feel, as those who knew her did, the splendid nervous courage, the shrewd discernment, and the strange compassion and mercy, of Paula Lebetwood!)
Make no mistake. The weary, faltering girl at my side—never, never for an instant did I suspect her.
Yet while we lagged through a ruined fairyland, past the wreck of Sir Pharamond’s first hold, beneath branches where the rooks were brawling, and between the ordered files of the summer-house park—all the way my heart grew blacker, and the incubus weighed heavier on my soul. I feared for her, and fear pressed cold fingers against my lips.
Blasphemous thoughts; they were not mine. I had no thoughts of her but reverence.
They might have been the jangling voices of the birds themselves: “Look! Here comes the foreign woman who was pledged to the Kingmaker, but is going to marry his millions instead! Why has she never wept a tear for the man in his shroud?” What if the trees had voices, these grey and sombre sycamores? “We saw what happened in the two twilights. We know where the golden-haired girl was when Cosgrove met his fate. We know when she left the strawberry grove the day that Heatheringham rushed toward death. We saw her slip across the shadowed lawn—”
No, no! If trees could speak, they would declare her innocence.
Not trees but men would be her judges, cunning men, who might weave about her a web of suspicion with strands as fine and strong as silk.
Scotland Yard might be waiting for us when we returned; that is, a brisk, clear-headed, observant, utterly unprejudiced investigator, a person whose mind as nearly as might be resembled an inductive and deductive machine. He would sweep the ground clear of the débris of false starts and idle speculations, and construct anew.
The deaths: what would the lynx of justice discover immediately in respect of them? He would hear of a motive, money. How should he know better than to impute a sordid impulse to this high-minded girl? He would hear of a quarrel on the afternoon of Cosgrove’s death. How should he know that there had been more than mere anger in her mood when she parted from us, that there had been dignity, aloofness, a temper far above reprisal?
But there was worse, much worse. She may have been with Cosgrove the moment he was struck down!
Belvoir, coming toward the towers, had seen the Irishman with canvas lifted regarding the puny battle-axe. In the mixed light, Belvoir had not been positive hehadseen Cosgrove, but the likelihood was that he had attested to less rather than more than the truth. The American girl might have been beyond the Irishman at that moment, concealed partly by his bulk, partly by the darkness of her gown in the twilight. I, of course, had come past the spot afterward and found the lawn empty, but the two might easily have gone through one of the entrances of the House and re-emerged shortly after I had made my reconnaissance from the parapet. What brief, passionate scene could then have taken place, such as would have ended by Cosgrove’s turning away and her hammering him with a rough-and-ready chunk of rock snatched up from the rim of the flower-bed, I left to the professional imagination.
In Heatheringham’s death, we knew her insistence that she had disobeyed his bidding, and her declaration of what she had seen. But, again, there was not a tittle of proof of her assertion that she had remained on the edge of the strawberry trees. Quite safely she could have slipped back into the House. I wondered, in spite of the arm thrust through the glass, if the detective might not have been outside the House when he pressed the trigger, and that straightway he rushed into the Hall (pursuing something?)—to meet his death. Who waited for him there? No one could have, save Paula Lebetwood.
Black—it was black.
I tried to gain comfort from the obscurities that would confront Scotland Yard if he tried to build up a theory in this wise. I recalled the bone, the laugh, the pig’s gore, and other unsolved conundrums. But Scotland Yard, being an experienced hand, would be sure to fit them in somewhere. I was sick at heart.
Yes, I must protect her against the world, and, if need be, against herself. The proof would be in action. I began wondering whom I could trust.
When we came to the fringe of the sycamore park and passed alongside the cypress trees, one first-storey window showed light in the northern wall of the House, and we could see radiance from others down the long façade.
“Miss Mertoun has returned.” It was the only speech either of us had offered in two dark and desolate miles.
“Millicent?” The American girl halted in surprise. “Did they make her go out, too?”
“She volunteered like the rest of the ladies for searching in the Vale itself.”
“Darling Millicent. I love her better than anything else on earth. She shouldn’t have tried to find me, Mr. Bannerlee. She isn’t strong, you know, and this has been a terrible, tragic week for her. She should never have come to Aidenn Vale, but I didn’t—understand then, as I do now.”
Somehow we did not go straight on, but lingered there by the cypresses with their low-hung darkness.
“But her week has not been as tragic as yours.”
Her voice was sombre. “More, much more.”
“What!” I came closer, peered into her face, where the dusk had erected shadows. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t wondered, I see, about Millicent and Sean.”
“Wondered? Wondered what, in God’s name?”
She spoke wearily. “You didn’t know Sean, of course. Neither did I, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?” I cried again, with an intolerable heaviness in me, remembering Lib.
“Religion and sensuality: they go together often, don’t they? I thought that if I recognized that—streak in Sean I might disregard it and it would be like a thing that never was. If that had been all. . . .”
I caught up the silence. “You can never make me believe—that Miss Mertoun—”
“Oh, of course not. She wasn’t like the others. . . . She hasn’t offended me; I’m the offender. . . .”
“Paula, you mustn’t stop. Tell me what you mean.”
“It’s beastly of me, I suppose . . . especially when someone else . . . I wonder why it is we confide in people we half-know instead of our closest friends. But it’s horrible to have a thing pent up in your brain . . . like a deadly growth.”
“Tell me, Paula.”
“If I hadn’t come along, Millicent would be Mrs. Cosgrove now. It sounds—almost grotesque, doesn’t it? But there it was, a fact that months and even years couldn’t kill. I never had the least inkling of it—oh, Millicent’s been a loyal friend to me—until we were all here and it was—too late. Millicent came, you see, since if she didn’t—I would never have had a Bidding Feast without Millicent, and she knew it. But I never guessed . . . until she told me, after midnight, the night you came.”
“She—loved him still?”
“No, hated him then. But the old heart-wound would break out during sleep. His music, as she called it, came to her through her dreams. Then she answered what she believed to be—his call.”
A little wind came winding down the Vale and wrapped its chilly arm about us. She said, very low: “That was what I meant, partly, when I spoke of lost innocence a little while ago. I have changed toward people since I came here. I think I can never trust a person again.” Then quickly, “We must go in. They’ll be wanting to know I’m safe.”
I followed where she made a road through the darkness.
We reached the House at seven-fifteen. At the bottom of the stairs she turned. “Thank you—thank you more than I can say. May I have the campstool? I must go up now, really. I—I—have to—think over to-night.”
I handed over the stool. “If ever—” I commenced, feeling my voice shake in my throat.
The boy Toby, his hair all on end as usual, crossed the corridor from the dinner-room to the Hall. She called his name, and the lad reappeared, coming toward us bashfully. His eyes, turned on her, were filled with something like awe, and I remembered how she had made this seemingly lumpish lad her excellent and devoted scholar. He now carried a few yards of insulated wire.
“Has Superintendent Salt returned?”
“Yes, from the hills, Miss. He came back early, but he’s gone away again.”
“Did he leave any message?”
“He said you wasn’t to mind if he didn’t bring his friend from—somewhere—”
“Scotland Yard?”
“Yes, that’s right. He wouldn’t bring him to-night. He said you was to go ahead anyhow because the French womenfolks was coming with Constable Pritchard.”
“French women!” I exclaimed in surprise and pleasure. “Does he mean that the sisters Delambre have been brought back?”
“Sure to be,” said Toby.
“By George, I’ll be tickled to see what they look like. But what does it all mean? No one could imagine—”
Miss Lebetwood silenced me with a gesture and an eager question. “He was working here this afternoon, then, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, Miss, but it was a secret or somefing. He put the maids out of the house at half-past three.”
“Three-thirty!” I exclaimed again, indignantly now. “He didn’t waste much of his precious time in the search!” I asked the lad, “Why did he make the women-servants leave the building? He did, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir; he was going to use some gas from a little tank he had with him all over the ground floor of the House. He said it was a deadly poisonous gas, and unless they were looking for their deaths if they got a whiff they had better go down to New Aidenn for the rest of the afternoon. Wheeler was in the search; so I drove ’em all down to the bridge in the big car,” Toby recited with pride.
“And did you come back for a whiff?” asked Miss Lebetwood, smiling faintly.
“No, Miss; I went to my workroom in the stables and did some more on my radio. I only remembered about a quarter past six that I had to fix the lights in the Hall, and when I came to the House I met Mr. Salt and the constable’s brother that wasn’t here before coming out with the gas tank. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Tell ’em they can go anywhere they like now. I’ve sucked the gas back into the respirator; so there’s no danger for that matter of fact.’ And then he told me what I told you.”
“I suppose most of our people have returned?”
“Yes, Miss. The ladies are all upstairs or somewhere. There’s them back from New Aidenn, too, and Mr. Blenkinson and some of the others from the hills. If you wasn’t found by nine o’clock, they was going to ’phone up Penybont and Bleddfa and maybe get a bloodhound and have a grand search like they almost had for Sir Brooke Mortimer.”
“Thank you, Toby,” said the girl, “and thank you again, Mr. Bannerlee. Ishallhave to do a bit of thinking now.” She went quickly, almost lightly, up the steps. Somehow, she had drawn comfort from Salt’s strange behaviour.
I followed Toby into the Hall. Quite by chance I had found the person I could trust, one whose allegiance to the American girl might be as great as mine.
He was upon a lofty step-ladder planted beneath the chandelier which hung some distance clear of the musicians’ gallery. Below him rested a bushel basket partly filled with electric bulbs.
“Will you be there long, Toby?”
“Only to take out the rest of the bulbs, sir, and connect a bit of wire with the wall-fixture in case they needs it. Only a minute or two, sir.”
I drew close to the foot of the ladder and spoke very softly. “Toby—can you get an hour off before very late to-night—to do something for Miss Lebetwood?”
“For Miss Paula?” His funny hair seemed to be a forest of notes of exclamation. “OfcourseI can, sir, for Miss Paula.”
“Right! I knew you would. Come down here a minute, and I’ll give you directions. This is very secret, mind. If you should meet even Miss Paula herself, remember you’re not to show a sign you’re the wiser.”
I laid the trappings of mystery on very thick, enough to make the souls of a dozen lads lick their lips. I explained how a message might be delivered at the House later on to-night that would make it necessary for Miss Lebetwood, and perhaps Miss Mertoun, to leave without word or warning to anyone by the eleven o’clock train. Secrecy and haste were the points I stressed. He fell into the plot with so much spirit that I felt a little ashamed of the deception I was practising. With eagerness that ran before my suggestions, he promised to be at New Aidenn station when it opened for the 9.40 train, and to purchase with money I gave him two tickets for London available by the late express. He would leave the tickets for mein the mail. We went into the armoury and agreed on a definite spot. He would also secrete two ladies’ bicycles, property of the Clays, beneath the bush opposite the third oak tree on the left-hand side of the drive after passing the gate-house. We went over that complex direction again and again.
Yes, in these days of the many-tentacled police, the telegraph, and the radio, I was planning for Paula Lebetwood an escape by flight. With two hours’ clear start, for I would see that the telephone did not function and that the shaky bridge should go down behind the pursued, I could almost guarantee scot-freedom. For of course those tickets would not be used for getting to London, not when the express connected at Leominster with fast trains running both north and south. To what destination I would direct the fugitives, I had better not say, but it was one which would afford a refuge almost before the wires were singing with the alarm for her capture.
At that moment Aire slipped in from the darkness through one of the french windows. His head was bare, his clothing was somewhat dishevelled, and he seemed to lack for breath. His mouth was set, with its thin blue-whitish lips drawn back from the teeth. He stared at us some time before speaking; then his voice, the first time I had known it to be so, was instinct with fear.
“Bannerlee, seen Maryvale?”
“I’ve just returned with Miss Lebetwood. What makes you ask?”
“He’s—gone.”
“He’ll come back.”
“I’m sure he will. Come in here, Bannerlee.”
Quite astonished by his tone, I followed him toward the library, turning at the door to give a pithy glance at the boy, whose hair now looked like a forest of query-notes. When I entered the library, Aire had thrown himself down in one of the big leather arm-chairs in a posture of complete relaxation, and was breathing heavily. Again it was some time before he spoke.
“He’s gone, God knows where. He left me an hour ago while we were walking among the strawberry trees. Went snap off, like breaking a stick, while I was in the middle of a sentence.”
“Why, Doctor,” I exclaimed, with a snort of assumed cheerfulness, “surely you’re making too much of this.”
He sprang up, paced the breadth of the room, ugly wrinkles on his brow. “I hope I am. I hope I am. But I’ve bitched the thing so. And this afternoon he seemed in perfect possession of himself. I’ve been so damned optimistic that now the reverse— He seemed perfectly normal late this afternoon, you understand; in fact the two of us were planning—no matter. I must go out again.”
“I’ll come along with you.”
“No, thanks. I’ll have to manage him alone. It will be ‘Horse and Hattock in the Devil’s name,’ and I fancy I’m the only one who can play up to him.”
“But you’ll be in danger.”
He gave a short laugh. “I think not. I’m more afraid of the things that can’t hurt.” He looked out to the lawn. “Thank God for a clear night, and moonlight. You know, the trees seem to have faces in their trunks; they seem to be grinning and mowing in the wind. That’s the sort of drivel this thing’s brought me to. Well, I’m off.”
He made toward the door, but paused with his hand on it. “Don’t say a word of this to anyone, Bannerlee. I’ll need a free hand if I’m to bring it off. Cheerio.”
He plunged into the night. I saw him cross the silver carpet of the lawn and disappear between the gigantic jaws of the gate-house towers.
A moment later in the corridor I met Harmony carrying a tray up to “the young ladies.” She told me that cold viands were laid out in the dinner-room for those lagging in from the hills. But in spite of my three hours’ struggle, I was in no humour for feeding, especially since I was bound to encounter the others and would have to repeat my adventures again and again.
I asked the girl if there had been any fresh development during my absence.
“Did you hear about what they dug up this afternoon, sir?”
“Great Scott! You don’t mean another corpse?”
“Lor’, no, sir, not human. In the garden, it was, where the dogs were scratching the place to pieces. Someone said get a spade and dig and see what’s there, and they found it.”
“What did they find?”
“A little pig, sir. And it was wrapped in some black cloth they said must be Parson Lolly’s gown, only it was all tore up and full of holes and had some funny bits of red paper pinned to it. They do say that Parson Lolly is too tall for a gown like that. We met Superintendent Salt when we were coming back from the town, and he was carrying it with him.”
“So,” I remarked. “It looks to me as if the Superintendent took advantage of Miss Lebetwood’s absence to spend a busy afternoon down here.”
“Lor’, yes, sir. He was using the gas-expirator and fair drove us out of the house.”
“I’m glad he made such a thorough job of inspirating the gas again.”
“Yes, sir, or it wouldn’t be safe. It’s that wonderful, sir.”
“It is,” I agreed heartily, and cursed—to myself.
She with her tray went down the passage while I went up the second flight, feeling not the shadow of a suspicion of my darling, but the certainty that before the night was past, she would be accused. I hurried past Maryvale’s portal with an aching heart.
Yet such was the settled habit of the week that when I reached my own door, the turmoil of my mind was stilled. This lonely chamber, which had such baneful associations for me a week ago, had become a harbour of refuge. Whatever strife and doom might wait outside, here the ceiling aslope, the candle-bracket askew, the oaken chest, and the narrow window before my table invited me to my work.
I fell to. I wrote steadily. I forgot to be hungry. Once the sound of a gong quivered through the House, but not until long after it had died away did I consider what it meant. Then I set down my pen. Mrs. Belvoir’s séance must be in progress, and Scotland Yard was doubtless there. I must attend.
I secured my invaluable pocket light before setting out. Past Maryvale’s door forbid, down the long stairs, through the corridor of faces—until a murmurous voice reached me from the Hall of the Moth, a voice whose tone I recognized though the words were indistinct. Yes, Mrs. Belvoir was probing beyond the visible.
Softly I opened the door behind the musicians’ stair, tiptoed over the threshold, and stood concealed within. Great curtains shut out the moonlight from the Hall, which was dark indeed, save for the circle of bulbs on the circumference of the chandelier. These, cased by Toby in paper, gave very little illumination, and that of a mysterious tinge. At the other end of the room wavered a lazy fire, composed for the most part of bluish flame.
The people seated around the table, which had been placed not far from the musicians’ stairs, were so vague that I could not tell their attitude toward the proceedings. I observed at once that Mrs. Belvoir was not going to “bring the spirits and all,” not yet, at any rate. For on the table was spread some dark cloth above which I caught the faint glimmer of glass: a crystal sphere. The woman seated deep in her chair before the ball must be the pythoness herself.
Her voice had lapsed when I entered, and a long silence ensued. Then she said: “It’s no use. I’ve lost it again,” and I saw a white arm reach up. Instantly a dazzling light shone above her head, from a special globe connected with the wall-fixture, and Mrs. Belvoir was gazing intently into the crystal ball. I now saw that the sphere was erected on a small tripod with legs of different-coloured metals, and that this structure stood upon a square yellow velvet cloth laid over a cloth of blue. A mouldy, triangular crust of bread was placed underneath the crystal, and some statement I had once heard or read, that “bread possesses a potent protective magic against evil forces,” occurred to me to explain its presence.
Neither Salt nor any stranger was there. Mrs. Belvoir, attired in pale mauve ninon, a heliotrope band above her forehead, and an amethyst pin at her breast, was brooding over the crystal with eyes that widened and narrowed with the phase of her thought. Those pale sapphire eyes were darkened with intensity, and the customary indistinctness of her face—a mermaid-under-water look—was quite gone. Sometimes her hands clasped or slid about the sphere; sometimes her fingers rested on her temples or tapped them gently. Beyond a doubt, she was sincere.
The assisting parties were either slightly embarrassed or strongly impressed, all save Belvoir, who sat opposite her; on his face lived a smile of scepticism. Up went the arm and the Hall was dim once more.
“I have it now,” said the seeress: “I am in fog, deep fog.”
“Good,” came asotto vocefrom the other end of the table, but the word was drowned in the current of her speech. Leaning back, but apparently still gazing at the sphere, in trance-life passivity, she seemed not so much to utter words as to let the words flow from her mouth.
“I am in fog, thick fog; it clings about me.” Her hands made dim outward movements, as if pressing away the mist that enveloped her. “I am lost, and there is a malignant spirit nearby, but I am not sure I know that—yet. I sit down—on a rock. I am not very hungry, but since there is nothing else to do, I eat what I have brought with me. I wait for light to penetrate the fog. I wish to find something; perhaps I fear the malignant spirit that is near. I wish to find the ancient hermit’s cell. It is a place hallowed by good works and piety. The malignant spirit will not dare come near me there. I eat and wait. The mist clears partly away at last. I go on. The sun shines on me; I am glorified. . . .”
I suddenly realized it was my story she told. There was nothing wonderful in this, to be sure, for the narrative of my afternoon on the hills had long been common property. I listened with care, to see if she included some detail proving her version to be a brain-picture really evoked by the crystal and having objective authority. But all she added to the fable was the “malignant spirit” hovering near me all the while, a presence which I certainly had no idea was dogging me on the hilltops.
It became apparent that the seeress was not interested in me but in the spirit, and some time before the dénouement I had an inkling of how the story would end.
“I am fleeing from the malignant spirit in its carnal shape. I allow it to overtake me—so far, no farther. We are approaching the brink of the cliff. I leap aside, and the animal plunges into the gulf. I am saved, and I hear the carnal shape of the spirit go thundering down, down, down. I am saved, and the bull is dead.”
Silence. . . . When Mrs. Belvoir spoke again, her voice had lost its dreaminess and become positive. But she spoke with effort; the phrases seemed wrung out of her.
“The bull is dead. . . . But spiritual force . . . is never destroyed. . . . The bull is dead. . . . The malignant spirit is living still. . . . It never ceases to operate. . . . It is localized. . . .”
A small sound shattered the tension of that moment: merely the opening of one of the french windows.
“My God, what’s that?” cried Eve Bartholomew, before someone reached above Mrs. Belvoir’s head and lit the bright globe once more. Mrs. Belvoir turned, intending angry remonstrance, but her voice was stilled by one look at Doctor Aire.
He was coatless and collarless, and his shirt and trousers were miry. His small yellow head seemed to have turned almost white, save for a ragged cut across his forehead, and while he spoke the man leaned hard on the back of theBrocade de Lyonscouch as if in the last throes of exhaustion.
Everyone was standing up; my presence excited no surprise.
“Maryvale’s—somewhere near.”
“Doctor! What’s happened to you?” cried Crofts.
“I’ve had a bout with him on the tennis court. He was a few stone too heavy for me. I saw him heading for the House—probably wants something that’s in his room. I’m afraid—he’s insane.”
“What shall we do, then?” asked Crofts, become very cool in the crisis.
“Keep a watch at every entrance, enough of us at each place to tackle him safely.”
“Stephen, you mustn’t go out again. You’ve done too much already,” said Alberta.
But Aire, though he swayed, hung on grittily, and shook his head. “No, thanks. A stiff drink will put me right. Just have the men-servants in here, Crofts, and—”
Miss Mertoun gave a shrill scream. A creature was looking at us through the open entrance behind Aire—a strange creature.
The thing that looked at us was using Maryvale’s face, but it was not Maryvale any longer. The countenance, blank of any jot of humanity, had become a mere bag with features. It lingered there only for a moment, staring at us with incomprehension so complete that a pang of pity thrilled through me. A woman sobbed. The face was gone.
Pell-mell the men were gone, too, in a wild chase scattering across the lawn, and I among them. Yet sorry as I was for Maryvale, he did not concern me now. I had sterner work even than trammelling a moonlight madman.
I determined to risk the notice of my absence in order to make certain that the bicycles were properly waiting where Toby had promised to conceal them. Keeping under the shadow of trees where I could, I hastened across the southern lawn toward the oaks that guard the drive below the gate-house towers. I was just in time to see someone drag one of the bicycles from its bushy covert into the full moonlight and bend over the front tyre with a gleaming blade ready to slash. I sprang upon this man, mastered him more by the surprise of my leap than by main strength. He fell face upward, groaning. His knife lay on the grass ten feet away.
“Morgan! What crazy work is this?”
He thrashed about in my inexorable grip, and blurted out his words in speech that reverted toward the primitive. “The killers, the killers! They bikes was for them. I saw the lad fetch ’em and hide ’em, aye I did. ’E’s sweet on ’er since she took notice of ’im.”
“What are you talking about?” I blustered. “What do you know about the murderers?”
He struggled to rise, but I let my weight bear down, and he relapsed with another groan, though certainly not hurt. “I know who did the killin’. I’ve known all along.”
I shook him roughly by the shoulders. “Don’t lie to me. Come, out with it, now, or I’ll throttle you.”
“Mr. Blenkinson told us. It’s the sure truth.”
“Blenkinson!” I bawled. “By God, Blenkinson’s got something to answer for to me. What lies has he been spreading?”
“He has the proofs. It’s sure as if ’e saw ’em with ’is own eyes.”
“Sawwhat? Sawwho?”
“Saw the killin’s. The three Americans did ’em, and they’ll make shares of Mr. Cosgrove’s money.”
My fingers itched for his throat, but black fear blazed in my heart. “Liar!” I screamed. “They’ll hang you sooner thanher! Don’t you know she won’t touch a penny of it until the killer’s found!”
The man on the ground maintained a sullen obstinacy. “Sometimes them hangs as isn’t guilty, and them suffers as finds out. The milkman knew it was ’er, and look what ’appened to ’im.”
“You poor, blind fool,” I exclaimed bitterly. “There’s jealousy and hatred in this somewhere. Damn Blenkinson. Why, there isn’t a particle of evidence—”
“There is, there is,” he gasped. “There’s court evidence to ’ang ’er when Mr. Blenkinson comes out with it.”
“What evidence? Tell me!”
He writhed in my clutch. “The beetle-stone as she lost from ’er ring that day. She tried to keep it secret, but it got about. Mr. Blenkinson found it right in the same place as the stone she did the killin’ with. There wasn’t a foot between ’em.”
I pressed my fists against his chest, with a downward thrust now and then for emphasis. “Your fine Blenkinson’s a liar, do you hear? His evidence, as you call it, isn’t worth a pin. And if he whispers a word of his slander, and it comes to my ears, I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life, do you hear? And the same applies to you—you contemptible—”
I stood up quickly. Men were crowding out of the plantation near Whimble-foot and clamouring toward the House. Had the quarry turned? I must be present now at any cost.
This man was cowed sufficiently. He still lay supine; I prodded him with my foot. “Remember!” I warned him darkly, and commenced running toward the mansion, stooping to seize the knife where it glittered on the turf.
Once only I paused for a moment and looked back. Was there something—someone—moving stealthily toward the man, who was sitting up now and feeling himself for bruises? A moment later the figure of a woman emerged from the shadows, crossed quickly to Morgan, and seemed to lift him bodily from the ground. I did not immediately grasp that she had lugged him up by the ear. Now they were arguing, gesticulating, and though I had heard it seldom, I knew the prim voice of Miss Ardelia Lacy.
Smiling to myself, I pressed on.
The half-dozen men who reached the corner of the House more or less in a pack were in the nick of time to see the wretched Maryvale, driven from cover to cover like a hunted beast, drag his body, which had never before seemed ponderous, to the base of one of the gate-house towers. He carried what seemed a club with an enormous broadened head.
He turned there at bay while we closed in upon him, and the awful wreck of his face with its glaring eyes and bared teeth in the moonlight will haunt me to my death. He was a beast. While we stood speechless, he began to climb.
One hand gripped the queer-looking club, but grasping the ivy with one hand alone, he raised himself steadily. It was agony to watch this man-turned-ape mounting where none of us dared to follow. In the thick wavering growth that clung to the tower sometimes he swung pendulum-wise, sometimes was almost buried in the foliage, but his ascent was sure as if he climbed the stairs within. We cried out to him appeals and abuse; I do not think he heard us. Someone ran to the stables, shouting for a ladder.
Maryvale reached the angle where the covered bridge meets the wall of the tower. Here the ivy thins, and the man made a wide stop to the roof of the bridge. Then, surely, I felt the supreme horror, when Maryvale, using the base of a window-slit for foot-rest, lifted himself over the edge of the turret-roof and carefully but expeditiously crawled up the slope of stone toward the pointed top.
We held on shouting, some of us, in sheer desperation. Pendleton made a frenzied effort to climb the ivy, failed. Maryvale crept on, his whole body flat against the roof, save for the arm which held the club-like mass. He reached the pinnacle and lifted himself to a precarious standing posture, one foot firm on the very apex, the side of the other foot pressed against the slope.
For a few moments he bent over the object he had carried; then when he straightened his body, his arm above his head brandished a flaming, sizzling torch, and he uttered the only words I had heard him speak that day. He called out to the night at large:
“Lolly, Lolly, Parson Lolly!” His voice gloated above the hiss of the torch. “Who’s the Parson? I’M THE PARSON! AND NOW I’M GOING OVER THE HILLS: PARSON LOLLY FLIES!”
The torchlight danced in his face while he laughed shrilly. Then he launched himself into the air in an enormous leap.
He fell almost but not quite clear of the sloping roof. Striking it all awry, he dashed against the roof of the bridge and on down. Mercifully, he was hurled toward the wall of the tower, and his foot caught for a second in some loop of the ivy-twine twenty feet from the ground. His swinging body struck the wall a terrific blow, and he hung head downward for a moment; his torch, which had drawn a flaming mark across the night, now blazed upward enveloping him with its flames. Only for an instant, however. The impact of the collision with the wall had stunned him, and the torch fell from his hand. The ivy gave way, and the madman, part of his clothing afire, fell insensible to the ground at our feet.