XXVI.Blood on the PortraitWe had carried Maryvale down to the bridge, and the ambulance from the Cottage Hospital at Kington had been waiting to take the unfortunate man away. We did not know until later, of course, that Maryvale would never walk again, though the delusion which had unhinged his mind no longer held him in thrall.Now we were returning to the House, I and the remnant of the men of the Bidding Feast. We were a straggling squad. The sense of Fate, of dark wings closing down, of stern gates clashing, swept over me again while I wondered which of us would be the next to suffer. One by one our little group reassembled in the library. There the women were waiting; there, too, stood Maryvale’s picture of the headless Parson, more enigmatic than before. Yes, even with the madman’s words ringing in our ears, none of us could believe that he had indeed been the arch-lord of disorder who may have destroyed two men.Mrs. Belvoir, purpureal priestess, was making agitated efforts to reassemble her devotees that she might reveal the further activities of the “malignant spirit”; but the devotees were very slippery. Indeed, it was natural that after the catastrophe of Maryvale, other things should disintegrate, and although the terror spread through the House tightened the little knot of us, soon we might have wandered off to bed, unless a sudden loud knocking had been audible.“The front door, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lebetwood.Our host said it was, and added he wondered what the devil—“It is a sign for me, I think.” Addressing Mrs. Belvoir: “Marvel, you must let me take charge now.”“Why, what do you mean?” demanded the seeress.“We shall see in a moment.”Alberta’s firm hand had restrained Crofts from jumping into the corridor to answer the knock himself. Presently Soames sidled into the room with a salver which he presented to Miss Lebetwood. Regarding him closely, I thought he gave her a slanting, snake-like look of mingled fear and malevolence—and yet on the surface his countenance remained perfectly respectful.“A telegram for you, Miss.”“Thank you.”Lib gurgled, “Why, Paula, someone’s had the cheek to open it!”“I know,” answered Miss Lebetwood, withdrawing two closely-filled sheets from the envelope already slit. “Those were my instructions.”Crofts asked sharply, “Don’t they know those should be ’phoned here?”“My directions again,” said the American girl evenly, without glancing up from the sheet in her hand. Her brief, self-possessed words made us realize of a sudden that she had assumed leadership quietly and confidently. “There will be no answer, Soames,” she remarked, and the man slid out shadow-wise.A silence supervened, while we stared at her and she read the message to the very end. When she was through, her clear blue eyes were bright with exultation.“Yes, it’s what I expected! I think, people, that we will see the end of our ghastly bewilderment to-night. Won’t you be glad? Oh, I will!”Mrs. Belvoir, aware that she was likely to lose the post of cynosure, countered vaguely. “What do you mean?” she repeated. “I haven’t finished—”“You won’t need to, Marvel dear. I have found a better way to deal with the malignant spirit you spoke of. I have Mr. Salt’s approval for what I do. In fact”—she smiled slightly—“I am his deputy.”Lord Ludlow’s eyebrows gave a jerk. “His deputy?”“Yes, and I believe I am to have a Police-Constable to enforce my authority. And the—the Frenchwomen from the farm, the Delambres, have kindly consented to be present here to-night as witnesses.”“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Crofts. “Will people be coming in here all night? Who owns this place, anyhow?”Alberta struck a counter-blow. “Of course, Paula dearest, we shall do anything you like. Shall we have to wait long for those queer old women?”“Theyare waiting foryou,” said the American girl, standing by the door which led through the armoury into the Hall. “Will you enter, please, and take your seats as before?”“I don’t like this,” objected Crofts, blocking our way. “In my opinion there should be no jiggery-pokery without Salt or this Scotland Yard man he was supposed to bring. Why doesn’t he do as he intended?”“Hush, dear,” said Alberta, “or Paula will have her Constable arrest you and lock you up in the gate-house.”“He may appear later on, of course,” the American girl suggested, not very hopefully. “You can trust me, though, to—”“Later? Later?” Crofts grumbled. “Are we going to be kept up all night?”But now Paula Lebetwood ignored him. “Please follow me,” she said, brushing past, and Crofts gave way.Like creatures under a spell we moved into the Hall, a place still obscured from the moon and illumined now only by the pale ring of lights from the chandelier by the gallery. I offered to switch on the other chandelier, which hung near the chimney-piece, but she said she wished it to remain dark for the present. While she spoke, she lit the one bright globe beneath which Mrs. Belvoir had sat, and took her own place beneath it.“Please interrupt me as little as possible,” she requested, “especially in this early part where I know my way. I’ll try not to waste time, though I don’t expect this to be a really short meeting. No, don’t say anything, yet.”It was hard to repress some exclamation of wonder when I saw the two women who sat in semi-darkness near the great expanse of the chimney-piece. Very quiet they had been, and took no notice of us while we entered. They seemed to be absorbed in the embers of the fire, from which only an occasional blue flame winked like an eye. One of them, the squatter of the two, seemed particularly aloof, and only her flattish nose and broad forehead peeped beyond the queer old-fashioned hood still drawn over her head. The other, who wore an expansive coverchief, was taller and more stalwart, with a strong face, large chin, and eyes which shone even in the gloom. She appeared from time to time to take some interest in us and our proceedings. But on the whole the presence of these foreign sisters was eerie and evasive.More stolid than either of these appeared the bovine Constable who sat near them and seemed to have them in charge.“Geewhilikins!” emitted Bob, and the state of Lib could be imagined from the fact that she brazenly allowed him to clutch her hand and keep it.Paula Lebetwood indicated the sisters Delambre with a gesture. “These—gentlewomen: you know who they are, of course. Before to-night is over we shall all be grateful to them for coming here. But it’s late, I know, and you are all anxious to hear my—revelation; so I’ll commence at once.”Her revelation! God grant that no prank of fate should causeherto be snared in whatever trap she was setting!“Don’t think, please, that I am certain myself what to-night’s result is going to be,” she went on while we settled into our seats around the shadowy board. “If I did, I wouldn’t waste your time. But I think—yes, I am almost certain—that you will find out before you leave your places. And perhaps I had better put this in evidence first.”She picked up the creased sheets of the telegram which lay on the table before her and handed them to Charlton Oxford. “It’s the answer to a wire Mr. Salt sent for me this morning. As you see, it’s from the Welsh National Library at Aberystwyth.”“That is surely far afield,” remarked Ludlow.“It may seem so. But I believe that when Mr. Salt hears of it, he’ll agree with me that it’s an important item in our list. In fact, my Lord, it’s the keystone of my arch.”While his eyes travelled along the lines, Oxford’s face was blank. Obviously he did not perceive the slightest link between the matter of the telegram and the matter in hand. He was not even puzzled; he was irretrievably befogged.“Will someone repeat it aloud, please? It will save so much time.”Crofts snatched the sheets from Oxford’s fingers and commenced to read. The eagerness in his voice subsided while he went on to an uncomfortable conclusion with an air that he was being made a fool. Our confusion increased with rapt attention, but the sisters Delambre seemed utterly uninterested, and I believe that the Constable had already dropped into a doze. The message ran about as follows:¹ADEQUATE DESCRIPTION MANUSCRIPT IN CATALOGUE MOSTYN COLLECTION TO WHICH IT FORMERLY BELONGED STOP ORIGINAL NOW IN CARDIFF UNIVERSITY LIBRARY STOP COPIES MAY EXIST STOP MOSTYN SAYS ELIS GRUFFYDD SELF STYLED SOLDIER OF CALAIS WAS NATIVE GRONNANT UCHA IN PARISH LLANASSA FLINTSHIRE LIVED ABOUT 1490–1560 STOP CUSTODIAN WINGFIELD PALACE SEVEN YEARS BEFORE JOINING RETINUE AT CALAIS STOP BEST KNOWN AS AUTHOR AND SCRIBE OF LARGE POLYCHRONICON IN WELSH IN TWO MANUSCRIPT VOLUMES STOP FIRST BEGINS CREATION ENDING BATTLE OF HASTINGS STOP SECOND CONTINUES TO 1552 STOP FOLIOS 365–657 CONTAIN EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS MANY TRANSACTIONS INCLUDING TRIALS IN STAR CHAMBER STOP NO MENTION IN MOSTYN OF REFERENCE TO CWM MELIN OR AIDENN VALE STOP CAN ASSURE YOU NO PASSAGE OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED STOP.“May I have it back? Thank you. And now straight to the point. People, I suppose you think that if we could only put our fingers down tight on one person, our troubles would be over. I mean Parson Lolly—not the Parson of Mr. Maryvale’s sad delusion, but the real one.”“I should say so,” remarked Crofts.“Well,” she said very quietly, “if there is one part of these mysteries I know I hold the clue of, it’s the Parson. Iknowwho the Parson is.”The tableful of us stiffened as if we had been plunged in an electric bath.“Then who, who, who?” Crofts burst out.“You mustn’t excite yourself. There never was any reason to be excited about Parson Lolly. Parson Lolly is a dud.”“Yes, he is!” hooted Bob incredulously.“Yes, he is, I tell you. I can’t believe for a minute that he has any unusual power. You can hardly say that he has any power at all; at least, it’s delusive rather than formidable. Why, he’s done nothing but deliver threats and make gestures, and some of us have been imagining we’re the victims of supernatural pranks.”“Supernatural or not,” growled Crofts, “I’ll give him a fine quarter of an hour when I lay hands on him. Who is he?”The American girl looked him straight in the eye, severely, and he subsided with vague rumblings. “Now, I stipulate that you shall do nothing of the sort. If you intend to make this the excuse for working off your surplus bad temper, I won’t go any further.”“I’ll go bail for him,” promised Alberta.“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me,” said Crofts.The American girl leaned her chin in her hand and studied the table with thoughtful eyes. She spoke slowly, tentatively. “Suppose I set the evidence before you and see if your conclusion isn’t the same as mine. Beginning, perhaps, with that night Millicent wandered out on the lawn, and I with her. It was the clock in the corner there that started all the trouble; neither the Parson nor any human being here could have foreseen the effect that melody would have on Millicent when she heard it through her dreams. But somewhere on the lawn we two collided, you might say, with a separate series of events. First of all it was the devilish, goggling face that glared down at us from an instant from the air. And let me remind you that it was not only an enormous face—I was frightened, but I’m not exaggerating—it was also high up in the air. We know the Parson is tall when he stands full length, but even he can’t extend indefinitely. Well, we saw this perfectly hellish face, just for an instant, and it hasn’t been seen again—that way. Mr. Salt took most of it away with him when he left the Vale this evening.”“What’s that?” jogged in Crofts.“Let me go on, please. The head was one thing. Then there was the placard: ‘Parson Lolly sends regards. Look out for Parson Lolly.’ That was the first of a number of such messages that have been found all about the place, and whythisone, at any rate, should have caused us such great alarm, I can only account for by supposing that we’d caught the spirit of panic from the servants. On sober reflection, I should think that that placard demonstrated a sort of ingenuousness in Parson Lolly.”“A damned funny sort of ingenuousness,” remarked our host. “What about the axe and the blood we found?”“I was just going to remind you of them. The blood, as you know, we learned to be that of one of a batch of little pigs, and its carcass was found this afternoon along with the head. As for the axe, you remember that Doctor Aire pointed out how light and impracticable it was, and how it had been removed from low down on the armoury wall. The final thing was that Mr. Bannerlee’s hat had been deposited on the lawn. The rest was merely excitement. I am able, though, to add a point or two borrowed from Mr. Bannerlee.”I received a burning glance from Crofts. “From you? Have you been holding something back all this time?”The American girl swiftly continued. “These are notes from the diary Mr. Bannerlee commenced that night.”They all exclaimed, “Diary!”“Yes, yes; don’t be so surprised at everything, or we shan’t get through. Don’t let them bother you, Mr. Bannerlee. A little later I’ll say something more general about the diary, but now I confine myself to a pair of small points. One is that while he came down the path from the uplands to the Vale, he heard a voice somewhere in the fog below, shouting—an indeterminate sort of voice with a quality he couldn’t quite describe. Now, I believe that was Parson Lolly’s voice, the same queer voice we heard the night before Mr. Bannerlee came. And the second point is this. Late in the afternoon before Sean met his death, Mr. Bannerlee was standing on the roof outside his window. Crofts had told him how the sun strikes the tumulus in Great Rhos at sunset. Mr. Bannerlee looked down, as it chanced, and saw a tiny piece of rope beneath the parapet that runs along there. It was lying at the edge of one of the merlons, which have been scraped fairly smooth and have their corners sharp. It is my belief that this scrap was part of the clothes-line rope and that it had something to do with Parson Lolly’s visit the night the conservatory window was smashed, also on the night previous to Mr. Bannerlee’s advent.”“Look here,” Crofts broke in. He had gradually been sliding to the edge of his chair again. “Why can’t you give up beating about the bush and tell us out and out?”“I’d have to go over it all anyhow,” returned Miss Lebetwood. “I’m wondering if these straws seem to you to point the way I think they do. You must let me tell this in my own way. There isn’t much more, and for that I have to thank Mr. Bannerlee also.”“You mean my visit to the tower?” I asked. “The Superintendent could help you there. He must have scoured the place long before me.”“He did, as it happens. But he left matters there as he found them, and it was through reading your diary that I heard of the variegated lot of objects which probably belonged to the Parson. For instance, you found shavings from the pencil which had written the placards. You also saw some splashes, unquestionably the blood of the little pig. Then there were fragments of wood and scraps of crêpe, left over from the construction of the head. Another thing was a pungent smell that you couldn’t identify. I think that was all except a torn-off corner of the title-page of a book; something ending in ‘CATTI.’ I would have telegraphed for information about that, too, this morning, but when I asked the Superintendent, he was able to tell me right away what the book is. It’s been quite a common one in Wales for generations: ‘The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti,’ who is described as a wild wag of Wales. He was a real person two hundred years ago, Mr. Salt told me, and a great many legends have sprung up about him, so that his exploits as a highwayman and a hero and a man of chivalry make up quite a readable book. It was borrowed from your library, Crofts, but I noticed this morning that it was back in its place.”Our host now seemed sunk in meditative gloom. “What of it?”“Well, suppose I recapitulate. As I see it, the night before Mr. Bannerlee came, the Parson intended to invade the House, but his plans were awry. Although the head was made, he didn’t bring it with him; this was to be an experimental sortie. He came by way of the kitchen yard, and took down the clothes-line that was hanging there and brought it with him. He made a loop, a lasso, with one end of the rope and flung it up the side of the House until he succeeded in drawing it tight about one of the merlons of the battlement. Then he began shouting through a megaphone, and even if you had heard his voice previously you wouldn’t have recognized it then. And he was still shouting while he commenced to walk up the wall of the House.”I thought Crofts was going to levitate from his chair. “A megaphone!”“But, my dear young lady,” objected Aire, “the man must have had a hand too many. I grant you, he might have hauled himself up the outside of the House, but he’d need both hands for it; where does the megaphone come in?”“You people will interrupt,” said the American girl. “The explanation is simple. The megaphone came from old Watts’ storeroom, of course. Don’t you remember that there are relics in there of early days of sport—even some oars and a sliding seat from a shell? A rowing coxswain uses a megaphone, doesn’t he, and there’s an attachment for keeping it tight against his mouth while both hands are occupied with the rudder chains. Parson Lolly, I imagine, can manage as well as most coxswains. Anyhow, hewasclimbing, and hewasshouting when his foot slipped and there he dangled. Instead of letting go the rope, he held on, and the result was that he began to sway back and forth. Of course he tried to steady himself by reaching one foot out to the wall, but instead of checking his momentum he kicked away from the wall, and his pendulum swing carried him neatly through the window of the conservatory. He wasn’t as much as scratched.”“Unbelievable,” declared Crofts. “And supposing by a miracle he wasn’t cut to pieces, what became of him?”The American girl went on quietly. “When my brother was a high-school lad, he had a soccer ball at home. One evening in an unlit hall he stepped on it accidentally and it sent him clean through a glass door without his losing a drop of blood. It isn’t an unusual thing, after all. As for how the Parson got away, he really didn’t—then. You see, the swing of the rope had gradually ground it to bits where it rubbed against the sharpened merlon. When the Parson swung through the window, the rope broke and he came down on his feet inside the conservatory. Lucky for him, perhaps, that he did, if he wanted to evade us, for all he had to do was to draw the rope in after him and wait until we had spent our patience looking for him in the grounds. None of us had a thought of searching inside.”“Well, I’m—” Crofts muttered, breaking off into stupefaction. No one else said a word, only stared at the American girl, and waited.“That night we may assume Parson Lolly escaped as soon as the coast was clear. But he escaped only to plan new mischief for the next evening. And again his schemes miscarried. I think it is easier to reconstruct what happened this time. For one thing, he brought the head with him.” Crofts seemed about to break in, but desisted. “He was carrying the blood as well; he must have slaughtered the piglet a little while before he set out from the tower, for the blood had not begun to clot. Earlier, he had been prowling inside the House and had pilfered the little battle-axe and the cap belonging to Mr. Bannerlee.”“But, dearest, you aren’t making it a bit clearer,” said Alberta. “What could it have all been for?”“It was to give us the scare of our lives.”“And didn’t it?” muttered Oxford. “Dash him!”“But not as planned. Sean pointed that out at once, I believe. The Parson’s intention that night was to stage a fictitious murder. There were the weapon, the gore, and the hat which was to be discovered reeking with blood. We were to find these things, and in the midst of our excitement we were to be thrown into a panic when the head—went off—probably somewhere on the battlement, or even above.”“The head, the infernal head!”“Yes, Crofts; it appeared when they dug it up this afternoon—Harmony told me—that it had been constructed somewhat like a kite and could have been flown quite easily. That occurred, in fact. When Millicent and I inadvertently crossed the Parson’s path and he dropped everything and legged it, the kite did fly up a little way, and then—went off.” She addressed me. “When it crashed to the ground, Mr. Bannerlee, the Parson still held the cord, and you distinguished the head as a black mass sliding across the lawn.”“I grant you the kite and the rest of the fol-de-rol,” cut in Lord Ludlow, in a voice like the broken edge of a cake of ice. “I fancy, however, that this ‘going off,’ as you call it, needs more explanation than you’ll readily find.”“The hellish thing couldn’t have been lit with a match like a Hallowe’en turnip,” added Crofts.The American girl slowly shook her head and smiled. “On the contrary, for me that was about the easiest guess of all as soon as I read how Mr. Bannerlee smelt powder in the tower. Don’t you see, the Parson must have carried a small dry battery connected by a length of wire with the magnesium charge in the head? It was an ordinary flash-light powder such as is used for taking photographs.”There was a long interval of sagging silence. I cannot speak for others, but my own mind struggled with an obstacle it could not grasp. There must be some egregious contradiction involved in this idea. Flashlight! Who had owned a flashlight?“But, Miss Lebetwood, you yourself—it can’t be—you’re the photography expert here. You didn’t—yourself—”“Wait a moment! I’ve got it!” Aire whistled. “Someone told me other other day—you’d been teaching Toby how to take flashlight photographs. Didn’t you bring down some old apparatus of yours and give it to him last week?”“Quite right,” said the American girl. “It’s been Toby all along, of course.”“Toby!” Crofts was only beginning to see the light.“Toby, who else?”“God!” Crofts seemed to choke for breath. “Do you mean to say that lad killed Cosgrove—killed Heatheringham? I can’t believe it.”“He never killed anybody. Don’t you see, Parson Lolly has no connection with these murders?”“Eh, what?”“Well, what do you know about that?”“I’ll be switched!”“I’ll be damned!”The American girl gave Ludlow a particular look. “It hardly needed the new psychology to give us the right lead. I’m amazed, really I am, that no one has thought of it before. Why, what activities did the Parson engage in? His plots were just the sort of thing that an artless—and artful—child would plan to frighten a grown person.”“Or a grown person to frighten a child,” appended Aire.“Yes, I think so, but there could be no such intention here, of course. As soon as I got my wits about me the night Mr. Bannerlee arrived, I suspected some juvenile escapade. The details unfolded to fit the theory. There was the little battle-axe from low on the wall, whereas the big ones hung out of reach. That later night, who but a small boy could have crawled underneath the arch of the bridge in the park when the Doctor and Mr. Bannerlee were so brisk on his trail? Then there was the book: hardly anyone but a lad nowadays would take much interest in a work as naïve as ‘Twm Shon Catti.’ A boy, however, might be much struck with it, and it probably fired Toby to emulation of Twm—a bloodyish emulation. There was his cloak, too—that was rather puerile, although it was a neat dodge all the same.”“Where does the neat dodge come in?” I asked.“Why, to add to his stature. A tiny Parson Lolly would be in danger of being identified with a boy, if there happened to be a boy in the neighbourhood. That was the reason for the exceedingly large and flowing garb. He must have had strapped to his shoulders one of those contrivances that magicians use to ‘produce’ objects, an apparatus that could be folded or extended by pressure on some spring. No wonder Millicent and I saw no head on him! That sort of stunt is as old as conjuring, I believe, and the appliance probably came from the exhaustless variety of old Watts’ attics.”The American girl leaned back in her chair, settling her head against the leather and closing her eyes, as if grateful for a chance to rest. The accumulation of details which she had picked out left no doubt whatever that the houseful of us had been hoaxed and flummoxed by a child, that Aidenn Vale was Cock Lane repeated on a twentieth century scale.But it could not be!There were facts, cold, stony facts, that loomed mountain high, cutting off this path. These facts could not be avoided.“But, Miss Lebetwood!” I cried hoarsely, “it won’t do.”“Won’t do!” resounded the voice of our host, a man of imponderable mind.“The placards!” I insisted. “Why, I remember clearly the one in Cosgrove’s room had been left after Toby had gone to wherever-it-was to fetch my bag—absolutely no question about that. That afternoon, too, the one Mrs. Bartholomew picked up by the library tower: I’ll swear by the beard of the Prophet it wasn’t there when I went past a few minutes before the tragedy occurred. And Toby was peeling potatoes then. It’s inconceivable—absolutely inconceivable—that he could have had anything to do with them.”Her eyes still shut, Miss Lebetwood said quietly, “I think I can tell who it was. Not Toby, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t alter the rest of what I’ve said about him. Toby didn’t write those placards, or leave them, and I am sure he knows no more about them than he knows about—that one there!”The hair at the back of my neck prickled, and my spine seemed to be wriggling in convulsions. A dozen cries, loud or stunned, sounded as if from one multi-vocal throat. For the American girl’s eyes were open now, and her arm pointed to the musicians’ gallery. Indistinct, hanging outside the bright zone of the globe, but unmistakable, a fifth placard was suspended from the rail of the balustrade.“My God!”“I’ll take oath that wasn’t there when we came in,” declared Crofts, and many voices supported him.It was I who rose like a brisk automaton, kicked my chair back against the wall, and sped up the stairs to the gallery, where I had never set foot before. The placard hung by a black thread attached to a pin. I seized it, carried it down to the light. Now we might have been some multi-headed creature studying the inscription:TOnigHT my LAst NiGHt BeSt REGards PARSON LOLLYOnly the American girl remained limp in her chair, not bending forward for a sight of the words. While my gaze, as it must, fell on her and lingered there, ever such a shadowy smile crept from her lips to her eyes.“Good people, good, good people, please don’t misjudge me. That placard has been hanging there since long before you came in. You didn’t see it because you weren’t on the look-out for it.”“You knew it was there?” Crofts boomed. “And you didn’t warn us?”“Warn you? Against myself?”“Against yourself, dearest?” cried Millicent Mertoun, her face suddenly worn with anxiety.Miss Lebetwood said, “I wrote that placard. I wrote it this evening and put it up there after Marvel’s crystal-gazing to-night. I did it just to show you that anybody could make a placard like that. This is the fifth, and perhaps the four others were done by four different persons.”Accompanying the last words of her speech, the first strokes of twelve began to sound from the clock in the corner. There was a spell in the sound of its old music. We were hushed.For the only time I saw Lord Ludlow’s face absolutely grey with fear. “There’s something moving in the wall!”“Not in the wall—on the wall!”Indeed, high up, above our solitary light, something rubbed and scraped near the portrait of Sir Pharamond. From somewhere else in the room came a soft murmur, as of a smooth-running reel. Belvoir caught hold of the bulb by its brass top and raised it overhead. Within the brightness now, the colours of the portrait were sharper and more brilliant than they had appeared in the austere dimness of the Hall.But Sir Pharamond was not still; he writhed and rocked, and a loud outcry was evidence we saw the blood oozing from the wound upon his cheek.A moment later down fell Sir Pharamond with a sound of splintering wood and ripping canvas. The wall where the portrait had been was quite smooth and blank.The quiet chime of the old clock had not ceased to ring.¹ The original has been supplied. (V. Markham.)↩︎
We had carried Maryvale down to the bridge, and the ambulance from the Cottage Hospital at Kington had been waiting to take the unfortunate man away. We did not know until later, of course, that Maryvale would never walk again, though the delusion which had unhinged his mind no longer held him in thrall.
Now we were returning to the House, I and the remnant of the men of the Bidding Feast. We were a straggling squad. The sense of Fate, of dark wings closing down, of stern gates clashing, swept over me again while I wondered which of us would be the next to suffer. One by one our little group reassembled in the library. There the women were waiting; there, too, stood Maryvale’s picture of the headless Parson, more enigmatic than before. Yes, even with the madman’s words ringing in our ears, none of us could believe that he had indeed been the arch-lord of disorder who may have destroyed two men.
Mrs. Belvoir, purpureal priestess, was making agitated efforts to reassemble her devotees that she might reveal the further activities of the “malignant spirit”; but the devotees were very slippery. Indeed, it was natural that after the catastrophe of Maryvale, other things should disintegrate, and although the terror spread through the House tightened the little knot of us, soon we might have wandered off to bed, unless a sudden loud knocking had been audible.
“The front door, isn’t it?” asked Miss Lebetwood.
Our host said it was, and added he wondered what the devil—
“It is a sign for me, I think.” Addressing Mrs. Belvoir: “Marvel, you must let me take charge now.”
“Why, what do you mean?” demanded the seeress.
“We shall see in a moment.”
Alberta’s firm hand had restrained Crofts from jumping into the corridor to answer the knock himself. Presently Soames sidled into the room with a salver which he presented to Miss Lebetwood. Regarding him closely, I thought he gave her a slanting, snake-like look of mingled fear and malevolence—and yet on the surface his countenance remained perfectly respectful.
“A telegram for you, Miss.”
“Thank you.”
Lib gurgled, “Why, Paula, someone’s had the cheek to open it!”
“I know,” answered Miss Lebetwood, withdrawing two closely-filled sheets from the envelope already slit. “Those were my instructions.”
Crofts asked sharply, “Don’t they know those should be ’phoned here?”
“My directions again,” said the American girl evenly, without glancing up from the sheet in her hand. Her brief, self-possessed words made us realize of a sudden that she had assumed leadership quietly and confidently. “There will be no answer, Soames,” she remarked, and the man slid out shadow-wise.
A silence supervened, while we stared at her and she read the message to the very end. When she was through, her clear blue eyes were bright with exultation.
“Yes, it’s what I expected! I think, people, that we will see the end of our ghastly bewilderment to-night. Won’t you be glad? Oh, I will!”
Mrs. Belvoir, aware that she was likely to lose the post of cynosure, countered vaguely. “What do you mean?” she repeated. “I haven’t finished—”
“You won’t need to, Marvel dear. I have found a better way to deal with the malignant spirit you spoke of. I have Mr. Salt’s approval for what I do. In fact”—she smiled slightly—“I am his deputy.”
Lord Ludlow’s eyebrows gave a jerk. “His deputy?”
“Yes, and I believe I am to have a Police-Constable to enforce my authority. And the—the Frenchwomen from the farm, the Delambres, have kindly consented to be present here to-night as witnesses.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Crofts. “Will people be coming in here all night? Who owns this place, anyhow?”
Alberta struck a counter-blow. “Of course, Paula dearest, we shall do anything you like. Shall we have to wait long for those queer old women?”
“Theyare waiting foryou,” said the American girl, standing by the door which led through the armoury into the Hall. “Will you enter, please, and take your seats as before?”
“I don’t like this,” objected Crofts, blocking our way. “In my opinion there should be no jiggery-pokery without Salt or this Scotland Yard man he was supposed to bring. Why doesn’t he do as he intended?”
“Hush, dear,” said Alberta, “or Paula will have her Constable arrest you and lock you up in the gate-house.”
“He may appear later on, of course,” the American girl suggested, not very hopefully. “You can trust me, though, to—”
“Later? Later?” Crofts grumbled. “Are we going to be kept up all night?”
But now Paula Lebetwood ignored him. “Please follow me,” she said, brushing past, and Crofts gave way.
Like creatures under a spell we moved into the Hall, a place still obscured from the moon and illumined now only by the pale ring of lights from the chandelier by the gallery. I offered to switch on the other chandelier, which hung near the chimney-piece, but she said she wished it to remain dark for the present. While she spoke, she lit the one bright globe beneath which Mrs. Belvoir had sat, and took her own place beneath it.
“Please interrupt me as little as possible,” she requested, “especially in this early part where I know my way. I’ll try not to waste time, though I don’t expect this to be a really short meeting. No, don’t say anything, yet.”
It was hard to repress some exclamation of wonder when I saw the two women who sat in semi-darkness near the great expanse of the chimney-piece. Very quiet they had been, and took no notice of us while we entered. They seemed to be absorbed in the embers of the fire, from which only an occasional blue flame winked like an eye. One of them, the squatter of the two, seemed particularly aloof, and only her flattish nose and broad forehead peeped beyond the queer old-fashioned hood still drawn over her head. The other, who wore an expansive coverchief, was taller and more stalwart, with a strong face, large chin, and eyes which shone even in the gloom. She appeared from time to time to take some interest in us and our proceedings. But on the whole the presence of these foreign sisters was eerie and evasive.
More stolid than either of these appeared the bovine Constable who sat near them and seemed to have them in charge.
“Geewhilikins!” emitted Bob, and the state of Lib could be imagined from the fact that she brazenly allowed him to clutch her hand and keep it.
Paula Lebetwood indicated the sisters Delambre with a gesture. “These—gentlewomen: you know who they are, of course. Before to-night is over we shall all be grateful to them for coming here. But it’s late, I know, and you are all anxious to hear my—revelation; so I’ll commence at once.”
Her revelation! God grant that no prank of fate should causeherto be snared in whatever trap she was setting!
“Don’t think, please, that I am certain myself what to-night’s result is going to be,” she went on while we settled into our seats around the shadowy board. “If I did, I wouldn’t waste your time. But I think—yes, I am almost certain—that you will find out before you leave your places. And perhaps I had better put this in evidence first.”
She picked up the creased sheets of the telegram which lay on the table before her and handed them to Charlton Oxford. “It’s the answer to a wire Mr. Salt sent for me this morning. As you see, it’s from the Welsh National Library at Aberystwyth.”
“That is surely far afield,” remarked Ludlow.
“It may seem so. But I believe that when Mr. Salt hears of it, he’ll agree with me that it’s an important item in our list. In fact, my Lord, it’s the keystone of my arch.”
While his eyes travelled along the lines, Oxford’s face was blank. Obviously he did not perceive the slightest link between the matter of the telegram and the matter in hand. He was not even puzzled; he was irretrievably befogged.
“Will someone repeat it aloud, please? It will save so much time.”
Crofts snatched the sheets from Oxford’s fingers and commenced to read. The eagerness in his voice subsided while he went on to an uncomfortable conclusion with an air that he was being made a fool. Our confusion increased with rapt attention, but the sisters Delambre seemed utterly uninterested, and I believe that the Constable had already dropped into a doze. The message ran about as follows:¹
ADEQUATE DESCRIPTION MANUSCRIPT IN CATALOGUE MOSTYN COLLECTION TO WHICH IT FORMERLY BELONGED STOP ORIGINAL NOW IN CARDIFF UNIVERSITY LIBRARY STOP COPIES MAY EXIST STOP MOSTYN SAYS ELIS GRUFFYDD SELF STYLED SOLDIER OF CALAIS WAS NATIVE GRONNANT UCHA IN PARISH LLANASSA FLINTSHIRE LIVED ABOUT 1490–1560 STOP CUSTODIAN WINGFIELD PALACE SEVEN YEARS BEFORE JOINING RETINUE AT CALAIS STOP BEST KNOWN AS AUTHOR AND SCRIBE OF LARGE POLYCHRONICON IN WELSH IN TWO MANUSCRIPT VOLUMES STOP FIRST BEGINS CREATION ENDING BATTLE OF HASTINGS STOP SECOND CONTINUES TO 1552 STOP FOLIOS 365–657 CONTAIN EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS MANY TRANSACTIONS INCLUDING TRIALS IN STAR CHAMBER STOP NO MENTION IN MOSTYN OF REFERENCE TO CWM MELIN OR AIDENN VALE STOP CAN ASSURE YOU NO PASSAGE OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED STOP.
ADEQUATE DESCRIPTION MANUSCRIPT IN CATALOGUE MOSTYN COLLECTION TO WHICH IT FORMERLY BELONGED STOP ORIGINAL NOW IN CARDIFF UNIVERSITY LIBRARY STOP COPIES MAY EXIST STOP MOSTYN SAYS ELIS GRUFFYDD SELF STYLED SOLDIER OF CALAIS WAS NATIVE GRONNANT UCHA IN PARISH LLANASSA FLINTSHIRE LIVED ABOUT 1490–1560 STOP CUSTODIAN WINGFIELD PALACE SEVEN YEARS BEFORE JOINING RETINUE AT CALAIS STOP BEST KNOWN AS AUTHOR AND SCRIBE OF LARGE POLYCHRONICON IN WELSH IN TWO MANUSCRIPT VOLUMES STOP FIRST BEGINS CREATION ENDING BATTLE OF HASTINGS STOP SECOND CONTINUES TO 1552 STOP FOLIOS 365–657 CONTAIN EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS MANY TRANSACTIONS INCLUDING TRIALS IN STAR CHAMBER STOP NO MENTION IN MOSTYN OF REFERENCE TO CWM MELIN OR AIDENN VALE STOP CAN ASSURE YOU NO PASSAGE OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED STOP.
“May I have it back? Thank you. And now straight to the point. People, I suppose you think that if we could only put our fingers down tight on one person, our troubles would be over. I mean Parson Lolly—not the Parson of Mr. Maryvale’s sad delusion, but the real one.”
“I should say so,” remarked Crofts.
“Well,” she said very quietly, “if there is one part of these mysteries I know I hold the clue of, it’s the Parson. Iknowwho the Parson is.”
The tableful of us stiffened as if we had been plunged in an electric bath.
“Then who, who, who?” Crofts burst out.
“You mustn’t excite yourself. There never was any reason to be excited about Parson Lolly. Parson Lolly is a dud.”
“Yes, he is!” hooted Bob incredulously.
“Yes, he is, I tell you. I can’t believe for a minute that he has any unusual power. You can hardly say that he has any power at all; at least, it’s delusive rather than formidable. Why, he’s done nothing but deliver threats and make gestures, and some of us have been imagining we’re the victims of supernatural pranks.”
“Supernatural or not,” growled Crofts, “I’ll give him a fine quarter of an hour when I lay hands on him. Who is he?”
The American girl looked him straight in the eye, severely, and he subsided with vague rumblings. “Now, I stipulate that you shall do nothing of the sort. If you intend to make this the excuse for working off your surplus bad temper, I won’t go any further.”
“I’ll go bail for him,” promised Alberta.
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to me,” said Crofts.
The American girl leaned her chin in her hand and studied the table with thoughtful eyes. She spoke slowly, tentatively. “Suppose I set the evidence before you and see if your conclusion isn’t the same as mine. Beginning, perhaps, with that night Millicent wandered out on the lawn, and I with her. It was the clock in the corner there that started all the trouble; neither the Parson nor any human being here could have foreseen the effect that melody would have on Millicent when she heard it through her dreams. But somewhere on the lawn we two collided, you might say, with a separate series of events. First of all it was the devilish, goggling face that glared down at us from an instant from the air. And let me remind you that it was not only an enormous face—I was frightened, but I’m not exaggerating—it was also high up in the air. We know the Parson is tall when he stands full length, but even he can’t extend indefinitely. Well, we saw this perfectly hellish face, just for an instant, and it hasn’t been seen again—that way. Mr. Salt took most of it away with him when he left the Vale this evening.”
“What’s that?” jogged in Crofts.
“Let me go on, please. The head was one thing. Then there was the placard: ‘Parson Lolly sends regards. Look out for Parson Lolly.’ That was the first of a number of such messages that have been found all about the place, and whythisone, at any rate, should have caused us such great alarm, I can only account for by supposing that we’d caught the spirit of panic from the servants. On sober reflection, I should think that that placard demonstrated a sort of ingenuousness in Parson Lolly.”
“A damned funny sort of ingenuousness,” remarked our host. “What about the axe and the blood we found?”
“I was just going to remind you of them. The blood, as you know, we learned to be that of one of a batch of little pigs, and its carcass was found this afternoon along with the head. As for the axe, you remember that Doctor Aire pointed out how light and impracticable it was, and how it had been removed from low down on the armoury wall. The final thing was that Mr. Bannerlee’s hat had been deposited on the lawn. The rest was merely excitement. I am able, though, to add a point or two borrowed from Mr. Bannerlee.”
I received a burning glance from Crofts. “From you? Have you been holding something back all this time?”
The American girl swiftly continued. “These are notes from the diary Mr. Bannerlee commenced that night.”
They all exclaimed, “Diary!”
“Yes, yes; don’t be so surprised at everything, or we shan’t get through. Don’t let them bother you, Mr. Bannerlee. A little later I’ll say something more general about the diary, but now I confine myself to a pair of small points. One is that while he came down the path from the uplands to the Vale, he heard a voice somewhere in the fog below, shouting—an indeterminate sort of voice with a quality he couldn’t quite describe. Now, I believe that was Parson Lolly’s voice, the same queer voice we heard the night before Mr. Bannerlee came. And the second point is this. Late in the afternoon before Sean met his death, Mr. Bannerlee was standing on the roof outside his window. Crofts had told him how the sun strikes the tumulus in Great Rhos at sunset. Mr. Bannerlee looked down, as it chanced, and saw a tiny piece of rope beneath the parapet that runs along there. It was lying at the edge of one of the merlons, which have been scraped fairly smooth and have their corners sharp. It is my belief that this scrap was part of the clothes-line rope and that it had something to do with Parson Lolly’s visit the night the conservatory window was smashed, also on the night previous to Mr. Bannerlee’s advent.”
“Look here,” Crofts broke in. He had gradually been sliding to the edge of his chair again. “Why can’t you give up beating about the bush and tell us out and out?”
“I’d have to go over it all anyhow,” returned Miss Lebetwood. “I’m wondering if these straws seem to you to point the way I think they do. You must let me tell this in my own way. There isn’t much more, and for that I have to thank Mr. Bannerlee also.”
“You mean my visit to the tower?” I asked. “The Superintendent could help you there. He must have scoured the place long before me.”
“He did, as it happens. But he left matters there as he found them, and it was through reading your diary that I heard of the variegated lot of objects which probably belonged to the Parson. For instance, you found shavings from the pencil which had written the placards. You also saw some splashes, unquestionably the blood of the little pig. Then there were fragments of wood and scraps of crêpe, left over from the construction of the head. Another thing was a pungent smell that you couldn’t identify. I think that was all except a torn-off corner of the title-page of a book; something ending in ‘CATTI.’ I would have telegraphed for information about that, too, this morning, but when I asked the Superintendent, he was able to tell me right away what the book is. It’s been quite a common one in Wales for generations: ‘The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti,’ who is described as a wild wag of Wales. He was a real person two hundred years ago, Mr. Salt told me, and a great many legends have sprung up about him, so that his exploits as a highwayman and a hero and a man of chivalry make up quite a readable book. It was borrowed from your library, Crofts, but I noticed this morning that it was back in its place.”
Our host now seemed sunk in meditative gloom. “What of it?”
“Well, suppose I recapitulate. As I see it, the night before Mr. Bannerlee came, the Parson intended to invade the House, but his plans were awry. Although the head was made, he didn’t bring it with him; this was to be an experimental sortie. He came by way of the kitchen yard, and took down the clothes-line that was hanging there and brought it with him. He made a loop, a lasso, with one end of the rope and flung it up the side of the House until he succeeded in drawing it tight about one of the merlons of the battlement. Then he began shouting through a megaphone, and even if you had heard his voice previously you wouldn’t have recognized it then. And he was still shouting while he commenced to walk up the wall of the House.”
I thought Crofts was going to levitate from his chair. “A megaphone!”
“But, my dear young lady,” objected Aire, “the man must have had a hand too many. I grant you, he might have hauled himself up the outside of the House, but he’d need both hands for it; where does the megaphone come in?”
“You people will interrupt,” said the American girl. “The explanation is simple. The megaphone came from old Watts’ storeroom, of course. Don’t you remember that there are relics in there of early days of sport—even some oars and a sliding seat from a shell? A rowing coxswain uses a megaphone, doesn’t he, and there’s an attachment for keeping it tight against his mouth while both hands are occupied with the rudder chains. Parson Lolly, I imagine, can manage as well as most coxswains. Anyhow, hewasclimbing, and hewasshouting when his foot slipped and there he dangled. Instead of letting go the rope, he held on, and the result was that he began to sway back and forth. Of course he tried to steady himself by reaching one foot out to the wall, but instead of checking his momentum he kicked away from the wall, and his pendulum swing carried him neatly through the window of the conservatory. He wasn’t as much as scratched.”
“Unbelievable,” declared Crofts. “And supposing by a miracle he wasn’t cut to pieces, what became of him?”
The American girl went on quietly. “When my brother was a high-school lad, he had a soccer ball at home. One evening in an unlit hall he stepped on it accidentally and it sent him clean through a glass door without his losing a drop of blood. It isn’t an unusual thing, after all. As for how the Parson got away, he really didn’t—then. You see, the swing of the rope had gradually ground it to bits where it rubbed against the sharpened merlon. When the Parson swung through the window, the rope broke and he came down on his feet inside the conservatory. Lucky for him, perhaps, that he did, if he wanted to evade us, for all he had to do was to draw the rope in after him and wait until we had spent our patience looking for him in the grounds. None of us had a thought of searching inside.”
“Well, I’m—” Crofts muttered, breaking off into stupefaction. No one else said a word, only stared at the American girl, and waited.
“That night we may assume Parson Lolly escaped as soon as the coast was clear. But he escaped only to plan new mischief for the next evening. And again his schemes miscarried. I think it is easier to reconstruct what happened this time. For one thing, he brought the head with him.” Crofts seemed about to break in, but desisted. “He was carrying the blood as well; he must have slaughtered the piglet a little while before he set out from the tower, for the blood had not begun to clot. Earlier, he had been prowling inside the House and had pilfered the little battle-axe and the cap belonging to Mr. Bannerlee.”
“But, dearest, you aren’t making it a bit clearer,” said Alberta. “What could it have all been for?”
“It was to give us the scare of our lives.”
“And didn’t it?” muttered Oxford. “Dash him!”
“But not as planned. Sean pointed that out at once, I believe. The Parson’s intention that night was to stage a fictitious murder. There were the weapon, the gore, and the hat which was to be discovered reeking with blood. We were to find these things, and in the midst of our excitement we were to be thrown into a panic when the head—went off—probably somewhere on the battlement, or even above.”
“The head, the infernal head!”
“Yes, Crofts; it appeared when they dug it up this afternoon—Harmony told me—that it had been constructed somewhat like a kite and could have been flown quite easily. That occurred, in fact. When Millicent and I inadvertently crossed the Parson’s path and he dropped everything and legged it, the kite did fly up a little way, and then—went off.” She addressed me. “When it crashed to the ground, Mr. Bannerlee, the Parson still held the cord, and you distinguished the head as a black mass sliding across the lawn.”
“I grant you the kite and the rest of the fol-de-rol,” cut in Lord Ludlow, in a voice like the broken edge of a cake of ice. “I fancy, however, that this ‘going off,’ as you call it, needs more explanation than you’ll readily find.”
“The hellish thing couldn’t have been lit with a match like a Hallowe’en turnip,” added Crofts.
The American girl slowly shook her head and smiled. “On the contrary, for me that was about the easiest guess of all as soon as I read how Mr. Bannerlee smelt powder in the tower. Don’t you see, the Parson must have carried a small dry battery connected by a length of wire with the magnesium charge in the head? It was an ordinary flash-light powder such as is used for taking photographs.”
There was a long interval of sagging silence. I cannot speak for others, but my own mind struggled with an obstacle it could not grasp. There must be some egregious contradiction involved in this idea. Flashlight! Who had owned a flashlight?
“But, Miss Lebetwood, you yourself—it can’t be—you’re the photography expert here. You didn’t—yourself—”
“Wait a moment! I’ve got it!” Aire whistled. “Someone told me other other day—you’d been teaching Toby how to take flashlight photographs. Didn’t you bring down some old apparatus of yours and give it to him last week?”
“Quite right,” said the American girl. “It’s been Toby all along, of course.”
“Toby!” Crofts was only beginning to see the light.
“Toby, who else?”
“God!” Crofts seemed to choke for breath. “Do you mean to say that lad killed Cosgrove—killed Heatheringham? I can’t believe it.”
“He never killed anybody. Don’t you see, Parson Lolly has no connection with these murders?”
“Eh, what?”
“Well, what do you know about that?”
“I’ll be switched!”
“I’ll be damned!”
The American girl gave Ludlow a particular look. “It hardly needed the new psychology to give us the right lead. I’m amazed, really I am, that no one has thought of it before. Why, what activities did the Parson engage in? His plots were just the sort of thing that an artless—and artful—child would plan to frighten a grown person.”
“Or a grown person to frighten a child,” appended Aire.
“Yes, I think so, but there could be no such intention here, of course. As soon as I got my wits about me the night Mr. Bannerlee arrived, I suspected some juvenile escapade. The details unfolded to fit the theory. There was the little battle-axe from low on the wall, whereas the big ones hung out of reach. That later night, who but a small boy could have crawled underneath the arch of the bridge in the park when the Doctor and Mr. Bannerlee were so brisk on his trail? Then there was the book: hardly anyone but a lad nowadays would take much interest in a work as naïve as ‘Twm Shon Catti.’ A boy, however, might be much struck with it, and it probably fired Toby to emulation of Twm—a bloodyish emulation. There was his cloak, too—that was rather puerile, although it was a neat dodge all the same.”
“Where does the neat dodge come in?” I asked.
“Why, to add to his stature. A tiny Parson Lolly would be in danger of being identified with a boy, if there happened to be a boy in the neighbourhood. That was the reason for the exceedingly large and flowing garb. He must have had strapped to his shoulders one of those contrivances that magicians use to ‘produce’ objects, an apparatus that could be folded or extended by pressure on some spring. No wonder Millicent and I saw no head on him! That sort of stunt is as old as conjuring, I believe, and the appliance probably came from the exhaustless variety of old Watts’ attics.”
The American girl leaned back in her chair, settling her head against the leather and closing her eyes, as if grateful for a chance to rest. The accumulation of details which she had picked out left no doubt whatever that the houseful of us had been hoaxed and flummoxed by a child, that Aidenn Vale was Cock Lane repeated on a twentieth century scale.
But it could not be!
There were facts, cold, stony facts, that loomed mountain high, cutting off this path. These facts could not be avoided.
“But, Miss Lebetwood!” I cried hoarsely, “it won’t do.”
“Won’t do!” resounded the voice of our host, a man of imponderable mind.
“The placards!” I insisted. “Why, I remember clearly the one in Cosgrove’s room had been left after Toby had gone to wherever-it-was to fetch my bag—absolutely no question about that. That afternoon, too, the one Mrs. Bartholomew picked up by the library tower: I’ll swear by the beard of the Prophet it wasn’t there when I went past a few minutes before the tragedy occurred. And Toby was peeling potatoes then. It’s inconceivable—absolutely inconceivable—that he could have had anything to do with them.”
Her eyes still shut, Miss Lebetwood said quietly, “I think I can tell who it was. Not Toby, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t alter the rest of what I’ve said about him. Toby didn’t write those placards, or leave them, and I am sure he knows no more about them than he knows about—that one there!”
The hair at the back of my neck prickled, and my spine seemed to be wriggling in convulsions. A dozen cries, loud or stunned, sounded as if from one multi-vocal throat. For the American girl’s eyes were open now, and her arm pointed to the musicians’ gallery. Indistinct, hanging outside the bright zone of the globe, but unmistakable, a fifth placard was suspended from the rail of the balustrade.
“My God!”
“I’ll take oath that wasn’t there when we came in,” declared Crofts, and many voices supported him.
It was I who rose like a brisk automaton, kicked my chair back against the wall, and sped up the stairs to the gallery, where I had never set foot before. The placard hung by a black thread attached to a pin. I seized it, carried it down to the light. Now we might have been some multi-headed creature studying the inscription:
TOnigHT my LAst NiGHt BeSt REGards PARSON LOLLY
TOnigHT my LAst NiGHt BeSt REGards PARSON LOLLY
Only the American girl remained limp in her chair, not bending forward for a sight of the words. While my gaze, as it must, fell on her and lingered there, ever such a shadowy smile crept from her lips to her eyes.
“Good people, good, good people, please don’t misjudge me. That placard has been hanging there since long before you came in. You didn’t see it because you weren’t on the look-out for it.”
“You knew it was there?” Crofts boomed. “And you didn’t warn us?”
“Warn you? Against myself?”
“Against yourself, dearest?” cried Millicent Mertoun, her face suddenly worn with anxiety.
Miss Lebetwood said, “I wrote that placard. I wrote it this evening and put it up there after Marvel’s crystal-gazing to-night. I did it just to show you that anybody could make a placard like that. This is the fifth, and perhaps the four others were done by four different persons.”
Accompanying the last words of her speech, the first strokes of twelve began to sound from the clock in the corner. There was a spell in the sound of its old music. We were hushed.
For the only time I saw Lord Ludlow’s face absolutely grey with fear. “There’s something moving in the wall!”
“Not in the wall—on the wall!”
Indeed, high up, above our solitary light, something rubbed and scraped near the portrait of Sir Pharamond. From somewhere else in the room came a soft murmur, as of a smooth-running reel. Belvoir caught hold of the bulb by its brass top and raised it overhead. Within the brightness now, the colours of the portrait were sharper and more brilliant than they had appeared in the austere dimness of the Hall.
But Sir Pharamond was not still; he writhed and rocked, and a loud outcry was evidence we saw the blood oozing from the wound upon his cheek.
A moment later down fell Sir Pharamond with a sound of splintering wood and ripping canvas. The wall where the portrait had been was quite smooth and blank.
The quiet chime of the old clock had not ceased to ring.
¹ The original has been supplied. (V. Markham.)↩︎