“He’s done us!” he cried. “Look here, French, this is the original staircase. There’s the leather loop. I know it because there was a crack on the fourth stair. When we rushed down the cellar after him, he swung the thing round again and simply walked out of the front door. Damn it, man, it’s open!”
They hurried outside. French blew his whistle. One of the plain-clothes men came running up from the avenue. He was looking a little sheepish.
“What’s wrong?” French demanded.
“He’s gone off,” was the unwilling reply. “I guess that chap’s given us the slip.”
“Speak up,” French insisted.
“The only place,” the man went on, “we hadn’t our eyes glued on, was the front door. He must have come out through that. There’s been a motor truck with one or two queer-looking chaps in it, at the corner of the avenue there for the last ten minutes. I’d just made up my mind to stroll round and see what it was up to when Jim, who was on the other side, shouted out. A man jumped up into it and they made off at once.”
“Could he have come from this house?” French asked sternly.
“I guess, if he’d come out from the front door, he might just have done it,” the man admitted.
Quest and the Inspector exchanged glances.
“He’s done us!” Quest muttered,—“done us like a couple of greenhorns!”
The Inspector’s rubicund countenance was white with fury. His head kept turning in the direction of Laura, to whom the Professor was busy rendering first aid.
“If I never take another job on as long as I live,” he declared, “I’ll have that fellow before I’m through!”
The Professor roused himself from what had apparently been a very gloomy reverie.
“Well,” he announced, “I must go home. It has been very kind of you, Mr. Quest, to keep me here for so long.”
Quest glanced at the clock.
“Don’t hurry, Mr. Ashleigh,” he said. “We may get some news at any moment. French has a dozen men out on the search and he has promised to ring me up immediately he hears anything.”
The Professor sighed.
“A man,” he declared, “who for twenty years can deceive his master as utterly and completely as Craig has done me, who is capable of such diabolical outrages, and who, when capture stares him in the face, is capable of an escape such as he made to-day, is outside the laws of probability. Personally, I do not believe that I shall ever again see the face of my servant, any more than that you, Quest, will entirely solve the mystery of these murders and the theft of the Rheinholdt jewels.”
Lenora, who, with her hat on, was packing a small bag at the other end of the room, glanced up for a moment.
Three men (one a police officer) look perplexed.QUEST IS MYSTIFIED AT FINDING THE JEWELS IN THE BLACK BOX, WHICH WAS ON THE FLOOR.
QUEST IS MYSTIFIED AT FINDING THE JEWELS IN THE BLACK BOX, WHICH WAS ON THE FLOOR.
Several men stand in a boat with their hands up, with guns pointing at them.“SURE AN’ ME NAME’S NOT CRAIG—IT’S MARTY O’TOOLE, SIR.” THEY HAD FOOLED THE CRIMINOLOGIST.
“SURE AN’ ME NAME’S NOT CRAIG—IT’S MARTY O’TOOLE, SIR.” THEY HAD FOOLED THE CRIMINOLOGIST.
“The man is a demon!” she exclaimed. “He would have sacrificed us all, if he could. When I think of poor Laura lying there in the hospital, crushed almost to death, so that he could save his miserable carcass, and realise that he is free, I feel—”
She stopped short. Quest looked at her and nodded.
“Don’t mind hurting our feelings, Lenora,” he said. “French and I are up against it all right. We’re second best, at the present moment—I’ll admit that—but the end hasn’t come yet.”
“I am sorry,” she murmured. “I was led away for a moment. But, Mr. Quest,” she went on piteously, “can’t we do something? Laura’s so brave. She tried to laugh when I left her, an hour ago, but I could see all the time that she was suffering agony. Fancy a man doing that to a woman! It makes me feel that I can’t rest or sleep. I think that when I have left the hospital I shall just walk up and down the streets and watch and search.”
Quest shook his head.
“That sort of thing won’t do any good,” he declared. “It isn’t any use, Lenora, working without a plan. That’s why I’m here now, waiting. I want to formulate a plan first.”
“Who are we,” the Professor asked drearily, “to make plans against a fiend like that? What can we do against men who have revolving staircases and trolley-loads of river pirates waiting for them? You may be a scientific criminologist, Quest, but that fellow Craig is a scientific criminal, if ever there was one.”
Quest crossed the room towards his cigar cabinet, and opened it. His little start was apparent to both of them. Lenora laid down the bag which she had just lifted up. The Professor leaned forward in his chair.
“What is it, Quest?” he demanded.
Quest stretched out his hand and picked up from the top of the cigars a small black box! He laid it on the table.
“Unless I am very much mistaken,” he said, “it is another communication from our mysterious friend.”
“Impossible!” the Professor exclaimed hoarsely.
“How can he have been here?” Lenora cried.
Quest removed the lid from the box and drew out a circular card. Around the outside edge was a very clever pen and ink sketch of a lifebuoy, and inside the margin were several sentences of clear handwriting. In the middle was the signature—the clenched hands! Quest read the message aloud—
“In the great scheme of things, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe divided an inheritance amongst His children. To one He gave power, to another strength, to another beauty, but to His favourites He gave cunning.”
“In the great scheme of things, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe divided an inheritance amongst His children. To one He gave power, to another strength, to another beauty, but to His favourites He gave cunning.”
They all looked at one another.
“What does it mean?” Lenora gasped.
“A lifebuoy!” the Professor murmured.
They both stared at Quest, who remained silent, chewing hard at the end of his cigar.
“Every message,” he said, speaking half to himself, “has had some significance. What does this mean—a lifebuoy?”
He was silent for a moment. Then he turned suddenly to the Professor.
“What did you call those men in the motor-truck, Professor—river pirates? And a lifebuoy! Wait.”
He crossed the room towards his desk and returned with a list in his hand. He ran his finger down it, stopped and glanced at the date.
“TheDurham,” he muttered, “cargo cotton, destination Southampton, sails at high tide on the 16th. Lenora, is that calendar right?”
“It’s the 16th, Mr. Quest,” she answered.
Quest crossed the room to the telephone.
“I want Number One Central, Exchange,” he said. “Thank you! Put me through to Mr. French’s office…. Hullo, French! I’ve got an idea. Can you come round here at once and bring an automobile? I want to get down to the docks—not where the passenger steamers start from—lower down…. Good! We’ll wait.”
Quest hung up the receiver.
“See here, Professor,” he continued, “that fellow wouldn’t dare to send this message if he wasn’t pretty sure of getting off. He’s made all his plans beforehand, but it’s my belief we shall just get our hands upon him, after all. Lenora, you’d better get along round to the hospital. You don’t come in this time. It’s bad enough to have Laura laid up—can’t risk you. There’ll be a little trouble, too, before we’re through, I’m afraid.”
Lenora sighed as she picked up her bag.
“If it weren’t for Laura,” she said, “you’d find it pretty hard to keep me away. I think that if I could see the handcuffs put on that man, it would be the happiest moment of my life.”
“We’ll get him all right,” Quest promised. “Remember me to Laura.”
“And present my compliments, also,” the Professor begged.
Lenora left them. The Professor, his spirits apparently a little improved by the prospect of action, accepted some whisky and a cigar. Presently they heard the automobile stop outside and French appeared.
“Anything doing?” he asked.
Quest showed him the card and the sailing list. The Inspector nodded.
“Say, that fellow’s some sport!” he remarked admiringly. “You wouldn’t believe it just to look at him. That staircase this afternoon, though, kind of teaches one not to trust to appearances. So you think he’s getting a move on him, Mr. Quest?”
“I think he had a truck waiting for him at the corner of Gayson Avenue,” Quest replied. “It was the machine my men went after. The men looked like river thugs, although I shouldn’t have thought of it if the Professor hadn’t used the word ‘river pirates.’ It’s quite clear that they took Craig down to the river. There’s only one likely ship sailing to-night and that’s theDurham. It’s my belief Craig’s on her.”
The Inspector glanced at the clock.
“Then we’ve got to make tracks,” he declared, “and pretty quick, too. She’ll be starting from somewhere about Number Twenty-eight dock, a long way down. Come along, gentlemen.”
They hurried out to the automobile and started off for the docks. The latter part of their journey was accomplished under difficulties, for the street was packed with drays and heavy vehicles. They reached dock Number Twenty-eight at last, however, and hurried through the shed on to the wharf. There were no signs of a steamer there.
“Where’s theDurham?” Quest asked one of the carters, who was just getting his team together.
The man pointed out to the middle of the river, where a small steamer was lying.
“There she is,” he replied. “She’ll be off in a few minutes. You’ll hear the sirens directly, when they begin to move down.”
Quest led the way quickly to the edge of the wharf. There was a small tug there, the crew of which were just making her fast for the night.
“Fifty dollars if you’ll take us out to theDurhamand catch her before she sails,” Quest shouted to the man who seemed to be the captain. “What do you say?”
The man spat out a plug of tobacco from his mouth.
“I’d take you to hell for fifty dollars,” he answered tersely. “Step in. We’ll make it, if you look quick.”
They clambered down the iron ladder and jumped on to the deck of the tug. The captain seized the wheel. The two men who formed the crew took off their coats and waistcoats.
“Give it her, Jim,” the former ordered. “Now, then, here goes! We’ll just miss the ferry.”
They swung around and commenced their journey. Quest stood with his watch in his hand. They were getting up the anchor of theDurham, and from higher up the river came the screech of steamers beginning to move on their outward way.
“We’ll make it all right,” the captain assured them.
They were within a hundred yards of theDurhamwhen Quest gave a little exclamation. From the other side of the steamer another tug shot away, turning back towards New York. Huddled up in the stern, half concealed in a tarpaulin, was a man in a plain black suit. Quest, with a little shout, recognised the man at the helm from his long brown beard.
“That’s one of those fellows who was in the truck,” he declared, “and that’s Craig in the stern! We’ve got him this time. Say, Captain, it’s that tug I want. Never mind about the steamer. Catch it and I’ll make it a hundred dollars!”
The man swung round the wheel, but he glanced at Quest a little doubtfully.
“Say, what is this show?” he asked.
Quest opened his coat and displayed his badge. He pointed to the Inspector.
“Police job. This is Inspector French, I am Sanford Quest.”
“Good enough,” the man replied. “What’s the bloke wanted for?”
“Murder,” Quest answered shortly.
“That so?” the other remarked. “Well, you’ll get him, sure! He’s looking pretty scared, too. You’d better keep your eyes open, though. I don’t know how many men there are on board, but that tug belongs to the toughest crew up the river. Got anything handy in the way of firearms?”
Quest nodded.
“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “We’ve automatics here, but as long as we’re heading them this way, they’ll know the game’s up.”
“We’ve got her!” the captain exclaimed. “There’s the ferry and the first of the steamers coming down in the middle. They’ll have to chuck it.”
Right ahead of them, blazing with lights, a huge ferry came churning the river up and sending great waves in their direction. On the other side, unnaturally large, loomed up the great bows of an ocean-going steamer. The tug was swung round and they ran up alongside. The man with the beard leaned over.
“Say, what’s your trouble?” he demanded.
The Inspector stepped forward.
“I want that man you’ve got under the tarpaulin,” he announced.
“Say, you ain’t the river police?”
“I’m Inspector French from headquarters,” was the curt reply. “The sooner you hand him over, the better for you.”
“Do you hear that, O’Toole?” the other remarked, swinging round on his heel. “Get up, you blackguard!”
A man rose from underneath the oilskin. He was wearing Craig’s clothes, but his face was the face of a stranger. As quick as lightning, Quest swung round in his place.
“He’s fooled us again!” he exclaimed. “Head her round, Captain—back to theDurham!”
The sailor shook his head.
“We’ve lost our chance, guvnor,” he pointed out, “Look!”
Quest set his teeth and gripped the Inspector’s arm. The place where theDurhamhad been anchored was empty. Already, half a mile down the river, with a trail of light behind and her siren shrieking, theDurhamwas standing out seawards.
Return to Table of Contents
“Getting kind of used to these courthouse shows, aren’t you, Lenora?” Quest remarked, as they stepped from the automobile and entered the house in Georgia Square.
Lenora shrugged her shoulders. She was certainly a very different-looking person from the tired, trembling girl who had heard Macdougal sentenced not many weeks ago.
“Could anyone feel much sympathy,” she asked, “with those men? Red Gallagher, as they all called him, is more like a great brute animal than a human being. I think that even if they had sentenced him to death I should have felt that it was quite the proper thing to have done.”
“Too much sentiment about those things,” Quest agreed, clipping the end off a cigar. “Men like that are better off the face of the earth. They did their best to send me there.”
“Here’s a cablegram for you!” Lenora exclaimed, bringing it over to him. “Mr. Quest, I wonder if it’s from Scotland Yard!”
Quest tore it open. They read it together, Lenora standing on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder:
“Stowaway answering in every respect your description of Craig found on ‘Durham.’ Has been arrested, as desired, and will be taken to Hamblin House for identification by Lord Ashleigh. Reply whether you are coming over, and full details as to charge.”
“Stowaway answering in every respect your description of Craig found on ‘Durham.’ Has been arrested, as desired, and will be taken to Hamblin House for identification by Lord Ashleigh. Reply whether you are coming over, and full details as to charge.”
“Good for Scotland Yard!” Quest declared. “So they’ve got him, eh? All the same, that fellow’s as slippery as an eel. Lenora, how should you like a trip across the ocean, eh?”
“I should love it,” Lenora replied. “Do you mean it really?”
Quest nodded.
“The fellow’s fooled me pretty well,” he continued, “but somehow I feel that if I get my hands on him this time, they’ll stay there till he stands where Red Gallagher did to-day. I don’t feel content to let anyone else finish off the job. Got any relatives over there?”
“I have an aunt in London,” Lenora told him, “the dearest old lady you ever knew. She’d give anything to have me make her a visit.”
Quest moved across to his desk and took up a sailing list. He studied it for a few moments and turned back to Lenora.
“Send a cable off at once to Scotland Yard,” he directed. “Say—‘Am sailing onLusitaniato-morrow. Hold prisoner. Charge very serious. Have full warrants.’”
Lenora wrote down the message and went to the telephone to send it off. As soon as she had finished, Quest took up his hat again.
“Come on,” he invited. “The machine’s outside. We’ll just go and look in on the Professor and tell him the news. Poor old chap, I’m afraid he’ll never be the same man again.”
“He must miss Craig terribly,” Lenora observed, as they took their places in the automobile, “and yet, Mr. Quest, it does seem to me a most amazing thing that a man so utterly callous and cruel as Craig must be, should have been a devoted and faithful servant to anyone through all these years.”
Quest nodded.
“I am beginning to frame a theory about that. You see, all the time Craig has lived with the Professor, he has been a sort of dabbler with him in his studies. Where the Professor’s gone right into a thing and understood it, Craig, you see, hasn’t managed to get past the first crust. His brain wasn’t educated enough for the subjects into the consideration of which the Professor may have led him. See what I’m driving at?”
“You mean that he may have been mad?” Lenora suggested.
“Something of that sort,” Quest assented. “Seems to me the only feasible explanation. The Professor’s a bit of a terror, you know. There are some queer stories about the way he got some of his earlier specimens in South America. Science is his god. What he has gone through in some of those foreign countries, no one knows. Quite enough to unbalance any man of ordinary nerves and temperament.”
“The Professor himself is remarkably sane,” Lenora observed.
“Precisely,” Quest agreed, “but then, you see, his brain was big enough, to start with. It could hold all there was for it to hold. It’s like pouring stuff into the wrong receptacle when a man like Craig tries to follow him. However, that’s only a theory. Here we are, and the front door wide open. I wonder how our friend’s feeling to-day.”
They found the Professor on his hands and knees upon a dusty floor. Carefully arranged before him were the bones of a skeleton, each laid in some appointed place. He had a chart on either side of him, and a third one on an easel. He looked up a little impatiently at the sound of the opening of the door, but when he recognised Quest and his companion the annoyance passed from his face.
“Are we disturbing you, Mr. Ashleigh?” Quest enquired.
The Professor rose to his feet and brushed the dust from his knees.
“I shall be glad of a rest,” he said simply. “You see what I am doing? I am trying to reconstruct from memory—and a little imagination, perhaps—the important part of my missing skeleton. It’s a wonderful problem which those bones might have solved, if I had been able to place them fairly before the scientists of the world. Do you understand much about the human frame, Mr. Quest?”
Quest shook his head promptly.
“Still life doesn’t interest me,” he declared. “Bones are bones, after all, you know. I don’t even care who my grandfather was, much less who my grandfather a million times removed might have been. Let’s step into the study for a moment, Professor, if you don’t mind,” he went on. “Lenora here is a little sensitive to smell, and a spray of lavender water on some of your bones wouldn’t do them any harm.”
The Professor ambled amiably towards the door.
“I never notice it myself,” he said. “Very likely that is because I see beyond these withered fragments into the prehistoric worlds whence they came. I sit here alone sometimes, and the curtain rolls up, and I find myself back in one of those far corners of South America, or even in a certain spot in East Africa, and I can almost fancy that time rolls back like an unwinding reel and there are no secrets into which I may not look. And then the moment passes and I remember that this dry-as-dust world is shrieking always for proofs—this extraordinary conglomeration of human animals in weird attire, with monstrous tastes and extraordinary habits, who make up what they call the civilized world. Civilized!”
They reached the study and Quest produced his cigar case.
“Can’t imagine any world that existed before tobacco,” he remarked cheerfully. “Help yourself, Professor. It does me good to see you human enough to enjoy a cigar!”
The Professor smiled.
“I never remember to buy any for myself,” he said, “but one of yours is always a treat. Miss Lenora, I am glad to see, is completely recovered.”
“I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Ashleigh,” Lenora replied. “I am even forgetting that I ever had nerves. I have been in the courthouse all the morning, and I even looked curiously at your garage as we drove up.”
“Very good—very good, my dear!” the Professor murmured. “At the courthouse, eh? Were those charming friends of yours from Bethel being tried, Quest?”
Quest nodded.
“Red Gallagher and his mate! Yes, they got it in the neck, too.”
“Personally,” the Professor exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with appreciation of his own wit, “I think that they ought to have got it round the neck! However, let us be thankful that they are disposed of. Their attack upon you, Mr. Quest, introduced rather a curious factor into our troubles. Even now I find it a little difficult to follow the workings of our friend French’s mind. It seems hard to believe that he could really have imagined you guilty.”
“French is all right,” Quest declared. “He fell into the common error of the detective without imagination.”
“What about that unhappy man Craig?” the Professor asked gloomily. “Isn’t theDurhamalmost due now?”
Quest took out the cablegram from his pocket and passed it over. The Professor’s fingers trembled a little as he read it. He passed it back, however, without immediate comment.
“You see, they have been cleverer over there than we were,” Quest remarked.
“Perhaps,” the Professor assented. “They seem, at least, to have arrested the man. Even now I can scarcely believe that it is Craig—my servant Craig—who is lying in an English prison. Do you know that his people have been servants in the Ashleigh family for some hundreds of years?”
Quest was clearly interested. “Say, I’d like to hear about that!” he exclaimed. “You know, I’m rather great on heredity, Professor. What class did he come from then? Were his people just domestic servants always?”
The Professor’s face was for a moment troubled. He moved to his desk, rummaged about for a time, and finally produced an ancient volume.
“This really belongs to my brother, Lord Ashleigh,” he explained. “He brought it over with him to show me some entries concerning which I was interested. It contains a history of the Hamblin estate since the days of Cromwell, and here in the back, you see, is a list of our farmers, bailiffs and domestic servants. There was a Craig who was a tenant of the first Lord Ashleigh and fought with him in the Cromwellian Wars as a trooper and since those days, so far as I can see, there has never been a time when there hasn’t been a Craig in the service of our family. A fine race they seem to have been, until—”
“Until when?” Quest demanded.
The look of trouble had once more clouded the Professor’s face. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“Until Craig’s father,” he admitted. “I am afraid I must admit that we come upon a bad piece of family history here. Silas Craig entered the service of my father in 1858, as under game-keeper. Here we come upon the first black mark against the name. He appears to have lived reputably for some years, and then, after a quarrel with a neighbour about some trivial matter, he deliberately murdered him, a crime for which he was tried and executed in 1867. John Craig, his only son, entered our service in 1880, and, when I left England, accompanied me as my valet.”
There was a moment’s silence. Quest shook his head a little reproachfully.
“Professor,” he said, “you are a scientific man, you appreciate the significance of heredity, yet during all this time, when you must have seen for yourself the evidence culminating against Craig, you never mentioned this—this—damning piece of evidence.”
The Professor closed the book with a sigh.
“I did not mention it, Mr. Quest,” he acknowledged, “because I did not believe in Craig’s guilt and I did not wish to further prejudice you against him. That is the whole and simple truth. Now tell me what you are going to do about his arrest?”
“Lenora and I are sailing to-morrow,” Quest replied. “We are taking over the necessary warrants and shall bring Craig back here for trial.”
The Professor smoked thoughtfully for some moments. Then he rose deliberately to his feet. He had come to a decision. He announced it calmly but irrevocably.
“I shall come with you,” he announced. “I shall be glad of a visit to England, but apart from that I feel it to be my duty. I owe it to Craig to see that he has a fair chance, and I owe it to the law to see that he pays the penalty, if indeed he is guilty of these crimes. Is Miss Laura accompanying you, too?”
Quest shook his head.
“From what the surgeons tell us,” he said, “it will be some weeks before she is able to travel. At the same time, I must tell you that I am glad of your decision, Professor.”
“It is my duty,” the latter declared. “I cannot rest in this state of uncertainty. If Craig is lost to me, the sooner I face the fact the better. At the same time I will be frank with you. Notwithstanding all this accumulated pile of evidence I feel in my heart the urgent necessity of seeing him face to face, of holding him by the shoulders and asking him whether these things are true. We have faced death together, Craig and I. We have done more than that—we have courted it. There is nothing about him I can accept from hearsay. I shall go with you to England, Mr. Quest.”
The Professor rose from his seat in some excitement as the carriage passed through the great gates of Hamblin Park. He acknowledged with a smile the respectful curtsey of the woman who held it open.
“You have now an opportunity, my dear Mr. Quest,” he said, “of appreciating one feature of English life not entirely reproducible in your own wonderful country. I mean the home life and surroundings of our aristocracy. You see these oak trees?” he went on, with a little wave of his hand. “They were planted by my ancestors in the days of Henry the Eighth. I have been a student of tree life in South America and in the dense forests of Central Africa, but for real character, for splendour of growth and hardiness, there is nothing in the world to touch the Ashleigh oaks.”
“They’re some trees,” the criminologist admitted.
“You notice, perhaps, the smaller ones, which seem dwarfed. Their tops were cut off by the Lord of Ashleigh on the day that Lady Jane Grey was beheaded. Queen Elizabeth heard of it and threatened to confiscate the estate. Look at the turf, my friend. Ages have gone to the making of that mossy, velvet carpet.”
“Where’s the house?” Quest enquired.
“A mile farther on yet. The woods part and make a natural avenue past the bend of the river there,” the Professor pointed out. “Full of trout, that river, Quest. How I used to whip that stream when I was a boy!”
They swept presently round a bend in the avenue. Before them on the hill-side, surrounded by trees and with a great walled garden behind, was Hamblin House. Quest gave vent to a little exclamation of wonder as he looked at it. The older part and the whole of the west front was Elizabethan, but the Georgian architect entrusted with the task of building a great extension had carried out his work in a manner almost inspired. Lines and curves, sweeping everywhere towards the same constructive purpose, had been harmonised by the hand of time into a most surprising and effectual unity. The criminologist, notwithstanding his unemotional temperament, repeated his exclamation as he resumed his place in the carriage.
“This is where you’ve got us beaten,” he admitted. “Our country places are like gew-gaw palaces compared to this. Makes me kind of sorry,” he went on regretfully, “that I didn’t bring Lenora along.”
The Professor shook his head.
“You were very wise,” he said. “My brother and Lady Ashleigh have recovered from the shock of poor Lena’s death in a marvellous manner, I believe, but the sight of the girl might have brought it back to them. You have left her with friends, I hope, Mr. Quest?”
An aristocratic man dramatically points towards a down-trodden man.LORD ASHLEIGH IDENTIFIES THE CAPTURED MAN AS CRAIG.
LORD ASHLEIGH IDENTIFIES THE CAPTURED MAN AS CRAIG.
Several men stand around a pair of men crouched next to two bloodhounds.“CRAIG DISAPPEARED ABOUT HERE, SIR”—SAID THE GAMEKEEPER.
“CRAIG DISAPPEARED ABOUT HERE, SIR”—SAID THE GAMEKEEPER.
“She has an aunt in Hampstead,” the latter explained. “I should have liked to have seen her safely there myself, but we should have been an hour or two later down here, and I tell you,” he went on, his voice gathering a note almost of ferocity, “I’m wanting to get my hands on that fellow Craig! I wonder where they’re holding him.”
“At the local police-station, I expect,” the Professor replied. “My brother is a magistrate, of course, and he would see that proper arrangements were made. There he is at the hall door.”
The carriage drew up before the great front, a moment or two later. Lord Ashleigh came forward with outstretched hands, the genial smile of the welcoming host upon his lips. In his manner, however, there was a distinct note of anxiety.
“Edgar, my dear fellow,” he exclaimed, “I am delighted! Welcome back to your home! Mr. Quest, I am very happy to see you here. You have heard the news, of course?”
“We have heard nothing!” the Professor replied.
“You didn’t go to Scotland Yard?” Lord Ashleigh asked.
“We haven’t been to London at all,” Quest explained. “We got on the boat train at Plymouth, and your brother managed to induce one of the directors whom he saw on the platform to stop the train for us at Hamblin Road. We only left the boat two hours ago. There’s nothing wrong with Craig, is there?”
Lord Ashleigh motioned them to follow him.
“Please come this way,” he invited.
He led them across the hall—which, dimly-lit and with its stained-glass windows, was almost like the nave of a cathedral,—into the library beyond. He closed the door and turned around.
“I have bad news for you both,” he announced. “Craig has escaped.”
Neither the Professor nor Quest betrayed any unusual surprise. So far as the latter was concerned, his first glimpse at Lord Ashleigh’s face had warned him of what was coming.
“Dear me!” the Professor murmured, sinking into an easy-chair. “This is most unexpected!”
“We’ll get him again,” Quest declared quickly. “Can you let us have the particulars of his escape, Lord Ashleigh? The sooner we get the hang of things, the better.”
Their host turned towards the butler, who was arranging a tray upon the sideboard.
“You must permit me to offer you some refreshments after your journey,” he begged. “Then I will tell you the whole story. I think you will agree, when you hear it, that no particular blame can be said to rest upon any one’s shoulders. It was simply an extraordinary interposition of chance. There is tea, whisky and soda, and wine here, Mr. Quest. Edgar, I know you’ll take some tea.”
“English tea for me,” the Professor remarked, watching the cream.
“Whisky and soda here,” Quest decided.
Lord Ashleigh himself attended to the wants of his guests. Then, at his instigation, they made themselves comfortable in easy-chairs and he commenced his narration.
“You know, of course,” he began, “that Craig was arrested at Liverpool in consequence of communications from the New York police. I understand that it was with great difficulty he was discovered, and it is quite clear that some one on the ship had been heavily bribed. However, he was arrested, brought to London, and then down here for purposes of identification. I would have gone to London myself, and in fact offered to do so, but on the other hand, as there are many others on the estate to whom he was well-known, I thought that it would be better to have more evidence than mine alone. Accordingly, they left London one afternoon, and I sent a dogcart to the station to meet them. They arrived quite safely and started for here, Craig handcuffed to one of the Scotland Yard men on the back seat, and the other in front with the driver. About half a mile from the south entrance to the park, the road runs across a rather desolate strip of country with a lot of low undergrowth on one side. We have had a little trouble with poachers, as there is a sort of gipsy camp on some common land a short distance away. My head-keeper, to whom the very idea of a poacher is intolerable, was patrolling this ground himself that afternoon, and caught sight of one of these gipsy fellows setting a trap. He chased him, and more, I am sure, to frighten him than anything else, when he saw that the fellow was getting away he fired his gun, just as the dog-cart was passing. The horse shied, the wheel caught a great stone by the side of the road, and all four men were thrown out. The man to whom Craig was handcuffed was stunned, but Craig himself appears to have been unhurt. He jumped up, took the key of the handcuffs from the pocket of the officer, undid them, and slipped off into the undergrowth before either the groom or the other Scotland Yard man had recovered their senses. To cut a long story short, that was last Thursday, and up till now not a single trace of the fellow has been discovered.”
Quest rose abruptly to his feet.
“I’d like to take this matter up right on the spot where Craig disappeared,” he suggested. “Couldn’t we do that?”
“By all means,” Lord Ashleigh agreed, touching a bell. “We have several hours before we change for dinner. I will have a car round and take you to the spot.”
The Professor acquiesced readily, and very soon they stepped out of the automobile on to the side of a narrow road, looking very much as it had been described. Further on, beyond a stretch of open common, they could see the smoke from the gipsy encampment. On their left-hand side was a stretch of absolutely wild country, bounded in the far distance by the grey stone wall of the park. Lord Ashleigh led the way through the thicket, talking as he went.
“Craig came along through here,” he explained. “The groom and the Scotland Yard man who had been sitting by his side followed him. They searched for an hour but found no trace of him at all. Then they returned to the house to make a report and get help. I will now show you how Craig first eluded them.”
He led the way along a tangled path, doubled back, plunged into a little spinney and came suddenly to a small shed.
“This is an ancient gamekeeper’s shelter,” he explained, “built a long time ago and almost forgotten now. What Craig did, without a doubt, was to hide in this. The Scotland Yard man who took the affair in hand found distinct traces here of recent occupation. That is how he made his first escape.”
Quest nodded.
“Sure!” he murmured. “Well now, what about your more extended search?”
“I was coming to that,” Lord Ashleigh replied. “As Edgar will remember, no doubt, I have always kept a few bloodhounds in my kennels, and as soon as we could get together one or two of the keepers and a few of the local constabulary, we started off again from here. The dogs brought us without a check to this shed, and started off again in this way.”
They walked another half a mile, across a reedy swamp. Every now and then they had to jump across a small dyke, and once they had to make a detour to avoid an osier bed. They came at last to the river.
“Now I can show you exactly how that fellow put us off the scent here,” their guide proceeded. “He seems to have picked up something, Edgar, in those South American trips of yours, for a cleverer thing I never saw. You see all these bullrushes everywhere—clouds of them, all along the river?”
“We call them tules,” Quest muttered. “Well?”
“When Craig arrived here,” Lord Ashleigh continued, “he must have heard the baying of the dogs in the distance and he knew that the game was up unless he could put them off the scent. He cut a quantity of these bullrushes from a place a little further behind those trees there, stepped boldly into the middle of the water, waded down to that spot where, as you see, the trees hang over, stood stock still and leaned them all around him. It was dusk when the chase reached the river bank, and I have no doubt the bullrushes presented quite a natural appearance. At any rate, although the dogs came without a check to the edge of the river, where he stepped off, they never picked the scent up again either on this side or the other. We tried them for four or five hours before we took them home. The next morning, while the place was being thoroughly searched, we came upon the spot where these bullrushes had been cut down, and we found them caught in the low boughs of a tree, drifting down the river.”
The Professor’s tone was filled with something almost like admiration.
“I must confess,” he declared, “I never realised for a single moment that Craig was a person of such gifts. In all the small ways of life, in campaigning, camping out, dealing with natural difficulties incidental to our expeditions, I have found him invariably a person of resource, ready-witted and full of useful suggestions. But that he should be able to apply his gifts with such infinite cunning, to a suddenly conceived career of crime, I must admit amazes me.”
Quest had lit a fresh cigar and was smoking vigorously.
“What astonishes me more than anything,” he pronounced, as he stood looking over the desolate expanse of country, “is that when one comes face to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences of the most amazing, the most diabolical resource…. Who’s this, Lord Ashleigh?”
The latter turned his head. An elderly man in a brown velveteen suit, with gaiters and thick boots, raised his hat respectfully.
“This is my head-keeper, Middleton,” his master explained. “He was with us on the chase.”
The Professor shook hands heartily with the newcomer.
“Not a day older, Middleton!” he exclaimed. “So you are the man who has given us all this trouble, eh? This gentleman and I have come over from New York on purpose to lay hands on Craig.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” the man replied. “I wouldn’t have fired my gun if I had known what the consequences were going to be, but them poaching devils that come round here rabbiting fairly send me furious and that’s a fact. It ain’t that one grudges them a few rabbits, but my tame pheasants all run out here from the home wood, and I’ve seen feathers at the side of the road there that no fox nor stoat had nothing to do with. All the same, sir, I’m very sorry,” he added, “to have been the cause of any inconvenience.”
“It is rather worse than inconvenience, Middleton,” the Professor said gravely. “The man who has escaped is one of the worst criminals of these days.”
“He won’t get far, sir,” the gamekeeper remarked, with a little smile. “It’s a wild bit of country, this, and I admit that men might search it for weeks without finding anything, but those gentlemen from Scotland Yard, sir, if you’ll excuse my making the remark, and hoping that this gentleman,” he added, looking at Quest, “is in no way connected with them—well, they don’t know everything, and that’s a fact.”
“This gentleman is from the United States,” Lord Ashleigh reminded him, “so your criticism doesn’t affect him. By-the-by, Middleton, I heard this morning that you’d been airing your opinions down in the village. You seem to rather fancy yourself as a thief-catcher.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as that, my lord,” the man replied respectfully, “but still, I hope I may say that I’ve as much common sense as most people. You see, sir,” he went on, turning to Quest, “the spots where he could emerge from this track of country are pretty well guarded, and he’ll be in a fine mess, when he does put in an appearance, to show himself upon a public road. Yet by this time I should say he must be nigh starved. Sooner or later he’ll have to come out for food. I’ve a little scheme of my own, sir, I don’t mind admitting,” the man concluded, with a twinkle in his keen brown eyes. “I’m not giving it away. If I catch him for you, that’s all that’s wanted, I imagine, and we shan’t be any the nearer to it for letting any one into my little secret.”
His master smiled.
“You shall have your rise out of the police, if you can, Middleton,” he observed. “It seems queer, though, to believe that the fellow’s still in hiding round here.”
As though by common consent, they all stood, for a moment, perfectly still, looking across the stretch of marshland with its boggy places, its scrubby plantations, its clustering masses of tall grasses and bullrushes. The grey twilight had become even more pronounced during the last few minutes. Little wreaths of white mist hung over the damp places. Everywhere was a queer silence. The very air seemed breathless. The Professor shivered and turned away.
“My nerves,” he declared, “are scarcely what they were. I have listened in a primeval forest, listened for the soft rustling of a snake in the undergrowth, or the distant roar of some beast of prey. I have listened then with curiosity. I have not known fear. It seems to me, somehow, that in this place there is something different afoot. I don’t like it, George—I don’t like it. We will go home, if you please.”
They made their way, single file, to the road and up to the house. Lord Ashleigh did his best to dispel a queer little sensation of uneasiness which seemed to have arisen in the minds of all of them.
“Come,” he said, “we must put aside our disappointment for the present, and remember that after all the chances are that Craig will never make his escape alive. Let us forget him for a little while…. Mr. Quest,” he added, a few minutes later, as they reached the hall, “Moreton here will show you to your room and look after you. Please let me know if you will take an aperitif. I can recommend my sherry. We dine at eight o’clock. Edgar, you know your way. The blue room, of course. I am coming up with you myself. Her ladyship back yet, Moreton?”
“Not yet, my lord.”
“Lady Ashleigh,” her husband explained, “has gone to the other side of the county to open a bazaar. She is looking forward to the pleasure of welcoming you at dinner-time.”
Dinner, served, out of compliment to their transatlantic visitor, in the great banqueting hall, was to Quest especially a most impressive meal. They sat at a small round table lit by shaded lights, in the centre of an apartment which was large in reality, and which seemed vast by reason of the shadows which hovered around the unlit spaces. From the walls frowned down a long succession of family portraits—Ashleighs in the queer Tudor costume of Henry the Seventh; Ashleighs in chain armour, sword in hand, a charger waiting, regardless of perspective, in the near distance; Ashleighs befrilled and bewigged; Ashleighs in the Court dress of the Georges—judges, sailors, statesmen and soldiers. A collection of armour which would have gladdened the eye of many an antiquarian, was ranged along the black-panelled walls. Everything was in harmony, even the grave precision of the solemn-faced butler and the powdered hair of the two footmen. Quest, perhaps for the first time in his life, felt almost lost, hopelessly out of touch with his surroundings, an alien and a struggling figure. Nevertheless, he entertained the little party with many stories. He struggled all the time against that queer sensation of anachronism which now and then became almost oppressive.
The Professor’s pleasure at finding himself once more amongst these familiar surroundings was obvious and intense. The conversation between him and his brother never flagged. There were tenants and neighbours to be asked after, matters concerning the estate on which he demanded information. Even the very servants’ names he remembered.
“It was a queer turn of fate, George,” he declared, as he held out before him a wonderfully chased glass filled with amber wine, “which sent you into the world a few seconds before me and made you Lord of Ashleigh and me a struggling scientific man.”
“The world has benefited by it,” Lord Ashleigh remarked, with more than fraternal courtesy. “We hear great things of you over here, Edgar. We hear that you have been on the point of proving most unpleasant things with regard to our origin.”
“Oh! there is no doubt about that,” the Professor observed. “Where we came from and where we are going to are questions which no longer afford room for the slightest doubt to the really scientific mind. What sometimes does elude us is the nature of our tendencies while we are here on earth.”
“Mine, I fancy, are obvious enough,” Lord Ashleigh interposed.
“Superficially, I grant it,” his brother acknowledged. “As a matter of scientific fact, I recognize the probability of your actually being a person utterly different from what you appear. Man becomes what he is according to the circumstances by which he is assailed. Now your life here, George, must be a singularly uneventful one.”
“Not during the last six months,” Lord Ashleigh remarked, with a sigh. “Even these last few days have been exciting enough. I must confess that they have left me with a queer sort of nervousness. I find myself listening intently sometimes,—conscious, as it were, of the influence or presence of some indefinite danger.”
“Very interesting,” the Professor murmured. “Spiritualism, as an exact science, has always interested me very much.”
Lady Ashleigh made a little grimace.
“Don’t encourage George,” she begged. “He is much too superstitious, as it is.”
There was a brief silence. The port had been placed upon the table and coffee served. The servants, according to the custom of the house, had departed. The great apartment was empty. Even Quest was impressed by some peculiar significance in the long-drawn-out silence. He looked around him uneasily. The frowning regard of that long line of painted warriors seemed somehow to be full of menace. There was something grim, too, in the sight of those empty suits of armour.
“I may be superstitious,” Lord Ashleigh said, “but there are times, especially just lately, when I seem to find a new and hateful quality in silence. What is it, I wonder? I ask you but I think I know. It is the conviction that there is some alien presence, something disturbing lurking close at hand.”
He suddenly rose to his feet, pushed his chair back and walked to the window, which opened level with the ground. He threw it up and listened. The others came over and joined him. There was nothing to be heard but the distant hooting of an owl, and farther away the barking of some farmhouse dog. Lord Ashleigh stood there with straining eyes, gazing out across the park.
“There was something here,” he muttered, “something which has gone. What’s that? Quest, your eyes are younger than mine. Can you see anything underneath that tree?”
Quest peered out into the grey darkness.
“I fancied I saw something moving in the shadow of that oak,” he muttered. “Wait.”
He crossed the terrace, swung down on to the path, across a lawn, over a wire fence and into the park itself. All the time he kept his eyes fixed on a certain spot. When at last he reached the tree, there was nothing there. He looked all around him. He stood and listened for several moments. A more utterly peaceful night it would be hard to imagine. Slowly he made his way back to the house.
“I imagine we are all a little nervous to-night,” he remarked. “There’s nothing doing out there.”
They strolled about for an hour or more, looking into different rooms, showing their guest the finest pictures, even taking him down into the wonderful cellars. They parted early, but Quest stood, for a few moments before retiring, gazing about him with an air almost of awe. His great room, as large as an apartment in an Italian palace, was lit by a dozen wax candles in silver candlesticks. His four-poster was supported by pillars of black oak, carved into strange forms, and surmounted by the Ashleigh coronet and coat of arms. He threw his windows open wide and stood for a moment looking out across the park, more clearly visible now by the light of the slowly rising moon. There was scarcely a breeze stirring, scarcely a sound even from the animal world. Nevertheless, Quest, too, as reluctantly he made his preparations for retiring for the night, was conscious of that queer sensation of unimagined and impalpable danger.
Return to Table of Contents
Quest, notwithstanding the unusual nature of his surroundings, slept that night as only a tired and healthy man can. He was awakened the next morning by the quiet movements of a man-servant who had brought back his clothes carefully brushed and pressed. He sat up in bed and discovered a small china tea equipage by his side.
“What’s this?” he enquired.
“Your tea, sir.”
Quest drank half a cupful without protest.
“Your bath is ready at any time, sir.”
“I’m coming right along,” Quest replied, jumping out of bed.
The man held up a dressing-gown and escorted him to an unexpectedly modern bathroom at the end of the corridor. When Quest returned, his toilet articles were all laid out for him with prim precision; the window was wide open, the blinds drawn, and a soft breeze was stealing through into the room. Below him, the park, looking more beautiful than ever in the morning sunshine, stretched away to a vista of distant meadowlands and cornfields, with here and there a little farm-house and outbuildings, gathered snugly together. The servant, who had heard him leave the bathroom, reappeared.
“Is there anything further I can do for you, sir?” he enquired.
“Nothing at all, thanks,” Quest assured him. “What time’s breakfast?”
“Breakfast is served at nine o’clock, sir. It is now half-past eight.”
The man withdrew and Quest made a brisk toilet. The nameless fears of the previous night had altogether disappeared. To his saner morning imagination, the atmosphere seemed somehow to have become cleared of that cloud of mysterious depression. He was whistling to himself from sheer light-heartedness as he turned to leave the room. Then the shock came. At the last moment he stretched out his hand to take a handkerchief from his satchel. A sudden exclamation broke from his lips. He stood for a moment as though turned to stone. Before him, on the top of the little pile of white cambric, was a small black box! With a movement of the fingers which was almost mechanical, he removed the lid and drew out the customary little scrap of paper. He smoothed it out before him on the dressing-case and read the message:—
“You will fail here as you have failed before. Better go back. There is more danger for you in this country than you dream of.”
“You will fail here as you have failed before. Better go back. There is more danger for you in this country than you dream of.”
His teeth came fiercely together and his hands were clenched. His thoughts had gone like a flash to Lenora. Was it possible that harm was intended to her? He put the idea away from him almost as soon as conceived. The thing was unimaginable. Craig was here, must be here, in the close vicinity of the house. He could have had no time to communicate with confederates in London. Lenora, at any rate, was safe. Then he glanced around the room and thought for a moment of his own danger. In the dead of the night, as he had slept, mysterious feet had stolen across his room, mysterious hands had placed those few words of half mocking warning in that simple hiding-place! It would have been just as easy, he reflected with a grim little smile, for those hands to have stretched their death-dealing fingers over the bed where he had lain asleep. He looked once more out over the park. Somehow, its sunny peace seemed to have become disturbed. The strange sense of foreboding which he, in common with the others, had carried about with him last night, had returned.
The atmosphere of the pleasant breakfast-room to which in due course he descended, was cheerful enough. Lady Ashleigh had already taken her place at the head of the table before a glittering array of silver tea and coffee equipage. The Professor, with a plate in his hand, was making an approving survey of the contents of the dishes ranged upon the sideboard.
“An English breakfast, my dear Quest,” he remarked, after they had exchanged the usual greetings, “will, I am sure, appeal to you. I am not, I confess, given to the pleasures of the table, but if anything could move me to enthusiasm in dietary matters, the sight of your sideboard, my dear sister-in-law, would do so. I commend the bacon and eggs to you, Quest, or if you prefer sausages, those long, thin ones are home-made and delicious. Does Mrs. Bland still cure our hams, Julia?”
“Her daughter does,” Lady Ashleigh replied, smiling. “We are almost self-supporting here. All our daily produce, of course, comes from the home farm. Tea or coffee, Mr. Quest?”
“Coffee, if you please,” Quest decided, returning from his visit to the sideboard. “Is Lord Ashleigh a late riser?”
“Not by any means,” his wife declared. “He very often gets up and rides in the park before breakfast. I don’t know where he is this morning. He didn’t even come in to see me. I think we must send up.”
She touched an electric bell under her foot and a moment or two later the butler appeared.
“Go up and see how long your master will be,” Lady Ashleigh directed.
“Very good, your ladyship.”
The man was backing through the doorway in his usual dignified manner when he was suddenly pushed to one side. The valet who had waited upon Quest, and who was Lord Ashleigh’s own servant, rushed into the room. His face was white. He had forgotten all decorum. He almost shouted to Lady Ashleigh.
“Your ladyship—the master! Something has happened! He won’t move! He—he—”
They all rose to their feet. Quest groaned to himself. The black box!
“What do you mean?” Lady Ashleigh faltered. “What do you mean, Williams?”
The man shook his head. He seemed almost incapable of speech.
“Something has happened to the master!”
They all trooped out of the room and up the stairs, the Professor leading the way. They pushed open the door of Lord Ashleigh’s bedchamber. In the far corner of the large room was the four-poster, and underneath the clothes a silent figure. The Professor turned down the sheets. Then he held out his hand. His face, too, was blanched.
“Julia, don’t come,” he begged.
“I must know!” she almost shrieked. “I must know!”
“George is dead,” the Professor said slowly.
There was a moment’s awful silence, broken by a piercing scream from Lady Ashleigh. She sank down upon the sofa and the Professor leaned over her. Quest turned to the little group of frightened servants who were gathering round the doorway.
“Telephone for a doctor,” he ordered, “also to the local police-station.”