Therewassomeone coming, for even as Cleek spoke the door swung open and a tall, gaunt, white-haired old man, with a back like a ramrod and a face of granite, and with eyes that shone like pin-points of steel in the smooth pallor of it, came intothe room, followed by a dark-eyed, dark-haired, sallow-complexioned woman with the long nose of the Italian and the brand of the true coquette stamped all over her.
Cleek recognized them at once. Here were the chief actors in the little comedy of what was at present a girl's imaginings, and which he sincerely hoped would never become anything else. What a hard face the man had! What a trap-like mouth! What a merciless, seeking eye! And the woman with him—all soft curves and roundness, with those luminous eyes of southern Italy looking out at him from the frame of her pale, ivory-tinted face, with already a hint of coquetry in their velvet depths for any well-dressed, well-apportioned specimen of mankind. Beside the something rugged and clear-cut in Maud Duggan's personality—the something Scotch and enduring which is the birthright of those born beyond the boundary-line of England—this woman's pale suavity fell into a kittenish foolishness, became instantly trivial and beyond recognizance.
At sound of their approach Maud Duggan turned hurriedly and waved a hand toward Cleek.
"Father," said she in her low, level-toned voice, "this is Mr. Deland of whom I told you last night. Mr. Deland is engaged to Ailsa Lorne, my old school friend at the convent in Paris—and he has come down for the fishing, and did me the honour to call uponme the very first thing. I have asked him to stay and lunch with us."
Sir Andrew bowed stiffly and then extended a blue-veined and tremulous hand. Cleek took it and bent over it like a courtier.
"Very pleased indeed to see you, Mr. Deland," said Sir Andrew, in a deep, full-throated voice that spoke more of the man he had been than of the man he was now. "You are welcome to our hospitality now and at any other time."
"I am deeply grateful, sir, and during my short stay in these parts I shall hope to make fuller acquaintance of you and your family—your wife? How do you do, Lady Paula? I am enamoured of your charming surroundings and your glorious home. May I be permitted to congratulate you upon both?"
A fleet look flashed from her eyes, a swift warmth of friendship for this stranger who made her so muchoneof them who had never yet been made one by the family themselves.
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Smooth as velvet her voice, warm, subtle, alluring as the country that gave her birth. "I love it—howI love it! Even though I am not of the Scotch blood, yet have I that birthright of my nation—home-love. Maud, dear, take Mr. Deland round, won't you? I have still some matters to arrange with your father, so you must do the honours in my stead. And when Sir Andrew and I have finished with our littlepersonalmatters"—she smiled suddenly, showing a flash of snowy teeth between the warm red lips which Time had not yet cooled to the more even tenor of England's blood—"then we will join you upon the terrace. And be sure and show Mr. Deland the electric-lighting plant, dear. He will be interested."
Maud Duggan flashed her a look of absolute hatred at this, for she saw the darkening shade upon her father's face, and noted the sudden clenching of the hand upon his stick.
"Cursed modernism and all its extravagant ways!" said the old gentleman in a bitter voice. "Spending that which he should have saved, sir, upon a ridiculous experiment which has ruined the atmosphere of the place entirely. Wayward fool!"
"But it has improved your reading faculties, anyhow, Father," put in Miss Duggan in a quiet, resolute voice. "Paula is not nearly so busy nowadays, when you can read your own papers——"
"As though Ieverwanted to do anything but wait upon him—dear man!" struck in Lady Paula reproachfully, and with an arch glance at Cleek which did not go unrewarded. "Your father is not so old a man as to be in his dotage. And if thereistwenty years between us, Maud, it is hardly kind of you to bring the matter up like this. Perfect love should have no age nor yet youth. It should be as ageless as Eternity, as boundless as the sea, as high asHeaven itself.... Are you ready, Andrew dear?"
She bent toward the flattered and fluttered old man with that something in her gesture which has been the gift of every woman of her type all down the long ages since Scylla tempted Ulysses and Charybdis sent his head whirling with her lure.
Maud Duggan led Cleek from the room at that, and once out of earshot of this ill-assorted pair, whirled round upon him, a spot of anger showing in each cheek.
"You see, Mr. Deland, you see?" she rapped out excitedly, "how she misleads everything we say, and turns it all to her own ends? Oh, how I hate her—hate her! and have done so ever since she first set foot in this dear old home of ours. And Father—did you notice how worn and ill he looks? How his hand shakes so that he cannot steady it? Three months ago his hand was like a rock; his colour was as healthy as yours or mine. And yet your Mr. Narkom would say that a woman's intuition leads to nothing but her own foolish imaginings!"
"Hush, my dear young lady—have a care!" threw in Cleek quickly, at the sound of footsteps hurrying toward them, his lips tightening in a way that suggested that he, too, thought there might be "something in it." "We don't want the whole place to suspect my mission. That is our secret, if you please. Now, show me the Castle, if you will—andwhatever of interest which you think has bearing upon the case. Where is Lady Paula's son? Does he live here, or is he away at school just now?"
Miss Duggan shook her head.
"No—Cyril is a delicate boy, and the doctor has advised Father to let him stay home for a year and just run wild. He is generally with Ross."
"WithRoss?"
"Yes, the two are sworn friends. Cyril's heart is wrapped up in Ross, Mr. Deland. He never for one moment suspects what his mother is trying to do—wrest Ross's inheritance from him so that he, Cyril, should have it instead. It would break his heart, I think. Wherever Ross is to be found you may be sure Cyril will be there also."
"Damon and Pythias, eh? Strange that the son loves what the mother hates, isn't it? I should like to meet this boy."
"You shall—when we reach the laboratory. He's sure to be there helping Ross. He is like his shadow, that child."
"And he is sixteen, you say?"
"Next October. And a firm believer in our ghost, Mr. Deland."
"Then you have a ghost and all complete?"
"Of course. Hasn't Mr. Fairnish of the Three Fishers told you the story yet? He is usually to be relied upon to impart every bit of village gossip within the first five minutes of one's acquaintance!"
Cleek threw back his head and laughed. They had entered a long, low-ceilinged room, panelled in Spanish leather, with casement windows which gave upon a little walled-in enclosure surrounded by flowering shrubs and white-starred syringa-bushes that sent their pungent odour upon the air in one long waft of perfume.
"He's told me a good deal, it is true, but——What a delightful room! A library, I take it? And what a curious old instrument that is! I haven't seen a spinning wheel like that since I was in Wales and one stood in the corner of the room where I slept at the village inn. A sort of heirloom, I suppose?"
She nodded, and Cleek crossed over to the thing to examine it, touching a part here and a part there with reverent fingers.
"Yes, I suppose youwouldcall it that," she responded, crossing over to him and looking down at the thing in question. "Though, really, why Father has it here I cannot imagine. Its history is certainly not a credit to the line. For it belonged to the very girl I was going to tell you about. It belonged to the Family Ghost. Here is the story. The villagers believe it to this day, and couldn't be persuaded to enter the Castle grounds at night upon any pretext whatever. But of course the educated folk don't. Early in the sixteenth century a wild head of the Macduggan clan abducted ayoung—and I imagine beautiful—peasant-girl when she was sitting at her wheel, spinning, and ran away with her—wheel and all—and brought her here, so legend says, to this very room. The girl, whose name, I believe, was Dhurea, or something like that, stabbed herself with the sharp-pointed spindle of the wheel, and in doing so laid a curse upon the Macduggan clan. She—she was going to have a child, Mr. Deland, and as she was dying, she swore that in every generation a Duggan should die a violent death, and that the sound of her spinning wheel should predict the moment when death was near."
"Oho!" said Cleek, in two different tones. "That differs a good deal from the story Mr. Fairnish tells. There was a child, I understood, and this child was stolen by the grandparents. That's not correct, then?"
"There are various interpretations of the legend. No one knows the truth—only that she killed herself and cursed the family in that unpleasant manner."
"And has the curse come true?"
For a moment Miss Duggan hesitated. Then she sent startled eyes up into his face. There was the look of a dog at bay in them.
"I don't believe the story, Mr. Deland! I don't believe awordof it, for such things cannot possibly be, in this civilized country," she answered in ascared tone. "And yet—ever since that day, one at least of each generation has died unnaturally. And now—inthisgeneration there is only Father and Ross.... This peasant-girl is supposed to haunt our dear Castle, and after midnight to stalk the place over, looking for the man who dishonoured her and who has been dead these many generations past."
"H'm! I see. And so, naturally, she cannot find him. A weird story, and more pleasant in the daylight than in the dark. And this is the lady's spinning wheel, I take it? Your father has it by his writing-table, I see. Rather in the way, isn't it?"
"It used to stand over there, in the corner, but Paula declared that it was too dark there, and that it did not show to its full beauty. So she moved it. Father lets her do whatever she wishes. And of course it does show better there, by the window, doesn't it? And as it's Father'slefthand that comes beside it, Mr. Deland, I don't really see that it much matters."
"No, I suppose not.... Hello! we've been a long time here, haven't we? And I haven't seen the half of the place yet. Isn't that the luncheon gong? Or is it just your tangy Highland air that makes me hungry enough to imagine it?"
"Neither," said she, laughing. "That's Rhea's bell. It hangs just under the bronze statue of Rhea—you remember the one I showed you yesterdayas we came home together?—and it rings upon the entrance of any one through the great gate. A clumsy contraption, which has never been altered in all these years."
"But quite useful—with unwanted visitors," he replied, stooping suddenly and picking up something off the carpet. "Hello, what's this? Looks like a bit of flexible electric wire. Something of your brother's hobby, no doubt."
He held it out to her in the open palm of his hand. It was just a little scrap of crimson-covered flexible wire, and she barely noticed it.
"And ... hello, hello! No electricity used in here, either. I suppose that's because your father doesn't approve?"
"Yes. Ross wired the room—or had it wired with the aid of an electrician—and then installed the light. But Father was so angry that he would rarely ever use it. Sticks to the musty old lamp over there, for most things."
"And is the room still wired?"
"Yes. There's a wall plug over there by the door. Why, Mr. Deland?"
"Oh, nothing. Then that would account for this fragment of flexible wire, wouldn't it? H'm. Yes. I see. I see."
But what he saw he did not at that moment mention, and Miss Duggan had to guess at his meaning.
"But it was done ten days ago— I must really speak to the servants and tell them to keep the place cleaner than they do. Fancy leaving odd pieces about like that!" she ejaculated, sensitive to any suggestion of poor management upon the part of Castle authorities. But Cleek did not hear. He was standing over by the wall-plug, looking down at it, and then kneeling, began to examine it minutely. She watched him in amazement, unused to his methods.
"Why, Mr. Deland—"
"Oh, just looking at how your brother does his work. Quite a good workman, isn't he?" said Cleek, rising slowly to his feet, and pocketing the bit of flexible wire forthwith.
And that was the last word she could get out of him upon the subject.
Within one short hour Cleek had explored the Castle from end to end, in company with a tireless girl for whom every stick and stone of the grand old place held a memory that was as sacred to her as the church is to the priest who has passed all his days in the service of it. But they met no other members of the family just then. Only, as they passed through the left wing, where the servants' quarters lay beyond, Cleek was introduced to Johanna McCall—paid hireling and companion of Lady Paula, and not too pleased with her job, either, if all he read in that frightened face of hers was true.
He found her a little pale slip of a thing, with wide, anxious eyes set in an ivory-tinted, utterly colourless face, and with hair that was "mousey" and straight, and a mouth that might tremble at an unkind word as a child's does.
She bowed to him timidly and extended a slender hand.
"How do you do," she said, in a soft, toneless sort of voice which matched her poor, toneless, utterlydowntrodden personality. "Your stepmother, Miss Duggan? She is in the study, I suppose? I have her embroidery silks, and she wanted them immediately. But it took such a time to get them disentangled. Master Cyril was playing with them last night. I—oh, I do hope she won't be angry!"
"Don't worry, Miss McCall. Rome won't fall, you know, even if she does speak an unkind word to you in her hasty fashion," gave back Maud Duggan, with a kindly pressure of one hand upon the frail girl's arm. "And she's busy just now with Sir Andrew. Looking over some accounts, I believe. I should wait for her in her boudoir, if I were you. She's bound to ring if she wants you."
"Yes, perhaps that would be better."
Miss McCall hurried down the corridor, silent-footed, as a paid companion should always be, and Cleek shook his head as she vanished through an open door at the end of the passage.
"Poor little frightened thing!" he said softly. "And all for a pittance which, in her sort of profession, must necessarily be small!"
"Yes, and she works like a black for it, too," gave back Maud Duggan heatedly. "Slogs away all the day long, running errands for—her—sewing, darning, mending, writing interminable letters which Paula tears up afterward and decides not to send. And gets not a crumb of comfort for her pains. Paula is terribly hard upon her, Mr. Deland. Iwonder the girl stands it; only—there's an attraction."
"And you women are endurance personified—in those circumstances!" he responded with a little significant laugh. "When your hearts are involved, your common sense vanishes to make room for it. I've seen it a thousand times before.... Really, Miss Duggan, you have been an indefatigable guide. I don't believe there's a nook or cranny of this place which I haven't seen, is there?"
"Only the cellars—or, properly speaking, the dungeons. And they're of no interest to anybody. Father keeps the wines down there, of course, and anything that does not require too much storage. But, excepting for the cellar, the place is never entered from one year's end to another. Not a servant would go down into them for double wages. The peasant-girl is supposed to stay there when she is not out on her nightly prowl for the man who abducted her!"
"Indeed? That's interesting. I suppose I couldn't go down? Dungeons are a perfect passion with me, for I've an insatiable curiosity, and always want to go poking my nose where no one else does. Sort of brand of my profession, I suppose. Do you think you could find energy enough to take me down?"
"Certainly."
She led the way down an L-shaped passage, which led past the kitchens and the servants' hall, andgave out upon a little stone courtyard set apart from the house and bounded about with a high wall through which arrow-slits gave the true mediæval touch, and then down to the right of this through a huge oaken door which opened noiselessly, showing a flight of steep, uneven stone steps leading down into a dark, damp-smelling interior.
At the top of the steps she paused and looked back at him over the curve of her shoulder, making a wry face.
"You still want to go?" she asked jestingly. "I'm a brave woman, Mr. Deland, but I wouldn't undertake this journey alone for anything! There's—rats!"
"As well as ghosts? But this is morning, and Scotland, and the twentieth century—so lead on, Macduff," he answered her in the same jesting spirit. "Or would you like me to go first?"
She shivered and twitched up her shoulders.
"No; I'll do the honours properly. This way. If you've a torch on you, you'll need it at the bottom of these stairs. It's as dark as pitch."
"I have."
Cleek produced it, and they proceeded upon the uncanny journey. The steps led down, down, into what seemed the very bowels of the earth (which indeed they were), until they reached a little square opening from which iron-grilled doorways looked out upon them from every side, saving for one oak dooron the left, which Miss Duggan pointed out as the wine-cellar.
"H'm! And smells like it, too," put in Cleek, with a sniff—"What's behind that door is worth a fortune, I'll be bound. Hello! here's a candle-end stuck in a bottle! Now, who the dickens uses that, I wonder?"
"The servants, I suppose. They come down through their own stairs, Mr. Deland—over there on the left—you can see them if you look hard enough. They're wooden ones, and were put in by my father's grandsire, for the convenience of the house. The servants don't like this way at all. They prefer to come through the butler's pantry."
"And those stairs lead up there? I see. Hello! Here's a chain attached to this iron post. What's that?"
"The prisoner's chain. This room here"—she pointed to the grilled door opening next to the cellar "was kept for political prisoners, I believe. And those two across the way were for personal enemies of the family."
"And are there any others?"
"Yes—through that first door on the right—but you won't getmeto go into them," she responded with a laugh. "It's horrible in there. There's a rack and one or two thumbscrews and other articles which belong to the Spanish Inquisition period; as well as rats innumerable. My bravery vanishes at this point. I'll not go a step farther!"
"But you don't mind if I do?"
"Not a bit. I'll wait here. But there's nothing to see—really. And it's getting perilously near lunch-time."
Cleek cocked his head persuasively at her.
"I won't be a minute—really. But that thumbscrew has got me guessing, as our American cousins say. I suppose there's no lock on the door? Gad! but it opens easily enough. Been fairly recently oiled, I take it?"
"Not that I know of. In fact, I don't believe any one's been in the place since Ross came down here, three months ago, to show a friend round. Perhaps he oiled it then."
"Perhaps. I won't be a minute, really. And I've another torch, if you'd like it. Here." He tossed it to her, and, keeping his spotlight ahead of him, entered the dark, dank, evil-smelling place, his footsteps ringing upon the stone flooring and sending the echoes scampering into the corners, together with more tangible—and verminous—things. There was nothing in the first room, but beyond it he came upon the Torture Chamber and all those instruments of cruelty which marked a less kindly period of the world's history. And this Chamber was larger than the other cell. Rusty hooks hung from the ceiling, of incredible size and suggesting unthinkable horrors, and over all hung the odour of damp and decay, mingled with somethingmore modern, which caused Cleek to stop suddenly and sniff like a terrier scenting a rat.
"Strange!" he said to the silence and the solitude of that awful place, "but she said the cellars were over there! But if someone hasn't been drinking spirits here a short time ago, I miss my guess! And, what's more, someonehas! A solitary debauch, I suppose. Now, who the dickens would have thought it?"
His torch caught a glimmer of something that shone like glass—whichwasglass, in fact, and resolved itself into a cracked tumbler beside which stood a syphon of soda and an empty bottle smelling strongly of whisky.
"Whew! Nice little place for a quiet read and a smoke—Idon'tthink!" he apostrophized it. "With rats in the corners and ghosts all around—brrh! He's a strange fellow who likes this sort of company, I must say. But there's nothing to be nosed out here in this pleasant little den. I'll just take a glimpse through the next one, and then get back to Miss Duggan, or she'll be getting the creeps and run."
He had started back, and had just swung his torch through the doorway beyond, when of a sudden he stopped, sucked in his breath, and fairly ran into the place, head down, nose to the ground, like a dog, every faculty alert.
What he saw there is not recorded, for just at thatmoment he heard Miss Duggan's clear voice calling him, and he had perforce to answer. But he had time to stoop suddenly and swoop down upon something white but slightly bloodstained which lay on the ground before him, dart a hasty glance at it, and cram it into his pocket, before swinging round upon his heel and answering her summons; and all the time saying to himself: "Who'd have thought it? Now who the dickens would have thought it?"
Meanwhile he fingered the slightly bloodstained handkerchief which he had picked up, and upon which by the light of his torch he had remarked the initials "R. D." embroidered in one corner. And he laughed softly and joyfully clapped his hands together.
Luncheon at Aygon Castle resolved itself into a somewhat dull and ceremonious affair, and although there were a good many of them round the festive board, conversation languished and laughter was noticeable by its absence.
"What a devil of a family to live with!—sitting as though there were a cold-water poultice on top of 'em," mentally registered Cleek as he surveyed the company and tried his best to add to the general interest by anecdotes of a recent tour in Ireland; but his conversational efforts evoked only an occasional "Indeed?" from Sir Andrew. Entertaining these people ought to be a paid task in itself, he decided. They hadn't got any further with civilization than the hired-jester period. Gloom was glory to the atmosphere of that room during the interminable meal. He looked from one to another keenly.
First the old laird, solemn as a judge, and concerned only with what was put before him, with the strange greed of the very old; and at the foot of the table, his lady, offering a contrast that was as darknessto day. Cleek sat on the right of his host with Maud Duggan beside him, and opposite her brother Ross—a big, broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed chap with the small blue eye of the Scot, keen as a knife-blade, and showing in the winged flare of nostril the blood that ran in his veins. A likable, clever fellow. Cleek warmed to him on sight. And yet—his eye swung on him again. Next to Ross sat Miss McCall, eyes downcast, speaking only when spoken to, very patiently the servant of a mistress who would instantly quell any attempt at familiarity or breach of position upon her part; and next to Miss McCall, little Cyril, black-haired, brown-eyed, wide-lipped as any other Italian boy, with the soft olive bloom upon his cheeks that is youth's own birthright.
"And they called him Cyril!—a wishy-washy name like that!" thought Cleek disgustedly, looking long at him. "What a perfectly beautiful boy! And looks delicate, too. No wonder the mother loves him. There's something appealing in those pansy eyes of his that would lure blood from a stone. I must have a chat with him later on. He'll tell me much of this strange family, if I get the right side of him to begin with."
He commenced tactics right away, and caught Cyril's boyish fancy in a wonderful story of a heroic and marvellous engine-driver whom he had known.
"And I'll tell you some more about him, too—afterlunch is over—if you'll take me out and show me the grounds of this beautiful place," he promised, with a nod and a smile which won Cyril's hero-worshipping soul instantly and gained for Cleek an ally who, if handled in the right way, might prove more useful than he had at first imagined. "There's one story I remember about the Calais express, and how that chap got the better of a pack of Apaches who were after the mail-bags. Gospel-truth!—it's wonderful! We're goin' to be good pals, Cyril, I can see."
"Only, please,pleasedo not fill his mind up with any more imaginings, Mr. Deland, than he has already got for himself," threw in Lady Paula, with an arch glance at Cleek and a little self-conscious laugh. "He is already filled to the brim with his stepbrother's electrical madnesses. Ross has woven a spell over him, I think, in which—what do you call it?—flex and tungsten and short-circuits and all the rest of that impossible jargon of these light-fiends are inextricably mixed. I sometimes fear for Cyril's sanity! He talks in his sleep all night long of these things, and then wakes in the morning, pale as death. But I cannot make him do other than spend all these beautiful, long summer days in that stuffy laboratory with Ross, watching him at what he calls his experiments."
She flashed a smile into Ross Duggan's suddenly flushed face, as though the words she spoke boreno intended sting and innocence alone had prompted her to speak her mind thus freely. But the timed shaft had its desired effect, for Cyril turned quickly upon his mother with darkening brows.
"So silly of you, Mater, not wanting me to learn all about that ripping electricity. And Ross knows such a lot, too, and I love to sit and watch him. And he lets me help sometimes—don't you, Ross?"
"Yes, old chap."
"Well, then, I can't see what all the fuss is about, Mater. I really can't. Why, that light in my room's ripping for reading at night, instead of the fuggy old lamp we used to have there, and——"
An agonized look from Maud Duggan sent his brave words trailing off into nothingness. But already the mischief was done. The black cloud had settled upon Sir Andrew's face, and the sluggish blood was clotting in temple veins and cheeks, telling of the anger within. The pin-point eyes under their beetling brows were more steel-like than ever. He rose to his feet suddenly, and brought one shaking fist down upon the table-top with a force that sent the glasses jangling and the table silver rattling to the tune of it.
"Have done!" he thundered furiously, trembling in a rage that had become an old man's obsession, and which responded to the constant playing upon it like a deep-throated viola in the hands of a musician who understood it; "have done with all thisextravagant nonsense! Haven't I threatened Ross enough as it is, to take his time-wasting, money-eating experiments out of my house?—and now he not only disobeys my spoken word, but actually causes the illness of my youngest son himself. Pale?—of course the boy is pale! Hanging about indoors in a stuffy room, watching his father's money poured out like water to tickle the fancy of a fool who is old enough to know better! I'll have none of him—none of him! He may sing for his bread and butter in future!—go out into the streets and beg for it, as better beggers than he have done! But he'll leave the house—he——"
"Father!"
It was Maud Duggan who spoke, rising quickly and hurrying round to him, to put an arm about his shaking shoulders. "We have a guest—a stranger——"
"This is no time for guests or strangers! The moment has come, and I'll have done with it once and for all!" he thundered back at her, with an old man's persistence, and the single-mindedness of the ill and aged. "Mr. Deland will pardon what must seem an extraordinary outburst, but Mr. Deland will not stop it. I am master here, and my will is law. I mean to enforce it. My mind is made up. Shall I watch my boy Cyril grow up into just another such maniac, think you? Until he has not rested content but that the whole Highlands be lit withhis precious electricity—at the price of his father's fortune?... Paula, my dear—m-my medicine——" He shook slightly, and then an ague took him and he trembled. He dropped back into his chair, a huddled, shivering old man in whom the power of his anger had burnt the frail spirit into a mere husk of its former strength; and in an instant Lady Paula was upon her feet, running round to him, and fumbling as she ran with her fingers in her bodice.
"My dear!—my dear! You must not so excite yourself. It is not good for you. Not right," she said soothingly, taking his head in her arms and pillowing it against her breast; meanwhile with her other hand she deftly unscrewed the top of a little bottle she had drawn from her blouse, and shook out one tiny pellet, which she placed between his trembling lips. "Take this, dearest, and you will feel better.... A light drug, Mr. Deland, which the doctor orders at such times. Poor dear!—poor dear! it is such a constant worry to him, this continuous quarrel with his own flesh-and-blood. If you had really loved your father, Ross——"
"Asyoulove him, no doubt I should be able to emulate your methods of attack better," he returned, stung suddenly out of his bitter silence by the reproach. "But I have been brought up in another school, Paula, where we deal square blows that do not strike below the belt, and where we do not let our ambitions play upon a flattered old man'saffections quite so cleverly or so perceptibly as you do!"
"Stop!"
The mischief was out, the damage was done, and in one moment that dull and insignificant luncheon-table had been transformed into something that was more like a third-rate melodrama than a family quarrel among people of the better class. But the thing had been thrashed out so many times before that politeness had worn thin, and each one spoke his mind with a bitterness which left nothing to the imagination. Here was the actual canker of a family's innermost heart, with all the outer covering worn thin by constant bickerings and the whole ugly reality of the thing starkly revealed.
Cleek's face went grim as he watched the blanched faces about the table. The stammering, broken voice of Sir Andrew tore into the sudden silence. The old man was struggling up out of his chair, and from the detaining arms of wife and daughter, face livid, lips twitching, the vein in his transparent temple standing out like a piece of blue whip-cord. His clenched hand shook in the air, trembling with the force that he put into it.
"Stop it! How dare you say such words to my wife—how dare you! You shall pay for this, Ross Duggan, and pay dearly! To-night I alter my will—to-night I strike your name from it forever and make the estates over to someone else. Butyour name goes out of it—as you do—to-night!... Paula, your arm."
He swung toward his wife with all the dignity of his years and his inheritance, and took the arm she held out to him, clinging to it as a child to its mother's skirts, and falteringly left the room, where his words had fallen upon those remaining like the sword of Damocles itself. Ross had gone white—deathly white, as had Maud Duggan herself—and all the indignity of this thing before a stranger to their household showed itself in his tense countenance.
"Gad! I'll go—and gonow!" he rapped out, in a very fever of fury and outraged pride. "And glad to get away, too! Such an infernal hell-nest of a place asshehas made out of a decent British home!"
"Ross! She's my mater, you know."
"Sorry, old chap! I forgot for a moment. But it shan't occur again. I'll be off, Maud, and get along to Cynthia's. She'll have something to say about this, I daresay, and her Guv'nor will probably give me a leg-up in finding a job. I'm better out of this. Mr. Deland, you've been the unwilling victim of an unpleasant scene—and a family scene, which is most unpleasant of all. I must apologize to you. Had I foreseen anything of the sort, we would have postponed your luncheon until a later date. It might have been more agreeable for you. Good-bye, and I'm sorry I shan't see more of you.I'm clearing off now, Maud—you can send along my things later."
Maud Duggan's eyes searched his face, a look in them of agonized question, as if she was unable to believe the evidence of her own ears. Then she ran to him and caught him suddenly by the arm.
"Ross, dear, you mustn't be so hasty! You mustn't!" she entreated, squeezing his arm in her two hands as he looked down at her with his set, angry face. "You know Father, dear. He'll wish in half an hour, he'd bitten his tongue out sooner than spoken to you like that. You know he will. You're his first-born and his favourite—as you have always been. Try and see this thing clearly. Don't act in a hurry, dear. Just wait—wait until this evening, for my sake if not for your own. Don't leave me here to stick the thing out by myself. It isn't fair to me."
That last plea seemed to strike home better than all the others had done, for the anger faded suddenly from his countenance, and he laid a hand against her cheek before swinging upon his heel.
"Well, I'll think about it, and see what Cynthia says, anyhow," he replied, after a pause. "Only, I've reached the end of my tether, and human nature won't stand too much. Sorry, Miss McCall. Did I tread upon your foot? I'm so blithering angry I don't really know what I'm doing, so you must forgive me."
And for the first time the company seemed aware that Johanna McCall had been a silent spectator of this family scene. For she had kept, as usual, as quiet as a mouse, only, Cleek observed as he looked at her, her eyes had blazed with that one light which no fire can quench, and she had shut them for a moment, as though to hide the secret they revealed from Ross Duggan's troubled face.
"It's all right, really. And I'm so—awfully sorry, Mr. Duggan," she said in her soft, monotonous voice. "It is so unfair, so unjust! And please don't go—without saying good-bye—to me."
Then she, too, turned upon her heel and fled out of the room. And suddenly Cleek saw one thing startlingly clear. Miss Duggan had mentioned "an attraction" in Johanna McCall's eyes. That was why she stayed on here at the Castle and endured so much. But she had given him to understand that it was Tavish.
But it wasnotTavish who had inspired that unquenching fire in those pale eyes; it wasnotTavish who had set that hero-worshipping expression upon the plain, unattractive face.
It was the disinherited heir to the estates himself!
That afternoon, after he had left the Castle and its inhabitants behind, he wired Mr. Narkom, ashe had said he would. The enigmatic words which flew across the wire to Scotland Yard, in their own particular code, and made Mr. Narkom fairly jump in excitement, were these: "Full up right to the brim. Come along. Cleek."
Cleek left that house of anger in a strange frame of mind, rather glad to be back again in his own sunny room at the Three Fishers, and away from an influence which seemed somehow horribly malign. The pitched battle that had taken place between father and son—egged on by a designing woman who did not mind to what depths she stooped so that her ends were eventually reached, gave him an eery feeling. There was something venomous about the whole affair, something that reminded him of an asp about to strike. He could not shake that feeling from him. The premonition held firm hold of his faculties.
A walk with Dollops over the moors certainly acted as a refresher, for the lad's ready humour had the true Cockney bite in it and he had seen, with his keen eyes, how the master he loved and reverenced was brooding under the shadow of something he sensed although he could not see. And so his comical faculties were put to good work. Until—tea-time at length reached—Cleek returned to the Inn of the Three Fishers, a little less clouded inheart and brain, and with some of the moody depression shaken from him.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening reading and thinking by the open window of his room, looking out now and then at the whole massive structure of Aygon Castle, with its great gateway, above which Rhea du Macduggan stood everlasting guard. Gad! anything might happen there—and the world be no wiser! It was an appalling thought at best. What secrets had that place held in the past and never revealed to the light of day? What secrets might it not hold in the future?
And those dungeons. The thing he had seen there.... And that handkerchief—so obviously belonging to Ross Duggan, and which now lay in his inner pocket. He fumbled for it and brought it out to the light, examining it minutely. Fine linen, finely monogrammed. Very obviously the handkerchief of an extravagant gentleman. But what on earthheshould be doing down there, amidstthat, was something which sent the grim lines fleeting about Cleek's mouth and eyes. It couldn't be he—the son of a proud old house like this one! The thing seemed impossible. And yet—there was the handkerchief to prove that fact; and then this electricity business, which obviously ate up a good many private funds. H'm. It would want close looking into, if nothing further proceeded with Miss Duggan's part of the affair.
For an hour or two he sat pondering and dreaming there, the book he had caught up absent-mindedly from the billiard-room book-case lying open in his lap.
The dinner-gong sounding through that quiet house brought him quickly to his feet, a sense of sharpened appetite lending pleasing colour to the thought of what the dining-hall afforded, for mine host believed in setting a good table, and his hospitality was by no means frugal.
Dollops was already standing by his table, expectant eye upon the trim maid who waited upon them, for during this little sojourn in the Highlands Cleek had expressed a wish for the lad's company during meals, and old Fairnish had told his spouse that "Misthair Deland were an unco' queer pairrson tu wish the company of his mon wi' 'im at meal-time, but so lang as he paid his bill prampt, 'twere nought of hees business."
And that was why Dollops was waiting now with that hungry eye of his upon the plate of steaming soup which the maid was bringing to the table. Only his respect for the man who had raised him to his present status kept him from dropping into his seat and gulping the stuff down straightaway.
Cleek smiled as he saw the lad's eager eye.
"Sit down, sit down, Dollops, and set to," he said with a laugh, laying a hand upon the boy's sleeve with something of tenderness in the gesture."Your eyes are like hard-boiled eggs, they're popping out of your head so. Hungry, I'll be bound."
"'Ungry—I means hungry, sir? ... starved's more like it!" gave back Dollops between mouthfuls of hot soup. "Why, I'm that 'ungry me backbone's well-nigh come rahnd to me front! Nuffink since tea—although I must say as I nabbed a roll from the kitchen table when the cook wasn't lookin', and there was a cold sossidge fairly talkin' ter me from the plate in the larder. And so, as there weren't no one around, I just whistled to 'im, and he 'opped off his platter quite tame-like. But fer anything else!..." The last spoonful went down with a gulp.
"Dollops, Dollops! You'll be eating the wake up at your own funeral, you young gourmand!" threw in Cleek laughingly. "You've a constitution like an ostrich. I'm sure, if you were actually starving, you'd manage to gnaw an umbrella—spokes and all!... Heigho! This is a queer world, isn't it? Here's me sitting here in this little inn-place, on the top of the Highlands, with the heart of me wandering away in other places, and the soul of me sometimes hungry for the sight of other worlds across the sea—to which I've closed the door of my own accord and shut the sight of their dear blessedness forever from me! And there's those people up at Aygon Castle. Bitter, cruel, hard to each other. Pulling this way and that, untiltheir hearts must break with the strain of the fray—and with the whole structure of their dear inheritance forever with them, so that they need never hunger and thirst for a sight of it as—as others do. Heigho! but it's a topsy-turvy, crazy sort of a world we live in, isn't it?"
Something in the tone of Cleek's voice caused Dollops instantly to pause. Eyes wide, mouth open, face gone suddenly pale, he set down his knife and fork and reaching a shaking hand across the table laid it upon Cleek's.
"Guv'nor," he said, in a scared, hushed sort of voice, "you ain't a-wishin' ter go back—to all them Maurevanian royalties, are yer? Wiv a throne an' a crahn and a bloomin' spectur in yer 'and? You ain't a-pinin' fer the Crash Pots, I 'opes? For as sure as I know anyfink of anybody, they'd never let sich folks as Mr. Narkom an'—an'—me come within twenty miles of yer. And you ain't—ain't wishin' ter l-lose us, are yer, sir? It would fair break my 'eart if I thoughtthat."
Cleek put back his head and laughed, laughed heartily, with his eyes wet. There was a sob in the boy's voice as he spoke, and the look of injured worship in his eyes would have wrung tears from a stone. Cleek stopped laughing suddenly, and sat forward and looked straight at the boy.
"Dollops," he said quietly, "I wouldn't barterthisinheritance—of Love—which the good Lordhas given me, for all the thrones and 'specturs' and 'crash-pots' that the world could hold. For true friendship is the best inheritance of all. But there are times when a man must be allowed to go down into the deeps of his memory and take a maudlin joy in counting over the hidden pearls there. I've no doubt you do it yourself, lad—and shed a tear in solitude for the days when you had a mother to care for you, and you weren't just a frightened little sinner of an orphan boy."
"An' that's where you're dead wrong, sir," gave back Dollops with a vigorous nod of the head. "Fer I never does anyfink of the sort. Me muvver—Gawd 'elp 'er!—were a bruiser an' a footballer in one, an' there weren't an inch o' me poor little body which didn't 'ave a score of bruises upon it. As for me farver—well, I doesn't remember 'im, and no doubt it's a good fing, too.... No, sir, you've bin and gone and missed the bull's eye this time. I ain't no Wistful Willie, I ain't. You've been Muvver and Farver and Big Bruvver and all the whole darn Fambly ter me, an' if ever I finks o' the blinkin' parst, it's just that I didn't live clean and strite an'—an'decent, so's I could be a bit more worvy uv yer precious kindness.... Lord! listen ter me a-torkin' like a bloomin' sermonizer! But them's my sentiments—strite! An' so long as yer ain't wishin ter go back to—them——"
"No, I'm not wishing that at all, boy," said Cleekquietly, with an odd little smile. "So don't you worry your ginger head over such fool notions as that. The day I want to get rid of you all—Miss Lorne, yourself, and Mr. Narkom—is the day that sees me in my grave. And then I'll only be waiting to wring your hands across the Big Beyond. And if you ever mention royalties and 'specturs' and 'crash-pots' to me again, Dollops, I'll—I'll cut you out of my will.... Finished?"
"Yessir."
"Well, then, come along upstairs and smoke a weed with me. Unless you've something better to do. I've need of a man's company to-night, for my mood's maudlin, and a chat over old times will straighten things out for me."
"Rarver!" Then to himself: "Missin' Miss Ailsa, like any uvver bloomin' lovesick strain," thought Dollops to himself, with a shake of the head. "Well, orl I kin s'y is, Dollops me lad, it's a good thing you ain't in love yerself. You love yer tummy better'n the gels—and a fairer deal it is, too. Fer yercantell when you're proper fed up, and starve a bit in consequence. But the lydies!—well, they never lets yer leave 'em alone! 'E ain't 'ad no letter this mornin'—that's wot the trouble is, bless 'is 'eart!"
So Dollops followed Cleek upstairs to his room, and in the short twilight of the summer evening sat with him, curled up on a cushion at his feet, and smoked and talked and gazed at the great Castle in front ofthem, almost lost in the twilight mists, like the true littlegaminhe was, until the lonesomeness had gone from Cleek's soul, and the night had thrown her mantle over the sky.
Then:
"Time for you to be getting into your little 'downy', old chap," he said, with a stretch and a yawn and a smile down into the eager young face that rested against his knee, as a dog might do, faithfulness in the attitude. "Or we'll be having no salmon-fishing to-morrow, for you'll be over-sleeping yourself, and the fish will have swum to other waters, getting tired of waiting for you. Cut along now, there's a good boy."
"Orl right, Guv'nor. Thank yer, sir, for this—this rippin' fine evenin'. And fer lettin' me pertend I was for the moment, like, a real pal to yer. I shan't never ferget that. Good-night, sir, and pleasant dreams."
"Good-night, Dollops. Close the door softly behind you. There's an old lady in the room beyond, and I fancy she's just gone off to bed. I'll sit here a few minutes longer, and then nip in between the sheets myself."
But the few minutes lengthened into an hour before Cleek, about to rise from his chair by the open window to knock out the ashes of his pipe upon the sill, happened to glance up and out of it. Then he stopped of a sudden, sucked in his breath, and stoodstock-still, staring out in front of him as though he had gone suddenly mad.
For the darkness of that dark night had been cut suddenly by a ray of red light swung to and fro several times from the particular bit of darkness which Cleek knew was Aygon Castle; extinguished; re-lit; sent swinging across the darkness again like an arc of crimson light; and when this was done for a third time, Cleek knew that it was a signal—a signal from Maud Duggan to him—a signal, too, which meant distress. Something had happened out there in that grim darkness beyond the rim of hill and valley in that great, gaunt edifice of mediæval stone, something so serious that she had signalled for him to come, as she said she would.
He drew out his spotlight, and sent it zigzagging in the direction of the red light, just to let her know she had been seen and understood. Then, swinging round swiftly, he caught up his dark overcoat, slipped his arms into it, drew a cap low down over his head, and was off into the shadows and pelting away down the narrow tortuous lane as fast as his swift feet could carry him.
It was not an easy road Cleek traversed, for in the darkness and in the utter absence of lamps of any sort the lane became a thing of stones and pitfalls for the unwary traveller, and there were many times when he was down upon his hands and knees in the soft, sweet-smelling, heather-thatched hillside, having lost footing with the road altogether, and only his pocket-lamp kept him from absolute downfall and disaster. But the great gates were reached at last, and he saw that they had been set ajar, so that he could slip in undisturbed, if he wished—a little forethought on Maud Duggan's part for which he silently thanked her.
He slid in between them, glanced a moment up at Rhea's great bronze figure etched out against the moonlit sky and taking on a supernatural lifelikeness which was eery beyond words, and then darted up the driveway, groping his way in the shadows toward the great house which of a sudden seemed to be blazing with light from every window, as though the soul of it had suddenly been awakenedout of its sleep and it had come to life in one huge simultaneous effort.
Under the tread of his light feet the gravel barely moved, and having got his bearings that same afternoon, he pelted up in the darkness toward the front door, stopped suddenly, listened, darted leftward toward the lawns, and came—phut!—up against somebody who was running in the opposite direction, swift-breathing like a man pursued, and who, having met the impact of Cleek's tautened body, stationed there for just such a purpose, bounded back again and gave out an involuntary gasp of astonishment and ill-concealed irritation.
"Whew! I beg your pardon, I'm sure," said this stranger, as Cleek flashed on his lamp and sent its rays travelling up the man's slim figure from top to toe. "Who the—why the—what the——?"
"Awfully sorry, I'm sure," responded Cleek, with a light laugh, in his best blithering-idiot manner, "but I happened to be strollin' up in this direction to pay a call upon Miss Maud Duggan, and fell into you. So beastly dark in these parts, doncherknow. After London, a chap is likely to lose his bearin's. Exceedin'ly sorry and all that."
The man stopped suddenly and, bending forward, peered up under Cleek's tweed cap into the face beneath it. Cleek saw him as a slim, handsome fellow of the leisure classes, lithe of limb and athletic of body, and in that small ray of torch-light,augmented by the moon's pale gleams, liked the look of him, though he was startled by the meeting—that was obvious—and a little shaken as well.
"Eh? What's that? Miss Duggan, did you say? Then what's your name, may I ask? You're a stranger to these parts, I suppose?"
"Yes. Up for the salmon-fishin', doncherknow. Strollin' back to the Castle, are you? We'll go together. My name's Deland—Arthur Deland. Am I permitted to know yours?"
"Certainly. But I'm not—going to the Castle to-night. I've—I've just—come from there, you see, and was on my way home again when we cannoned into each other. My name's Macdonald, Angus Fletcher Macdonald. I'm a—particular friend of Miss Duggan's.... But time's getting along, and I've a good distance to go. So I'll be off, if you don't mind. Good-night."
"Good-night."
Cleek nodded to him in the half dark, then as the man swung away from him down the wide drive, turned in his tracks and watched him till the moon, hiding under a cloud, hid him, too.
"Macdonald, eh? The unfortunate lover whom the father will not countenance. H'm. Wonder what he was doing here at this time of night? Rather nervous, I should say, at our encounter. And why the dickens—if anything's happened—didn't he know something about it? It's a good twentyminutes since she signalled to me, and if he's just come from the house——"
Of a sudden he stopped short and sucked in his breath as a new thought penetrated itself into that perfectly pigeon-holed and regulated mentality of his. "Gad! surelyhehasn't—— Well! I ought to have detained him and brought him back on some pretext—if anything reallyhashappened to cause her to want me at this hour of the night.... Well, I'll nip along and find out. And if anything's really wrong, I shan't forgetthatgentleman in a hurry."
He reached the house without further adventure, and rang the door-bell with a steady hand. But he was hardly prepared for its response. For at the sound of it Maud Duggan came running toward him, her face white as a dead face, her eyes wild, her hair untidy, and clutching him by the arm fairly hauled him into the hallway, just as the butler—stung out of his calm demeanour by the happenings of that night—appeared from the end of the hall and came toward them.
"Oh, I'm so glad you came, so glad, Mr. Deland!" she shrilled out in a high-pitched, terrified voice. "It was lucky you turned up as—as you promised. But I'm afraid our game of c-cards cannot take place. Because—oh, how can I say it? How? A terrible thing has happened, Mr. Deland, and that which I feared has come to pass, only in a much more awfulmanner! My—my f-father has been murdered, in full sight of us all, right there in the library, just as he was about to draw up a new will to disinherit Ross. Foully ... murdered ... poor darling!"
Then the sobs caught in her throat, and she turned away a moment and hid her face in her handkerchief, while Cleek, mastering his curiosity and amazement at this curious and amazing statement, waited a moment for her to regain her composure. Then:
"My dear young lady!" he cried in a low-pitched, even voice. "Murdered! And in the presence of you all! Then of course you know who his murderer is."
"I don't, I don't! We none of us know! None of us!" she ejaculated, shutting her hands together and lifting a tear-stained, haggard face to his. "Oh, Mr. Deland, that is the terrible, the mysterious part of it all. It happened in a flash. Suddenly the lights went out; we heard the wheel humming, just as the Peasant Girl said it would hum, and then ... then ... the lights came up again, and there he lay, shot through the temple and stabbed to the heart, quite, quite dead!"
"Whew! Rather a marvellous happening, I must say," gave out Cleek, laying a hand upon her shaking shoulder and edging her tenderly toward the open door of that little ante-room into which he had beenshown only that morning, when the old laird himself had entered upon their conversation, with his lady in attendance. And now he was dead! murdered! It seemed indeed hardly credible. "Sit down awhile, and then tell me at your leisure all the happenings which took place. Got any brandy in the house? Or have you had some? No? Well, I've always a flask handy. Now, take a pull at this, and then lean back in that chair and close your eyes. You'll be a different person, I assure you. Here's my flask. Make it a good peg, too."
Dumbly she did as she was bidden, acting as a sick child does, without question, and thankful only for a directing hand. Meanwhile, Cleek stood over her, watching how the colour ebbed slowly back into her pallid cheeks and the red crept again into her blue lips, and congratulating himself that he had been just in time, and no more, before she would have fainted.
She shut her eyes as he had told her, and when a few minutes had elapsed, Cleek leaned forward and touched her gently upon the wrist.
"Now let's hear all about it—if you're able. Where is your stepmother?"
"Upstairs in her room—prostrate." She spat the words out with positive venom. "Ross is with his father, bowed down with grief, poor old boy; while his fiancée, Cynthia Debenham, who came back with him, and her cousin, Catherine Dowd,are in the house somewhere, seeing to the necessary household arrangements."
"And you've telephoned the police?"
"Yes. And then signalled to you. They'll be along presently, I suppose?"
"Possibly—yes. I'd have brought my own man if I had only known. Mr. Narkom will be here in the morning to take charge of affairs. I sent for him to-day. And the rest of the household?"
"Cyril is with his mother. Wakened up out of his sleep, poor boy, by all the commotion, and of course hardly aware yet of what a terrible tragedy has happened here in his own home. The servants are huddled together like frightened rabbits, and the women refuse to put in any appearance at all. Miss McCall has been trying to get them in hand—she's so quiet and yet so resourceful, you know, Mr. Deland—and she has helped us such a lot in that way."
"And that accounts for every one, then? No one left the house since the—the thing took place?"
"Not a soul. There was no reason to, you see. And no one has been here, either. Callers to Aygon Castle are few and far between, Mr. Deland, as you can imagine. We're so very far from civilization."
"I see. And no one's been to the place at all, you say? Beyond the immediate family, and thisMiss—Miss Dowd and your brother's fiancée? They returned with him, I suppose, after having persuaded him not to take such a foolhardy view of the case which I heard this morning? Well, I'm glad he came back, if only—for this. Poor chap! it will ease his conscience, at any rate. And those are the only people who have entered this place to-night, Miss Duggan? You are positive of that?"
She lifted wide eyes to his face. There was conviction in every line of her own.
"Absolutely positive, Mr. Deland."
"Well, that's all right, then." Cleek nodded slowly at her but his lips were grim. Eithersheor Macdonald had lied. For he had heard him say, in that broken, staccato voice of his, "I've just—come from there, you see, and was on my way home again." And a dollar to a ducat thatshewas not at fault. Well, the man Macdonald would want watching. And if hehad"done a bunk," as the boys say, he would know his man instantly and scout all Britain over for him—though at present his motive for connection with the crime was certainly unknown.
He sent his keen eyes over her wan face, and came to his own conclusions. Here was no liar, if he knew the signs. Then he leaned toward her.
"Now," said he, "just tell me—what happened. All about it. Don't leave anything out—not the veriest little thing. How did you all happen to be in the library in the first place?"
"As I told you, Father had summoned us all there for the purpose of disinheriting Ross by crossing his name from his will, and in the presence of witnesses substituting another instead."
"And whose name, may I ask?"
She bent her head suddenly, and put one hand against her cheek.
"Mine, Mr. Deland."
"Yours?... Oho! And not young Cyril's, then?"
"No. Upon that Father was adamant. He said justice must be done to the elder family—that is Ross and me, as you know—and he would see justice done. If Ross could not have the rightful inheritance because of his unfitness (poor Ross!) then it was to come to me, unless I saw fit to marry Captain Macdonald. In that event it all went to charity. Naturally, I protested with him."
"Why?"
"Because, don't you see? I hoped he would perhaps relent and leave Ross's name where it was. The ignominy to the poor boy would have been so terrible—if he had struck his name out. Ross would never have got over it—never! He is so proud of his house, so wrapped up in it in every way."
"And did your father manage to destroy the will then before it—happened?"
"No. He had it in his hands. I was wrestlingwith him, trying to get it away, and Paula had caught me by the shoulders and was endeavouring to get me away, too, when the lights suddenly went out, and—and came up again. And there he was in his chair—dead!"
"And you say that you heard the sound of the spinning wheel 'humming' in the darkness? You really did hear that, Miss Duggan?"
"Yes—I would swear to it on my oath."
"And how then did your father die? By what means?"
"By a shot through his temple, I suppose (though he was stabbed as well)—although there was no noise, Mr. Deland, nothing to tell us that the awful thing was happening, save the failing of the current at that moment."
"H'm. I see. A soundless pistol—in fact, an air-gun. Any one in the house got such a thing, do you know?"
She shook her head.
"Not that I know of, unless ... but he gave his away long ago."
"Who, may I ask?"
She sent suddenly startled eyes up into his face, as though she realized that she had unguardedly been trapped into a damaging admission.
"Why—why—my brother Ross, Mr. Deland," she said in a hoarse, frightened voice.