Chapter Thirteen.The Young Countess Makes a Statement.The harvest had been garnered and on the glorious “first” the young Countess returned from the Continent, just in time to receive her annual house-party.The instant she arrived Sibberton always put on an air of gaiety which it never wore during her absence. Full of verve and go, she lived only for excitement and pleasure, and always declared the Hall as dull as a convent if it were not full of those clever, well-known people who constituted her own particular set. Therefore she seldom brightened the place with her presence unless she brought in her train a dozen or so merry men and women of the distinctly up-to-date type, some of whom were fashionable enough to have scandal attached to their names.Has it ever occurred to you that feminine beauty in the higher circle of society is unfortunately, but very surely, deteriorating? It is remarkable how the type has of late years changed. When our grandmothers were celebrated and toasted in old port as beauties, quite a different ideal reigned. The toast was then somethingpetite, womanly, of a pink complexion, of a delicious plumpness and animated by a lively and natural emotionalism. But with the introduction of athletic, open-air exercise, motors and mannish achievements, we have developed an entirely different type.The modern athletic girl is generally ugly. She begins early, and continues till after her marriage to cycle, shoot, ride and play golf and tennis, all of which ruin her figure and consequently her health. She shoots up tall, flat-chested, colourless and lacking in reasonable proportions, with one hip larger than the other if she rides regularly to hounds. She becomes wried and atrophied by rough wear and unseemly habits, and the womanly delicacy shrinks and withers from the form of health and beauty.Glance over any social function in town or country, any meet of hounds, or any shooting-party where ladies are included, and you will not fail to recognise how women, by overtaxing their physique, are fading and gradually becoming asexual.The Countess of Stanchester’s house-parties were always merry ones, and generally included an Ambassador or two, a Cabinet Minister, a few good shots, and a number of ladies of various ages. The gigantic place was liberty hall, and both the young Earl and his wife carried out to the letter the traditions of the noble house for boundless hospitality. There was no better shooting in all the Midlands than that furnished by the Earl of Stanchester’s huge estate, extending as it did for nearly thirty miles in one direction; and the bags were always very huge ones.Twenty-eight guests arrived on the same day that the young Countess returned home, and dinner that night was served as it always was on the first night of the shooting-season, upon the historic service of gold plate presented by Queen Elizabeth to the first Earl of Stanchester. I was invited to dine, and after music in the blue drawing-room retired with the men to the cosy panelled smoking-room with the grotesque carvings over the mantelshelf.Many were the anecdotes and low the laughter, until at about midnight I rose and went back to my study, intending to get through some correspondence before retiring.I suppose I must have been writing half-an-hour when the door opened and the Countess entered, greeting me merrily, saying—“Well, Mr Woodhouse! I’ve had no time to talk to you to-night. And how have you been all this time?”“As usual,” I responded, smiling, for notwithstanding her faults she was so beautiful, merry and witty that her companionship was always pleasant. “Is there anything I can do?”“Yes. I want you, please, to send out cards for dinner next Tuesday to this list.” And she handed me half a sheet of note-paper on which she had hastily scribbled some names. “These county people, as they call themselves, are a fearful bore, and their women-folk are a terribly dowdy lot, but I suppose I must have them. It’s only once a year—thank Heaven.”I laughed, for I knew that outside her own set she had withering sarcasm for the lower grade of society. With poor people she was always pleasant and popular, but with that little circle which called itself “the county,” and which consisted of hard-up “squires,” country parsons, men who had made money in the city and had bought properties, and the tea-and-tennis womankind that came in their wake, she had no common bond. They were a slow, narrow-minded lot who held up their hands at what she would term a harmless game at baccarat, and would be horror-stricken at tennis-playing or even bridge on Sundays.Yet from time immemorial these people had been invited to dine at the Hall once during the shooting-season, and it was her husband’s wish that all the old customs of his noble house should be strictly observed. For hospitality, the house of Stanchester had always been noteworthy. The Earl’s grandfather, whom many aged villagers in Sibberton could still remember, used to keep open house every Friday night, and any of his friends could come up to the Hall and dine with him at six o’clock, providing they left or sent their cards on the previous day, in order that the cook should know how many guests would be present. It was the one evening in the week when his lordship entertained all his hunting friends, and on that day he did them royally for the port was declared the best in the country.In these modern go-ahead days, however, with the giddy young Countess as chatelaine, this sort of thing was of the past. She tolerated people only as long as they amused her. When they ceased to do that, she calmly and ruthlessly struck them off her list. In town, she petted young foreign musicians and got them to sing or play at her concerts and brought them into notoriety by paying them cheques of three figures for their nightly services. But their reign usually lasted only half the season, when they were cast aside, disappointed and dejected, and other popular favourites rose to take their places.She noticed my cigarettes in the big silver box the Earl had given me, and walking across, selected one, and slowly lit it with that free-and-easy air that was essentially that of the latter-day woman. An exception to the general rule that beauty in women of the higher class is growing rarer, she was extremely good-looking—fair-haired, grey-eyed, with handsome regular features and a clear pink complexion devoid of any artificial “make-up.”Her dress was magnificent, the latest Paquin creation for which I had sent a cheque only the week before for one hundred and ten guineas. It was a study in cream, and trimmed with sparkling sequins which caused the gauze to shimmer and sparkle with every movement. The curves of her figure were graceful in every line, and at her throat she wore the magnificent collar of rubies which Queen Anne had given to the beautiful Countess of Stanchester, wife of Her Majesty’s Ambassador to France.With careless abandon she threw herself into an armchair opposite where I sat, stretched out her tiny shoes upon the rug, gazing steadily at me, and blew a cloud of blue smoke from her lips. Yes, as I gazed upon her I really did not wonder how completely Lord Sibberton had been fascinated. Magnificent was the only word that described her.“I’ve only just heard about this awful affair in the park,” she commenced. “George says he knows nothing very much about it. He says you found a man murdered. Tell me all about it—I’m interested.” And she placed the cigarette to her lips and gazed lazily at me through the haze of smoke. Knowing the strong bond of friendship existing between her husband and myself, she always treated me with a flippant equality that would be viewed with some surprise in any other circle of society. But to-day it seems that the more daring a wealthy woman is in words and actions, the greater is her popularity.“Yes,” I answered, turning towards her upon my revolving writing-chair. “It is a mystery—an entire mystery.” And then I briefly related the curious facts, omitting, of course, all mention of the connexion between the murdered man and her sister-in-law, whom, be it said, she secretly ridiculed as a pious stay-at-home.Lolita did not care for the ultra-gay set who formed the shooting parties, therefore was absent from them when she could escape. She hated bridge and baccarat, and had nothing in common with those women about whom scandalous tales were told in boudoirs and smoking-rooms.“I suppose Doctor Pink has been exercising his talents in trying to discover the assassin?” she remarked.“Yes. But the young man has remained unidentified,” I answered. “And for my own part, I believe the affair will remain an absolute mystery.”“Why? What causes you to anticipate that?”“Because there are certain features which are utterly incomprehensible. The young man came along the avenue that night to keep a secret appointment—that’s very certain. And the person who met him coolly murdered him.”“Yes. But it really isn’t very nice to have a tragedy at one’s very door, and yet be unaware of the identity of the assassin! Who was the murderer? Who is suspected?”“A woman,” I responded, whereupon, to my great surprise, I noticed in her eyes a strange expression, but whether of fear or of surprise I could not determine.“A woman!” she repeated. “How is it that the police suspect a woman?”I told her how Redway had discovered certain footmarks, and how at least two of the prints were those of a woman’s shoe.“That’s very strange! Most interesting!” she remarked. “Sounds almost like what you see in a drama on the stage—a dark wood, man meets a woman who stabs him, then rushes away full of remorse—green lights, and all that sort of thing. You know what I mean.”“But this is no theatrical effect,” I said. “It is a hard solid tragic fact that an unknown man has been murdered in the park here not half-a-mile away, and the affair is still a complete mystery except, as I have said, a woman was certainly present.”“Exactly. She might have been present—and yet innocent,” she said, with a slightly triumphant ring in her argument, I thought. Was it possible that she, too, knew something of Lolita’s secret and, suspecting her, sought to divert suspicion from her?Her beautiful face was sphinx-like. She continued to discuss the startling affair, and I somehow felt convinced that she knew rather more of its details than she would admit. Yet probably she had read some report of it in the papers. Nevertheless, certain remarks of hers were distinctly curious, especially her eagerness to know exactly what suspicions the police entertained, and in what direction their inquiries were at present directed.As to the latter, I could tell her nothing, for I had not met Redway for several days. Indeed I had not heard of his presence in the neighbourhood, and I had begun to believe that he and his men were giving up the matter as a mystery that would never be solved save by confession or by mere chance. They were evidently pursuing that policy of masterly inactivity of which local police officers are past-masters. Gossips all of them, they are full of pretended activity on false scents, and prone to discover clues wherever beer chances to be deposited.“I hear that Warr, the innkeeper, was with you when you found the man,” the Countess presently remarked. “If the dead man were not an absolute stranger surely he, of all men, would have recognised him!”“But he was an entire stranger—and apparently a gentleman,” I said. “From his clothes, his appearance was that of a foreigner—but of course that’s only mere surmise. He may have been abroad and purchased foreign clothes there.”“A foreigner! And who in Sibberton could possibly have any business with a foreigner?” she laughed. “Why, half the villagers haven’t been as far away from their houses as Northampton, and I don’t believe, with the exception perhaps of our studsman James, that any one has crossed the Channel.”“Yes,” I admitted, “the whole affair is a profound puzzle. All that is known is that a certain young man who, from his exterior appearance and clothes, was well-bred, met in the park a certain woman, and that afterwards, he was found stabbed in the back with some long, thin and very sharp instrument. That’s all!”“And the police are utterly confounded?”“Utterly. They photographed the unfortunate man.”“Did they? Where can I see a copy?” asked the Countess quickly, bending forward to me in her eagerness. “I would so very much like to see one. Could you get one?”“I have one here,” I replied. “The police sent it to me a week ago, in response to my request.” And unlocking a drawer, I took out the inartistic picture of the dead man.So keenly interested was she that she sprang from her chair, and came quickly to the edge of my writing-table in order to examine the picture.“God!” she gasped, the colour of her cheeks fading pale as death as her eyes glared at it. “The woman has killed him, then—just as I thought! Poor fellow—poor fellow! The police don’t even know his name! It is a mystery—then let it remain so. They regard it, you say, as a strange affair. Yet if the real truth were known, the remarkable romance of which this is the tragicdénouementwould be found to be most startling—one so curious and mysterious indeed as to be almost beyond human credence. Yes, Mr Woodhouse,” she added in a low voice as she straightened herself and looked at me, “I know the truth—I know why this man was sent to his grave—and I know by whom!”
The harvest had been garnered and on the glorious “first” the young Countess returned from the Continent, just in time to receive her annual house-party.
The instant she arrived Sibberton always put on an air of gaiety which it never wore during her absence. Full of verve and go, she lived only for excitement and pleasure, and always declared the Hall as dull as a convent if it were not full of those clever, well-known people who constituted her own particular set. Therefore she seldom brightened the place with her presence unless she brought in her train a dozen or so merry men and women of the distinctly up-to-date type, some of whom were fashionable enough to have scandal attached to their names.
Has it ever occurred to you that feminine beauty in the higher circle of society is unfortunately, but very surely, deteriorating? It is remarkable how the type has of late years changed. When our grandmothers were celebrated and toasted in old port as beauties, quite a different ideal reigned. The toast was then somethingpetite, womanly, of a pink complexion, of a delicious plumpness and animated by a lively and natural emotionalism. But with the introduction of athletic, open-air exercise, motors and mannish achievements, we have developed an entirely different type.
The modern athletic girl is generally ugly. She begins early, and continues till after her marriage to cycle, shoot, ride and play golf and tennis, all of which ruin her figure and consequently her health. She shoots up tall, flat-chested, colourless and lacking in reasonable proportions, with one hip larger than the other if she rides regularly to hounds. She becomes wried and atrophied by rough wear and unseemly habits, and the womanly delicacy shrinks and withers from the form of health and beauty.
Glance over any social function in town or country, any meet of hounds, or any shooting-party where ladies are included, and you will not fail to recognise how women, by overtaxing their physique, are fading and gradually becoming asexual.
The Countess of Stanchester’s house-parties were always merry ones, and generally included an Ambassador or two, a Cabinet Minister, a few good shots, and a number of ladies of various ages. The gigantic place was liberty hall, and both the young Earl and his wife carried out to the letter the traditions of the noble house for boundless hospitality. There was no better shooting in all the Midlands than that furnished by the Earl of Stanchester’s huge estate, extending as it did for nearly thirty miles in one direction; and the bags were always very huge ones.
Twenty-eight guests arrived on the same day that the young Countess returned home, and dinner that night was served as it always was on the first night of the shooting-season, upon the historic service of gold plate presented by Queen Elizabeth to the first Earl of Stanchester. I was invited to dine, and after music in the blue drawing-room retired with the men to the cosy panelled smoking-room with the grotesque carvings over the mantelshelf.
Many were the anecdotes and low the laughter, until at about midnight I rose and went back to my study, intending to get through some correspondence before retiring.
I suppose I must have been writing half-an-hour when the door opened and the Countess entered, greeting me merrily, saying—
“Well, Mr Woodhouse! I’ve had no time to talk to you to-night. And how have you been all this time?”
“As usual,” I responded, smiling, for notwithstanding her faults she was so beautiful, merry and witty that her companionship was always pleasant. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes. I want you, please, to send out cards for dinner next Tuesday to this list.” And she handed me half a sheet of note-paper on which she had hastily scribbled some names. “These county people, as they call themselves, are a fearful bore, and their women-folk are a terribly dowdy lot, but I suppose I must have them. It’s only once a year—thank Heaven.”
I laughed, for I knew that outside her own set she had withering sarcasm for the lower grade of society. With poor people she was always pleasant and popular, but with that little circle which called itself “the county,” and which consisted of hard-up “squires,” country parsons, men who had made money in the city and had bought properties, and the tea-and-tennis womankind that came in their wake, she had no common bond. They were a slow, narrow-minded lot who held up their hands at what she would term a harmless game at baccarat, and would be horror-stricken at tennis-playing or even bridge on Sundays.
Yet from time immemorial these people had been invited to dine at the Hall once during the shooting-season, and it was her husband’s wish that all the old customs of his noble house should be strictly observed. For hospitality, the house of Stanchester had always been noteworthy. The Earl’s grandfather, whom many aged villagers in Sibberton could still remember, used to keep open house every Friday night, and any of his friends could come up to the Hall and dine with him at six o’clock, providing they left or sent their cards on the previous day, in order that the cook should know how many guests would be present. It was the one evening in the week when his lordship entertained all his hunting friends, and on that day he did them royally for the port was declared the best in the country.
In these modern go-ahead days, however, with the giddy young Countess as chatelaine, this sort of thing was of the past. She tolerated people only as long as they amused her. When they ceased to do that, she calmly and ruthlessly struck them off her list. In town, she petted young foreign musicians and got them to sing or play at her concerts and brought them into notoriety by paying them cheques of three figures for their nightly services. But their reign usually lasted only half the season, when they were cast aside, disappointed and dejected, and other popular favourites rose to take their places.
She noticed my cigarettes in the big silver box the Earl had given me, and walking across, selected one, and slowly lit it with that free-and-easy air that was essentially that of the latter-day woman. An exception to the general rule that beauty in women of the higher class is growing rarer, she was extremely good-looking—fair-haired, grey-eyed, with handsome regular features and a clear pink complexion devoid of any artificial “make-up.”
Her dress was magnificent, the latest Paquin creation for which I had sent a cheque only the week before for one hundred and ten guineas. It was a study in cream, and trimmed with sparkling sequins which caused the gauze to shimmer and sparkle with every movement. The curves of her figure were graceful in every line, and at her throat she wore the magnificent collar of rubies which Queen Anne had given to the beautiful Countess of Stanchester, wife of Her Majesty’s Ambassador to France.
With careless abandon she threw herself into an armchair opposite where I sat, stretched out her tiny shoes upon the rug, gazing steadily at me, and blew a cloud of blue smoke from her lips. Yes, as I gazed upon her I really did not wonder how completely Lord Sibberton had been fascinated. Magnificent was the only word that described her.
“I’ve only just heard about this awful affair in the park,” she commenced. “George says he knows nothing very much about it. He says you found a man murdered. Tell me all about it—I’m interested.” And she placed the cigarette to her lips and gazed lazily at me through the haze of smoke. Knowing the strong bond of friendship existing between her husband and myself, she always treated me with a flippant equality that would be viewed with some surprise in any other circle of society. But to-day it seems that the more daring a wealthy woman is in words and actions, the greater is her popularity.
“Yes,” I answered, turning towards her upon my revolving writing-chair. “It is a mystery—an entire mystery.” And then I briefly related the curious facts, omitting, of course, all mention of the connexion between the murdered man and her sister-in-law, whom, be it said, she secretly ridiculed as a pious stay-at-home.
Lolita did not care for the ultra-gay set who formed the shooting parties, therefore was absent from them when she could escape. She hated bridge and baccarat, and had nothing in common with those women about whom scandalous tales were told in boudoirs and smoking-rooms.
“I suppose Doctor Pink has been exercising his talents in trying to discover the assassin?” she remarked.
“Yes. But the young man has remained unidentified,” I answered. “And for my own part, I believe the affair will remain an absolute mystery.”
“Why? What causes you to anticipate that?”
“Because there are certain features which are utterly incomprehensible. The young man came along the avenue that night to keep a secret appointment—that’s very certain. And the person who met him coolly murdered him.”
“Yes. But it really isn’t very nice to have a tragedy at one’s very door, and yet be unaware of the identity of the assassin! Who was the murderer? Who is suspected?”
“A woman,” I responded, whereupon, to my great surprise, I noticed in her eyes a strange expression, but whether of fear or of surprise I could not determine.
“A woman!” she repeated. “How is it that the police suspect a woman?”
I told her how Redway had discovered certain footmarks, and how at least two of the prints were those of a woman’s shoe.
“That’s very strange! Most interesting!” she remarked. “Sounds almost like what you see in a drama on the stage—a dark wood, man meets a woman who stabs him, then rushes away full of remorse—green lights, and all that sort of thing. You know what I mean.”
“But this is no theatrical effect,” I said. “It is a hard solid tragic fact that an unknown man has been murdered in the park here not half-a-mile away, and the affair is still a complete mystery except, as I have said, a woman was certainly present.”
“Exactly. She might have been present—and yet innocent,” she said, with a slightly triumphant ring in her argument, I thought. Was it possible that she, too, knew something of Lolita’s secret and, suspecting her, sought to divert suspicion from her?
Her beautiful face was sphinx-like. She continued to discuss the startling affair, and I somehow felt convinced that she knew rather more of its details than she would admit. Yet probably she had read some report of it in the papers. Nevertheless, certain remarks of hers were distinctly curious, especially her eagerness to know exactly what suspicions the police entertained, and in what direction their inquiries were at present directed.
As to the latter, I could tell her nothing, for I had not met Redway for several days. Indeed I had not heard of his presence in the neighbourhood, and I had begun to believe that he and his men were giving up the matter as a mystery that would never be solved save by confession or by mere chance. They were evidently pursuing that policy of masterly inactivity of which local police officers are past-masters. Gossips all of them, they are full of pretended activity on false scents, and prone to discover clues wherever beer chances to be deposited.
“I hear that Warr, the innkeeper, was with you when you found the man,” the Countess presently remarked. “If the dead man were not an absolute stranger surely he, of all men, would have recognised him!”
“But he was an entire stranger—and apparently a gentleman,” I said. “From his clothes, his appearance was that of a foreigner—but of course that’s only mere surmise. He may have been abroad and purchased foreign clothes there.”
“A foreigner! And who in Sibberton could possibly have any business with a foreigner?” she laughed. “Why, half the villagers haven’t been as far away from their houses as Northampton, and I don’t believe, with the exception perhaps of our studsman James, that any one has crossed the Channel.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “the whole affair is a profound puzzle. All that is known is that a certain young man who, from his exterior appearance and clothes, was well-bred, met in the park a certain woman, and that afterwards, he was found stabbed in the back with some long, thin and very sharp instrument. That’s all!”
“And the police are utterly confounded?”
“Utterly. They photographed the unfortunate man.”
“Did they? Where can I see a copy?” asked the Countess quickly, bending forward to me in her eagerness. “I would so very much like to see one. Could you get one?”
“I have one here,” I replied. “The police sent it to me a week ago, in response to my request.” And unlocking a drawer, I took out the inartistic picture of the dead man.
So keenly interested was she that she sprang from her chair, and came quickly to the edge of my writing-table in order to examine the picture.
“God!” she gasped, the colour of her cheeks fading pale as death as her eyes glared at it. “The woman has killed him, then—just as I thought! Poor fellow—poor fellow! The police don’t even know his name! It is a mystery—then let it remain so. They regard it, you say, as a strange affair. Yet if the real truth were known, the remarkable romance of which this is the tragicdénouementwould be found to be most startling—one so curious and mysterious indeed as to be almost beyond human credence. Yes, Mr Woodhouse,” she added in a low voice as she straightened herself and looked at me, “I know the truth—I know why this man was sent to his grave—and I know by whom!”
Chapter Fourteen.Concerns a Gay Woman.The open declaration of the Countess held me in weak indecision. No doubt she was well aware of the motive of the crime, and therefore guessed who had struck the fatal blow. Yet she boldly expressed her intention of concealing her knowledge, which seemed strange on the face of it. A murder had been committed, therefore if she really had no reason to defeat the ends of justice she might surely reveal the dead man’s identity and explain all she knew concerning him. I argued this with her, but she shook her head and remained firm in her decision of silence.Did she entertain, as I did, a grave suspicion of Lady Lolita?This vague suggestion occurred to me as I sat staring straight up into the grey eyes of that brilliant woman before me. She knew the truth. She had told me so, yet next instant she seemed to regret the words had escaped her and sought lamely to modify her assertion.She appeared to regard her statement as an error of judgment, and with all the tact of a clever woman ingeniously endeavoured to mislead me.“One person could, I believe, tell us something,” I remarked presently, in order to show her that I was in possession of other facts that I had not revealed.“Who’s that, pray?”“A certain man named Richard Keene.” It was quite a haphazard shot, only made in order to ascertain whether the name really conveyed anything to her.“Richard Keene!” she echoed, her brows knit in quick apprehension. “Did you know him?”“I do know him,” was my calm response. “I have seen him down in Sibberton, if I am not very much mistaken.”“Seen him!” she cried hoarsely. “Why, if you’ve seen him you’ve met an apparition. He died long ago.”“No,” I declared. “I have seen Richard Keene in the flesh. He is not dead.”“Impossible! You’re deceiving me,” she exclaimed. “The man cannot possibly be alive.”“How do you know?”She hesitated, for she saw that to reply to my question was to expose her own knowledge. Her face was ashen grey. My announcement, I saw, held her rigid in terror and surprise.“Because his death is common knowledge to those who—well, those who knew him,” she replied lamely.“I tell you that Richard Keene has eaten cold meat and drunk beer in the tap-room at theStanchester Arms. He came to Sibberton to make inquiries regarding the Earl and the occupants of this house.”“He did!” she gasped aghast. “Are you quite certain of that?”“I heard him with my own ears. He questioned Warr, who is not, however, very communicative to strangers, especially if they are not very well-dressed.”“How long ago?”“On the evening of the tragedy.”“Ah!” she sighed, and the light died out of her countenance again. “But are you really certain that it was Richard Keene?—does Lolita know this?”“Yes. He wrote to her.”“Wrote to her! Then there is no mistake that the fellow is still alive?” she cried, dismayed.“None. He told Warr that he had only just arrived home from abroad. And he looked very travel-stained and weary. He seemed to be on tramp.”“Without money?”“On the contrary, he appeared to have plenty. It struck me that his penurious exterior was assumed for some purpose of his own.”“Then if he really has returned, he means mischief—serious mischief,” exclaimed the Countess, still very pale. “The fact that he is not dead, as we had all supposed, alters entirely my theory regarding the crime and its motive.”“You believe then that he is the guilty one?”“No. That could not be,” was her quick reply.“There are strong reasons—very strong reasons—why there can be no suspicion against him.”“Is he such a very estimable person, then?” I inquired, hoping to obtain some further facts from her.“Estimable!” she ejaculated. “Why, he is the one person in all the world who—but no!” she added, suddenly breaking off. “You are George’s friend!”“And therefore I must not be told the truth,” I remarked disappointedly.“You must not know the secret of his sister Lolita,” she answered quite calmly. “I cannot betray her confidence.”I felt assured that the real reason of her refusal to tell me was because she feared lest I might betray her to her husband, and not on account of Lolita at all. She and I had somehow never been very close friends. I distrusted all women of her stamp, and treated them with that same light airy irresponsibility with which they treated me. The Countess of Stanchester could not be taken seriously. She was one of those women who, though married, live for the admiration and flattery of the opposite sex, and who indeed, according to her enemies, would court the admiration of her footman, provided no other male of higher status were available. Often she had set herself to win from me some complimentary speech, but had, probably to her chagrin, always found me blind to all her feminine blandishments. That she was amazingly handsome could not for a moment be denied, but the open manner in which she coquetted under her husband’s nose filled me with anger and contempt.How different she was from Lolita. The latter possessed all that calm, well-bred dignity, that inflexible moral principle which had ever been characteristic of the noble Catholic line of Stanchester. Her early years had been passed with the good nuns of the Sacred Heart at Provins, in France, and even now she gave the impression of one who had passed under the ennobling discipline of suffering and self-denial; a melancholy charm tempered the natural vigour of her mind; her spirit seemed to stand upon an eminence and look down upon the world as though it were not of it; and yet when brought into contact with that world which she inwardly despised, she shrank back with all the timidity natural to her convent education.Marigold, on the other hand, possessed all the worst traits of the Gordons of Glenloch, that ill-fated house whose men were gamesters and whose women had for two centuries been noted only for their personal beauty. Successions of Gordons had ruined the estates, now mostly in the hands of Jew mortgagees, and the present generation, still reckless and improvident, were consequently very poor. Lady Gordon had successfully schemed to marry her three dashing daughters to wealthy men as a means of saving the last remnant of the estate from passing out of her husband’s hands and of the trio of girls who, for two seasons in London, were the most admired and most courted, Marigold, now Countess of Stanchester, was perhaps the most confirmed flirt. She had set all theconvenancesat naught then, just as she did now. The golden bond of matrimony never for a moment, galled her. She found the world most amusing, she declared, pouting if her husband reproved her, and surely she might be allowed to amuse herself!She differed very little from thousands of other wives—women of our latter-day degenerate stock which has neither code of honour to husband nor to tradesmen. Debts trouble them not, they fear neither man nor God, but skip arm-in-arm with the devil down to ruin and disgrace. If, however, the husband chances to be wealthy and their extravagance makes no difference to his income, they will, strangely enough, instead of descending to destruction, rise to a pinnacle of notoriety, become popular leaders of Society, and have their daily doings chronicled by the papers as assiduously as those of the princes of the earth. But, after all, conscience is the padlock that we try to put on our inclinations.I tried to ascertain the reason why the announcement of the man Keene’s return should concern her so deeply, but she was far too clever to betray herself. From her manner, as soon as she grew calmer again after the first startling shock which the truth had given her, I saw that she was trying to exercise her blandishments upon me. She had some motive in this, I felt convinced. Was it that she was trying to win me over to her side as her friend?“I really think the less we discuss the unfortunate affair, Mr Woodhouse, the better,” she exclaimed at last, standing upon the hearthrug and facing me with her hands clasped behind her back. The lamplight caught the magnificent ornaments on her throat and bodice, causing them to dance with a thousand flashing fires.“You yourself approached the subject,” was my cool response. “I quite agree that we may well leave the matter in the hands of the police.”“But there is one thing I would implore you, as Lolita’s friend—for she is very fond of you, I know—and as my own friend also—and that is to keep this man Keene’s return a profound secret from every one—more especially from George. Do you understand?”“No, I don’t,” I answered. “At least I don’t understand your reason for endeavouring to conceal the fact.”“Of course not,” she exclaimed in quick earnestness. “Because you don’t know the truth—you don’t know what exposure means to me—or to Lolita.”“To you? Then you wish me to assist you in preserving the secret?”“You have guessed aright, Mr Woodhouse. I confess that I am in fear lest George shall learn that this man Keene has been to Sibberton. He must be kept in ignorance of it at all hazards. Besides yourself, who knows of his return?”“The innkeeper, Warr.”“Ah!” she gasped quickly. “Then you must see him and make him promise to say nothing—either to the police or to any person Whatsoever.”“I will act as you wish,” I responded. “But Lolita has already told me of her own peril.”“Yes, she no doubt foresaw it, just as I do. If you will assist me in this matter, which is purely confidential between us, you will earn my everlasting gratitude,” she declared.Then after a brief pause she turned from me, as though to hide her face, and said—“I know quite well, Mr Woodhouse, that you hold me in little esteem. I daresay that if I dared I should be your open enemy, but knowing the friendship my husband has for you, I am prevented from acting as I would perhaps otherwise act. I confess to you, however, that no one is better aware of my own failings than I am myself. People believe that because I like to amuse myself, I am a woman without a heart. But I tell you that George is the only man I care for, even though I may laugh and allow others to pay court to me. George will not believe me when I say this, but some day I will show you, as I will show him, the strength of my love for him. I will, in a word, redeem my character as a woman worthy to bear his honourable name.”I was utterly dumbfounded at this sudden outburst of confidence. There was a strange catch of emotion in her voice by which I knew that the words came direct from her heart, that remorse had at last seized her, and she intended to make atonement for all the grief and pain she had caused the devoted man who was her husband.“If I can assist you in any way in this, Lady Stanchester, I will willingly do so,” I replied, deeply in earnest.She turned her handsome countenance to me, and I saw that her grey eyes were dimmed by tears.“I ought not, I suppose, to make you my confidant,” she went on, “yet if you will really take pity upon me, a helpless woman, you can at least prevent the one thing I dread from becoming known—you can help me to show George that I love him fondly after all—that I will try to make him as happy as is my duty. You have no belief in me, that I know full well. You believe that if it suited my purpose I would betray any confidence of yours to-morrow, and laugh in your face for being such a fool as to trust me. That is my exact character, I admit; but if you will preserve the secret of Richard Keene’s return and promise to act as my friend as well as Lolita’s, I swear to you that I will keep faith with you and endeavour when the day comes—as it certainly must ere long—to show George my heart is his, and his alone.”I could scarcely follow her true meaning, except that she was in deadly fear that the Earl should learn of the stranger’s presence at theStanchester Arms.I promised to remain secret and, if possible, to secure Warr’s silence, yet in her words there was some hidden meaning that even then I could not fathom. She seemed to anticipate an event in the near future by which her love for her husband would be sorely tried. How strange it was that she, gay and giddy woman that she was, had been seized by a genuine remorse on learning of the return of that dusty, down-at-heel stranger!I looked at her and became convinced that the words she had spoken were by no means idle ones. Her slim white hand, laid upon the edge of my table, trembled, her pale lips were set, and in her grey eyes was a strange hard light as she said—“Then I trust you, as you will trust me. In future, Mr Woodhouse, we will be friends, and I assure you that you will find your friendship has not been misplaced.”“Remember,” I pointed out, “that I do not unite with you against the Earl.”“No, of course not,” she cried in a low intense voice. “But by your silence you can give me a chance to atone for all the past—you—you can save me!”
The open declaration of the Countess held me in weak indecision. No doubt she was well aware of the motive of the crime, and therefore guessed who had struck the fatal blow. Yet she boldly expressed her intention of concealing her knowledge, which seemed strange on the face of it. A murder had been committed, therefore if she really had no reason to defeat the ends of justice she might surely reveal the dead man’s identity and explain all she knew concerning him. I argued this with her, but she shook her head and remained firm in her decision of silence.
Did she entertain, as I did, a grave suspicion of Lady Lolita?
This vague suggestion occurred to me as I sat staring straight up into the grey eyes of that brilliant woman before me. She knew the truth. She had told me so, yet next instant she seemed to regret the words had escaped her and sought lamely to modify her assertion.
She appeared to regard her statement as an error of judgment, and with all the tact of a clever woman ingeniously endeavoured to mislead me.
“One person could, I believe, tell us something,” I remarked presently, in order to show her that I was in possession of other facts that I had not revealed.
“Who’s that, pray?”
“A certain man named Richard Keene.” It was quite a haphazard shot, only made in order to ascertain whether the name really conveyed anything to her.
“Richard Keene!” she echoed, her brows knit in quick apprehension. “Did you know him?”
“I do know him,” was my calm response. “I have seen him down in Sibberton, if I am not very much mistaken.”
“Seen him!” she cried hoarsely. “Why, if you’ve seen him you’ve met an apparition. He died long ago.”
“No,” I declared. “I have seen Richard Keene in the flesh. He is not dead.”
“Impossible! You’re deceiving me,” she exclaimed. “The man cannot possibly be alive.”
“How do you know?”
She hesitated, for she saw that to reply to my question was to expose her own knowledge. Her face was ashen grey. My announcement, I saw, held her rigid in terror and surprise.
“Because his death is common knowledge to those who—well, those who knew him,” she replied lamely.
“I tell you that Richard Keene has eaten cold meat and drunk beer in the tap-room at theStanchester Arms. He came to Sibberton to make inquiries regarding the Earl and the occupants of this house.”
“He did!” she gasped aghast. “Are you quite certain of that?”
“I heard him with my own ears. He questioned Warr, who is not, however, very communicative to strangers, especially if they are not very well-dressed.”
“How long ago?”
“On the evening of the tragedy.”
“Ah!” she sighed, and the light died out of her countenance again. “But are you really certain that it was Richard Keene?—does Lolita know this?”
“Yes. He wrote to her.”
“Wrote to her! Then there is no mistake that the fellow is still alive?” she cried, dismayed.
“None. He told Warr that he had only just arrived home from abroad. And he looked very travel-stained and weary. He seemed to be on tramp.”
“Without money?”
“On the contrary, he appeared to have plenty. It struck me that his penurious exterior was assumed for some purpose of his own.”
“Then if he really has returned, he means mischief—serious mischief,” exclaimed the Countess, still very pale. “The fact that he is not dead, as we had all supposed, alters entirely my theory regarding the crime and its motive.”
“You believe then that he is the guilty one?”
“No. That could not be,” was her quick reply.
“There are strong reasons—very strong reasons—why there can be no suspicion against him.”
“Is he such a very estimable person, then?” I inquired, hoping to obtain some further facts from her.
“Estimable!” she ejaculated. “Why, he is the one person in all the world who—but no!” she added, suddenly breaking off. “You are George’s friend!”
“And therefore I must not be told the truth,” I remarked disappointedly.
“You must not know the secret of his sister Lolita,” she answered quite calmly. “I cannot betray her confidence.”
I felt assured that the real reason of her refusal to tell me was because she feared lest I might betray her to her husband, and not on account of Lolita at all. She and I had somehow never been very close friends. I distrusted all women of her stamp, and treated them with that same light airy irresponsibility with which they treated me. The Countess of Stanchester could not be taken seriously. She was one of those women who, though married, live for the admiration and flattery of the opposite sex, and who indeed, according to her enemies, would court the admiration of her footman, provided no other male of higher status were available. Often she had set herself to win from me some complimentary speech, but had, probably to her chagrin, always found me blind to all her feminine blandishments. That she was amazingly handsome could not for a moment be denied, but the open manner in which she coquetted under her husband’s nose filled me with anger and contempt.
How different she was from Lolita. The latter possessed all that calm, well-bred dignity, that inflexible moral principle which had ever been characteristic of the noble Catholic line of Stanchester. Her early years had been passed with the good nuns of the Sacred Heart at Provins, in France, and even now she gave the impression of one who had passed under the ennobling discipline of suffering and self-denial; a melancholy charm tempered the natural vigour of her mind; her spirit seemed to stand upon an eminence and look down upon the world as though it were not of it; and yet when brought into contact with that world which she inwardly despised, she shrank back with all the timidity natural to her convent education.
Marigold, on the other hand, possessed all the worst traits of the Gordons of Glenloch, that ill-fated house whose men were gamesters and whose women had for two centuries been noted only for their personal beauty. Successions of Gordons had ruined the estates, now mostly in the hands of Jew mortgagees, and the present generation, still reckless and improvident, were consequently very poor. Lady Gordon had successfully schemed to marry her three dashing daughters to wealthy men as a means of saving the last remnant of the estate from passing out of her husband’s hands and of the trio of girls who, for two seasons in London, were the most admired and most courted, Marigold, now Countess of Stanchester, was perhaps the most confirmed flirt. She had set all theconvenancesat naught then, just as she did now. The golden bond of matrimony never for a moment, galled her. She found the world most amusing, she declared, pouting if her husband reproved her, and surely she might be allowed to amuse herself!
She differed very little from thousands of other wives—women of our latter-day degenerate stock which has neither code of honour to husband nor to tradesmen. Debts trouble them not, they fear neither man nor God, but skip arm-in-arm with the devil down to ruin and disgrace. If, however, the husband chances to be wealthy and their extravagance makes no difference to his income, they will, strangely enough, instead of descending to destruction, rise to a pinnacle of notoriety, become popular leaders of Society, and have their daily doings chronicled by the papers as assiduously as those of the princes of the earth. But, after all, conscience is the padlock that we try to put on our inclinations.
I tried to ascertain the reason why the announcement of the man Keene’s return should concern her so deeply, but she was far too clever to betray herself. From her manner, as soon as she grew calmer again after the first startling shock which the truth had given her, I saw that she was trying to exercise her blandishments upon me. She had some motive in this, I felt convinced. Was it that she was trying to win me over to her side as her friend?
“I really think the less we discuss the unfortunate affair, Mr Woodhouse, the better,” she exclaimed at last, standing upon the hearthrug and facing me with her hands clasped behind her back. The lamplight caught the magnificent ornaments on her throat and bodice, causing them to dance with a thousand flashing fires.
“You yourself approached the subject,” was my cool response. “I quite agree that we may well leave the matter in the hands of the police.”
“But there is one thing I would implore you, as Lolita’s friend—for she is very fond of you, I know—and as my own friend also—and that is to keep this man Keene’s return a profound secret from every one—more especially from George. Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t,” I answered. “At least I don’t understand your reason for endeavouring to conceal the fact.”
“Of course not,” she exclaimed in quick earnestness. “Because you don’t know the truth—you don’t know what exposure means to me—or to Lolita.”
“To you? Then you wish me to assist you in preserving the secret?”
“You have guessed aright, Mr Woodhouse. I confess that I am in fear lest George shall learn that this man Keene has been to Sibberton. He must be kept in ignorance of it at all hazards. Besides yourself, who knows of his return?”
“The innkeeper, Warr.”
“Ah!” she gasped quickly. “Then you must see him and make him promise to say nothing—either to the police or to any person Whatsoever.”
“I will act as you wish,” I responded. “But Lolita has already told me of her own peril.”
“Yes, she no doubt foresaw it, just as I do. If you will assist me in this matter, which is purely confidential between us, you will earn my everlasting gratitude,” she declared.
Then after a brief pause she turned from me, as though to hide her face, and said—
“I know quite well, Mr Woodhouse, that you hold me in little esteem. I daresay that if I dared I should be your open enemy, but knowing the friendship my husband has for you, I am prevented from acting as I would perhaps otherwise act. I confess to you, however, that no one is better aware of my own failings than I am myself. People believe that because I like to amuse myself, I am a woman without a heart. But I tell you that George is the only man I care for, even though I may laugh and allow others to pay court to me. George will not believe me when I say this, but some day I will show you, as I will show him, the strength of my love for him. I will, in a word, redeem my character as a woman worthy to bear his honourable name.”
I was utterly dumbfounded at this sudden outburst of confidence. There was a strange catch of emotion in her voice by which I knew that the words came direct from her heart, that remorse had at last seized her, and she intended to make atonement for all the grief and pain she had caused the devoted man who was her husband.
“If I can assist you in any way in this, Lady Stanchester, I will willingly do so,” I replied, deeply in earnest.
She turned her handsome countenance to me, and I saw that her grey eyes were dimmed by tears.
“I ought not, I suppose, to make you my confidant,” she went on, “yet if you will really take pity upon me, a helpless woman, you can at least prevent the one thing I dread from becoming known—you can help me to show George that I love him fondly after all—that I will try to make him as happy as is my duty. You have no belief in me, that I know full well. You believe that if it suited my purpose I would betray any confidence of yours to-morrow, and laugh in your face for being such a fool as to trust me. That is my exact character, I admit; but if you will preserve the secret of Richard Keene’s return and promise to act as my friend as well as Lolita’s, I swear to you that I will keep faith with you and endeavour when the day comes—as it certainly must ere long—to show George my heart is his, and his alone.”
I could scarcely follow her true meaning, except that she was in deadly fear that the Earl should learn of the stranger’s presence at theStanchester Arms.
I promised to remain secret and, if possible, to secure Warr’s silence, yet in her words there was some hidden meaning that even then I could not fathom. She seemed to anticipate an event in the near future by which her love for her husband would be sorely tried. How strange it was that she, gay and giddy woman that she was, had been seized by a genuine remorse on learning of the return of that dusty, down-at-heel stranger!
I looked at her and became convinced that the words she had spoken were by no means idle ones. Her slim white hand, laid upon the edge of my table, trembled, her pale lips were set, and in her grey eyes was a strange hard light as she said—
“Then I trust you, as you will trust me. In future, Mr Woodhouse, we will be friends, and I assure you that you will find your friendship has not been misplaced.”
“Remember,” I pointed out, “that I do not unite with you against the Earl.”
“No, of course not,” she cried in a low intense voice. “But by your silence you can give me a chance to atone for all the past—you—you can save me!”
Chapter Fifteen.The Track of the Truth.When the Countess had gone, leaving behind her a sweet breath of “Ideale,” that newest invention of the Parisian perfumer, I sat with my elbows idly upon the table, pondering over her strange words and becoming more than ever puzzled.Beauty may be only skin-deep, yet it makes a very deep impression. The brilliant woman who was my dear friend’s wife had never captivated me. Nevertheless I had seen in her a genuine desire for reform and had therefore given her my promise. Still the mystery of it all seemed to increase, instead of diminish.The Earl of Stanchester had, of course, seen the dead man on the morning after the discovery, but had not recognised him. At least it was quite clear that he had no suspicion whatever of who the young man really might be.From a drawer I took that piece of paper with those puzzling numerals upon it which I had managed to obtain in secret. The cipher was, however, utterly unreadable. Staring at the paper I sat wondering what was written there. If only I could learn the meaning of those figures, then I knew that the truth would quickly become revealed.Only that morning I had received a response from an expert in cipher—one of the officials at the Record Office in London—to whom I had submitted a copy of that tantalising document.“This,” he wrote, “is what is known as the checker-board cipher, a numerical cipher invented by a Russian revolutionist some forty years ago, and of all secret means of correspondence is the most complicated and ingenious. It is absolutely undecipherable unless the keyword or words agreed upon by the two correspondents be known, and it is therefore much used by Anarchists and Revolutionists. The meaning of the present cipher can never be solved until you gain knowledge of the keyword used, for in writing it the numbers representing each letter of that word are added to the numbers representing each letter of the message. Therefore, in deciphering, the proper subtraction must be made before any attempt can be successful in learning the message contained. I enclose you a copy of the checker-board used in writing the cipher, but without knowledge of the keyword this can be of no use whatever. It will, however, serve to show you what an extremely ingenious cipher it is, devised as it has been by a Russian of quick and subtle intellect, and used as means of secret communication in the constant plots against the Russian aristocracy. In the Russian prisons this square with its five numbers and twenty-five letters is used in a variety of ways, for most political prisoners have committed it to memory. If two persons are in separate cells, for instance, and one wishes to communicate with the other, who in all probability is acquainted with the use of the square, he will ask, ‘Who are you?’ by rapping on the wall, thus, 5 raps, a pause, 2 raps, a pause (W); 2 raps, a pause, 3 raps, a pause (H); 3 raps, a pause, 4 raps, a pause (O); and so on until the whole question is rapped out. This is the way in which the cipher you have submitted to me is written, but in this case, as I have said, with the numbers of the keyword added. Discover that, and the secret here will be yours.”Enclosed was a half sheet of note-paper on which was drawn the following device:—- 1 2 3 4 51 A B C D E2 F G H I K3 L M N O P4 Q R S T U5 V W X Y ZAh! If only I could read what was written there! I placed the key beside the message, but saw that all the numbers were higher than those of the checker board, showing that the unknown keyword had been added, thus rendering the cipher secure from any save the person aware of the pre-arranged word. If, however, the expert failed to decipher what was written there, how could I hope to decipher it? I therefore replaced the papers in the drawer regretfully, locked it, and went upstairs to the long, old-fashioned room set apart for me when I dined and slept at the Hall.My thoughts were full of Lolita and of the curious effect the news of Richard Keene’s return had produced upon the Countess. For a long time I sat gazing out across the park, flooded as it was by the bright white light of the harvest moon.My window was open, and the only sound that reached me there was the distant barking of the hounds in the kennels and the bell of the old Norman church of Sibberton striking two o’clock.Over there, beyond the long dark line of the avenue, was the spot where the tragedy had been enacted, the spot where, in the clay, was left the imprints of Lolita’s shoes. Time after time I tried to get rid of those grave suspicions that ever rose within me, but could not succeed. The evidence against my love, both confirmed by her own words and by the circumstances of the affair, was so strong that they seemed to convey an overwhelming conviction.Yet somehow the Countess herself seemed to have united with Lolita in order to preserve the secret. Their interests, it seemed, were strangely identical. And it was this latter fact that rendered the enigma even more puzzling than ever.Next day the guests shot over at Banhaw, the Countess accompanying them, but “cubbing” having just opened, the Earl was out with the hounds at five o’clock at the Lady Wood.A letter I received by the morning post from Lolita at Strathpeffer told of a gay season at the Spa, for quite a merry lot of well-known people always assemble there in early autumn and many pleasant entertainments are given. One passage in the letter, however, caused me considerable apprehension. “If Marigold should question you regarding the re-appearance of a certain person at the inn in Sibberton, tell hernothing. She must not know.”What could she mean? Unfortunately her warning had come too late! I had told the Countess exactly what was contrary to my love’s interests. Could any situation be more perilous or annoying?When I recollected her ladyship’s words of the previous night I saw with chagrin how clever and cunning she was, and with what marvellous tact she had succeeded in eliciting the truth from me.Pink came in during the afternoon, and flinging himself into the armchair opposite me, took a pinch of snuff with his usual nonchalant air.“Thought you’d be out cubbing this morning,” he commenced. “Too early for you—eh? We killed a brace in Green Side Wood. Frank Gordon was there, of course. He’s as keen a sportsman as he ever was, and rides as straight as half the young ones. Wonderful man! They say he used, back in the fifties, to ride seventy miles to the meet, hunt all day, and ride home again. That’s what I call a sportsman!”“Yes,” I said. “There are few left nowadays like old Frank Gordon. He was one of the hunting crowd at the Haycock at Wansford in the old days when men rode hard, drank hard, and played hard. He did the first, but always declares that his present good health is due to abstinence from the other two.”The old gentleman we were speaking of was thedoyenamong hunting-men in the Midlands. He had hunted with the Belvoir half a century ago, and was as fine a specimen of an Englishman as existed in these degenerate days when men actually go to meets in motor cars.The doctor himself hunted, as indeed did every one, the parson of Sibberton included, and the opening of “cubbing” was always a time of speculation as to what the season was to be, good or bad. The Earl had been delighted at his success at winning the cup for the best dog-hound at the Hound Show at Doncaster back in July, and certainly the pack was never in better form even under the old Earl than it was at present. Of course he spent money lavishly upon it, and money, as is so often the case, meant efficiency. The thousand pounds or so subscribed annually by the Hunt was but a drop in the ocean of expenditure, for a Master of Hounds, if he wishes to give his followers good sport, must be a rich man and not mind spending money to secure that end.“I had a funny adventure last night,” the doctor remarked presently, after we had discussed the prospects of hunting and all appertaining to it. “Devilish funny! I can’t make it out. Of course you won’t say a word of what I tell you, for we doctors aren’t supposed to speak about our patients.”“I sha’n’t say anything,” I assured him.“Well, I was called out about eleven last night, just as I was going up to bed, by an old labourer who drove into Sibberton in a light cart, and who told me that a woman was lying seriously ill at a farmhouse which he described as beyond Cherry Lap. It was out of my district, but he told me that he had been into Thrapston, but one doctor was out at a case and the other was away, therefore he had driven over to me. From what he said the case seemed serious, therefore I mounted my horse and rode along at his side in the moonlight. The night was lovely. We went by Geddington Chase, through Brigstock, and out on the Oundle Road, a good eleven miles in all, when he turned up a narrow drift for nearly half-a-mile where stood a small lonely farmhouse on the edge of a spinney. The place was in darkness, but as soon as I had dismounted the door opened, and there appeared a big powerful-looking man, holding a candle in his hand, and behind him was the figure of an old woman, who made a remark to him in a low voice. Then I heard a man somewhere speaking in some foreign language.”“A foreign language?” I remarked, quickly interested.“Yes. That’s what first aroused my suspicion,” he said. “I was taken upstairs, and in a rather poorly-furnished room found a person in bed. The light had been purposely placed so that I could not see the features distinctly, and so dark was the corner where the patient lay that at first I could distinguish nothing.“My daughter here has—well, she’s met with a slight accident,” the sinister-looking fellow explained, standing behind me, and then as he shifted the paraffin lamp a little there was revealed a young woman, dark-haired and rather good-looking, lying pale and insensible. Upon the pillow was a quantity of blood, which had, I saw, flowed from an ugly gaping wound on the left side of the neck—distinctly a knife-wound.”‘Accident!’ I exclaimed, looking at the man. ‘Why, she couldn’t have inflicted such a wound as that herself. Who did it?’ ‘Never mind, doctor, who did it,’ the fellow growled surlily. ‘You sew it up or something. This ain’t the time for chin—the girl may die.’ He was a rough customer, and I did not at all like the look of him. I was, indeed, sorry that I had entered there, for both he and the woman also in the room were a very mysterious pair. Therefore I got the latter to bring some warm water, and after a little time succeeded in sewing the wound and properly bandaging it. Just as I had finished, the young woman gradually recovered consciousness. ‘Where am I?’ she inquired in a faint, rather refined voice. ‘Hold your jaw!’ roughly replied the fellow. ‘If you don’t it’ll be the worse for you!’ ‘But, where’s George?’ she demanded. ‘Oh, don’t bother about him,’ was the gruff injunction. ‘Ah!’ she shrieked suddenly, raising herself in her bed and glaring at him wildly. ‘I know the truth! I remember now! You caught him by the throat and you strangled him?—you coward! You believe that Dick Keene doesn’t know about the Sibberton affair, but he does. They’ve seen him, and told him everything—how—’ The man turned to her with his fist raised menacingly saying, ‘Lie quiet! you silly fool! If you don’t, you’ll be sorry for it! No more gab now!’ Then turning to me he said with a short harsh laugh, ‘The girl’s a bit off her head, doctor. Come, let’s go downstairs!’ And he hurried me out lest she should make any more allegations.“My first inclination was to remain and question her, yet it seemed clear that I was among a very queer lot, and that discretion was the best course. Therefore I followed the man down, although my patient shrieked aloud for me to return.”“By Jove!” I exclaimed, aroused to activity by mention of the man Keene. “That was a strange adventure—very strange!”“Yes,” he continued. “The fellow evinced the greatest anxiety that I should leave, pressed into my hand half-a-sovereign as a fee, and again assured me that the girl’s mind was wandering. Again and again she called after me ‘Doctor! doctor!’ but in a room beyond I again heard men’s voices, speaking low in a foreign language, therefore I hesitated, and presently mounted my mare and rode away. Now,” he added, taking another long pinch of snuff, “what do you make out of it, Woodhouse?”“Seems very much as though there’s been another tragedy,” I remarked. “I wonder who the injured girl is?” I added, utterly amazed at his narrative.“I wonder,” he added, “and who is this man Keene who knows all about the Sibberton affair? Could she have been referring to the tragedy in the park, do you think?”“Yes, undoubtedly,” I said quickly. “We must return there, get to see her in secret, and hear her story.”“The worst of it is that as I was there at night, just at a time when the moon was hidden behind the clouds, I doubt whether I’ll be able to recognise the place again.”“Let’s try,” I suggested eagerly, springing up. “Don’t let us lose an instant. I have a suspicion that we’re on the track of the truth.”
When the Countess had gone, leaving behind her a sweet breath of “Ideale,” that newest invention of the Parisian perfumer, I sat with my elbows idly upon the table, pondering over her strange words and becoming more than ever puzzled.
Beauty may be only skin-deep, yet it makes a very deep impression. The brilliant woman who was my dear friend’s wife had never captivated me. Nevertheless I had seen in her a genuine desire for reform and had therefore given her my promise. Still the mystery of it all seemed to increase, instead of diminish.
The Earl of Stanchester had, of course, seen the dead man on the morning after the discovery, but had not recognised him. At least it was quite clear that he had no suspicion whatever of who the young man really might be.
From a drawer I took that piece of paper with those puzzling numerals upon it which I had managed to obtain in secret. The cipher was, however, utterly unreadable. Staring at the paper I sat wondering what was written there. If only I could learn the meaning of those figures, then I knew that the truth would quickly become revealed.
Only that morning I had received a response from an expert in cipher—one of the officials at the Record Office in London—to whom I had submitted a copy of that tantalising document.
“This,” he wrote, “is what is known as the checker-board cipher, a numerical cipher invented by a Russian revolutionist some forty years ago, and of all secret means of correspondence is the most complicated and ingenious. It is absolutely undecipherable unless the keyword or words agreed upon by the two correspondents be known, and it is therefore much used by Anarchists and Revolutionists. The meaning of the present cipher can never be solved until you gain knowledge of the keyword used, for in writing it the numbers representing each letter of that word are added to the numbers representing each letter of the message. Therefore, in deciphering, the proper subtraction must be made before any attempt can be successful in learning the message contained. I enclose you a copy of the checker-board used in writing the cipher, but without knowledge of the keyword this can be of no use whatever. It will, however, serve to show you what an extremely ingenious cipher it is, devised as it has been by a Russian of quick and subtle intellect, and used as means of secret communication in the constant plots against the Russian aristocracy. In the Russian prisons this square with its five numbers and twenty-five letters is used in a variety of ways, for most political prisoners have committed it to memory. If two persons are in separate cells, for instance, and one wishes to communicate with the other, who in all probability is acquainted with the use of the square, he will ask, ‘Who are you?’ by rapping on the wall, thus, 5 raps, a pause, 2 raps, a pause (W); 2 raps, a pause, 3 raps, a pause (H); 3 raps, a pause, 4 raps, a pause (O); and so on until the whole question is rapped out. This is the way in which the cipher you have submitted to me is written, but in this case, as I have said, with the numbers of the keyword added. Discover that, and the secret here will be yours.”
Enclosed was a half sheet of note-paper on which was drawn the following device:—
- 1 2 3 4 51 A B C D E2 F G H I K3 L M N O P4 Q R S T U5 V W X Y Z
- 1 2 3 4 51 A B C D E2 F G H I K3 L M N O P4 Q R S T U5 V W X Y Z
Ah! If only I could read what was written there! I placed the key beside the message, but saw that all the numbers were higher than those of the checker board, showing that the unknown keyword had been added, thus rendering the cipher secure from any save the person aware of the pre-arranged word. If, however, the expert failed to decipher what was written there, how could I hope to decipher it? I therefore replaced the papers in the drawer regretfully, locked it, and went upstairs to the long, old-fashioned room set apart for me when I dined and slept at the Hall.
My thoughts were full of Lolita and of the curious effect the news of Richard Keene’s return had produced upon the Countess. For a long time I sat gazing out across the park, flooded as it was by the bright white light of the harvest moon.
My window was open, and the only sound that reached me there was the distant barking of the hounds in the kennels and the bell of the old Norman church of Sibberton striking two o’clock.
Over there, beyond the long dark line of the avenue, was the spot where the tragedy had been enacted, the spot where, in the clay, was left the imprints of Lolita’s shoes. Time after time I tried to get rid of those grave suspicions that ever rose within me, but could not succeed. The evidence against my love, both confirmed by her own words and by the circumstances of the affair, was so strong that they seemed to convey an overwhelming conviction.
Yet somehow the Countess herself seemed to have united with Lolita in order to preserve the secret. Their interests, it seemed, were strangely identical. And it was this latter fact that rendered the enigma even more puzzling than ever.
Next day the guests shot over at Banhaw, the Countess accompanying them, but “cubbing” having just opened, the Earl was out with the hounds at five o’clock at the Lady Wood.
A letter I received by the morning post from Lolita at Strathpeffer told of a gay season at the Spa, for quite a merry lot of well-known people always assemble there in early autumn and many pleasant entertainments are given. One passage in the letter, however, caused me considerable apprehension. “If Marigold should question you regarding the re-appearance of a certain person at the inn in Sibberton, tell hernothing. She must not know.”
What could she mean? Unfortunately her warning had come too late! I had told the Countess exactly what was contrary to my love’s interests. Could any situation be more perilous or annoying?
When I recollected her ladyship’s words of the previous night I saw with chagrin how clever and cunning she was, and with what marvellous tact she had succeeded in eliciting the truth from me.
Pink came in during the afternoon, and flinging himself into the armchair opposite me, took a pinch of snuff with his usual nonchalant air.
“Thought you’d be out cubbing this morning,” he commenced. “Too early for you—eh? We killed a brace in Green Side Wood. Frank Gordon was there, of course. He’s as keen a sportsman as he ever was, and rides as straight as half the young ones. Wonderful man! They say he used, back in the fifties, to ride seventy miles to the meet, hunt all day, and ride home again. That’s what I call a sportsman!”
“Yes,” I said. “There are few left nowadays like old Frank Gordon. He was one of the hunting crowd at the Haycock at Wansford in the old days when men rode hard, drank hard, and played hard. He did the first, but always declares that his present good health is due to abstinence from the other two.”
The old gentleman we were speaking of was thedoyenamong hunting-men in the Midlands. He had hunted with the Belvoir half a century ago, and was as fine a specimen of an Englishman as existed in these degenerate days when men actually go to meets in motor cars.
The doctor himself hunted, as indeed did every one, the parson of Sibberton included, and the opening of “cubbing” was always a time of speculation as to what the season was to be, good or bad. The Earl had been delighted at his success at winning the cup for the best dog-hound at the Hound Show at Doncaster back in July, and certainly the pack was never in better form even under the old Earl than it was at present. Of course he spent money lavishly upon it, and money, as is so often the case, meant efficiency. The thousand pounds or so subscribed annually by the Hunt was but a drop in the ocean of expenditure, for a Master of Hounds, if he wishes to give his followers good sport, must be a rich man and not mind spending money to secure that end.
“I had a funny adventure last night,” the doctor remarked presently, after we had discussed the prospects of hunting and all appertaining to it. “Devilish funny! I can’t make it out. Of course you won’t say a word of what I tell you, for we doctors aren’t supposed to speak about our patients.”
“I sha’n’t say anything,” I assured him.
“Well, I was called out about eleven last night, just as I was going up to bed, by an old labourer who drove into Sibberton in a light cart, and who told me that a woman was lying seriously ill at a farmhouse which he described as beyond Cherry Lap. It was out of my district, but he told me that he had been into Thrapston, but one doctor was out at a case and the other was away, therefore he had driven over to me. From what he said the case seemed serious, therefore I mounted my horse and rode along at his side in the moonlight. The night was lovely. We went by Geddington Chase, through Brigstock, and out on the Oundle Road, a good eleven miles in all, when he turned up a narrow drift for nearly half-a-mile where stood a small lonely farmhouse on the edge of a spinney. The place was in darkness, but as soon as I had dismounted the door opened, and there appeared a big powerful-looking man, holding a candle in his hand, and behind him was the figure of an old woman, who made a remark to him in a low voice. Then I heard a man somewhere speaking in some foreign language.”
“A foreign language?” I remarked, quickly interested.
“Yes. That’s what first aroused my suspicion,” he said. “I was taken upstairs, and in a rather poorly-furnished room found a person in bed. The light had been purposely placed so that I could not see the features distinctly, and so dark was the corner where the patient lay that at first I could distinguish nothing.
“My daughter here has—well, she’s met with a slight accident,” the sinister-looking fellow explained, standing behind me, and then as he shifted the paraffin lamp a little there was revealed a young woman, dark-haired and rather good-looking, lying pale and insensible. Upon the pillow was a quantity of blood, which had, I saw, flowed from an ugly gaping wound on the left side of the neck—distinctly a knife-wound.
”‘Accident!’ I exclaimed, looking at the man. ‘Why, she couldn’t have inflicted such a wound as that herself. Who did it?’ ‘Never mind, doctor, who did it,’ the fellow growled surlily. ‘You sew it up or something. This ain’t the time for chin—the girl may die.’ He was a rough customer, and I did not at all like the look of him. I was, indeed, sorry that I had entered there, for both he and the woman also in the room were a very mysterious pair. Therefore I got the latter to bring some warm water, and after a little time succeeded in sewing the wound and properly bandaging it. Just as I had finished, the young woman gradually recovered consciousness. ‘Where am I?’ she inquired in a faint, rather refined voice. ‘Hold your jaw!’ roughly replied the fellow. ‘If you don’t it’ll be the worse for you!’ ‘But, where’s George?’ she demanded. ‘Oh, don’t bother about him,’ was the gruff injunction. ‘Ah!’ she shrieked suddenly, raising herself in her bed and glaring at him wildly. ‘I know the truth! I remember now! You caught him by the throat and you strangled him?—you coward! You believe that Dick Keene doesn’t know about the Sibberton affair, but he does. They’ve seen him, and told him everything—how—’ The man turned to her with his fist raised menacingly saying, ‘Lie quiet! you silly fool! If you don’t, you’ll be sorry for it! No more gab now!’ Then turning to me he said with a short harsh laugh, ‘The girl’s a bit off her head, doctor. Come, let’s go downstairs!’ And he hurried me out lest she should make any more allegations.
“My first inclination was to remain and question her, yet it seemed clear that I was among a very queer lot, and that discretion was the best course. Therefore I followed the man down, although my patient shrieked aloud for me to return.”
“By Jove!” I exclaimed, aroused to activity by mention of the man Keene. “That was a strange adventure—very strange!”
“Yes,” he continued. “The fellow evinced the greatest anxiety that I should leave, pressed into my hand half-a-sovereign as a fee, and again assured me that the girl’s mind was wandering. Again and again she called after me ‘Doctor! doctor!’ but in a room beyond I again heard men’s voices, speaking low in a foreign language, therefore I hesitated, and presently mounted my mare and rode away. Now,” he added, taking another long pinch of snuff, “what do you make out of it, Woodhouse?”
“Seems very much as though there’s been another tragedy,” I remarked. “I wonder who the injured girl is?” I added, utterly amazed at his narrative.
“I wonder,” he added, “and who is this man Keene who knows all about the Sibberton affair? Could she have been referring to the tragedy in the park, do you think?”
“Yes, undoubtedly,” I said quickly. “We must return there, get to see her in secret, and hear her story.”
“The worst of it is that as I was there at night, just at a time when the moon was hidden behind the clouds, I doubt whether I’ll be able to recognise the place again.”
“Let’s try,” I suggested eagerly, springing up. “Don’t let us lose an instant. I have a suspicion that we’re on the track of the truth.”
Chapter Sixteen.The Story of Mr Thomas Hayes.By half-past four we had covered the eleven miles that lay between the old-world village of Sibberton and that point beyond Brigstock on the Oundle road which skirts that dense wood called Cherry Lap.Both of us were well-mounted, the doctor on his bay hunter, while I rode my own cob, and our pace had all along been a pretty hard one. Being both followers of hounds we knew all the bridle-roads across Geddington Chase, and over the rich pastures between them and the road at Cat’s Head. Beyond Brigstock, however, we never hunted, for at that point our country joined that of the Fitzwilliam Hunt. Therefore, beyond Cherry Lap the neighbourhood was unfamiliar to both of us.We hacked along on the grass by the side of the broad highway for a couple of miles or so, but the doctor failed to recognise the field by which he had turned off on the previous night. By-roads are deceptive in the moonlight.“The gate was open when I passed through,” he remarked. “And if it’s closed now it’ll be difficult to find it again. The country is so level here, and all the fields are so much alike. I recollect at the time looking around for some landmark and finding nothing until I got to the top end of the field, over the brow of the hill.”“We’ll go on slowly,” I said. “You’ll recognise it presently.”We passed half a dozen fields with rough cart-roads running through each of them. Indeed, after harvest each field generally bears marks of carts in its gateway. In the darkness my companion had not been able to see what had been grown, except that the crop had been cut and carried.For another couple of miles we rode forward, the doctor examining every field but failing to recognise the gateway into which he had turned, until at length we came to the junction of the road from Weldon, when he pulled up, saying—“I didn’t come as far as this. We’d better turn back.”This we did, slowly retracing our way in the sunset, the doctor now and then expressing disgust at his own failure to recognise the path.Presently we encountered an old labourer plodding home from work with bag and scythe across his shoulder, and pulling up, the doctor asked, pointing over the hill—“Which is the way to the farm across there?”“What farm?” asked the man blankly, in his broad Northamptonshire dialect.“I don’t know the name, but there’s a road goes in across one of these fields.”“Oh! you mean Hayes’s, sir! Why, there’s a way across that there next field. ’Bout ’arf a mile oop.”“Who lives there?” I asked.“Why, ole Tom Hayes an’ his missus.”“Anybody else?”“Not as I knows of. Bill used to live with the ole man, but ’e’s gone away this twelvemonth. Ole Tom don’t make much of a thing out o’ the farm nowadays, for ’e’s nearly blind.”We thanked him, and rode eagerly onward, Pink opening the gate with his hunting-crop. Up the hill we cantered, skirting a broad stretch of pasture land and presently coming into sight of a small old redbrick house with tall square chimneys and quaint gable ends, while at a little distance were several barns and cow-houses.Pink recognised the place in an instant, and we resolved that while I dismounted, tied my horse to a tree and walked on to the house, he should approach boldly and inquire after his patient of the previous night.I had found a convenient tree and was walking in the direction of the farm when I saw a decrepit blear-eyed old man leaning on a stick, emerge from the door and hold a conversation with Pink, who had not dismounted.A moment later my friend beckoned to me, and as I hurried forward he cried dismayed—“They’ve gone. We’re too late.”“Gone!” I cried in disappointment, turning to the old farmer for explanation.“Yes, sir,” the old fellow answered. “I’ve just been telling this ’ere gentleman. They were a funny lot, an’ I was glad to get rid of ’em out o’ my house.”“Tell us all about them,” exclaimed Pink dismounting, tying his horse to a ring in the wall, and entering the house with us. It was a poor, neglected, old-fashioned place, not over-clean, for it appeared that both Hayes and his wife were very infirm and kept no woman-servant.“Well, gentlemen, it happened just like this,” explained the decrepit old fellow, when we were in his stone-floored living room, with its great open hearth and big chimney corner. “One evening, back in last month, a gentleman called here. He’d walked a long way, and was very tired, so the missus, she gives ’im a mug o’ milk. He would insist on me ’avin a shillin’ for it, and then ’e sat here smoking ’is cigar—an’ a good un it wor. After we’d been talking some time and he got to know we were livin’ alone ’e asked whether we wouldn’t care to let four of our rooms to some friends of ’is up in London, who wanted to come and stay in a farm-’ouse for a month. What people wanted to come and stay in this ’ere place in preference to their own ’omes I couldn’t quite understand. Still, as ’e offered us five poun’ a week, I an’ the missus agreed. ’E stayed with us that night, ’ad a bit o’ supper, and went to bed. Next morning ’e went away, and in the afternoon ’e came back with one of his friends, a young man who was called Ben, while the older man they called Dick.”“Dick what?” I inquired breathlessly.“I don’t know. I never ’eered his other name.” Was it possible that the stranger who had walked so far was none other than Richard Keene? I inquired what day of August he had arrived.“It wor the night of the sixteenth,” was old Hayes’s reply.The very night of the tragedy in Sibberton Park! I asked him to describe the man known as Dick, but his description was somewhat hazy on account of his defective sight. Having, however, no doubt that the man who had arranged for apartments for the others was really the mysterious wayfarer, I allowed him to proceed with his highly-interesting narrative:“The two stayed ’ere about a week, but ’ardly went out. I’d got some old fishin’ tackle, so they spent their time mostly down at the river yonder. They were very pleasant gentlemen, both on ’em, and at the end o’ the week they gave me a five-poun’ note. Then they went away sayin’ that their friends were comin’ soon to occupy the rooms. At the end o’ the next week there arrived, without any notice, a young lady—the one you saw last night, Doctor—the big man with a beard, named Logan, two other younger men, and an old woman-servant. The two men were foreigners, as well as the woman-servant, but Logan seemed to be head of the household, and the young lady was ’is daughter. At least ’e said so, but I don’t think they were related at all. Well, from the very first ’our they were in the ’ouse they puzzled me: Logan took me aside, and explained that he and his friends wanted perfect quiet, and they didn’t want a lot o’ gossipin’ about what they did, and where they went. He told me to open my mouth to nobody, and if he found I kept my own counsel he’d make me a present o’ an extra five poun’. They seemed to ’ave plenty o’ money,” remarked old Hayes in parenthesis:“So it seems,” I observed. “Well, and what then?”“Well, they occupied the four upstairs rooms, the two younger men occupying one room. They were thin-faced, dark-eyed fellows, whom I never liked at all, they seemed so sly and cunnin’, always whispering to themselves in their own language. If anybody chanced to come up ’ere I saw how alarmed they all were. That’s what first aroused my suspicions.”“Why didn’t you speak to the constable at Brigstock?”“And lose my five poun’? Not likely! They did me no harm, even if they were forriners. Well,” he went on, “they all five of ’em remained ’ere, and like the men Dick and Ben, hardly ever went out in the day-time. The servant, an ugly old woman, did their cookin’ an’ looked after ’em while the three men amused themselves very often by playin’ cards for ’ours and readin’ their forrin’ papers. I’ve kept some of ’em—’ere they are,” and he took from a chair several well-thumbed newspapers, which I saw were the ItalianAvanti, and other Continental journals of advanced socialistic policy.“They had no letters?”“Only one. The man Logan received it about four days ago.”“But the young lady. Was she English?” I asked.“I suppose so. But she would talk with the forriners just like one o’ themselves. I rather liked ’er. She was very kind to my missus, and seemed quite a lady, much more refined than that big bullyin’ fellow who said he was her father.”“They gambled, you said, merely to kill time—or for money?” inquired Pink.“I never saw ’em play for money. They used to play a forrin’ game and I could never make anythin’ out of it. After some little time the young lady went back to London for a day or two. While she was absent the man Dick called. He was differently dressed and took Logan out for a walk in the wood, in order to talk, I suppose. Logan came back alone, and I saw from his face that ’e was in a vile temper, so I suppose the two ’ad quarrelled. Howsomever, next day the young lady, who was known as Miss Alice, rejoined her friends, and that night they sat talkin’ together till very late. I listened at the door, and ’eard ’em one by one a-arguin’, it seemed, in their forrin language. It was just as though they were ’olding a council about something, but the tone of their voices showed that something alarmin’ had happened. What it was, of course, I didn’t know. But when I went up, I told my old woman that there was something unusual in the wind. Nothin’ happened, however, till last night.”“And what happened last night?” I asked quickly.“Well, as you’ll remember, it was a beautiful evening, and after supper they all four went out for a walk, leaving the servant at home with us. When they’d been gone nearly two hours, I saw Logan return in the moonlight across the grass-field from the wood, smoking ’is pipe leisurely. When he saw me sittin’ in the shadow outside the door, ’e said ’e’d missed the others and been wandering about the wood in the dark for more’n ’arf a hour. This struck me as rather peculiar, but I went inside with ’im, and presently went up to bed. I ’adn’t been there long afore I ’eard a great scufflin’ and whisperin’, and on lookin’ out o’ my door saw the two forriners a carryin’ Miss Alice upstairs to her room! I inquired what was the matter, but they said she’d only fainted and ’ud be better presently. So I went back to bed. Logan, howsomever, seems to ’ave gone out to old Jim Pywell’s cottage down the hill and sent him for a doctor, telling ’im not to get one close at hand, but from a distance. Pywell called you, sir,” he added turning to Pink, “and the first time I knew that anythin’ was wrong was after you’d gone and the poor thing began to cry out and say that an attempt had been made to kill ’er. Both me and my ole woman are a bit ’ard o’ hearin’, an’ they brought you very quietly up the stairs that I’d no idea you were in the ’ouse.”“And what occurred afterwards?” Pink inquired eagerly.“They were evidently frightened lest what the poor girl had said in ’er ravings might arouse your curiosity a bit too much, for they were early astir this mornin’, and by eleven they paid me and all of ’em left, walkin’ by separate ways over to Oundle station, Jim Pywell a-takin’ in their trunks on a wagon.”“But the young lady?” the doctor exclaimed. “Was she well enough to walk?”“Yes. She was bandaged, of course, but she ’ad one o’ them big feather ruffles that ’id her throat an’ the lower part of ’er face. When she said ‘good-bye’ to me she looked like a corpse—poor thing.”“Then she said nothing about Logan’s attack upon her?” I asked. “She appeared anxious to get away with the others?”“Very,” replied the old farmer. “She seemed to fear that she had said somethin’ which would reveal what they were all tryin’ to keep secret.”“Now tell me, Mr Hayes,” I said, facing him very seriously. “Tell me one thing. Have you ever heard any of your mysterious visitors mention the name of Lejeune?”The old fellow leaned heavily on his stick, scratched his white head and thought hard a moment.“Ler—june,—Ler—june,” he repeated. “Why, I believe that’s the name by which the gentleman called Dick addressed the young lady when he came to see Mister Logan the other day! I recollect quite distinctly now. I’ve been a-tryin’ an’ a-tryin’ to remember it—an’ couldn’t. Yes. It wor Ler—june—I’m certain. Do you happen to know her, sir?”
By half-past four we had covered the eleven miles that lay between the old-world village of Sibberton and that point beyond Brigstock on the Oundle road which skirts that dense wood called Cherry Lap.
Both of us were well-mounted, the doctor on his bay hunter, while I rode my own cob, and our pace had all along been a pretty hard one. Being both followers of hounds we knew all the bridle-roads across Geddington Chase, and over the rich pastures between them and the road at Cat’s Head. Beyond Brigstock, however, we never hunted, for at that point our country joined that of the Fitzwilliam Hunt. Therefore, beyond Cherry Lap the neighbourhood was unfamiliar to both of us.
We hacked along on the grass by the side of the broad highway for a couple of miles or so, but the doctor failed to recognise the field by which he had turned off on the previous night. By-roads are deceptive in the moonlight.
“The gate was open when I passed through,” he remarked. “And if it’s closed now it’ll be difficult to find it again. The country is so level here, and all the fields are so much alike. I recollect at the time looking around for some landmark and finding nothing until I got to the top end of the field, over the brow of the hill.”
“We’ll go on slowly,” I said. “You’ll recognise it presently.”
We passed half a dozen fields with rough cart-roads running through each of them. Indeed, after harvest each field generally bears marks of carts in its gateway. In the darkness my companion had not been able to see what had been grown, except that the crop had been cut and carried.
For another couple of miles we rode forward, the doctor examining every field but failing to recognise the gateway into which he had turned, until at length we came to the junction of the road from Weldon, when he pulled up, saying—
“I didn’t come as far as this. We’d better turn back.”
This we did, slowly retracing our way in the sunset, the doctor now and then expressing disgust at his own failure to recognise the path.
Presently we encountered an old labourer plodding home from work with bag and scythe across his shoulder, and pulling up, the doctor asked, pointing over the hill—
“Which is the way to the farm across there?”
“What farm?” asked the man blankly, in his broad Northamptonshire dialect.
“I don’t know the name, but there’s a road goes in across one of these fields.”
“Oh! you mean Hayes’s, sir! Why, there’s a way across that there next field. ’Bout ’arf a mile oop.”
“Who lives there?” I asked.
“Why, ole Tom Hayes an’ his missus.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not as I knows of. Bill used to live with the ole man, but ’e’s gone away this twelvemonth. Ole Tom don’t make much of a thing out o’ the farm nowadays, for ’e’s nearly blind.”
We thanked him, and rode eagerly onward, Pink opening the gate with his hunting-crop. Up the hill we cantered, skirting a broad stretch of pasture land and presently coming into sight of a small old redbrick house with tall square chimneys and quaint gable ends, while at a little distance were several barns and cow-houses.
Pink recognised the place in an instant, and we resolved that while I dismounted, tied my horse to a tree and walked on to the house, he should approach boldly and inquire after his patient of the previous night.
I had found a convenient tree and was walking in the direction of the farm when I saw a decrepit blear-eyed old man leaning on a stick, emerge from the door and hold a conversation with Pink, who had not dismounted.
A moment later my friend beckoned to me, and as I hurried forward he cried dismayed—“They’ve gone. We’re too late.”
“Gone!” I cried in disappointment, turning to the old farmer for explanation.
“Yes, sir,” the old fellow answered. “I’ve just been telling this ’ere gentleman. They were a funny lot, an’ I was glad to get rid of ’em out o’ my house.”
“Tell us all about them,” exclaimed Pink dismounting, tying his horse to a ring in the wall, and entering the house with us. It was a poor, neglected, old-fashioned place, not over-clean, for it appeared that both Hayes and his wife were very infirm and kept no woman-servant.
“Well, gentlemen, it happened just like this,” explained the decrepit old fellow, when we were in his stone-floored living room, with its great open hearth and big chimney corner. “One evening, back in last month, a gentleman called here. He’d walked a long way, and was very tired, so the missus, she gives ’im a mug o’ milk. He would insist on me ’avin a shillin’ for it, and then ’e sat here smoking ’is cigar—an’ a good un it wor. After we’d been talking some time and he got to know we were livin’ alone ’e asked whether we wouldn’t care to let four of our rooms to some friends of ’is up in London, who wanted to come and stay in a farm-’ouse for a month. What people wanted to come and stay in this ’ere place in preference to their own ’omes I couldn’t quite understand. Still, as ’e offered us five poun’ a week, I an’ the missus agreed. ’E stayed with us that night, ’ad a bit o’ supper, and went to bed. Next morning ’e went away, and in the afternoon ’e came back with one of his friends, a young man who was called Ben, while the older man they called Dick.”
“Dick what?” I inquired breathlessly.
“I don’t know. I never ’eered his other name.” Was it possible that the stranger who had walked so far was none other than Richard Keene? I inquired what day of August he had arrived.
“It wor the night of the sixteenth,” was old Hayes’s reply.
The very night of the tragedy in Sibberton Park! I asked him to describe the man known as Dick, but his description was somewhat hazy on account of his defective sight. Having, however, no doubt that the man who had arranged for apartments for the others was really the mysterious wayfarer, I allowed him to proceed with his highly-interesting narrative:
“The two stayed ’ere about a week, but ’ardly went out. I’d got some old fishin’ tackle, so they spent their time mostly down at the river yonder. They were very pleasant gentlemen, both on ’em, and at the end o’ the week they gave me a five-poun’ note. Then they went away sayin’ that their friends were comin’ soon to occupy the rooms. At the end o’ the next week there arrived, without any notice, a young lady—the one you saw last night, Doctor—the big man with a beard, named Logan, two other younger men, and an old woman-servant. The two men were foreigners, as well as the woman-servant, but Logan seemed to be head of the household, and the young lady was ’is daughter. At least ’e said so, but I don’t think they were related at all. Well, from the very first ’our they were in the ’ouse they puzzled me: Logan took me aside, and explained that he and his friends wanted perfect quiet, and they didn’t want a lot o’ gossipin’ about what they did, and where they went. He told me to open my mouth to nobody, and if he found I kept my own counsel he’d make me a present o’ an extra five poun’. They seemed to ’ave plenty o’ money,” remarked old Hayes in parenthesis:
“So it seems,” I observed. “Well, and what then?”
“Well, they occupied the four upstairs rooms, the two younger men occupying one room. They were thin-faced, dark-eyed fellows, whom I never liked at all, they seemed so sly and cunnin’, always whispering to themselves in their own language. If anybody chanced to come up ’ere I saw how alarmed they all were. That’s what first aroused my suspicions.”
“Why didn’t you speak to the constable at Brigstock?”
“And lose my five poun’? Not likely! They did me no harm, even if they were forriners. Well,” he went on, “they all five of ’em remained ’ere, and like the men Dick and Ben, hardly ever went out in the day-time. The servant, an ugly old woman, did their cookin’ an’ looked after ’em while the three men amused themselves very often by playin’ cards for ’ours and readin’ their forrin’ papers. I’ve kept some of ’em—’ere they are,” and he took from a chair several well-thumbed newspapers, which I saw were the ItalianAvanti, and other Continental journals of advanced socialistic policy.
“They had no letters?”
“Only one. The man Logan received it about four days ago.”
“But the young lady. Was she English?” I asked.
“I suppose so. But she would talk with the forriners just like one o’ themselves. I rather liked ’er. She was very kind to my missus, and seemed quite a lady, much more refined than that big bullyin’ fellow who said he was her father.”
“They gambled, you said, merely to kill time—or for money?” inquired Pink.
“I never saw ’em play for money. They used to play a forrin’ game and I could never make anythin’ out of it. After some little time the young lady went back to London for a day or two. While she was absent the man Dick called. He was differently dressed and took Logan out for a walk in the wood, in order to talk, I suppose. Logan came back alone, and I saw from his face that ’e was in a vile temper, so I suppose the two ’ad quarrelled. Howsomever, next day the young lady, who was known as Miss Alice, rejoined her friends, and that night they sat talkin’ together till very late. I listened at the door, and ’eard ’em one by one a-arguin’, it seemed, in their forrin language. It was just as though they were ’olding a council about something, but the tone of their voices showed that something alarmin’ had happened. What it was, of course, I didn’t know. But when I went up, I told my old woman that there was something unusual in the wind. Nothin’ happened, however, till last night.”
“And what happened last night?” I asked quickly.
“Well, as you’ll remember, it was a beautiful evening, and after supper they all four went out for a walk, leaving the servant at home with us. When they’d been gone nearly two hours, I saw Logan return in the moonlight across the grass-field from the wood, smoking ’is pipe leisurely. When he saw me sittin’ in the shadow outside the door, ’e said ’e’d missed the others and been wandering about the wood in the dark for more’n ’arf a hour. This struck me as rather peculiar, but I went inside with ’im, and presently went up to bed. I ’adn’t been there long afore I ’eard a great scufflin’ and whisperin’, and on lookin’ out o’ my door saw the two forriners a carryin’ Miss Alice upstairs to her room! I inquired what was the matter, but they said she’d only fainted and ’ud be better presently. So I went back to bed. Logan, howsomever, seems to ’ave gone out to old Jim Pywell’s cottage down the hill and sent him for a doctor, telling ’im not to get one close at hand, but from a distance. Pywell called you, sir,” he added turning to Pink, “and the first time I knew that anythin’ was wrong was after you’d gone and the poor thing began to cry out and say that an attempt had been made to kill ’er. Both me and my ole woman are a bit ’ard o’ hearin’, an’ they brought you very quietly up the stairs that I’d no idea you were in the ’ouse.”
“And what occurred afterwards?” Pink inquired eagerly.
“They were evidently frightened lest what the poor girl had said in ’er ravings might arouse your curiosity a bit too much, for they were early astir this mornin’, and by eleven they paid me and all of ’em left, walkin’ by separate ways over to Oundle station, Jim Pywell a-takin’ in their trunks on a wagon.”
“But the young lady?” the doctor exclaimed. “Was she well enough to walk?”
“Yes. She was bandaged, of course, but she ’ad one o’ them big feather ruffles that ’id her throat an’ the lower part of ’er face. When she said ‘good-bye’ to me she looked like a corpse—poor thing.”
“Then she said nothing about Logan’s attack upon her?” I asked. “She appeared anxious to get away with the others?”
“Very,” replied the old farmer. “She seemed to fear that she had said somethin’ which would reveal what they were all tryin’ to keep secret.”
“Now tell me, Mr Hayes,” I said, facing him very seriously. “Tell me one thing. Have you ever heard any of your mysterious visitors mention the name of Lejeune?”
The old fellow leaned heavily on his stick, scratched his white head and thought hard a moment.
“Ler—june,—Ler—june,” he repeated. “Why, I believe that’s the name by which the gentleman called Dick addressed the young lady when he came to see Mister Logan the other day! I recollect quite distinctly now. I’ve been a-tryin’ an’ a-tryin’ to remember it—an’ couldn’t. Yes. It wor Ler—june—I’m certain. Do you happen to know her, sir?”