CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CLOUDBURST
The delay, trifling though it was, occasioned by the smashing of the tobacco jar and the discovery of the photograph, served to interfere with the smooth progress of events, as it fell out that Cleek did not, after all, rejoin the party below in time to witness the first meeting between Geoffrey Clavering and Lady Katharine Fordham, for the carriage had arrived at the entrance to the house before he put in an appearance, and the General and Mrs. Raynor, Ailsa and Lady Katharine, were out on the veranda talking excitedly with young Clavering when Harry and Cleek came upon the scene.
There is a subtle magic in love that dispels all other emotions, and despite the gravity of the situation, a look of happiness radiated from Lady Katharine's face, reflected, though in a far lesser degree, upon Geoffrey Clavering's; indeed it did not need an over-keen eye to detect that the young man was seriously ill at ease, and general conversation languished.
Cleek's entry, therefore, with young Raynor's announcement of his sudden attack of faintness, not only drew all attention, but, as he had foreseen, he became an object of extreme solicitude upon the part of the ladies.
"Crocked up, poor beggar, and came within an ace of bowling over," explained young Raynor as he led him to a seat in a big wicker chair. "Sharp attack of indigestion, if I know the symptoms. Bet you a hat, mater, it was that beastly cheese soufflé we had for lunch. Enough to kill a dog, that stuff. But you will give that silly ass of a cook his head, and let him serve up anything he likes. How are you, Clavering? Things look like going all right for you after all – eh, what? 'Tisn't every man who can have his rival's wind shut off to order."
The remark could not be said to be a happy one, despite the fact that the maker of it laughed as though he had just perpetrated a witticism; for even his doting mother could not but deplore it.
"Harry, darling, how can you?" she said reproachfully, as young Clavering coloured and the two girls looked distressed and indignant. "Darling, you ought to think before you speak."
"Huh!" grunted the disgusted General. "If he did, he probably wouldn't speak at all. It seems to me, Harry, that you must lie awake at nights planning how you can arrange to say just the wrong thing upon all occasions – you do it so constantly."
"Oh, that's it – just lay everything on me!" responded his dutiful offspring sulkily. "I'm always doing the wrong thing – if you believe what other people say. Seems to me that the best thing I can do is to take myself off, and then everybody will be happy. I say, Barch, when you feel like yourself again you'll find me either at the stables or in the pater's blessed ruin taking lessons in etiquette from the family ghost – if the pater has been able to rake up one and coax him to reside there."
And with this ill-natured dig at his father's pet weakness this engaging young gentleman lurched down the steps of the veranda and walked surlily away round the angle of the house.
The place which he had spoken of as "the pater's ruin" was a little fad of the General's, whose love of antiquities and the like had tempted him to transform a bare and unattractive part of the Grange grounds into something at least picturesque if not in the very highest good taste. Ancient ruins had always been a passion with him, but as you can't have ancient ruins in modern Wimbledon, the General had had a ruin built for himself, modelling it after the crumbling remains of an old Scottish castle which had appealed to his artistic eye, planting it with ferns and enwrapping ivy and vines of Virginia creeper, and even supplying it with owls and bats to keep up the illusion. It was his one harmless weakness, his one foible – that ruin; and nobody but his son ever mocked him for it, though many laughed in their sleeves and secretly made game of his foolish whim.
Cleek had heard of the "ruin" at Wuthering Grange before he had ever set foot inside the gates of the place; and hearing of it again – now, like this – he felt that he would like to kick the young cub who could publicly mock his father's folly in this fashion. He saw the General's kindly old face flush with anger and mortification, and was not at all surprised when he presently made an excuse to get away and retired indoors.
Meantime, Cleek's plan of pretending illness had panned out precisely as he had imagined, and was productive of the results he desired. Essentially feminine and of a highly sympathetic nature, Lady Katharine hovered near him, doing all in her power to ease the sufferings of one whom she shrewdly suspected of being very near to the heart of her dearest friend, and this naturally brought Geoffrey to the little group surrounding him, and enabled him to study his attitude at close quarters.
The more he saw of Sir Philip Clavering's son and heir, the better he liked him; but although the young man occasionally turned an adoring look upon Lady Katharine, and appeared to be doing his best to share her evident high spirits, it was apparent to Cleek, after a moment's study, that his attitude was for the most part assumed. He made no attempt to get away from the others and have the lady of his heart all to himself, and whenever he and she were for a moment separated from Mrs. Raynor and Ailsa Lorne, he was nervous, distressed, and acted with an air of restraint that was as puzzling as it was pronounced.
A chance remark regarding the state of Lord St. Ulmer's health brought from Lord St. Ulmer's daughter the happy, excited remark:
"Oh, Geoff, dear, he's improving every hour, and he has been so wonderfully kind and tender to me this afternoon that I could kiss him. Just think, he says that things can go on now just as they did before Count de Louvisan came; that there is nothing now to come between us, Geoff; nothing to keep us apart for another moment!"
"Really? That's ripping!" said young Clavering, and in his effort to appear delighted smiled the ghastliest parody of a smile possible to conceive. It was so pronounced that even Lady Katharine herself noticed it and looked puzzled and distressed.
"You don't seem very glad," she said, a note of pain in her voice, a look of pain in her reproachful eyes. "Aren't you glad, Geoff? And is that why you did not come over to see me before?"
"Don't be silly, Kathie. I couldn't come any earlier because – well, because I couldn't, that's all."
"A very lucid explanation, I must say. What is the matter with you, Geoff? You're not a bit like yourself to-day – is he, Ailsa?"
But Ailsa made no reply. There was none really needed. Geoffrey had taken hardly any notice, but as if struck with a sudden thought, whipped out a notebook and began shuffling the pages nervously through his fingers.
"I'd nearly forgotten, Kathie," he said apologetically; "my mother asked if you would lend her these books." He handed her the torn leaf with something scribbled upon it. "Any time will do, but she said you would have them."
Lady Katharine looked down at the writing, and a wave of colour surged over her face.
"But – " she commenced.
"I don't want them now; in fact, I can't stop even now, only I just wanted to know that you were all right."
There was no mistaking the look of adoration on the young man's face, but she looked at him reproachfully.
"Going back again, so soon!" she said softly, averting her head, while her lips trembled and her hand clutched painfully on the leaf of the notebook.
"I'm afraid I must, dear," responded Geoff. Then he turned swiftly to Cleek, who had been watching the little scene, the peculiar one-sided smile looping up the corners of his mouth.
"Good-bye, Mr. Barch; pleased to have met you," he said without, however, coming forward and offering his hand.
"Thanks! same to you; good-bye," replied Cleek, and that same smile was still on his face when a minute or two later, young Clavering having taken his departure, Cleek was rejoined by Ailsa Lorne.
"What do you think about it?" she asked abruptly. "What is it that is wrong? Oh, Mr. Cleek, do you think – "
"I'll be beyond 'thinking' before the morning. I shall know," he interposed. "Now, show me the way to that ruin, please. I want a word or two with Mr. Harry Raynor if he is there. Down that path, is it? Thanks very much." And swinging down from the veranda, he moved away in the direction indicated.
A brisk two minutes' walk brought him to the picturesque ruin with its ivy-wrapped walls, its gaping Gothic windows, and its fern-bedded battlements, so artfully copied that the stones actually seemed to be crumbling and the plants to have been set there by Nature rather than by man. Even the appearance of a dried-up moat and a ruined drawbridge was not wanting to complete the picture and to give an air of genuine antiquity; and he had just stepped on the latter to make his way across to the wide arch of the entrance when he was hailed, not from within, but from behind.
He faced round suddenly to see young Raynor moving quickly toward him. He was walking rapidly, and appeared to be in a state of great excitement.
"I say, Barch, hold on a moment, will you?" he sang out. Cleek gave him time to get to the drawbridge and then the reason for his excitement became known. "Look here, old chap, I'm afraid we shall have to give up our little 'lark' for this evening, after all. Rotten bad luck, but I've just got a message that will call me to – well, somewhere else; and I've got to go at once. Don't expect I shall be able to get back this side of midnight; but if you don't mind prolonging your stay and making it two nights instead of one – "
"Not in the least. Delighted, old chap."
"Oh, well, then, that's all right. Have our night out to-morrow instead – eh, what? Look here, Barch, blest if I don't like you immensely. Let you into the secret. It'll be with 'Pink Gauze.'"
"Pink Gauze? Don't mean the little Frenchy, do you – the little beauty of the photograph?"
"The very identical. Be a good boy, Barchie, and I'll take you to see her to-morrow night. What do you think – eh, what?"
Cleek didn't say what he thought; it would have surprised the young man if he had.
"Well, ta-ta until midnight or thereabouts, old chap. So long!" And with a wave of the hand he was gone.
Cleek stood and looked after him for a moment, a curl on his lip, an expression of utter contempt in his eyes; then he gave his head a jerk indicative of a disgust beyond words, and, facing about, walked on into the ruins.
The General had done the thing well, at all events. The atmosphere of antiquity was very cleverly reproduced: walls, roof, floor – all had the appearance of not having been disturbed by the hand of any one for ages. Half-defaced armorial bearings, iron-studded doors, winding staircases, even a donjon keep.
This he came to realize when the sight of a rusted iron ring in the floor tempted him to pull up and lay back a slab of stone that appeared centuries old, and to expose in doing so a twisting flight of stone steps leading downward into the very depths of the earth.
Really, you know, the old chap had done it well. Cells down there, no doubt – cells and chains and all that sort of thing. Well, he had time to spare; he'd go down and have a look at those cells. And, leaving the stone trap-slab open, he went down the black stairway into the blacker depths below, flicking the light of his torch about and going from cell to cell. One might swear that the place was centuries old. Rusty old barred doors, rustier old chains hanging from rings in the walls. Nothing modern, nothing that looked as if it had known use or been disturbed for these hundreds of years; nothing that – Hello! There was a break in the illusion, at all events: a garden spade, with fresh earth clinging to the blade of it, leaning against the wall. Fancy a man so careful of preserving an atmosphere of antiquity letting one of the gardeners leave – No, b'gad! it hadn't been left merely by chance. It had been brought here for use, and was probably left for further use. There was a place over in that corner that most decidedly had been recently dug up.
He walked over to the place in question and directed the glow of the torch so that the circle of light fell full upon it. Somebody had been digging in the earthen floor of the cell, and had made an attempt to hide the fact by sprinkling bits of stone and plaster scraped from the walls over it. In the ordinary course of things, and with a light less powerful than this of the electric torch, the thing would have passed muster very well, and would, in all probability, have escaped observation. Now, asked Cleek of himself, what the dickens should any one wish to dig in this place for? And, having dug, why try to disguise the fact? Hum-m-m!
He switched round suddenly, walked to the place where the spade stood, in the angle of the wall opposite, took it up, and, returning, began to dig where the digging had been done before.
This he had to do in the darkness, for the moment his thumb was removed from the button of the torch the light went out. But, having once located the place, this was not difficult, for the earth, having once before been disturbed, yielded easily to the spade.
For five – possibly six – minutes he worked on, shovelling out the loose earth and tossing it aside unseen; then, of a sudden, the spade encountered something which, though soft and yielding, would not allow the blade to penetrate it at all, press his foot down as hard as he might. If Cleek knew anything at all, he knew that that betokened a fabric of some sort, and knew, too, that he had got to the bottom of the original excavation.
He laid aside the spade, and the electric torch spat its light into the hole.
Clothing at the bottom of it – buried clothing!
He stooped and pulled it to the surface, letting the articles thus unearthed drop one by one from his fingers. A cap, a pair of trousers, a coat with a badge on it, a stick with a loop of leather by which to carry it, a belt, and a number on that belt.
He looked at the number; it was a brass "4." He looked at the badge, and then rose upright, clamping his jaws hard and understanding.
What he had unearthed was the clothing of the Common keeper who had been done to death last night – the clothing which the assassin had stolen and worn.
And he had found that clothing here, hidden in the grounds of Wuthering Grange! Why, then, in that case, the murderer – He stopped; and the thought went no farther – stopped, and releasing the button of the torch, let utter darkness swing in and surround him.
Some one had entered the ruin – some one was moving about overhead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE THUNDERBOLT
It was not a man's foot that made that soft noise; his trained ear recognized that fact at once. A woman, eh? What woman would be coming here at this time when all the ladies of the household would be in their rooms dressing for dinner?
He crept in the darkness out of the cell in which he had been digging, through the one next and through the next again, until he came to the passage leading to the staircase, and then, dropping on his hands and knees, went soundlessly up the stone steps.
Above him as he crept upward – as slow as any tortoise and with far less noise – sounded the woman's faint footfalls pacing the paved floor with that persistent restlessness which tells of extreme agitation. He had but just begun to ask himself what that agitation might portend, when something occurred which caused him to twitch up his head with a jerk and crouch there, a thing all eyes and ears.
The woman's footsteps had ceased abruptly, brought to a sudden halt by the ring of others – the nervous, heavy-heeled, fast-falling steps of an excited man coming across the drawbridge and into the ruin at a pace which was almost a run; and that man had no more than come into range of the woman's vision when the thin, eager voice of Lady Katharine Fordham sounded and made the situation clear.
It was a tryst – the lovers' meeting upon which Cleek had built such high hopes and upon which he had blundered by the merest fluke.
"Geoff!" sounded that enlightening voice, with a nervous catch in it which told of a hard-hammering heart. "Thank heaven you have come. Ailsa thinks I am in my room dressing for dinner. Now tell me what it is all about, there's a dear, for my head has been in a whirl ever since I read what you wrote. Why did you want me to come here and meet you without anybody knowing? Whatever can it be that you 'have to say to me that no one on this earth must hear'? Do tell me. I'm frightened half to death!"
"Are you?" His footsteps clicked sharply as he moved rapidly across the floor toward her. "You have not gone so far as I, then, for I believe I have been frightened past death, and that after this nothing on earth or in heaven or hell can appall me! Come here, into my arms, and let me hold you while I speak. How I love you! My God, how I love you!"
"Geoff!"
"Put your arms round me. Kiss me! I want you to know that I love you so well I'll fight all the dogs of justice and all the devils of hell but what I'll stand by you and save you from them. They can't kill my love for you. Nothing on God's earth can do that. I'll come between them and you no matter what happens, no matter what it costs me – life with all the rest. That's what I've come to tell you! But, oh, my God, Kathie, why didn't you let me kill him?"
"Kill him, Geoff? Good heavens, what are you talking about? Kill whom?"
"De Louvisan!"
"De Louvisan? Let you kill De Louvisan – I? Oh, my God! Geoff – you – think —I– killed – killed – him?"
Geoff groaned and buried his face in his hands. "There was no one in the house but you," he said hoarsely. "It was you who took me into the place; it was you who showed me his dead body spiked up there against the wall – you and you alone. My God! Kathie, what is the use of denying what we both know?"
Cleek sucked in his breath, drew every muscle of his body taut as wire, and then crouching back in the darkness listened intently.
Lady Katharine remained perfectly silent for a moment, as though she had been stricken dumb by the directness of the charge: as though the half-despairing, half-impatient protest of that final "What is the use of denying what we both know?" had impressed her with a realization of the utter futility of longer endeavouring to act a part.
It was either that that held her silent, Cleek told himself, or she was utterly amazed, utterly overcome by an accusation which had no foundation in fact and had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt. If the latter should prove to be the case, why, then, Geoff Clavering would be lying, and she would be wholly and entirely innocent of the crime with which he had charged her.
Then she spoke suddenly:
"You mean this thing? You really and truly mean it?"
Geoff bowed his head in silent assent.
"That I – I – did this thing?"
Still he could not answer, could not put into brutal words the conviction that had been forced upon him.
"That I met you and took you into Gleer Cottage last night?" she went on. "Took you in there and showed you that man's – body? I?"
"Not exactly showed it to me – that, as we both know, is an exaggeration. You showed me into the room where it was hanging, however. Or, at least, you waved me to the door and told me to go in there and wait a minute or two and you'd rejoin me and show me something that would 'light the way back to the land of happiness!' But you never did rejoin me. I waited in that dark room for fully ten minutes but you never came back. Afterward, when I struck a match to light a cigarette and saw that dead man spiked to the wall – God! I think I went mad for the moment. I know I ran out of the house, although I do not know when nor how; for when I came to my senses I was racing up and down the right-of-way across the fields; and if it had not been for you I should have run on until I dropped. But all of a sudden I remembered you, remembered that in rushing out of the house I had left you there; and you might come back to that room and find me gone, and think that I had deserted you. I ran back to the place as fast as I could. I remembered that when first you met me and took me into it you had led me in through the gates and up the drive to the door; but when I got back there a horror of the place seized me. I couldn't have gone in that way again had my life depended upon it. There was a break in the boundary wall. I got back into the grounds that way, cutting my wrist – look, see, here's the mark – on the fragments of broken glass which still adhered to the coping. I ran through the gardens and round to the back of the house. I burst open the rear door and raced along the passage to the room where De Louvisan's body hung. You were not there. I struck another match to see, noticing this time that there was the half of a candle standing upon the mantelpiece, where it had been secured in its own wax. I took that thing and lit it and ran through all the house, hunting for you. There was not a trace of you anywhere – and at last, in a panic, I rushed from the house and flew for my very life. But there was no getting away so easily as all that. Lights were shining, men were coming, the hue and cry had begun. I could not go forward; I dared not go back. I remembered the old hollow tree where we used to play in our kiddy days, you and I. I ran to that and got inside of it – and I was there through all that followed. I was found in time, and it might have ended badly for me but for my father's friend, Mr. Narkom, and a French detective – a muff of a fellow named De Lesparre. It didn't, however. I got off scot free, thanking God that no suspicion pointed your way, and telling myself that you had not left so much as one hair from the ermine cloak you wore that might be caught up as a clue to bring the thing home to you!"
"The ermine cloak I wore! You say I wore an ermine cloak?"
"Yes. An ermine cloak and the same pretty white frock you had worn at the Close earlier in the evening. It was the white of the ermine that first attracted my attention in the darkness when I looked up and saw you near the gates of Gleer Cottage."
"That is not the truth!" she flung back, with a sudden awakening from the sort of stupor which, up till now, had mastered her. "I never wore an ermine cloak in my life! I never was nearer to Gleer Cottage last night than I am at this minute; and if you say that I met you, that I spoke to you, that I even saw you, or that you saw me after Ailsa Lorne led me out of the drawing-room at Clavering Close when you threatened the Count de Louvisan's life, you are saying what is absolutely untrue."
"Kathie!"
"I repeat it, utterly and absolutely untrue."
"Good God! Do you accuse me of lying?"
"There must be some horrible mistake. Some one impersonated me for some awful purpose. You never saw me again after I left your father's house last night, and you know it. But, in any case, since you confess that you were there, what took you to Gleer Cottage last night at all?"