Part 15

Dick shook his head.

“We shall have to call in the police, and I want to keep your name out of the business. Arthur is at home?”

“Yes, Arthur is at home,” she said listlessly.

At that moment the telephone bell rang and he took up the instrument.

“Is that Lord Chelford’s house?” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Yes,” said Dick shortly.

“I’m speaking from the sub post office. That isn’t Lord Chelford speaking?”

“No, it’s Mr. Alford,” said Dick.

“Well, listen, Mr. Alford. Have you sent anything very important from the local post-box?”

“Why?” asked Dick quickly.

“Because our roundsman reported that the box had been tampered with. He couldn’t get in his key, so the letters that had been posted between six and ten have not yet been collected.”

Dick uttered an exclamation.

“Right! When it’s cleared, will you ask the postman to bring the letters up to the hall? There are one or two that I want to withdraw.”

The man at the other end of the wire hesitated.

“Why, in the special circumstances, yes,” he said, and Dick hung up the receiver and turned slowly to the girl.

“The letter box hasn’t been cleared.”

Slowly the significance of the words dawned upon her.

“What shall I do?” she whispered.

“Give me authority to withdraw your letter to Gilder. There are six more days.”

She held her breath. For a second a vision of her brother in convict’s garb came to her eyes, and then she looked at the man before her. Something of his vitality, his confidence, passed to her soul.

“I will do as you tell me,” she said, in a voice little above a whisper. “But, Dick, what will happen?”

“I am going to do my duty,” said Dick.

And all that sleepless night, as she tossed from side to side in her bed, she pondered those words but could find no solution to their mystery.

XLI

Puttler, unshaven and weary-eyed, dragged himself to the study and poured out a large cup of tea that the butler had brought in, and drank it at a gulp.

“Scotland Yard has given me charge of this case, for which you may thank your stars!” he said. “Considering we’ve had to do all our work between eleven and four, I think I’ve set up a record in investigation. Thomas’s monkish attire was hired, as you thought, from a theatrical costumier’s in Wardour Street----”

“I saw him coming out with a bundle under his arm and wondered what use he could find for fancy dress,” interrupted Dick.

“That is fact No. 1,” counted Puttler. “Fact No. 2 is that he was making ready for a getaway. He even tried to open your local letter box, probably earlier in the evening. Do you send money by post?”

“My brother does, frequently. It’s a habit I’ve tried to cure, without success.”

“That is fact No. 2,” said Puttler. “He couldn’t open the box, but we found the key on him. He had moved everything of value from Gilder’s house. I found his portmanteau packed and cached in the field where you say Gilder parks his car. And obviously he was coming to relieve your brother of any loose cash he might find in the library. I found his tools scattered on the flower bed under one of the library windows.”

“How was he killed?” asked Dick.

Puttler scratched his head.

“By a regiment of soldiers, to judge from the appearance of him!”

They talked till the sleepy-eyed Mr. Glover staggered in and asked permission to go to bed, and then they walked out into the cold morning and joined the party of police that were searching the grounds.

“I suppose the best thing we can do is to go to bed also,” said Dick, and at that instant Puttler stooped and picked something from the long grass.

It was a long dagger, its steel hilt black with age, the blade coated with something that was still wet. They looked at one another.

“Do you know this?”

Dick nodded mutely.

“What is it?” asked Puttler.

“It is the dagger that once belonged to the Black Abbot’s slayer,” said Dick.

The man’s jaw dropped.

“Where does it come from?”

Dick shook his head.

“The last time I saw it,” he said slowly, “it was hanging in the hall of Arthur Gwyn’s house.”

XLII

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Puttler, who had literary leanings.

Dick heard his name shouted in an agitated voice, and, looking round, saw the butler running toward him, no longer sleepy-eyed, but very alert and white.

“What is the matter, Clover?”

“The maid… foolish girl only just told me… frightened!” gasped the old man, and pointed to the open study windows.

Dick walked quickly back, followed by Puttler. Drooping in his study chair was a plain-looking girl, wearing over her coarse nightdress a man’s overcoat; her lank hair falling over her shoulders, she presented a sight which at any other time would have moved Dick Alford to laughter.

“Now, Alice, tell Mr. Alford what you told me,” said the old butler, beside himself with anxiety.

It was some time before she could speak coherently, and then she told her amazing story. She had gone to bed in the servants’ quarters soon after eleven, with a sick headache. She had heard nothing of the scream, but at some time--which she placed with accuracy, having an alarm clock with a phosphorescent dial by her bedside, at 1.45--she heard “a terrible commotion” downstairs. Her room was immediately above Lord Chelford’s. She heard shouts and screams, the smashing of glass and the sounds of a struggle.…

“Hurry, hurry, woman!” said Dick, frantic with anxiety. “Downstairs, in his lordship’s room--are you sure?”

“Yes, sir,” whimpered the girl. “I simply dared not get up for fear I was murdered. I simply laid there and fainted and come to again.…”

Before she had finished, Dick was across the hall and running up the stairs two at a time. He tried the door of Harry’s room but it was bolted. He called him by name, and hammered on the panels, but there was no answer.

“We’d better break in the door,” said Puttler. “Have you got an axe?”

Mr. Glover went downstairs in search of the tool and returned with an axe and a case-opener. In a second the panel of the door was smashed and Dick peered in.

All the blinds save one were drawn, and the exception afforded sufficient light to enable him to examine the room. He gave one glance and his heart sank. The room was in hopeless confusion; the bedclothes were thrown on the floor, two mirrors, one a cheval glass, had been smashed; the uncurtained window was open. Dick put his hand through the hole in the panel and unbolted the door, and the two men ran in.

There were signs as of a terrible struggle. The wreckage of two chairs lay scattered about the floor. The table which had held the medicines was overturned and the floor was littered with broken glass and wet with the spilt medicines.

Puttler walked over to the bed. The mattress had been half dragged to the floor but the pillows were still in their place, and one of these and a part of the under sheet were smothered with blood.

Dick examined the open window. Three or four of the leaded panes were broken, and the steel rod that kept the windows open was bent as though a heavy weight had rested upon it. The ground was about fifteen feet below, and immediately under the window a large rhododendron bush had been broken as though by some heavy weight thrown upon it. Without hesitation, Dick threw his legs across the window sill, poised himself a moment, and dropped to the ground. There was blood on the leaves of the bush; he could find no footprints. Searching the ground, he came upon a smudge of blood against one of the buttresses of the wall.

By this time Puttler, who had chosen a more sedate method of descent, had joined him, and the two men went on, keeping to the paved path, and searched the ground for a further trail.

“This happened when we were in the grounds with the local police,” said Puttler.

He had been full of self-reproaches all night, and now Dick silenced him.

“It can’t be helped,” he said. “The fault is as much mine as yours. I ought to have expected this, after the killing of Thomas. Knowing what I know, I should have gone up to his room and stayed there with him, or at least outside. Poor old Harry! Poor old boy!”

His voice broke, and for a second there were tears in his eyes.

“What is this?”

The paving ended abruptly and was continued with a rolled gravel path, and there were marks here of something heavy being dragged along. These ceased as suddenly as the paving.

“Wait,” said Dick, as the solution dawned upon him.

He ran back along the wall of the wing, turned the corner, and stopped before the first of the library windows. It was open, and, drawing himself up, he dropped into the darkened room and pulled back the curtains. So far he had not examined the library; his practised eye, familiar with almost every book on the shelves, told him that somebody had been here. One section of the shelves had been almost cleared. A drawer in Harry’s desk had been broken open, and on the floor he found an empty cash box.

He made a brief and hurried survey, and, returning to the open by the window, he rejoined the detective and told him of his discovery.

Beyond the gravelled path and the dragging marks, all trace of Harry was lost. Ahead of them, at a distance of four or five hundred yards, was the river. To the left, and at this point out of sight, the Abbey ruins.

An hour’s search brought them no nearer to discovery, and Dick went back to his room to find the first of the dishevelled reporters stepping from his hired car.

XLIII

Mr. Gilder rose at six o’clock that morning. He had spent a restless night and welcomed the dawn. The first post did not arrive until eight o’clock, and he met the postman at the door. There were half a dozen letters for him, and he carried them into his room and examined them eagerly. Only one bore a familiar postmark and that was in a hand which he recognized. He tore it open and found a few scrawled lines.

If I don’t see you again, thank you for your kindness, and don’t think too badly of your old friend.

So Thomas had gone! With a curse he threw the letter into the fireplace and went back, accosting the postman as he descended from the upper floors of the apartments.

“No, sir, there’s no other letter.” The man went through his bundle carefully. “There is another post at half-past nine. The country post doesn’t usually get into town in time for the first delivery.”

Gilder slammed the door and went back to sulk in his room. By this time his servants were about. At nine o’clock they called him to breakfast, but a glance at the contents of the dishes did not tempt him.

His newspapers were placed folded at his hand. He opened the first, and on the centre page a paragraph arrested his eye.

STRANGE HAPPENING AT HAUNTED MANOR HOUSE

By telephone, Chelfordbury, 2 A. M.

There has been a tragic sequel to the appearance of the Black Abbot in the grounds of Fossaway Manor. At eleven o’clock last night, Mr. Richard Alford, hearing screams, ran out from the house and discovered the dead body of a man in the habit of a monk. He had been terribly injured, there being no less than nine wounds. The man has been identified as Thomas Luck, a former footman in the employ of the Earl of Chelford.

Gilder uttered an exclamation and put down the paper. Thomas! His first thought was for himself. Suppose it were known that this man had been staying at his cottage, he would be dragged into the affair; inquiries would be made, and he would figure at a coroner’s inquest, if not in a murder trial. Cold-bloodedly he cursed the dead man for his folly.

Gilder had no doubt in his mind what had occurred. Thomas had gone back to Fossaway Manor to get the remainder of the cash out of the box in Chelford’s room. And then--was Thomas the Black Abbot, after all? It was quite possible that he had used this disguise on other occasions, and he was in a position very favourable to such a masquerade.

It was nine o’clock; the next editions would be out in an hour. He could, if he wished, have called up a tradesman he knew in Chelfordbury, but that would associate his name with the crime, and these villagers gossiped.

For the time being, all thought of the expected letter went out of his mind. But as the tragedy became familiar to him, his thoughts came back to Leslie Gwyn. The country post would bring the letter, and he would act generously, munificently. There should be no higgling, no bargaining, no balancing of accounts to the last penny. Her word would be sufficient. Overnight he had written his letter, prepared the grand gesture which should break down the last barrier of mental resistance; and, with his knowledge of women, he did not doubt what form the reaction would take.

He went into the little library where he did his work, opened a combination wall safe and took out the letter. He had read it again and again after it had been written, and with every reading he had the warm glow of complacency which men derive from the contemplation of their own generosity.

My dear Leslie:

Thank you for your letter. I did not doubt that you would keep your word. My answer you will find enclosed herewith--a blank check. I make no stipulations, I extract no conditions. Draw the check for as much money as your brother requires to clear himself from his dreadful situation. I have given instructions to the bank that the check is to be honoured without question.

Fabrian.

It was characteristic of the man, who kept three banking accounts, that the check was drawn on a branch where his balance was exactly the amount required to liquidate Arthur Gwyn’s liability. It would have been a simple matter to fill in the form for the amount required, but there was a certain nobility, a magnificence, in the blank check. It was a carte-blanche upon his fortune. He replaced the letter in the envelope, put it back in the safe and pushed the door close, as the telephone bell rang.

The caller was the man who had taken his place at the office. Had he heard anything about Gwyn?

“We haven’t seen anything of him since you left, and the letters we have sent down for him to sign haven’t been returned.”

Gilder comforted the anxious man with the assurance that Arthur would put in an appearance some day that week. At the back of his mind there was still a great uneasiness about the tragedy at Chelfordbury. He sent his maid out to get a copy of the sporting editions, but they had not arrived at Regent’s Park, and he decided to take a taxi to Piccadilly Circus, and, if necessary, to Fleet Street, to get an early copy. Such a journey would serve the purpose of filling in the time until the country post arrived.

It was at Oxford Circus that he saw the first newspaper contents bill. The first said “Terrible Tragedy in Sussex Village”; the second made him sit bolt upright in the car: “Well-known Earl Kidnapped and Murdered.”

XLIV

Gilder stopped the taxi and, springing out, grabbed at a paper. A flaring headline met his eye.

LORD CHELFORD CARRIED OFF BY UNKNOWN MURDERER. FEARED DOUBLE TRAGEDY IN A SUSSEX VILLAGE

There were other sub-headings, but his eye ran down to the story.

At 11 o’clock last night screams were heard in the grounds of Fossaway Manor, the fine old Tudor mansion which has been the country seat of the Earls of Chelford for hundreds of years. The Hon. Richard Alford, the only brother of Lord Chelford, ran out, accompanied by Detective-Sergeant Puttler, who was staying at the Manor as Mr. Alford’s guest. They were horrified to discover, lying on the grass, the dead body of a man dressed in the habit of the famous Black Abbot. The local police were immediately called in, and hardly had their investigations begun when, unknown to them, a second tragedy occurred. A maid in the employ of the Earl of Chelford, Alice Barter, who sleeps in a room over that occupied by Lord Chelford, states that at one-forty-five o’clock in the morning she heard sounds of a terrific struggle in his lordship’s room. In terror, she did not report the occurrence till four o’clock in the morning. Lord Chelford’s door was broken open and a terrible scene met the eyes of the police officers. The room was in confusion: mirrors and furniture were smashed; and it was evident from the indications that a terrible struggle had taken place, and, either stunned or killed, Lord Chelford was pulled to the window and thrown out. A search of the grounds left no doubt that his body was dragged for some distance along the ground. At the moment of telephoning, says our correspondent, no trace of the body has been found, but from certain indications there can be little doubt that the unfortunate peer has been a victim of foul play. Certain of his property is missing, whilst a cash box which he kept in the drawer of a desk in his library has been found empty. Detective-Sergeant Puttler of Scotland Yard is in charge of the case.

The newsboy was still waiting for payment. Mr. Gilder put his hand in his pocket mechanically and, giving him a shilling, reëntered the cab.

“Drive me round the Outer Circle,” he said. He wanted time to think.

In a dim, uneasy way he realized how deeply he was involved in this tragedy. Fabrian Gilder had a lawyer’s mind. He saw the connection between Thomas, himself, and Chelford. Thomas, a known thief, harboured in his cottage, goes out, with or without associates, and is killed. Chelford, lately engaged to the girl whom Gilder himself was pursuing, disappears in circumstances which leave no doubt as to his death.

Round and round the Regent’s Park Circle the cab moved slowly, and all the time he was piecing together a version which would sound plausible. He had known Thomas; was aware that the man was dismissed, but did not know his criminal connections. The man had asked for shelter for a few days, and in charity Gilder had given it to him. He himself was in London when the crime was committed; had unchallengeable alibis if necessary.

Perhaps he was exaggerating the seriousness of the situation, he thought. Putting his head out of the window, he directed the driver to take him to Regency Mansions. He had forgotten his key; had to ring the bell, and the maid who opened the door handed him the post, which had arrived a few minutes before. He examined the three letters carefully: none was from Leslie. But at the moment he was too occupied with the happenings at Chelfordbury to be disappointed.

And then came a thunderbolt.

“Mr. Arthur Gwyn is waiting for you in the library,” said the girl.

“Mr. Gwyn!” he said in astonishment. “When did he come?”

“Ten minutes ago, sir.”

“Oh!” said Gilder blankly.

Had she sent her brother instead of a letter? Had she told him… well, it was a situation that had to be faced.

He walked carelessly into the little library and found Arthur Gwyn sitting in one of the easiest chairs, a book in his hand, a half-smoked cigar between his teeth.

“Good-morning, Gilder.”

His voice was cheerful and almost amiable, and for a moment Mr. Gilder’s heart leapt. This was a friendly ambassador sent by the girl to make the necessary arrangements.

“I think we’d better forget all that’s passed,” said Arthur. “We both lost our temper, and there’s no sense in keeping the old trouble alive. You don’t mind my smoking?”

He replaced the book he had taken from one of the shelves, dusted his knees carefully, and then laughed.

“You’re thinking of marrying Leslie, I understand?”

Gilder nodded, watching his visitor closely.

“Expecting a letter from her? Well, I’m afraid you won’t get it.”

“Why not?” asked the other, with a sudden tightening at his heart.

“Because friend Thomas, who spent the evening in wholesale robbery--incidentally, he stole a very ancient dagger from my hall, a silver teapot, and a few other etceteras--added to his infamy by attempting to rob a letter box. He didn’t succeed in opening the box, but he put the lock out of order.”

Gilder breathed again.

“So there was no collection, eh?” he said huskily. “Well, that is rather a relief.”

There was a quizzical smile in Arthur Gwyn’s eyes; the discolouration on the left cheek had faded to a pale green.

“I understand you’re going to help me?”

“I am going to get you out of your trouble, yes.”

“It occurred to me”--Arthur leaned sideways and very carefully dusted the ash of his cigar into a silver tray on the library table--“it occurred to me that you might care to give me proof and evidence of your good feeling.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Gilder.

Arthur hesitated.

“I wondered whether you would write me a letter, to the effect that you are lending me this very large sum. You see, Gilder, although you plan to marry my sister, I am vain enough to wish that it should not be regarded as a gift or the price--the price of her marriage--but as a loan to me.” He laughed. “Don’t look at me like that, my dear fellow. I am not asking you for money, I am seeking a salve to my conscience. I don’t want people to say ‘Leslie Gwyn was sold for fifty thousand pounds.’ I want to produce evidence that you did no more than lend me the money.”

A slow smile dawned on Gilder’s face.

“There’s no objection to that,” he said. “I’ll give it to you now, if you like. Do you mind if I address you as ‘Dear--Arthur’?”

“Charmed,” murmured Arthur.

“One has to keep up the pretence of friendliness,” said Gilder as he wrote rapidly; “and really, I’ve no strong feeling against you, Gwyn. You’ve been a useful man to me.”

“Damned useful,” said Arthur, without heat.

The man blotted the letter, brought it across, and Arthur Gwyn read it carefully.

“Thank you,” he said, folded and put it into his pocket. “You may think I’m rather weak--which of course I am--and vain. I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that! You will hear from Leslie when the mail box is cleared--that is, if the letters are intact. There is some suspicion that our friend Thomas, baffled in his attempt to open the box, and inspired with that instinct for destruction which is one of the characteristics of the unbalanced criminal, threw in a couple of lighted matches. I had the curiosity to smell at the letter slot, and I think it is very likely that the police theory is correct.”

He rose, took up his silk hat, and stifled a yawn.

“We’ve had rather an exciting night in my part of the world. You’ve probably read all about it in the newspapers?”

“Has Chelford been found?”

Arthur shook his head.