Part 23

The work was now heavier. A derrick and windlass had to be rigged to move the heavy loads from the cutting, and that took a considerable time, during which he paid frequent visits to the “wishing well.”

It was after the shingle had been discovered that Harry’s voice answered him.

“Is that you, Dick? What are you fellows doing up there?”

The voice held all the old irritation and fretfulness. Briefly Dick described what was happening.

“Couldn’t you send me something down so that I could work below?” asked Harry. “I’m perfectly sure I could make it much easier for you.”

To humour him, Dick Alford found a light crowbar and with great difficulty lowered it. Because of its shape and size, the operation was a painfully slow one, and Harry fretted and fumed below.

“Hurry, for heaven’s sake!” he shouted. “You don’t suppose I want to stay down here, do you? I’ve a tremendous lot of work to do--you know that, Dick, very well.”

Dick did not answer, but his anxiety increased. He knew Harry and his symptoms all too well to be under any illusion as to what would follow if his irritation grew beyond the power of restraint, and it was with a sigh of thankfulness that he felt the crowbar caught in the eager hands of his brother.

“Be very careful how you use this,” he called. “The men are working from above and you may have a fall unless you take the greatest care.”

But he was talking to the air. Harry had gone and it was Leslie who answered him.

“How long will you be, Dick?” she asked.

“I don’t know, my dear. A few hours, not longer. Are you all right?”

A little hesitation.

“Yes, I’m all right.”

“Is Harry?”

A longer pause.

“I think so. Is it possible to send something down that he could take?”

Earlier in the evening Dick had tried to pass the end of a thin rubber tube to the imprisoned pair, but the attempt had been futile.

“I’ll try,” he said, and went in search of one of the two doctors who had been summoned.

From him he obtained two small brown pellets, and these, wrapped in paper and weighted, were dropped into the wishing well.

“Thank you,” said her low voice. “I don’t know how I can use them, and for the moment he is very busy.”

LXIV

There was no question as to Harry’s activity. He had rolled a heavy boulder from the débris in the passage and, placing it in the centre of the floor, he could reach the stone roof, which was in six petal-shaped sectors. The lens of his lamp had been removed so that the light was diffused, and she had a better view of the room.

There were little holes at intervals that looked as if they had once held hat-pegs, though why anybody should come into these depths to hang up his hat, she could not imagine. And then the real value of this peculiar chamber occurred to her. She found against the wall a long, rusty hook, so thin that she could break it. This had been the meat storeroom of the Abbey, the mediæval equivalent to a refrigerator. The atmosphere was deathly cold. It seemed a very long way from the Abbey, but in reality it was not more than a hundred and fifty yards. The old monks had found this cavern, had dressed and strengthened it, had lined and converted it to their own use. That explained why this chamber, so far distant from the main building, had received the ancient architects’ attention.

Harry was in his shirt sleeves, which were rolled up, revealing his thin but sinewy arms. He had managed to get the claw of the crowbar between two of the stones, and was working at them gradually, talking the while to himself in an undertone. Her anxiety increased. The paroxysm, when it came, would be short, but what would be the end of it? Her mouth went dry and she felt for the knife she had put in her pocket and stealthily opening the blade, thrust it through the lining to keep it in place.

Presently Harry paused, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his arm, and looked down at her. His horn-rimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose and he stopped to adjust them.

“Dick has no intention whatever of rescuing us. I think that you ought to know that.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken, Harry,” she said.

But opposition only made him worse and he snapped down at her.

“You’re a fool! All women are fools! I tell you it is a plot. Dick has no more intention of rescuing us…”

He stopped suddenly and passed his hand across his eyes.

“I wish I had brought the picture,” he muttered, and glared at her. “But for you I should have taken it with me, and now I’ve left it behind for that swine to jeer at!”

She looked up at the roof.

“You’re doing splendidly, Harry,” and, his attention distracted, he attacked the roof again.

“You can trust me, Leslie,” he said. “I am the only person in the world you can trust. You have no enemies. The Black Abbot is dead! I killed him, and I am very proud of the fact. Every Chelford should kill at least one Black Abbot, and I have had the approval of my illustrious ancestor.”

By this time the claw of the crowbar had been worked deep into the crevice he had made, and he began to lever slowly. As she watched him she saw the stone move. It dropped suddenly an eighth of an inch, and he raised an excited shout.

“You see, you see!” he said, in his shrill voice. “Dick never dreamt I would be able to do that, or he would not have allowed me to use this crowbar.”

He got down from the stone, scooped up two handfuls of water from the worn channel, and drank, dashing the remainder of the water into his face before he leapt again on the stone and went to work with renewed vigour. Backward and forward he levered the jemmy, and again the stone dropped, until it was perceptibly out of place.

“You must be careful, Harry,” she warned him. “That may come down with a rush and hurt you.”

He was sensible enough to see this, changed the position of the stone, and worked from the other angle. And then, without warning, all that she had predicted happened. He leapt aside into the open doorway as with a crash the sector fell and broke into fragments on the stone pavement.

“You see, you see!” he screamed. “I’ve done it!”

A steady shower of shingle was falling. He struck upward with the point of his crowbar and the shower increased until it made a heap on the ground.

And then he saw the edge of a box.

“Look, look, look!”

His trembling hands could scarcely hold the tool. With the energy of dementia he dug away at the shingle beneath it, and presently, gripping it by the edge, he pulled it clear. It was a tiny chest, a miniature of those she had seen at Fossaway Manor, six inches in length, four inches broad and as deep. With his crowbar he pried open the lid and the rusted iron hasp parted with a snap. Inside was what appeared to be a bundle of discoloured cloth. He lifted it out.

“There’s something heavy here,” he said hoarsely, and his hands shook so, that in pity she came forward and helped unwrap the thing that the box held. Presently it came to light: a long flask containing a colourless fluid. The bottle was heavily sealed at the top.

He snatched it from her hand; a frenzied gleam in the staring eyes.

“The elixir!” he croaked. “The Life Water! Oh, God be thanked!”

She tried to take it from him, but he snarled round on her like an angry dog.

“You devil!” he screamed. “You’re in league with Dick! You’re trying to rob me of life! But you sha’n’t, you sha’n’t!”

The flask was corked with a piece of wood that had swollen. He dragged at it with his teeth and presently extracted the stopper.

“I shall live eternally! But you shall die! He shall find you here dead, and realize…”

He put the flask to his lips and drank. She covered her eyes with her hands, then, as he moved, gripped the knife.

And then she heard something drop with a heavy crash to the floor and looked. The shingle was still sliding down like sand in an hourglass, but now something big and heavy thudded to the ground. It looked ludicrously like a yellow candle, but its weight was such that the first bar struck the pavement and the impact bent it hook-shape. Another followed. She watched, fascinated, as they came, first slowly, then in a stream, from the triangular space in the roof--scores, hundreds of yellow candles thundering down in twos and threes amidst the flow of shingle.

“The gold, the gold!” screamed Harry. “But he shall never have it!”

He lifted the lamp, but as his arm rose she stooped swiftly. The crash of the lamp as it struck the wall came to her and she crouched back toward the wishing well. She heard a loud crash in the chamber; a sector of the roof had given under the strain, and now, with a hiss and a rush, shingle and ingot were falling until they almost filled the room. They flowed about her feet like a heavy stream. She struggled to get it underfoot and became more and more engulfed.

“Dick, Dick!” she screamed, but he did not hear her.

He had reached the broken roof of the Cold Room and was slipping and sliding down the heap of shingle under which lay a man who was dead before the torrent of stone was loosened. Later they found him, gripping a crystal flask in his hand. What it had contained, no man ever knew.

LXV

When Leslie Gwyn woke, the sunlight was peeping round the edges of the drawn blinds. She sat up suddenly and her head went round and round. And then she remembered and her eyes closed, as if to shut out some horrible sight.

“Oh, you _are_ awake?” said Mary Wenner, bustling in. “Dick sent me up to see how you were. Everybody’s most fearfully anxious about you--even Fabe, though I’m not of a jealous disposition, as everybody knows.”

“What is the time?”

Then, with a shiver, she remembered that somebody else had asked her that. How long ago? An eternity!

“Twelve thirty-five,” said Miss Wenner, consulting her watch. “I’ve been out looking at the workmen. Really, my dear, it’s more like a Desirable Residential Estate than the grounds of Fossaway Manor. Wheelbarrows and navvies and goodness knows what! They say it’s cost his lordship twenty thousand pounds.”

Leslie looked at her in wonder.

“His lordship?” she said in a hushed voice.

“I mean Dick,” said the calm Miss Wenner. “The King is dead, long live the King! That’s my motto every time.” And then, in a more sober tone; and rather ashamed of herself for her heartlessness: “Poor boy! It was a mercy for him. Fabe’s gone back to London.”

“Who is Fabe? Oh, Mr. Gilder!” said the girl, smiling faintly.

Miss Wenner dropped her eyes modestly.

“We are engaged. It was all his idea, because, as you know, Leslie darling, I’m not the sort of girl to throw herself at any man’s head. But he’s persuaded me.” She sighed heavily. “I suppose I’d better. I’m getting on in years, and a girl can’t always be pretty.”

Leslie brought her feet to the floor and stood up. She was still a little unsteady and the pain in her feet was atrocious, in spite of the dressing that the doctor had applied.

“I must say that Arthur took it very well,” said Miss Wenner as she assisted the girl to dress. “It was naturally a great blow to him.”

“What was?” Leslie was a little dazed.

“My engagement,” said Mary. “You didn’t know----” she sighed. “Arthur was very fond of me, I’ll admit it. But in the circumstances I don’t think it would be nice to marry a gentleman who’s bad friends with my fiancé, do you, Leslie?”

“I had no idea that there was anything between Arthur and you,” said Leslie truthfully.

Again Miss Wenner sighed.

“Very few people knew anything about it. Perhaps it is all for the best. Arthur thinks so. It isn’t as though I’d thrown myself at him, so there’s no harm done one way or the other.”

Leslie was wearing a pair of man’s slippers when she came down the broad stairs. Dick’s study door was open and she saw him sitting in a deep cane chair on the lawn outside, a pipe between his teeth, a heap of documents on his knees which he was examining slowly one by one. He looked round, rising from his chair at the sound of her voice. She saw his face and was shocked.

“Dick, you look a hundred years old!”

“I feel a thousand,” he said, and guided her to the chair. “Sit down. Well, that’s the end, Leslie--and the beginning.”

She nodded.

“I think we’ve managed to keep the ugliest part of it out of the newspapers. Poor old Harry!” There were tears in his eyes which he did not attempt to hide. “Poor old victim!”

“Victim of what?”

“Of his mother,” said Dick. “There never was a time when she was sane. My poor father did not discover this until after the child was born, and her death removed one of the greatest sorrows from his life. The other was--Harry! Well, now you know the secrets of us all, what do you think, Leslie?”

“Who was the Black Abbot?” she asked, and then, to her amazement:

“I was,” he replied quietly, and told her all he had told the high official from Scotland Yard.

“The queer thing was that he must have seen the gold before he died. What fools we were! The Diary told us as plainly as anything could that the old Lord Chelford who hid his treasure chose the bed of the river. It was a year of drought, the river was quite dry, and probably he found a deep hole in its bed, hid the gold and covered it with shingle that would not wash away.”

“You are very rich now, Dick?”

He nodded slowly.

“Yes--I suppose I am. There are a few minor trials and troubles for us, Leslie dear,” he said, “but when those are all over and everything is settled we will go abroad for a year and forget all about these ghastly days and nights.”

She took his hand between her two palms.

FINIS

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ frock-coat/frock coat, paving-stone/paving stone, shirt-sleeves/shirt sleeves, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Abandon the use of drop-caps.

Adjust the chapter numbering (the source text had two chapter XLIs).

Add ToC.

Punctuation: fix some missing periods and quotation mark pairings.

[Chapter I]

Change “such _aws_ the gloom in the library” to _was_.

[Chapter XIII]

“he said, and his voice was _kusky_ with emotion” to _husky_.

[Chapter XX]

“then went _downstars_ to his own room” to _downstairs_.

[Chapter XXI]

“moved stealthily toward the bed, _feeeling_ for the brass rail” to _feeling_.

[Chapter XXIV]

(“Do you know that _Robison_ Crusoe was a German?”) to _Robinson_.

[Chapter LVI]

“and _occasionlly_ as prospective buyers of our property” to _occasionally_.

[Chapter LXIV]

“Her mouth went _dray nd_ she felt for the knife she” to _dry and_.

[End of text]