Part 6

Before she could reply, he heard the ring of a bell in the servants’ quarters and she ran to the door. Through the glass panel she saw the gleam of a white shirt-front on the unlighted porch, and switched on the lights. It was Dick, and, with an oath, Arthur Gwyn flung back into his room and slammed the door. He had hoped that Dick had forgotten his threat to call that night.

“Enter, Richard of Chelford!” said the girl dramatically, as she threw open the door. “I was just ’phoning to you. I’m bored to extinction and I want amusing.”

Which was not true.

“I don’t feel at all amusing,” said Dick, as he closed the door and hung up his cap on the hat-rack.

She took him by the arm and led him into the drawing-room.

“Arthur is invisible to-night; he is working very hard. He doesn’t approve of you, and you hardly approve of him, so we sha’n’t be interrupted! Dick, it was lovely of you to arrive as you did this afternoon.”

“Gilder proposed to you, I understand?” said Dick quietly.

“Did he tell you?” She fetched a long sigh. “Yes; I was amazed. I suppose it was very complimentary, but why did he do it in such a great hurry, do you think?”

Dick took a cigarette from the box she offered him and lit it before he replied.

“That is exactly what I’ve come to discover,” he said. “I feel rather like a grand inquisitor, but I must know.”

“And I can’t tell you.”

She was acting. He knew that her one object was to turn him from an interview with her brother, and she in turn knew that her efforts would be in vain.

“You had no hint of this precious proposal in advance? Arthur told you nothing?”

“No; Arthur couldn’t possibly have known. He told me that Mr. Gilder wanted us to see his new flat, and although it was a great bore going out to tea with somebody one doesn’t know, I went----”

“To oblige Arthur, of course?”

“No,” she insisted; “you must credit me with a reasonable amount of feminine curiosity. Bachelors’ establishments intrigue me. Your one drawback, from my point of view, is that you’ve only a poky little office and, I presume, a wretched little servant’s bedroom.”

“For a second son I’m rather well off,” said Dick with a quizzical smile. “You are sure Arthur didn’t give you any forewarning of this proposal?”

“Absolutely sure. He was as much astonished as I was.”

“Have you discussed it with him?” he asked quickly.

She hesitated.

“Yes, I spoke about it in the car on the way down, and Arthur was rather--astonished.”

“Only astonished--not furious?”

“He may have been furious, too. Arthur doesn’t carry his heart on his sleeve.”

“I should imagine not,” said Dick drily, and then: “Will you ask him if I can see him for five minutes?”

She looked at him with troubled eyes.

“You’re not going to quarrel, are you, Dick?”

He shook his head.

“No, I’m going to ask him a question or two. You realize that I’m entitled to know.”

“Why are you ‘entitled’?”

“Don’t you think I am?” he asked gently.

Her eyes went up to his for a second, and then dropped, as she read something there that thrilled and hurt her. Without a word she went out into the hall and knocked at Arthur’s door.

“What does he want? I can’t be bothered to-night,” said Arthur Gwyn fretfully. “What a fellow he is for interrupting people when they’re busy!”

“I think you’d better see him, Arthur,” she said, and added: “And get it over.”

He shot a quick glance at her.

“What do you mean--get what over?” he asked.

“Whatever there is to get over,” said Leslie quietly.

Arthur looked down at the picturesque confusion of papers that covered his library table.

“All right, shoot him in,” he said ungraciously.

XVII

He did not attempt to rise from his chair when Dick entered, closing the door behind him.

“Sit down, will you, Alford? Leslie tells me you want to see me.”

“Leslie need not have given you that message. I’d already told you this afternoon that I would come to you for an explanation.”

“Of what?”

“Of the unpleasant happening at Gilder’s flat. This man proposed to your sister--you know that?”

“Leslie told me,” said the other, after a moment’s silence.

“And you were annoyed, one supposes? You will dismiss this clerk of yours to-morrow?”

The other leaned back in his chair.

“I don’t see why I should,” he said coolly. “After all, it’s no crime for any man to propose to a pretty girl. Of course, he’s not the sort of fellow I should choose for a brother-in-law, but if brothers had to choose husbands for their sisters, you know, Alford, there would be some very queer marriages!”

“What is his pull?” asked Dick quietly.

“I don’t----”

“What is his hold on you?”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“Just what I say. You would never tolerate a man like Gilder paying attentions to your sister, apart from the insult he offered to a prospective Countess of Chelford, unless he had such a grip on you that all your natural indignation was crushed by the fear of some consequence he held over your head.”

Arthur Gwyn found it difficult to control his voice.

“My dear fellow, how very melodramatic!” he scoffed. “Hold over me! You must have been studying the latest Drury Lane play! Naturally, I would rather see Leslie married to your brother, but I certainly would put no obstacle in her way if her heart was set elsewhere.”

“On Gilder, in fact?”

“On Gilder,” nodded Arthur gravely, as though the matter had been the subject of deep thought and much self-communion.

And then Dick Alford asked a question that brought the man to his feet, white and shaking.

“Is it the question of the bills?”

“The--the what?” faltered the lawyer.

“The four bills which were supposed to be backed by my brother--the signatures being forgeries. I thought you knew that I had seen them. They were shown to me at the bank, and fortunately I did not disclaim them--fortunately for you, I mean. When I went to see them again they were taken up. I presume Mr. Fabrian Gilder redeemed them. That would have cost him a little over five thousand pounds, and I presume he did not do that out of sheer altruism.”

Arthur Gwyn’s mouth was dry; he could scarcely articulate.

“I didn’t know until to-day,” he muttered. “Harry was ill at the time. The money was due to me for--for--legal costs. I went down to the bank to take them up and found they had been honoured.”

“Was that the pull?”

He did not meet the steady gaze that was fixed on him.

“Yes, that was the pull, if you want to know. You don’t suppose I’d allow Leslie to marry a swine like Gilder unless--unless he had something on me, do you? Can’t you understand my position, Alford? I’m ruined! That fellow could send me to jail--he still can.”

Dick shook his head.

“Fire him to-morrow,” he said. “If he produces the bills I will undertake that Harry will acknowledge the signatures.”

The pink came back to the colourless face of the lawyer.

“You’ll do this?” he said eagerly. “My God! you don’t know what a weight you’ve lifted off my mind. You’re a brick, by jove! I’ll fire him to-morrow.”

He held out an eager hand and Dick took it with some hesitation. At the best of times Arthur Gwyn did not impress him; at this moment, almost incoherent with relief, he seemed a pitiful coward.

“I will pay Harry every penny. I have something on the stocks now that will bring me in a fortune, that will wipe out all my debts and put me on my feet again.”

There was humour in the situation; for the thing which was to rehabilitate his fortunes was no less than the barefaced robbery of Harry Chelford’s inheritance! But Arthur was not conscious of the irony of the position. He would deal with Gilder in the morning. Thank God he had not gone still deeper into the mire! The knowledge that in his pocketbook was another bill as yet unuttered, did not cool the glow of virtue he was experiencing. Henceforth he would walk the straight way.

“There’s one thing you could do for me, Alford--hurry along that marriage. Fix it for next month if you can. Leslie is just a foolish girl, she is trying to put off the inevitable, but that’s natural, isn’t it? Can’t you buck up Harry----”

Dick Alford looked at him steadily.

“The matter must be left entirely to Leslie,” he said, and there was something very definite and final in those words.

They came out of the library together; Leslie waiting, a little fearful, saw the smile on her brother’s face and breathed a sigh of thankfulness.

“You’re not going?” Dick was reaching for his cap.

“I have to get back to the house,” he said, and, seeing her look of disappointment, he stood irresolutely.

“Come along in and play mah-jongg. I am in a mah-jongg mood,” said Arthur, almost jovially.

If there was one thing that Dick could not endure that night it was to sit vis-à-vis with Arthur Gwyn. He would have liked to stay with the girl, but for the moment her brother seemed an inevitable third. And he was terribly informative. Arthur was in his most expansive mood.

“Here is something that will interest you!”

He pointed to the wall. Hanging against a dark wooden shield was an iron dagger--black and sinister, the handle worn smooth, the long blade notched and jagged. Dick had seen it before.

“That should be at your place, Alford. The veritable dagger of the veritable Black Abbot’s slayer--Hubert of Redruth! Look at his arms on the hilt.…”

“I have seen it,” said Dick shortly. “Put on your coat and come for a walk, Leslie,” he suggested, and the obliging Arthur, who would have been agreeable to any scheme he propounded, seconded the suggestion.

XVIII

The night was cool and dark. There was a full moon, visible at intervals through the drift of clouds. Leslie slipped her arm into his as they walked down the dark avenue toward the road.

“Did you quarrel?” she asked.

“N-no, we didn’t quarrel,” said Dick. “There was a little plain speaking, but I think it cleared the air, and, after all, that was what I came for. He is dismissing Gilder to-morrow.”

She was silent at this, and did not speak again until they were on the road.

“Is that wise?” she asked. “I’m a little afraid of the man. I feel he would be a very bad enemy.”

She heard his soft laugh and felt reassured.

“He’s that all right,” said Dick; “the worst enemy any man could have, I should imagine. But an enemy is only dangerous in ratio to his hurting power. I don’t think Mr. Gilder will hurt anybody.”

“Not Arthur?” she asked.

“Not Arthur, and certainly not you.”

She squeezed his arm in hers.

“You’d be a wonderful brother,” she said.

“I am,” he said curtly, and she smiled in the darkness. “Your handsome relative asked me to persuade you to marry next month, and I told him point-blank that I would do nothing of the kind. Leslie, do you know that you never see Harry from one week-end to another?”

She had realized that for a long time, and it was a constant subject for self-reproach that she had less and less desire for her fiancé’s society.

“He is really not interested in me, Dick,” she said. “Harry is so absorbed in his treasure hunt and his queer chase after the elixir of life----”

“He’s told you that, has he?” asked Dick quickly.

“Why, of course!” she scoffed. “Do you know, Dick, he has almost convinced me that there is something in his idea?”

She waited for him to reply.

“Don’t you think so?”

“In the Life Water… perhaps there is.”

“And in the treasure?” she asked.

“Maybe. Generations of Chelfords have hunted for that wretched gold, and I suppose in the past four hundred years almost as much money has been spent in the search as the treasure is worth! I’m perfectly sure in my own mind that Good Queen Bess of pious memory bagged every bar of it!”

“And I’m perfectly sure she didn’t,” was the surprising reply. “I’ve been reading Elizabethan history very carefully, and the year that your ancestor hid his gold was the year that the Queen was so hard-pressed for money that she had to borrow from the Lombards.”

He stopped.

“Is that so?” incredulously.

“Absolutely. And if you weren’t such a sceptic and would read a little more, you would know what any schoolchild could tell you, that in 1582 the Queen was broke. Do you object to that vulgar word?”

“It is a familiar one at any rate,” he laughed.

They had reached the deep cutting, and he turned to the left, opened a gate, and they walked up a little path toward the ruins of Chelford Abbey.

The moon was showing through a rift in the clouds.

“You ought to see the Abbey by moonlight, if you’ve never seen it. It’s rather beautiful,” he said, as he gave her a hand to assist her up the steep path.

As they came in sight of the broken walls and towers of this ancient place of peace, something of the solemnity of the scene entered her heart, and she stood still, looking spellbound upon the wreckage of a once great abbey. The Abbey ruins stood on the broadest surface of what was locally known as the Mound--the high embankment which ran almost from Fossaway Abbey to the road, following the course of the little Ravensrill. Here, if tradition spoke the truth, a place of sacrifice had stood, before the English church had risen in flint, before the Norman monks laid chisel to stone on their great abbey.

The moon softened and idealized the broken stonework, and in her mind she went back through the years to those ancient times when the black-robed figures of the monks moved where she now stood. Below, to the left, she could see the fret of sparkling silver where the moon reflected in the Ravensrill. Here they had sat, these ancient men, with their fishing-rods, discussing the little events of their narrow world. They had passed into dust, and this great abbey, the pride of their eyes and the work of their hands, was crumbling rapidly into like nothingness.

“It is wonderful!” she breathed.

Were her eyes deceiving her? She could have sworn she saw something moving in the shadow of the old tower. He heard the quick intake of her breath.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know--my imagination, I think. I thought I saw somebody moving there.”

He followed the direction of her eyes.

“There would be nobody here at this time of the night, unless it is the Black Abbot,” he said jocularly, “and we’re not scared of him, are we?”

“I’m not, for one,” she said, with a firmness that she was far from feeling.

At that moment she heard something--something that turned her blood to water. It was a low moan of anguish, a sobbing diminuendo of sound that began on a high note and wailed down the scale until it was inaudible.

“What was that?” she asked, grasping his arm.

He did not speak; he was straining his eyes toward the shadows.

Again the sound, this time a wail that ended in a scream. He caught the girl by the shoulder. At that moment he had seen a figure moving away from the Abbey toward the river. A tall, black figure that showed clearly in the moonlight. She saw it, too.

“Don’t leave me, Dick!” she begged, as she felt him strain away from her.

Then of a sudden she felt his tension relax.

“Let him go,” he said, half to himself.

She clung to him desperately, frantically, as the figure stumbled and staggered toward the trees that would presently engulf him. The dreadful Thing ran on, stopping now and again to turn and gibber and mouth at the man and the woman who stood motionless on the edge of the cutting. Waving wild arms, now howling in dreadful glee, now screaming in senseless fear, it vanished in the dark of the wood--an obscene, uncleanly thing, that belonged to bad dreams and the horrid imaginings of madness. Far away in the distance came the howl of him, and then the night swallowed him up.

“How dreadful!”

And then her knees gave under her and she remembered no more.

XIX

Leslie opened her eyes and frowned up into the face that was bent over her. She was lying on the verge of the road, for Dick had carried her down into the cutting and a hundred yards toward Willow House.

“Oh, how awful!” she shuddered, and closed her eyes. “It was the Black Abbot?”

Dick Alford did not reply for a while. His anxiety for the girl was such that all other interests had passed from his mind.

“I am all right now,” she said, and, with his assistance, stood shakily on her feet. “I told you I was a fool. This is my crazy day! Dick, what was it?”

“He was too far away from me to see,” said Dick; “probably one of our stupid villagers under the influence of drink.”

She shook her head.

“No, it was not that, Dick! It was----” She shuddered again. “I think I’d better go home.”

“I think you’d be wise,” he said gravely. “I wish I hadn’t brought you out now.”

She laughed a little shakily and clung to him tighter.

“In a way I’m glad you did,” she said, as they walked slowly toward her home. “Dick, I had all sorts of queer dreams: just before I woke up I felt somebody kiss me. It was so convincing that I can still feel the lips on my cheek.”

“I kissed you,” he said, without shame. “I thought the shock would bring you to life!”

Her laughter was almost hysterical, for Leslie’s nerves were jangled and on edge.

“You might at least have denied that,” she said. “Dick, you have no subtlety!”

As they walked slowly toward the house, she noticed that he looked back once or twice.

“You’re not expecting that--that thing to follow us, are you?” she asked, her teeth chattering.

“No, I thought I heard a car” (which was true). “I’ll swear I saw a haze of light over the crest of the road, but I must have been mistaken.”

He was not mistaken, and knew it. A car had been following them, had been slowly ascending the hill to the cutting; he had seen the reflected rays from the lamps distinctly, and had heard the soft purr of engines. What was more certain than anything else, the car could not have turned in that narrow road, so that the only explanation was that the unknown driver had switched off his lights and stopped his machine.

“Let me look at you.” He turned her to the moonlight and lifted her face. “I don’t know whether you’re horribly pale or whether it’s a trick of the moon,” he said, “but you look mighty ill: You had better go straight to bed, preferably without seeing your brother.”

“Why?” she asked, in surprise.

“I don’t want this spook story to get around, for one thing,” he said. “And for another--oh well, the other doesn’t matter.”

Leslie realized that she was walking at a much slower pace than her physical weakness justified. She was still a little shaky, but in every sense had recovered from the shock. Too sane to believe in ghosts, she had, nevertheless, been shaken by the terrible experience. She leaned heavily on Dick’s arm as they paced up the avenue to the house, turning on to the grass that Arthur should not hear their footsteps and come out to give them a boisterous welcome. Presently, with a sigh, she dropped his arm.

“I’m glad I went out,” she said, in a low voice. “And I’m rather glad----” She did not finish the sentence.

The silence that followed was a little disturbing for both of them. Suddenly she faced him.

“Dick, do you want me to marry your brother?”

He did not answer.

“Do you--really?”

She heard his sigh in the dark. She could not see his face, for they stood in the shadow of a great cedar immediately before the house.

“I don’t know,” he said. There was a bleakness in his voice she had heard once before. “It isn’t a question of my liking. I can offer you no reason why you should not marry him. You must do what you want, Leslie. The decision must rest entirely with you--and if I were a praying man, I would spend the night praying that you did right.”

“Do you wish me to marry him?” she asked again.

“I cannot tell you.” His voice was hard, and there swept over her a wave of unreasonable anger and resentment against his detachment.

“I won’t ask you that question again,” she said, her voice trembling. “Good-night, Dick.”

She ran into the hall and up to her room, and long after she had gone, he stood where she had left him, looking wistfully at the door which had closed upon her.

With something like despair at his heart, Dick Alford walked quickly along the road toward Fontwell Cutting. He had something to distract his mind for the moment.

There was no sign of the car, and, instead of passing through the cutting gates, he continued over the brow of the hill.

When he went out at night he invariably carried a small flash lamp (he kept a supply of them at the house, for his electric supply had a trick of failing at inconvenient moments) and this he took from his pocket, and, switching on, threw the light on the road, sweeping the beam from side to side. This was not a main thoroughfare, and, except his own and Gwyn’s car, and an occasional tradesman’s Ford, there was little traffic. He saw the diamond-shaped impress of Arthur Gwyn’s Rolls, could pick out his own little machine, and presently he saw a new track: the track of tires with an arrow-shaped tread. He could distinguish the exact spot at which it had stopped. Apparently the driver had made no attempt to turn, but had gone backward some distance. He followed the trail till it curved round, apparently into an open field. The wagon gate was closed, but on the loamy earth the mark of wheels was very apparent.

Red Farm! thought Dick, and, opening the gate, he went into the field. His search was a very short one, for the deserted car was parked close under the hedge parallel with the road. All the lights were out, but the radiator was still hot. He examined the machine carefully; it bore a London number and was new: an American touring car, replete with all the gadgets of its kind. He made a careful note of the number and, walking back to the gate, sat on the top rail and waited.

His vigil was not a protracted one. From where he sat he could see over the swelling hill the top curve of the Abbey arch, and five minutes after he had taken up his position he saw a figure silhouetted against the skyline cross the brow and descend the hill toward him.