Part 9

“He’s an accountant,” said Dick glibly. “He’s also quite an amusing fellow and full of weird information. I’m going to try a little on you. Do you know that Robinson Crusoe was a German?”

“Why, of course, his father lived in Bremen,” she said, and he was still laughing when he took her into the library.

In the presence of his fiancée Lord Chelford exhibited a nervousness and a _gaucherie_ which might have been understandable if he were meeting her for the first time. He had never quite overcome the novelty of his engagement, and his attitude toward her was one of awe rather than of reverence.

“How do you do, Leslie?”

He had never kissed her in his life; now he held her hand for a fraction of a second and dropped it as though it burnt him.

“Do you know Mr. Tuttler?”

“Puttler,” said the other, and Leslie looked into the melancholy eyes and read something in them that Dick had missed, and possibly Mr. Puttler’s closest associate had not seen.

She did not pay him the poor compliment of feeling sorry for him, though she read in those quick-lighting deeps a craving for woman’s sympathy which nature, by her cruel handiwork, had repelled in advance.

“Glad to know you, Miss Gwyn. I know your brother--Mr. Arthur Gwyn, the solicitor, isn’t it? I thought so.”

“Has Arthur come?” asked Harry.

“No,” said Dick. “We’re going to have tea in the drawing-room. Will you come along, Harry?”

“Surely, surely,” he said hastily. “You’ll excuse me, dear----” It was an effort to employ even so banal an expression of affection.

When they reached the beautiful drawing-room, with its windows open to the terrace, and a riot of gorgeous sulphur chrysanthemums showing above the stone balustrade, they found they were alone. Mr. Puttler had melted away as they were passing through the hall. He explained, afterward, that he wanted to stroll through the gardens, but the girl knew that the man’s uncanny instinct had told him that, of all the people in the world, these two were satisfied best with each other’s company.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I didn’t get up till lunch time,” he said. “And you?”

She shook her head.

“No, I couldn’t sleep. Poor Arthur!”

“Did you try beefsteak?” he asked brutally. “Really, the most incongruous company I can imagine is a black eye and Arthur Gwyn!”

“He is awfully shaken,” she said seriously. “I have never known him to be so upset. It _was_ Mr. Gilder.”

“I knew,” said Dick, “or, at least, I guessed. Did you find out the cause of the quarrel?”

She hesitated.

“I don’t know; I think it was something to do with me.”

“What was Gilder doing at your house?”

“Arthur didn’t tell me,” she replied. “From what he said I gather that Mr. Gilder had been watching Arthur and had followed him somewhere.”

“To the Abbey ruins--yes, that is quite possible. And of course your brother objected to that, naturally. Why are they watching each other?”

“Is Arthur watching Gilder?” she asked in surprise.

“It almost looks like it. Leslie, I want to tell you something that nobody else knows, not even Harry. It may bring a little ease to your mind in the dark hours of the night. Puttler is a detective, a Scotland Yard man.”

She stared at him.

“A detective? Why on earth----?”

“Things have been happening that I don’t very much like,” said Dick. “I’ve been worried nearly sick about them, and though I’m quite capable of dealing with most contingencies, the Lord has ordained that I should take seven hours’ rest in every twenty-four, and there must be somebody awake when I’m asleep.”

“The Black Abbot--is that what is worrying you?”

He bit his lip thoughtfully.

“Yes and no. Some aspects of the Black Abbot’s activities trouble me more than I should like to confess. Leslie, do you believe in the treasure?”

“The Chelford treasure?” she asked, in surprise. “And what do you mean by believing in it? It is true that the gold was brought to Fossaway Manor in olden times, isn’t it?”

“Perfectly true,” said Dick, “and perfectly true, I should imagine, that it was taken away. But do you believe that it has any existence, that it can be found? Suppose one dug up every square inch of the park, pulled down this old house of ours, probed into the bowels of the earth, do you think it is possible that the gold could be found? Because, if you don’t, there are other people who do besides Harry.”

“Do you believe?” she challenged.

He heaved a deep sigh.

“Heaven knows, I’m ready to believe anything! And I thought I should never drag down my lofty intelligence to such deeps. But, Leslie, my dear, I am getting----” He paused for a word.

“Convinced?”

“Not exactly convinced, but shaken in my obstinacy. I’ve become a doubter of my own scepticism, and that’s the worst mental condition a man can reach--or almost the worst,” he added.

“Does Harry know you are a convert?” Her fine eyes twinkled with mischief.

“He suspects me,” said Dick gloomily. “If I thought the money was here----”

She regarded him steadily.

“Would it make a big difference to you, Dick?” she asked.

“Me personally?” He shook his head. “Lord, no! It would make a difference to the----” He paused. “To Harry. I was going to say the estate. The estate, to me, is something distinct from any personality. It stands for the agglomeration of dead men’s efforts, the cumulative sum of all their strivings.”

She looked at him for a long time in wonder. She loved him in this serious mood of his.

“You’ve made rather a fetish of Fossaway Manor and the Chelford estates, haven’t you?”

“Have I?” He was genuinely surprised. “I wonder…” And then he laughed. “It isn’t a bad line for a second son to exalt the estates to which he will never succeed, above the personality of the man who will get it! It makes him rather superior to the real heir. Put my fetish worship down to vanity, for the Lord knows I have my share of that.”

“I doubt it,” she said quietly. “Come out on to the terrace. Your flowers are lovely.”

“‘Everything in the garden----’” he began, but she checked him with a warning finger.

“If you get banal I shall go in and find Puttler.”

XXV

She leaned on the gray stone balustrade and looked down upon the wind-stirred tresses of great golden chrysanthemums, each as big as a large-sized saucer. They were not all gold; there were deep red blooms and snowy white and flaming orange, and beyond them a huge bed of late-flowering roses; even from this distance, she could catch the delicate fragrance of them.

“It’s a beautiful old place,” she said in a hushed voice. “I don’t wonder that you love it. How long has your family owned this estate, Dick?”

“Eight hundred years,” he said. “The first of the Chelfords sliced off the head of the original owner and stole the property. Successive generations of Chelfords, whose own heads were cut off with monotonous regularity, enclosed a few thousand acres of common land belonging to the people--and there you are!”

She laughed softly.

“You have very few illusions, have you?”

“None,” was his curt reply, and somehow the answer hurt her.

They had to send twice for Harry before he put in an appearance, and he seemed disappointed to find that Puttler was not there.

“That is quite an intelligent fellow, Dick,” he said, delicately spearing a cucumber sandwich. “He has an extraordinary knowledge of history, particularly English history. Unfortunately, he doesn’t read German” [Harry read German as well as he read English, French, or Italian] “but I have persuaded him to take up the study. Have you everything you want, Leslie?”

He had helped her to nothing, and was happy to find that her requirements had been supplied. Only twice he spoke to her: once to ask about Arthur, and the other time when he made an oblique reference to his forthcoming marriage.

“Marriage ceremonies and the pomp of them are a little indelicate, I think. It is a barbarous custom, these veils and bridesmaids and barbaric orange-blossoms. Now in America I am told that it is quite the usual thing to be married in a drawing-room. I’m sure that could be arranged, couldn’t it, Dick? The bishop is quite an obliging old gentleman.”

“Turn Puttler on him: he’s an authority on church ritual,” said Dick.

“The man is an authority on most things,” said Harry, with unaccustomed enthusiasm. “He was telling me that possibly there was some cryptogram in existence which would give a direct clue as to the treasure.” And then, seeing the half smile on the girl’s face, he gave one of his rare boyish laughs. “We are still chasing shadows, Leslie, but it is a very substantial shadow, believe me. Now, Puttler thinks…”

They listened without comment to Puttler’s views, which in this case were neither informative nor particularly brilliant.

“Puttler’s mind apparently runs to dungeons, and there are dungeons to this place,” said Harry vigorously. “I am going to have a look round to-morrow. There are probably secret places under the floor which might be profitably examined.”

“The dungeons, as you call them, are wine cellars,” said Dick ominously; “and if Puttler goes fooling around my port there will be trouble! Besides which, Harry, I don’t suppose there has been a single ancestor of ours who hasn’t dug up the floor of that unfortunate dungeon--one of them in the days of the Regency had the walls stripped, and the beggar never replaced the stone. It cost our father the best part of a thousand pounds to repair the damage done by this old gold-hound!”

Dick noticed that whilst Harry was present the girl’s manner was just a little strained and unreal, and she was nervous, too, started when she was addressed, and was content to listen without including herself in the conversation. It was not until Harry had gone, with a lame apology, back to the library that she became her real self again, and the old Leslie crept forth from its hiding place. Once, whilst he and his brother were discussing the affair of the dungeons, she had walked on to the terrace, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her in profile, a slim, frail-looking girl, with her delicate face and her glorious hair, and in the setting she looked almost ethereal. It was as though some old masterpiece of Botticelli had come to life.

When the door had closed on Harry she came back and sat down with a little grimace.

“Was it very rude of me to go out? Dicky, I can’t work up any interest in the things that really fascinate Harry! Whatever will he talk about when the treasure is found?”

“The treasure? Oh, you mean the gold? He will probably talk about you.”

She made a little moue.

“I’m too young to be interesting to Harry, three hundred years too young,” she said. “Now tell me about your detective. I liked what I saw of him. He is to be your little guardian angel? And, Dick, will he have a beat--is that the word? Because, if he has, I do hope he’ll take in Willow House. I’ll even lend him my car.”

“Are you really frightened?”

She thought for a while before she replied.

“I think I am,” she said. “When I was a child the first air raids fascinated me, the second were interesting, but after the third or fourth they became--just air raids. And the Black Abbot--well, he’s very picturesque, Dick, but he’s rather terrifying. Didn’t you tell me that Harry feared him?”

“He does a little.”

“Why, I wonder?”

“Harry is naturally of a nervous temperament,” said Dick. “People are born that way, and it is absurd to talk of ‘cowardice’ where they are concerned. Now I was born without the knowledge of nerves, and I daresay if you saw me chasing the Black Abbot you would think I was terribly brave. As a matter of fact, it is simply because I’ve no imagination.”

“That isn’t true,” she said. “Why do you always belittle yourself?”

“Because I am by nature excessively modest,” he said gravely, and at that moment they caught sight of Mr. Puttler strolling through the long lines of rose trees that ran parallel with the eastern wing. Together they went down the terrace steps and intercepted him.

“It is a lovely place,” said Mr. Puttler, shaking his head in admiration. “I’ve never seen so many roses together in my life, except at Covent Garden Market, and they’re not roses, they’re just merchandise.”

“I’ve told Miss Gwyn that you’re a detective, Puttler.”

Puttler frowned at this.

“You know Miss Gwyn better than I do,” he said good-humouredly. “Speaking for myself, I find that life is much easier to live if you keep your mouth shut. Not,” he added hastily, “that I want to be offensive. That’s only my way of reasoning and my way of talking. There used to be an officer in our division who rose from the rank of plain police constable to superintendent by the simple process of never saying anything to anybody. If he was asked for his opinion on a matter he used to shake his head and say there was much to be said on both sides but he had his own private opinion, and even when he was called into a case he’d say nothing, but listen to what everybody else said and smile. That smile was worth a thousand a year to him.”

They crossed the rose garden and were strolling across the lawn. Under a huge elm Mr. Puttler stopped to continue a story which was fated never to be finished.

“One day the superintendent said to this man, whose name was Carter, ‘Carter,’ he said, ‘I can’t understand----’”

_Crack!_

A bullet snicked past the detective’s face, struck the bole of the tree, and sent the bark splintering. From a clump of rhododendron bushes two hundred yards away floated a pale blue cloud.

“Down on your face!” said Dick hoarsely, and dragged the girl to the ground, only just in time.

_Crack!_

The second bullet struck a little lower. A splinter of bark hummed past the girl’s ear.

“There’s someone in those bushes who doesn’t like me,” said Mr. Puttler.

Pulling a long-barrelled Browning from his pocket and bending low, he sprinted toward the bushes, zigzagging as he ran.

A third shot rang out and the running man pitched forward on his face and lay still.

XXVI

Dick flew forward to the prostrate figure, and, kneeling by his side, turned him on his back. His eyelids were working spasmodically, but there was no sign of injury, except a bruise on the side of his face which had been caused by his coming violently into contact with the ground. And then Dick saw the man’s right boot. The sole had been ripped off and there was a patch of blood showing on the toe of the sock. At the sound of a rustling skirt Dick turned his head. The girl was coming toward them.

“Go back behind that tree and don’t move,” he shouted authoritatively, but for once she did not obey him.

She was rather pale, but there was no other evidence of fear, as she knelt by his side and began to unfasten the collar of the stricken man.

“He’s stunned. I don’t think it’s anything worse than that,” said Dick. “I thought at first he was finished--look at his boot!”

He was pulling it off gingerly and the operation must have hurt a little, because the detective winced and opened his eyes.

“Hullo! What has happened?” he asked, looking round. “Did that bird shoot me?”

“I don’t think he’s hurt you very much.” Dick was looking at the foot. The bullet had ricochetted, cutting a shallow gash on the man’s instep, but there was no other injury.

“Do you feel fit enough to look after Miss Gwyn?” said Dick.

The detective reached round for the gun he had dropped and humped himself to his feet. Without another word, Dick raced across the grass-land to the bushes, and the girl watched him in terror, expecting every second to hear the fourth and the fatal shot.

After five minutes he emerged from the bushes, holding something in his hand which he was examining curiously as he walked toward them.

“A Lee-Enfield rifle, army pattern,” he said. “I found these shells.”

He put them into the detective’s hand. Puttler examined the exploded cartridges carefully.

“You didn’t see him, of course?” he said.

“No, I think he must have got round to the back of the house. The bushes ran practically from the west wing of Fossaway Manor to the end of the Mound. He might of course be still hidden in the bushes, but the probability is that he made his getaway as soon as he saw you fall,” said Dick. “I think we’d better go inside and I will find you a pair of shoes, unless you have a spare supply.”

They were halfway to the house when they met Lord Chelford.

“Who was that shooting?” he asked irritably. “Dick, I told you that I did not want rabbit shooting or any other kind of shooting within half a mile of the house. It gets on my nerves terribly. Really, I think you must show a little more consideration.”

The girl had opened her lips to explain when Dick caught her eye, and with splendid mendacity she invented a hurried but effective excuse.

“My fault, Harry. I saw a stoat, and I hate stoats.”

The fact that none of them carried a rifle was unnoticed by Harry.

“Well, of course…” He was obviously taken back by her championship. “If that’s the case it can’t be helped. Only in future, Dick, old boy…”

He walked rapidly back to the house.

“Why shouldn’t he be told?” asked Leslie. Then, realizing the foolishness of the question, she was all penitence. “There is no reason why he should be, of course. I was silly to suggest it. But, Dick, who did such a terrible thing? It couldn’t have been an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident: of that I can assure you,” said Mr. Puttler, nursing his injury. “The first two shots that were fired hit the tree within three inches of each other. Are you going to notify the local police, Mr. Alford?”

Dick thought for a moment, then decided against that course, and to Leslie’s surprise the detective approved.

“I think you’re right,” said Puttler. “Where is the nearest rifle range?”

“About fifteen miles away,” said Dick sardonically. “You needn’t follow that line of thought.”

“I’m not following any line of thought,” said the detective. “I’m only foreseeing possible alibis. I spend my life standing in front of alibis and waving a red flag.”

Through the tan, Dick’s face was gray. He seemed suddenly to have gone old, and Leslie looked at him anxiously.

“Dick, at whom were they shooting?”

“I don’t know that they were shooting at anybody,” he said wearily. “They just loosed off a few rounds to scare us.”

And then he laughed; it was a fierce, hard little laugh, and she winced at the sound of it.

“I am thinking of Harry and his nerves, and the stoat and every damned ridiculous---- I beg your pardon, Leslie; I’m afraid I’m getting rattled.”

She smiled at this.

“Dick, will you say good-bye to Harry for me? I promised my brother I would come home early. No, really, you need not take me. I’m not at all afraid of being held up by armed desperadoes!”

“Neither am I,” said Dick, “but I don’t fancy you overmuch as a driver.”

And in her annoyance at this false accusation she forgot to resist his escort.

By the time he had returned to the house, Puttler had secured a dressing for his foot. The injury was so slight that he could resume his shoes, and pooh-poohed the suggestion that he had better lie up that night.

“It was a narrow escape,” he said, “but I’m rather glad I got that bullet, and that it didn’t go where it was intended.”

Dick looked at him steadily.

“For whom was it intended?” he asked.

Without hesitation came the reply:

“For Miss Leslie Gwyn: I thought you knew that.”

Dick could find no answer, but in his heart of hearts he knew that Puttler was speaking the truth.

XXVII

Mr. Fabrian Gilder, sometime head clerk to the firm of Gwyn & Gwyn, and now a gentleman of leisure, was in one sense a hard man. He did not forgive even slight injuries, and in the past had gone a long way out of his path to get even with those who had the misfortune to affront him. And Arthur Gwyn had offended beyond hope of forgiveness. A few days before, Gilder would have thought it a very simple matter to be revenged upon his enemy; but now the simple process of laying an information and of preferring a charge of forgery was contingent upon four bills which were in his possession being repudiated by the man who was alleged to have backed them.

He could do no more than present those interesting documents, and this he did through his bank. Dick had already made arrangements for their redemption. It was not entirely an act of philanthropy on his part, for he was a business man, and took over from the frankly reluctant Mr. Gwyn the choice of a number of unsalable shares which Dick regarded as having a certain value. The bills, which had been renewed from time to time, were met, and that ended Mr. Gilder’s chance of carrying his threat into execution.

He was the type of man who thrived on opposition. Though it would be true to say that he had fallen in love with Leslie Gwyn the first time he had seen her, which was months before that unpleasant scene at his flat, his desire for her grew as his chance of winning her receded farther and farther into the background.

On the night that Dick had found him examining the ruins of the Abbey, Mr. Gilder had returned to the cut road when he thought the coast was clear and had discovered yet another in quest of the treasure. He had witnessed the interview between the two men and had followed Arthur back to Willow House with no other intention than to offer his help, for a consideration, in discovering this mythical fortune. For Mr. Gilder had heard quite enough that day he surprised his employer with Mary Wenner, to know that somewhere under the Abbey lay either the fortune or its key. He had overtaken Arthur on the drive, and Arthur was in an unpleasant mood: hot with the man at the interruption of his search, smarting under the sting of Dick Alford’s sarcasm.

At first, startled by the unexpected apparition of his head clerk, Arthur had snarled round on him, and there and then discharged him from his service and defied him to do his worst. It was Gilder who had struck the first blow.

When Arthur was in his more unpleasant moods he said things that no self-respecting man could endure, and the black eye which the lawyer nursed was an advertisement of his indiscretion.