CHAPTER XIV.

A DOCTOR IN DURANCE

“What’s that?” Wilfred Barlow asked nervously.

“A police lantern! What did you think it was?” replied the old man calmly. Then, putting his head out of the window, he ordered: “Sharp to the right, and through the low woods. Did you leave the gates open as I told you to?” The man on the driving seat mumbled something that was evidently satisfactory, and the car, swinging sharply to the right, rushed along a cart track used chiefly for communicating with the game preserves. Fainter and fainter grew the sounds of the whistles, and, as the driver got used to the road, the faster he drove the car.

“Through Eggleham and across the marsh!” again ordered Mr. Benson, and the driver nodded. They reached the main road after a run of two miles through woods and fields belonging to the Evenden Priory estate, and, for a few hundred yards, rushed along the great white thoroughfare, then turned down a by-road leading to the little hamlet of Eggleham. Swiftly, passing through the sleeping group of cottages, the car continued along the narrow road, until Joe Litt observed to Mr. Benson:

“Here’s the old occupation road, sir.”

“Then tell him to take it--if he knows it,” said the lawyer.

“Knows it like a book,” said Joe Litt, and spoke a word to the driver, who slowed the car down. Then, after crawling along for a few yards, he turned off the road and entered a grass-grown way, half field, half road.

In reality the road, or narrow field, belonged to no one now in these later days. Villagers with a cow or a horse could let the animals graze at will there. It wound erratically along, turning and bending for more than a mile, until it reached the marsh, when it lost itself in the treacherous, swampy waste ground that stretched for many miles to the Broads, in the south.

Now the car proceeded very carefully indeed; for, it was a work of great skill, even in the daytime, to thread a safe way through the hidden pools and morasses. The man driving, nearly stopped occasionally, but never quite, and only an anxious glance, that he kept giving over the side at the ground, told of their occasional nearness to disaster.

Through all the journey Laidlaw remained unconscious, Wilfred frequently feeling his pulse to make certain that he was in a safe condition.

At last the ruined farm was reached, and the car drew up at the door.

“I’ve made things as comfortable as I can,” said Joe Litt, “but there isn’t much need of comfort here, as you know, for me, sir.”

“That’ll be all right,” said Mr. Benson. “There’s not much comfort needed now, I give you my word. Take him in.”

The last words were addressed to the farm hands, who were alighting, and two of them immediately carried the insensible Dr. Laidlaw into the farm kitchen. A great fire was burning on the hearth, and another laborer got up sleepily from a settee on which he had been reclining.

“We’ll begin now as we mean to go on, Joe,” said the lawyer. “Appoint some one to remain with him, and never let him be alone for a single second, so that he can play no tricks. Where are you going to put him?”

“I’ve had a bit of fire lit in the old parlor, sir, and there’s big shutters to the window, and curtains, so no one can see a light there. I thought of putting him in there.”

“Yes, that’ll do all right, but I don’t see any reason to keep the window shuttered in the daytime. You can get warning of the approach of anyone within two miles, and then you can slip him in the barn, can’t you?”

“Yes, that was what I was thinking,” said Joe Litt. “If there was any search or anything, I would have him fastened up and muzzled and put under the hay.”

They carried the recumbent doctor through a door and along a damp-smelling passage, to a room which had once been the great parlor of the farm, but was now only the happy hunting ground of beetles and occasional rats.

The old farm of Swinerigmire--always pronounced locally in three words, Swine-Rig-Mire--had a curious history. Years ago it was in the occupation of a family called Foulder, and was a very prosperous farm on the outskirts of the marsh. The last of the Foulders married very late in life, and his wife bore him a daughter. She left him at the same moment that she presented him with the girl, who was to be the apple of his eye.

When Norah Foulder was sixteen she “kept company” with Joe Litt, then a lad of about twenty and her aged father’s right-hand man. Norah was wonderfully sweet, but her beauty turned out to be fatal to Joe Litt’s hopes. She met a young engineer taking a holiday in the Broad country, who had wandered afield in the marshes and met a vision of unexpected beauty in such a wilderness. Then, something happened that broke the old man’s life, and destroyed for Joe Litt any hopes of happiness.

The engineer deserted Norah, but he had told her enough of the life of the great cities to fire her imagination, and she went away with him. No one ever heard from her again. Joe Litt, who never before in his life had traveled beyond Norwich, journeyed to London, and for a week wandered round in pathetic helplessness, searching for Norah. Then he gave it up. Like her father, he gave up everything else, too, dismissed the staff, and just let the farm go to rack and ruin, only cultivating such acreage as was absolutely necessary to preserve life. The old man died a few months after his daughter had disappeared, leaving Joe the farm--and there he lived alone. His companions were a few sheep, a couple of cows, some poultry, and a horse which he yoked occasionally to a crazy old cart and drove to the market.

The marsh, ever jealous of ground once wrested from its depths, came into its own again after the centuries, slowly, ever so slowly, but with deadly certainty and little suckling sounds of satisfaction it encroached. Outlying fields were already bearing its mud and reeds in exchange for the poppies and gold of the days when the marsh was made to obey the behests of men, and reluctantly presented its master with rolling fields of grain.

But, though a recluse, Joe Litt was not a bitter man. The old lawyer was very fond of him. He had been of service to Mr. Benson on more than one occasion; and, indeed, Joe was always only too ready to help anyone. No farmer ever called to him in vain, and he was a giant among men as a worker. Uncouth in appearance, he was not without a gentleness of manner that endeared him to women and children and animals.

Joe’s life was in no sense an idle one--it was simply that he had lost interest in his own future, and took rather a sad delight in beholding the ruin of the once prosperous farm. It seemed suitable, he thought--a monument to the loss of the farm’s most precious inhabitant, a register of ruin.

The room into which the unconscious little doctor was now brought, still contained the faded furniture and the worn carpet of the old days. Everything suffered from damp; the room smelt musty, the walls were mildewed, the ceiling broken down in places, the floor boards dangerous and rotten. Joe knew that these were all heralds of the approaching marsh, but the lawyer sniffed.

“Joe, my lad,” he said, “this damp is enough to give a rhinoceros the rheumatics. Keep a good fire on, Joe, because I’m going to spend a bit of time with him to-morrow.”

Joe assented. And, after leaving two men in charge of Laidlaw, the others went to the great kitchen, where a huge pot of coffee was served, with rashers of ham.

“That smells good,” announced the lawyer. “Come on, Barlow, have a plate of ham. This your own curing, Joe?”

“Yes, Mr. Benson. I never buy nothing in the way of bacon and that sort of thing.” Mr. Benson nodded with his mouth full of the delicious ham.

“Now then, Joe,” he said presently, when the meal was over, “I shall be round about eleven o’clock to-morrow. Is my man ready?”

The driver was brought forward and the journey back across the marsh was begun. It was more difficult now; for, the moon that had been shining was set, and a mist was veiling the marsh. After a long time, however, they threaded their way safely back to the road. And then it was an easy matter to get to the Priory.

Mr. Benson stopped the car in the game coverts behind the house, and he and Wilfred walked the remaining quarter of a mile.

They approached the house from the rear, skirted the kitchens, and then very carefully surveyed the front of the building. There was not a sign of life. Keeping close to the wall, Mr. Benson approached the library window and opened it; then, followed by Wilfred, he stepped through.

“Now, my boy,” announced the old lawyer, “we’ll get some sleep; we’ve done a good night’s work, and we’ll do better work to-morrow, when we get that little murderer talking. I’ve arranged for a bed for you next door to me. Have a drink?”

The old lawyer and Wilfred talked for a further five minutes over a tot of whisky, then went to bed. In the morning, while Wilfred was still asleep, the old lawyer was up attending to his letters and telephoning. At breakfast, the butler said that the police had blown whistles and caused an alarm during the night. It appeared that a constable had seen some men appear, apparently from nowhere, near the Prior’s Tower, carrying a corpse to a waiting motor car.

“What had you been giving the constable to drink?” Mr. Benson asked the butler severely. “This is a very serious thing, you know.”

After a moment, during which the butler seemed unhappy, Mr. Benson looked up sharply. “What had you been giving the constable?”

“Well, sir,” said the butler, with a little cough, “the constable, sir, is rather partial to Helen, the housemaid, sir, and I am given to understand that he had a little game pie.”

“Game pies do not make constables see men appearing from nowhere, carrying corpses to waiting motor cars!” announced Mr. Benson with decision.

“No, sir, of course not,” agreed the butler seriously. “I am further informed, sir, that the constable had a little ale----”

“Send for Helen immediately,” interrupted Mr. Benson, who was thoroughly enjoying himself. Presently Helen appeared trembling. She was a pretty, buxom girl, very dark, with laughing blue eyes--an Irish type.

“What did the constable drink--your constable, I mean?” asked the lawyer.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” she replied, “He had a little beer, if you please, sir.”

“How many quarts?” asked Mr. Benson, thumping his fist upon the table and looking terrible.

“Oh, only one, sir--well, not more than one-and-a-half at the outside, sir.” Mr. Benson nodded solemnly.

“How much whisky?”

“Oh, sir, only a nip. Just a little to keep the cold out, sir. He suffers with a weak chest. Oh, sir, I hope he will not get into trouble.”

“No, I’ll fix it up for him,” said Mr. Benson, nodding towards the door.

The girl withdrew, and soon Wilfred appeared. When the butler left the room, Mr. Benson told him of the fortunate incident of the discredited constable on watch. Wilfred enjoyed the joke heartily, and after breakfast Mr. Benson sent for the constable’s sergeant and obtained from him an assurance that no disciplinary action would be taken against the constable for his stupid mistake.

Mr. Benson found that Lady Evenden was not so well that morning, and decided not to see her. Wilfred took advantage of the opportunity to spend half an hour with Jill, who was exceedingly surprised to see her lover in the house. Wilfred told her that he was assisting Mr. Benson in the general inquiry, and that, as there might be another nocturnal visitor for the old lawyer, he had offered to sleep near him--an offer, he said, which the lawyer had accepted.

Not a syllable did he breathe about the strange adventure in the night.

At half-past ten, Mr. Benson was dressed ready for riding; and, as a mount also had been arranged for Wilfred, the two set off across country to the lonely farm of Swinerigmire.

Long before they approached, they were seen by Joe Litt’s trustworthy watchers, and when they pulled up at the farm door, the master of the ruined house himself met them.

“He’s been going on something terrible, sir,” said Joe to Mr. Benson. “Cursing and threatening and all sorts of things.”

“Never mind, Joe,” said Mr. Benson darkly. “It’s nothing to how he’ll go on in a few minutes. Come on, Wilfred.”

Followed by Joe Litt, Wilfred and Mr. Benson walked through the kitchen, and through the darkened, damp passage to the parlor where Laidlaw was.

The doctor sat by the fire in a huge armchair, looking very white and sick, and glowering fiercely at two laborers who sat opposite him on bench, smoking clay pipes. Their eyes never left him.

As the lawyer and Wilfred entered the room, the doctor was in the midst of a tirade of threats, which was absolutely wasted upon his audience; they merely sat stolidly there, watching him and smoking their pipes. When he saw who his visitors were, Laidlaw stood up.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?” he asked. “I’ll have the law on you for this!”

“I certainly would, if I were you,” agreed Mr. Benson reasonably. “Your treatment includes a good many indictable offences. There is, for instance, the kidnaping--a most serious thing; there is the violence; then the question of illegal detention and false imprisonment arises. Oh, you have an unanswerable case against me--that’s why I’m going to murder you and bury you in the marsh.”

The lawyer spoke so quietly, and in such matter-of-fact tones, that, to begin with, the doctor could not understand whether he was being chaffed or whether the lawyer was actually stating a case seriously. At his last words, accompanied by a dangerous glint in Mr. Benson’s terrible eyes, Laidlaw positively quailed; he gasped, and, with eyes staring in horror at the lawyer, collapsed into his chair.

“Examine him,” said Mr. Benson briefly to Wilfred, and immediately the young doctor went over and felt the prisoner’s pulse and examined his eyes.

“H’m--not much wrong, beyond shock,” he declared. “I’ll give him a dose of something.”

“Yes, and I’ll give him a dose of something, too!” Mr. Benson said darkly, with an ominous nod of his head. And the unfortunate Laidlaw shivered again.

Wilfred Barlow gave the terrified man a stimulant, and, after a few moments, during which they watched the color return to his face, Mr. Benson dismissed the two laborers, and he and Wilfred were left alone with their prisoner.

“Now then,” began Mr. Benson, lighting a cigar. “To begin with, Dr. Laidlaw, we’ll just hear exactly what happened on the night of the murder of the late Sir John Evenden.”

“Ha! ha!” Laidlaw made a pathetic effort to laugh. “I thought as much. You daren’t hand me over to the police, in case I ruined Lady Evenden, so you struck the happy little idea of kidnaping me by violence, and trying to get me to talk. Well, Mr. Lawyer Benson, you’ve overreached yourself, for you’ll get nothing from me, understand? Nothing.

“What’s more, you’ll get punished--severely punished, the whole gang of you--toughs, crook lawyers, and kidnapers. Lady Evenden will be ruined, Frank Gough will hang, and I’ll laugh at the lot of you.”

In silence they listened to his outburst. Laidlaw was silent for a minute; he looked a little less at ease, then continued rather inconsistently: “What can you prove against me, anyway?”

“You’ve given the little rat too much stimulant, you know,” Mr. Benson said to Wilfred, with a disapproving shake of his head. “He imagines himself a man-eating tiger. Pity, because he might have told us something before he died.”

Mr. Benson walked to the door.

“Joe!” he shouted. “Joe Litt! Bring that coffin in!”