CHAPTER XIV.

TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS

Bayre went straight back to the landing-place, where, as he had expected, he found that Monsieur Blaise had pushed off without him and was now some distance on his way back to Guernsey. He could even see the recumbent figure of the fickle lover in the stern of the boat; for Monsieur would not undertake the management of the tiller, but left the business of the boat to the two men, and displayed the better part of valour by lying with his head upon the seat and his eyes closed, subduing qualms, both physical and mental, with what success he could.

Bayre found lodgings, as he had proposed, at the little house of a man who lived close to the landing-place, who made money in the summer by bringing visitors to Creux, and filled up his time in the winter and autumn by fishing.

The young man had only a few days’ leave from his duties in town, and was doubtful as to whether he should be able to get an extension, which indeed he scarcely dared to ask for. But he could not tear himself away from the islands without some clearer knowledge than he yet possessed on the subject of the mystery which surrounded his uncle, on account of the effect it might have upon Olwen Eden.

So deeply intent was he upon the solution of this uncanny mystery, so entirely absorbed by his thoughts of the girl, that when he crossed to St Luke’s that evening, and found a letter at Madame Nicolas’ house from Jan Repton, he felt a pang of guilt on discovering that he had almost entirely neglected the mission on which he was supposed to have come.

Repton’s letter ran thus:--

“Dear B.,--Southerley’s going to punch your head for you when you get back, and I think you jolly well deserve it. Here have we been waiting for the wire you promised to send as soon as you found out who it was that landed us with this brat; and I’m ready to bet you’ve forgotten all about us, and it and everything but your own affairs!

“I hate a fellow who can’t think of anything else when he’s got a love-affair on hand! Why, I can manage half a dozen at a time, and never miss an appointment or forget to post a letter!

“I don’t say Southerley isn’t as bad as you. And there’s another thing. He’s got it into his head that this Miss Merriman is moping because you’re away; so if you get off with a whole bone in your body when he’s done with you, you may think yourself lucky. And I jolly well hope you won’t, for I know very well it was you got us into this mess, and here you’ve left us to bear the brunt of it, and the chaff, and the rest of it! The way that minx Susan grins and cheeks us now is intolerable. And she has the impudence to run up when there’s a Punch and Judy show in the street to ask if we would like her to tell the man to give a show ‘to please the baby!’

“And there’s some idiot who’s got a room on the top floor, who will sit with his door open singing some doggerel about ‘Molly and I and the baby!’ at the top of his voice as soon as he hears us on the stairs.

“Southerley pretends he doesn’t care, and I don’t suppose he would care as long as he had an excuse to go down and talk to Miss Merriman under pretence of seeing the brat--‘the co-operative kid’ as he calls it. But Miss Merriman seems to be getting rather anxious at our not hearing from you, so I suppose she’s getting tired of the bother of the animal, and no wonder!

“What we’re going to do with it when she refuses to look after it any longer I don’t know. But unless I get a wire from you within forty-eight hours, I shall take it to the workhouse myself in a brown-paper parcel and give your name with it. So look out! Yours till the breaking of heads,

“Jan R.”

Bayre did not quite place implicit confidence in Jan’s veracity, or pay too much heed to his dark threats. But he thought it best to send a telegram of a reassuring but vague character, and then he reflected that he had really better be pushing his inquiries in the direction Jan desired.

So on the following morning he went to the house of the Vazons, and getting inside by a ruse, with a boy who was delivering logs for fuel, he found himself in the presence not only of Marie Vazon of the sly eyes, but of the baby.

And having perhaps become both more suspicious, more observant, and more experienced of late in the matter of infants, he had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the baby in the cradle was not his cousin, but was a peasant’s child of an age more tender than that of the hero of their adventure.

He jumped at once to the conclusion that Marie was passing this child off as old Monsieur Bayre’s for the sake of the payment she got from him. It was strange that a father could be thus deceived, he thought; but old Mr Bayre was not an ordinary man, so that it was perhaps too much to expect that he should be an ordinary father.

“What has become of Monsieur Bayre’s child?” he asked the girl point-blank, seeing at once, by the guilty look in her eyes, that she knew she was found out.

“This is M. Bayre’s son, monsieur,” said she, promptly.

“Oh, no, it’s not. I don’t suppose this child is more than ten or twelve months old,” hazarded he, making a guess which was still over the mark. “And this child’s hair is red, what there is of it, while Mr Bayre’s son has hair almost flaxen.”

The girl frowned sulkily, and her eyes shifted uneasily from his face to the child’s and back again.

“It’s no business of yours, at any rate,” she said defiantly, at last.

“Oh, yes, it is. You are being paid to look after one child, and you seem unable or unwilling to tell what you’ve done with it, and you try to pass off a much younger one for that given into your care. Such a matter is everybody’s business, and mine especially, as I am a member of Monsieur Bayre’s family.”

“You’d better complain to Monsieur Bayre, then,” said Marie, sullenly.

“That’s just what I’m going to do.”

The girl looked scared for a moment; then she shrugged her shoulders.

“Go then, tell him, and see what thanks you get,” said she, insolently. “Go, I say, if you dare.”

And she shot a steely glance at him out of her blue eyes.

Defiant as her manner was, Bayre detected in the girl’s face an even greater uneasiness than he would have expected, considering the hold the Vazons, father and daughter, appeared to have over their nominal master. He pondered this fact as he left the cottage, and determined to carry out his threat at once.

This he found to be impracticable, however, for on presenting himself at the _château_ he found himself confronted by Pierre Vazon himself, who surlily refused him admittance, saying that Monsieur Bayre had given strict orders that he was not to enter the house.

Thus denied, Bayre considered himself justified in further attempts to obtain information by outside means, and after passing an uneasy day on the island, without one glimpse either of Olwen or of his uncle, he returned to the neighbourhood of the _château_ after dark, in the hope that when lighting up time came he might be able to make more discoveries.

The great house looked desolate indeed with only a room lighted here and there, and with whole suites in darkness. The great hall with the long row of high windows, in which he had seen the groping figure which he believed to have been that of his uncle tearing up the floor-boards, had no light glimmering behind the dusky panes.

The room in which Bayre and Monsieur Blaise had been received, and the two apartments through which they had passed on their way thither, were equally in darkness.

But at the corner of the mansion, where the strings of dead Virginia creeper hung over the two narrow barred windows high up in the wall, there was a moving light behind the closed shutters.

Bayre’s attention was instantly attracted. This was the room, this closed room at the end of the house, on the first floor, at the window of which Olwen had seen, or fancied she saw, a woman’s hand thrust out.

Was it a woman who was moving about inside now? It was only the flickering of the light above and between the cracks of the shutters which betrayed the presence of something human within. But slight as the indication was, it was unmistakable, and Bayre felt that he could not rest until he should have discovered whether some one was really imprisoned there.

He stood back on the broad path and calculated his chances of reaching these windows as he had done those of the great hall.

But the walls here were of brick, offering no foothold, and the creeper did not appear to be strong enough to bear his weight.

While he was considering what action to take next, the flickering light became stationary, and remained so for some minutes.

Stepping further back to get a better look at the barred and shuttered windows, and at the narrow slit of light above them, Bayre presently perceived a faint glimmer appearing in like manner above the shutters of the French windows on his right. By the flickering he could see that while the light above the higher windows was still, that behind the French windows was being carried about.

He crossed the path and came close to the glass, listening. For there were certain sounds to be made out, as of the pushing about of heavy furniture, with an occasional succession of short, sharp raps, as of some person knocking for admittance at a closed door.

Bayre took out his pocket-knife and tried to slip the catch of the window nearest to him. After a few attempts, during which the sounds within became louder, he succeeded; but the slight noise he made over this coincided with a sudden cessation of the sounds within.

There was a rapid step across the floor, and he heard someone breathing heavily on the other side of the still closed shutters. Then the footsteps retreated quickly, and Bayre stood listening, shaking the shutters gently, preparatory to making an attempt to burst them open.

That he was on the track of the mystery at last he felt certain. These strange nocturnal sounds, this haunting of the house by a being who was declared by Olwen to be a woman, would be satisfactorily explained if only he could effect an entrance now while the disturbance was in full swing.

So thought Bayre, and after only a few seconds’ pause he stepped back, with the intention of dealing such a blow upon the shutters as would probably force them open.

But before he could do this he heard a click and the fall of the iron bar with a clanking sound against the wood, and the next moment the shutters flew back and his uncle, with a small lantern in his right hand, stood face to face with him.

Bayre was startled, and an exclamation broke from his lips; for he had never seen on any human face such an expression of rage and defiance, proud, menacing, savage, as now distorted the rugged features, the light eyes, wrinkled cheeks, and long hatchet chin of old Bartlett Bayre.

His voice was hoarse and broken with passion as he cried,--

“I thought so. I thought so. You rascal, you thief! It is you who play the spy upon me, who haunt my house and listen at my doors, you, you, you.”

And as he spoke the old man shuffled out upon the path, lantern in hand, and shook his clenched fist in the young man’s face, panting and husky with rage.

Bayre was taken aback. This was an unexpected turn of events, but one which he felt he ought to have been prepared for. As it was, the angry old man certainly appeared to have right on his side as he stood, his face still convulsed with rage, in front of the man who had thus been caught in an attempt at burglarious entry into his premises.

Bayre saw at once that this loose dark dressing-gown, tied round the waist by a frayed cord, was the very garment in which he had seen his uncle groping on the floor of the great hall on the first day of his investigations; the old man shivered as he stood, slippered and hatless, with his lank and sparse grey locks ruffled by the night wind, clutching at the sides of his collar and holding them together against his lean throat.

“What do you want here? What do you want?” croaked out he, after a pause of a few moments, during which his nephew reflected upon the answer he should give to his accuser.

“I want,” cried young Bayre, boldly, suddenly resolving on the bold course of telling the whole truth without disguise, “to know who the woman is that you have shut up in your house.”

To his surprise, the whole demeanour of the old man changed at once. The convulsive twitchings of his features gave place to a sudden calmness, while he peered into the face of the younger man with a sly intentness which prepared the other for the fact that he had a crafty antagonist to deal with.

Coming quite close to young Bayre, and staring up into his face with the lantern held high enough for them to see clearly into each other’s eyes, he croaked out, in a jeering voice,--

“What’s that to you?”

Young Bayre was thunderstruck. He was prepared for denial, for indignation, for a torrent of abuse. But this cynical speech, which he took for an avowal, struck him dumb. The old man saw his advantage, and went quietly on, in the same aggressive, jibing tone,--

“What business is it of yours if I keep half a dozen women shut up in my house, eh? Are you the master of my house, or the head of my family, that you should interfere with me? If you’ve found a mare’s nest, my friend, don’t come here straining your precious eyes by looking through brick walls and wooden doors, but go to the police, go, go, go.” And with each insulting repetition of the word the old man thrust a skinny finger into his face. “And lay information against me, me, _me_, master of Creux and benefactor to my neighbours! Say that you, a stranger, a distant relation of the man whose property you covet--”

“I do not covet your property. I’ve never asked you for a shilling!” cried Bayre, hotly.

“No, because you knew very well you would never get it if you did,” retorted the old man, grimly. “Tell the police, I say, that you, a penniless adventurer--”

“I’m no adventurer.”

“A penniless adventurer,” repeated old Mr Bayre, his voice going up into a squeak of rage, “have a notion that there’s a woman concealed in my house! See what they’ll say to you, you pitiful sneak and spy! See what honour and credit you will win for yourself by trying to foul your own nest, to bring disgrace upon the head of your own family!”

Again young Bayre was for the moment dumb; the passion which possessed the old man, the torrent of wounded pride which gushed forth in his speech and glowed in his sunken eyes, impressed his nephew with a sort of respect and remorse, and he began to wonder whether he had not taken fancies, both his own and those of others, for facts too readily.

But even as he began to hunt for suitable words in which to make a sort of apology, there passed suddenly over the withered old face below him an expression of cunning and malice combined which revived all his suspicions and made him stand to his guns.

“If I’ve played the spy, sir,” he said boldly, “you’ve brought my action upon yourself by your own outrageous behaviour. If a sane man will behave like an insane one, if he will surround himself with dubious people and behave in a suspicious way, he has no one to blame but himself if a stranger to the place comes to the conclusion that there’s something about his way of life that wants inquiring into.”

Again the old man appeared to be impressed by his words, and for a moment he remained silent, holding his lantern hanging by his side, and pulling the sides of his dressing-gown yet more closely over his throat.

Then he spoke again, not angrily, not loudly, but with a keen suspicion in his tones.

“Who told you about this woman?” he asked abruptly.

The young man hesitated. He did not wish to implicate Olwen; yet what could he say?

He pointed suddenly to the barred windows above their heads.

“Who is in that room?” he asked sharply.

The old man turned and looked up. There was just a second’s pause. Then he turned again, so abruptly that the lantern nearly swung out of his hand.

“Come and see,” said he in a low voice.

And beckoning his nephew to follow him, he stepped into the house through the open doors of the French window, and setting down his lantern on the polished floor, barred the shutters behind them without another word.