IT was on the second day after the arrival of the furniture that the surcharged storm, that had so long been lowering over the caretaker’s head, burst in an explosion of thunder that was near attended with tragic consequences.
In the interval Mr. Tuke had been too greatly occupied with other business to give consideration to, or take action in, that little matter of the worthy Mr. Breeds and his far-too-heady wine. Glancing askance, indeed, at the subject with his mind’s eye now and again, he felt a degree of perplexity as to the course it would be anything less than futile for him to pursue; inasmuch as nothing definite in the way of roguery had succeeded his drugging, and it was quite open to the landlord to affirm that a dog-tired guest had fallen sound asleep over his bottle. But for the present, adequate debate of the subject must be adjourned sine die; and, in the meantime, the gentlemen of the “Dog and Duck” were leaving him, to all appearance, peaceably alone.
Now, on that particular morning, he took stock of his newly-equipped and carpeted rooms with a feeling of satisfaction such as a rescinded sentence of exile might have afforded him. A few days more would see the advent of such servants as he had thought himself justified in engaging through his agent; and then his house would be ordered for all immediate purposes, and he himself served and tended somewhat as befitted his condition.
“Delsrop” furnished was a very different living-place to the gusty and melancholy habitation of his hitherto experience; and for the first time since his arrival he was feeling a certain sense of homeliness—shadowy, indeed, but with a faint warmth in it that was a little earnest of comfort to come. Much, of course, remained to do—so much, in fact, that, in moments of depression, he would liken his present accomplishment to putting new wine into old bottles. The grounds were still a wilderness; the out-buildings tottering to their fall; the canker of decay was eaten into the very plaster-epidermis of the house itself. Still, the husk remained splendidly durable—a stubborn fortress from which to direct operations; and in this at least was matter for most sincere self-congratulation.
In the prospect of an established household, he was considerably exercised in his mind as to what course to pursue with Whimple and his overburdening sister. Did he consult his own common-sense, he would get rid of them both without any further humouring of indecision. But to this outright action he could not bring himself, and that from an aggravating sentiment no less than a motive of policy. As to the latter, he must needs hesitate before returning to the enemy their possible confederate, whose weakness lay in his unconsciousness of surveillance. As to the former, inexplicable and irritating as it was, he could not deny even to himself that, for some unaccountable reason, he took a secret interest in the poor creature’s personality—was aware of a perverse desire in his own heart that the man would by some means succeed in disabusing him of the prejudice he had formed against him, and end by becoming his devoted and confidential servant. Against this last wish or emotion, unformulated as it was, he would bitterly rebel; but the germ of it quickened in him nevertheless.
Now, having dined and smoked a pipe of good tobacco, he wandered off into his grounds, easy and ruminative, and gave thought pleasantly to the brighter side of things. Pushing, presently, into the dense shrubbery that skirted the Stockbridge road, he came suddenly upon a little clearing amongst the bushes, in the middle of which was a bricked dome or segment of masonry, something after the shape of an Esquimaux hut, which protruded from the ground and was accessible by way of a low door or trap of rotted wood. Against this last he kicked, driving it open, and was aware of a pit within, deepish, but half-choked with weedy rubbish—a disused ice-house, by every token of shape and situation.
“Mouth of Hades on the dead plains of Enna!” he murmured, with a little self-preening smile over his remembered classics; and he fell a-dreaming, as he strolled away, in that trance of paganism that enwraps many who give licence to their imaginations in silent woods.
“But who shall be my Persephone?” he breathed, and thought of one or other of two most meet for abduction. He felt his arms about—whom? No matter. The broken cellar served his fancy for a spell, and, unguessed by him, was to serve his experience by and by with tougher matter than day-dreams.
Suddenly, issuing from a dank, dumb little track amongst the bushes, he found himself looking over the ruined garden to the rear of the lodge. He jerked to a halt. Amongst the compact weediness of depraved vegetable stuff, thridding the cumbered paths and alleys of straggled fruit trees, moved the girl Darda. She sang to herself in that odd wild voice of hers, the stinging disharmonies of which seemed to flicker up in the flame of her hair. Then, in a moment she had drifted into the gloom of the porch and vanished.
At that the watcher came out into the open, and stepping softly, followed in silent pursuit. He could not have explained what impelled him to it. Only it seemed to him a natural counter-move in that game of secrecy and suspicion he had set his wits to master.
Stealthily he stole down the littered passage—stealthily put foot in the dusk room where the museum was. He might pad it like an Ojibbeway, but she heard him. She heard him and turned, her eyes opening chatoyant.
She was standing near the loaded shelves, fingering something—a round yellow flint-stone, by the look of it—that she had lifted from its place amongst the collection.
“What have you there?” said he, curious and masterful at once.
She did not answer. But she snatched the object to her bosom and glinted at him with adumbrated pupils.
“Let me see it,” he said, advancing a step.
At that she gave out a thin little tale of screams, like the cry of a shot rat, and, retreating into a black corner, hugged her treasure with a frantic closeness.
“It’s not for you!” she cried. “It’s his—Dennis’s. It was thrown through the window to him that night you went a-wooing to ‘Chatters.’”
“Thrown! by whom, you jade?”
“How should I know? The shadows were thick about the house. They cried to get back to their dark hole under the floor against daylight. But he wouldn’t let them, and they stormed and wept. I would have opened the door and given them passage; but he is wise, my wise brother, and he forbade me. ‘They must bid higher first,’ said he.”
It was as if a dark veil fell over the listener’s face.
“Go on,” he muttered.
“They cried to him; but he withdrew, and would give no answer. And they entreated long, till my heart sobbed for them. ‘Let them in, Dennis,’ I prayed. But he said, ‘They must bid higher.’ Then they threw this thing, and it cracked through the lattice; and he crept softly and took it up and read and cast it down again. ‘Make no sound,’ he whispered to me; ‘and they will think we are gone.’ But I went secretly and picked up the stone; and all night long the shadows moaned about the house.”
She screamed again, with a note of fury startled out of terror, for her master had pounced upon her and wrung the treasure from her grasp. She fought with him, clawing and spitting like a cat; but he beat her off, as he would have any wild animal, and rushed out to the light.
Here, in a moment’s gain of time, he looked and read what was roughly scrawled in pencil upon the smooth surface of the stone.
“Half the profits,” were the words—“if you lead us to the Lake of Wine.”
He had space to no more than decipher this when the wild creature was upon him again.
“Stand off!” he cried furiously, backing from her, with a white face. “Stand off! I must have a word with your brother.”
He heard her swift step behind him as he raced up the drive. He might have been conscious of a certain lack of dignity in the situation, had his passion allowed his reason a moment to itself.
It did not. It leapt—a white consuming blaze that seemed to roar the louder with the wind of his going.
For here, at last, he held in his very hand a damning proof of the guilt he had so long suspected. In the fierce triumph of its possession, he forgot caution, policy—everything but the lust to crush under a savage heel the reptile he had warmed and cherished at his hearth. No doubt that little rebellious emotion we wot of was reacting upon itself with a double hate of its own weakness. He writhed to think that he had ever admitted it to his counsels; but his revenge should be proportionate.
An evil chance drove him upon his victim on the very threshold of the hall; and he had him by the throat before the poor wretch could so much as guess his purpose.
“Here, here!” he yelled, holding up the stone. “I have the proof at length. You dog—you currish hypocrite, to be in the league against me!”
The man’s face had gone of a mortal whiteness. He struggled feebly.
“Master!” he gasped.
The other’s fury came to a bestial head. He threw down the stone and struck the poor creature on the mouth.
“Silence!” he shrieked. “I know it all!—I’ve heard all the truth, I tell you. You shall swing for it, by God! You shall——”
Mad to give expression to his ungovernable rage, he flung himself upon the shivering form, and seized and tore it along the passage, while it pleaded to him in hoarse terror, and clutched vainly at whatever projections came in its way.
Suddenly, conscious of his purpose, it gave up a shrill scream, and writhed frantically in his hands.
“No, no!” cried the man. “Not there—not there! Give me time to speak! Oh, my God! I shall go mad of the horror of that place!”
They had struggled to within a few feet of the “Priest’s Hole.” The flap yet remained open as Mr. Tuke had left it.
“You will go in,” panted the latter, beating under his victim by mere furious force of muscle. “You will go in, and lie and rot till I can carry you to Winton Gaol. Down with you!”
In his stumbling wrestle with the half-fainting creature, he twisted about, saw something, and let go his prey for a moment. Whimple fell back as if he were dying, and on the instant the other struck up and caught Darda by the wrist. A thin flash of steel went above their heads, and there was the sound of a knife ringing on the boards. There was no blood-letting; but the moral was as if there had been. The fever of passion in the man was subdued to a worser coldness of cruelty.
“Not yet!” he said, in a low voice, his eyes holding her like evil magnets. “Not yet, you pretty animal!”
In a moment he leapt at her, lifted her light form in his arms, and, clapping his hand over her shrill voluble mouth, bore her to the front of the house, and, rolling her without, closed and bolted the door upon her.
Then he returned with smiling lips to the other.
He lay as he had left him—cowering, exhausted, half-stupid with terror already, it seemed.
Tuke leaned and took the impassive form under the arms. With his foot he shuffled the limp trailing legs over into the pit, and so lowered the body with a single heave. It went down unresistingly, save for a broken moan or two, and sank into a huddled heap at the bottom.
He raised the flap, and stood an instant looking down. There was little motion below him, or sign of life but a weak fitful whimpering.
Feeling as one who stubbornly signs his own soul to the devil, he closed the pit-mouth, secured it, and walked away with his heart thumping. And there rose up to and pursued him a long dreary whine like that of a dog baying the moon.