A Crime of the Under-seas Part 11

"You are quite right. That's where we always hear it. But if you think there is anybody hiding there you're mistaken. Come and look for yourself."

So saying he led the way into the house. I followed him. As he had said, there was n.o.body to be seen. The pa.s.sage in question was about twenty feet long by four wide. There was a door at each end, and two on either side. It was well lighted by an oil lamp supported on an iron bracket screwed into the woodwork. The walls were composed of weather boards, while the floor was covered by a strip of oilcloth, which stretched from end to end. Spicer lifted the lamp from its socket, and, opening one of the doors on the left, led me into the sitting-room. We explored it carefully, but there was nothing there that could in any way account for the noise we had heard. Having satisfied ourselves on this point, we crossed to the room on the opposite side of the pa.s.sage. This was my bedroom, and in it, as in the other apartment, our search was unrewarded. The room next to it was Spicer's office, and, save a safe, a desk, a small cupboard, a chair, and a row of account books, contained nothing to excite our suspicion. We pa.s.sed into the pa.s.sage again.

"This room," he said, pointing to the door opposite the office, "is our bedroom."

He tapped on the door.

"Minnie," he cried, "are you awake?"

"Yes," was the answer, "and very frightened. How long will you be before you come to bed?"

"I am coming now," he replied. Then, turning to me, he held out his hand. "Good-night," he said, "and pleasant dreams to you. It seems a shame to have brought you up here only to worry you with our troubles."

"I am very glad, indeed, that I came," I replied. "And if I can help you to some solution of your difficulty I shall be still more glad."

A quarter of an hour later I was in bed and asleep. If there was any further noise that night I did not hear it. I was tired after my long journey, and slept on until long after the sun had risen next morning.

When I did turn out I went into the verandah, where I discovered my hostess.

"Good-morning," she said, as she offered me her hand. "Jim has just gone across to the stockyard, but he will be back to breakfast in a moment."

Many people might have been discovered in Australia who would have thanked their stars that they were not the proprietors of Warradoona Station, but there would have been few who would not have envied Spicer his partner in life. She was a pretty brunette, with wonderful brown eyes, and a sympathetic, motherly way about her that made every one feel at home in her company, even if they had never seen her until five minutes before.

"I cannot tell you how very kind I think you are," she said, "to come to our a.s.sistance. You can imagine what a depressing effect this place has had upon Jim and myself. We have tried everything we can think of to solve the mystery, but without success. Now it remains to be seen whether you will fare any better than we have done."

"I am going to do my best," I answered, and as I said so, Jim came up the steps.

"Good-morning," he said as he reached the verandah. "I hope you slept well and that you were not disturbed by any more noises."

"If there were any to hear they didn't wake me," I answered. "I suppose you have not discovered anything that throws any sort of light upon that scream we heard last night?"

"Nothing at all," he replied, shaking his head. "But, to add to the discomfort we are already enduring, our cook has just informed me that he saw the White Horseman on the plain last night, and in consequence has given me notice that it is his intention to leave at mid-day. He says he would rather forfeit all his wages than remain another night."

"Oh, Jim, I am sorry to hear that," said his wife. "We shall have great difficulty in getting another. We _do_ indeed seem doomed to misfortune."

Jim said nothing, but I saw his mouth harden as we went in to breakfast.

His patience was well-nigh exhausted, and I suspected that if the mystery were not solved before many days were over he would follow the example of his predecessors, forfeit all the money he had put into it, and sever his connection with Warradoona.

During the morning I gave him a hand with some branding in the stockyard, and in the afternoon we went for a ride across the river, hoping to meet the mob of cattle his men were out collecting. We were unsuccessful, however, and it was dusk when we reached home again. By the time we had turned our horses loose, and placed our saddles on the racks, the full moon was rising above the Ranges behind the house. On reaching the verandah we heard voices in the sitting-room.

"That's Marmaduke Chudfield, I'll wager a sovereign," said Jim. "I'm glad he's come over, for though he's rather a namby-pamby sort of individual, he's not bad company."

A moment later we had entered the room, and I was being introduced to a tall, slim youth of perhaps eight-and-twenty years of age. His height could not have been much under six feet two, his face was devoid of beard or moustache, and boasted a somewhat vacuous expression, which a single eye-gla.s.s he wore continually only served to intensify. He spoke with a lisp and a drawl, and if one could judge by his own confessions, seemed to have no knowledge of any one thing in the whole system of the universe. In less than five minutes' conversation I had struck the bed rock of his intelligence, to use a mining phrase, and, while I had small doubt of his good nature, was not at all impressed by his sagacity. His station, Yarka, was, so Jim informed me later, a grand property, and carried a large number of cattle. This success, however, was in no sense due to Chudfield's exertions. To quote his own words, he "left everything to his overseer, a German, named Mulhauser, don't-cher-know, and didn't muddle things up by shoving his spoke in when it was no sort of jolly a.s.sistance, don't-cher-know. Cattle farming was not exactly his line, and if he had to pay a chap to work, well, he'd make him work, while he himself sat tight and had a jolly good time with continual trips to town and friends up to stay, and all that sort of thing, don't-cher-know."

After dinner we sat in the verandah and smoked our pipes until close upon ten o'clock, when Mrs. Spicer bade us "Good-night" and retired to her own room, as on the previous evening. After she had left us, there was a lull in the conversation. The night was perfectly still, as only nights in the Bush can be; the moon was well above the roof, and in consequence the plain below us was well-nigh as bright as day. The only sound to be heard was the ticking of the clock in the sitting-room behind us, and the faint sighing of the night-breeze through the scrub timber on the hills behind the house. And here I must make a digression.

I don't think I have so far explained that in front of the house there was an unkempt garden about fifty yards long by thirty wide, enclosed by a rough Bush fence. In an idle sort of way I sat smoking and watching the rails at the bottom. The beauty of the night seemed to exercise a soothing influence upon the three of us. Jim, however, was just about to speak when Chudfield sprang from his chair, and, pointing towards the fence, at which only a moment before I had been looking, cried, "What's that?"

We followed the direction of his hand with our eyes, and as we did so leapt to our feet. Being but a sorry scene-painter I don't know exactly what words I should employ to make you see what we saw then. Scarcely fifty yards from us, seated upon a white horse, was a tall man, with a long grey beard, dressed altogether in white, even to his hat and boots.

In his hand he carried a white stock-whip, which he balanced upon his hip. How he had managed to come so close without making a sound to warn us of his approach was more than I could understand; but this much was certain, come he did. The time, from our first seeing him to the moment of his wheeling his horse and riding silently away again, could not have been more than a minute, but all the same we were able to take perfect stock of him.

"Follow me," shouted Jim, as he rushed down the steps and ran towards the gate at the bottom of the garden. We followed close at his heels, but by the time we reached the fence the Phantom Stockman had entirely disappeared. We stared across the moonlit plain until our eyes ached, but not a sign of the apparition we had seen rewarded us.

"That is the third time he has been up here since I have had the place,"

said our host, "and each time he has vanished before I could get close enough to have a good look at him."

"What beats me was the fact that his horse made no sound," remarked the Honourable Marmaduke, "and yet the ground is hard enough hereabouts."

"Wait here till I get a lantern," cried Spicer. "Don't go outside the fence, and then you won't obliterate any tracks he may have made."

So saying he hastened back to the house, to return in about five minutes carrying in his hand a large lantern. With its a.s.sistance we carefully explored the ground on the other side of the fence, but to no purpose.

There was not a sign of a horse's hoof to be seen.

"Well, this beats c.o.c.k fighting," said the Honourable, as Jim blew out the light and we turned to walk back to the house. "This is Hamlet's father's ghost with a vengeance, don't-cher-know. I shall be glad whenever he takes it into his head to pay me a visit at Yarka. I'm afraid in that case my respected parent would see me in England sooner than would be quite convenient to him."

To this speech Jim replied never a word, nor did I think his remark worth an answer. Once in the verandah we separated, bidding each other good-night, Jim to go to his own room, the Honourable to take possession of the sofa in the sitting-room, upon which a bed had been made up for him, and I to my own dormitory. I saw Jim turn down the lamp in the pa.s.sage and heard him blow it out as I shut my door. Then I undressed and jumped into bed.

How long I had been asleep I do not know, but I have the most vivid remembrance of suddenly finding myself sitting up in bed with the sweat pouring off my face, and the echo of surely the most awful shriek mortal man ever heard ringing in my ears. Before I could recover my self-possession it rang out again, followed this time by a strange moaning sound that must have continued while I could have counted twenty. Thinking this had gone about far enough I jumped out of bed, opened the door, and ran into the pa.s.sage, only to be seized by a pair of arms. Lifting my right hand I took my a.s.sailant by the throat, and just as I did so, Jim's door opened and he came out, holding a candle in his hand. Then it was that I made the discovery that it was not the ghost's throat I was clutching between my finger and thumb, but that of the Honourable.

"Confound you two," said Jim angrily. "What on earth are you up to?"

"Up to?" gasped Chudfield. "Why, I heard the most villainous scream just now that I ever heard in my life, and came running out of my room to see what was the matter, only to be collared by the throat by this chap."

Then turning to me he continued, in his usual drawling way, "I believe you've half broken my neck, don't-cher-know."

"Bother your neck," I cried shortly, for my dander was up and somebody had got to suffer for the fright I had received. "Jim, did you hear that scream?"

"Worse luck," answered poor Jim. "I wish I could say I hadn't. What the deuce does it mean?"

"It means," I replied sternly, "that if there's a ghost in this place I've got to see him before I'll be satisfied. And if it's a trick, well, I've got to find the chap that's playing it or know the reason why. When I do, I'll do what Chudfield here accuses me of half doing. I'll break his neck."

With that I walked first to the door at one end of the pa.s.sage and examined it, then to the other; after that I tried the door leading into the office. All three were securely locked on our side.

"As far as I can remember, the sound seemed to come from about here," I said, pointing to the centre of the floor. "What is underneath these boards, Jim?"

"Only solid Mother Earth," he replied. "I had some of the planks up when I came into the place and put new ones down."

"Well, I'm going to sit up and await further developments," I said. "Do either of you feel inclined to share my vigil?"

"I will do so with pleasure," said Jim.

"And I too, if it's necessary," said the Honourable, with peculiar eagerness. "I'm not going to risk being wakened out of my sleep by another shriek like that."

Jim went into his bedroom and said something to his wife. After that we dressed and made ourselves as comfortable as possible in the sitting-room. But though we remained there till daylight we heard nothing further. As day dawned we returned to our beds to sleep soundly until we were roused by Mrs. Spicer at eight o'clock.

That afternoon, in spite of our jeers, the Honourable left us to return to his own abode. He had had enough and to spare of Warradoona, he said, and as he had not proved himself a very good plucked one, we did not exert ourselves very much to make him change his mind.

"I never thought he'd prove to be such a coward," said Jim, as we watched the youth disappear behind the river timber. "Still, he's a man extra about the place, and if those wretched cattle are coming in to-night we shall want all the hands we can raise to look after them on the plain."

"Do you think they will be here to-night?"