The Courtship of Morrice Buckler Part 45

Otto started, and glanced about him with some fear, as though he half expected to see the priest start out of the earth.

"You know not what you say," he exclaimed.

"Who sent you to follow him?"

"Nay," he protested; "I came not to spy upon Father Spaur. We know not that he has been here. 'Twere wise not to know it."

I handed him the gold cross, and asked again:

"Who sent you after him?"

"I was not sent after him. I was bidden to come hither by my mistress."

"Ah! she sent you!" I cried. "Give the cross back to Father Spaur, and with it my most grateful thanks. He has done me better service than ever did my dearest friend."

I reasoned it out in this way. Father Spaur was bent on appropriating Lukstein and its broad lands to the Church. To that end, the Countess must, at all costs, be hindered from a second marriage. What motive could he have in prompting Groder to make an end of me, unless--unless Ilga now and again let her thoughts stray my way? And to confirm my conjecture, to rid it of presumption, I had this certain knowledge that she had sent Otto to see that I came to no harm at his hands. I should add that my speculations during the winter months had in some measure prepared me to entertain this notion. From constantly a.n.a.lysing and pondering all that she had said to me in the pavilion, and bringing my recollections of her change in manner to illumine her words, I had come, though hesitatingly, to a conclusion very different from that which I had originally formed. I could not but perceive that it made a great difference whether or no I had been alone upon my first coming to the Castle. Besides, I realised that there was a pregnant meaning which might be placed to the sentence which had so perplexed me: "Would that I had the strength to resist, or the weakness to yield!" And going yet further back, I had good grounds from what she had let slip to believe that there was something more than a regard for herself in the entreaty which she had addressed to me in London, that I should not tax Marston with treachery in the matter of the miniature.

Otto gave me back the cross.

"It is a mistake," said he. "Father Spaur has gone from Lukstein on a visit."

"Then," said I, "present it to your mistress. She has more claim to it than I."

That night Otto slept in the loft in Groder's place.

"You are sure," he asked, "that no one remained behind with Groder yesterday afternoon?"

"Quite," said I.

"None the less, I should sleep on the trap if I were you, and 'twere wise to carry your hatchet to bed for company."

"But they take it from me each night," I replied eagerly. "You must tell them."

"I will. But there's no cause for fear."

'Twas not at all fear which prompted my eagerness; but I bethought me if I had the loft to myself, and the axe ready to my hand, 'twould be a strange thing if I could not find a way out by the morning.

Thereupon we fell to talking again of Groder's attempt upon my life, and he repeated the words which he had used at the time.

"You were never nearer your death but once."

"And when was that once?" I asked drowsily.

He laughed softly to himself for a little, and then he replied; and with his first sentence my drowsiness left me, just as a mist clears in a moment off the hills.

"Do you remember one night in London that your garden door kept slamming in the wind?"

"Well?" said I, starting up.

"You came downstairs in the dark, took the key from the mantelshelf, and went out into the garden and locked it. That occasion was the once."

"You were in the room!" I exclaimed. "I remember. The door was open again in the morning. I had a locksmith to it. There was nothing amiss with the lock, and I wondered how it happened."

Otto laughed again quietly.

"Right. I was in the room, and I was not alone either."

"The Countess was with you. Why?"

"There was a book in your rooms which she wished to see--a poetry book, eh?--with a date on one page, and a plan of Castle Lukstein on the page opposite. My mistress was at your lodging with some company that afternoon."

"True," said I, interrupting him. "She proposed the party herself."

"Well, it seems that she got no chance of examining the book then. But she unlocked the garden door. You had told her where you kept the key."

I recollected that I had done so on the occasion of her first visit.

"And so Countess Lukstein and yourself were in the room when I pa.s.sed through that night."

Otto began to chuckle again.

"'Twas lucky you came down in the dark, and didn't stumble over us.

Lord! I thought that I should have burst with holding my breath."

"Otto," I said, "tell me the whole story; how your suspicions set towards me, and what confirmed them."

"Very well," said he, after a pause, "I will; for my mistress consulted me throughout. But you will get no sleep."

"I shall get less if you don't tell me."

"Wait a moment!"

He filled his tobacco-pipe and lighted it. I followed his example, and between the puffs he related the history of those far-away days in London. To me, lying back upon the boughs which formed my bed in the dark loft, it seemed like the weaving of a fairy tale. The house in Pall Mall--St. James's Park--the piazza, of Covent Garden! How strange it all sounded, and how unreal!

The odour of pine-wood was in my nostrils, and I had but to raise my arm to touch the sloping thatch above my head.

CHAPTER XXII.

A TALK WITH OTTO. I ESCAPE TO INNSPRUCK.

"Of what happened at Bristol," he began, "you know well-nigh as much as I do, in a sense, maybe more; for I have never learnt to this day why my master, the late Count, left me behind there to keep an eye upon the old attorney and Sir Julian Harnwood's visitors. There's only one thing I need tell you. The night you came from the Bridewell, after--well, after----" He hesitated, seeming at a loss for a word. I understood what it was that he stuck at, and realising that my turn had come to chuckle, I said, with a laugh:

"The blow was a good one, Otto."

"'Twas not so good as you thought," he replied rather hotly, "not by a great deal; and for all that you ran away so fast," he repeated the phrase with considerable emphasis, "for all that you ran away so fast, I found out where you lodged. I pa.s.sed the lawyer man as he was coming back alone, and remembering that I had traced him into Limekiln Lane in the afternoon, I returned there the next morning. The 'Thatched House' was the only tavern in the street, and I inquired whether a woman had stayed there overnight. They told me no; they had only put up one traveller, and he had left already. I thought no more of this at the time, believing my suspicions to be wrong, and so got me back to Lukstein. After the wedding-night I told the Countess all that I knew."