The House of Strange Secrets Part 4

Country women in picturesque costumes, and accompanied by a varied number of small children, roamed about the street, gossiping loudly and unceasingly, and laughing heartily, when, in their opinion, occasion required.

Laurence and his interested companion quickly intermingled with this motley throng, eagerly on the alert, the one to catch a glimpse of the woman whom he had already seen on such occasions as this, the other depending upon her keen intuition to pick out from the rest of the crowd the person of whom they were in search.

For some time they sought in vain, and Laurence was beginning to fear that the woman had already returned to the Dene with her purchases of frugal provisions, when a harsh voice at his elbow caused him to turn sharply, and confront none other than the cloaked and closely hooded servant from the mysterious house.

"Keep close to her," he whispered to Selene. "We must follow her about, so that she doesn't give us the slip, but it will be impossible to speak to her until we get out of this crowd and into the quiet road."

They had not long to wait. After making a few purchases at the grocer's and butcher's shops (in both of which she was received with rude stares and uncomplimentary remarks, made aside), she entered the saddler's, emerging a moment later with a stout dog-whip.

What was the meaning of this last purchase? Laurence wondered. To the best of his knowledge they kept no animals about the Dene, certainly no dogs, which would surely have made their presence known very quickly by howls, or wanderings into the adjoining estate. Here there seemed to be yet another mystery.

The woman had evidently finished her shopping for the day. She turned and hurried off in the direction of her destination, closely followed by Laurence and Lena. Already they had left the shops behind them, and reached a quiet turn of the road, almost within sight of the Manse, when the woman, who was stout and tall, and carried a market-basket, deliberately turned round and faced them.

"What do you want with me?" she asked, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

Her sudden action caused Laurence to forget the carefully worded denunciation he had decided upon. For a moment the young man could not reply.

"When the children come a-following of me I box their ears for them,"

the woman went on in a loud, sneering tone; "take care I don't do the same to you!"

Her sarcastic words enraged young Carrington beyond measure. He took one step towards the scowling creature.

"Be careful," he said, suggestively raising a warning finger, "or I'll put the police on your track. There's something underhand going on at Durley Dene, and, if you don't tell me what it is, I will obtain a search-warrant, and then we will see who is going to be punished."

The woman started at his opening words, but as he went on, heedlessly confessing in his anger his ignorance of what actually was the secret of the Dene, she recovered herself, and sprang forward suddenly at the young man.

"Take that for your impertinence," she hissed, striking him a savage blow on the chest with the clenched fist of her left hand. Then, turning sharply round, she clutched at her print skirts, and fled precipitately down the road, disappearing in quick time into the grounds of Durley Dene. But in her activity, and when she had made the sudden attack upon him, Laurence noticed that the dark hood which had covered her head and effectually shrouded her face had been thrust aside. He almost gasped with astonishment when he perceived that the villainous countenance he was now at liberty to scrutinise was that which he had seen on the previous night pressed against one of the windows of the Dene.

He had hardly recovered from his surprise when Lena, after satisfying herself that he was in no way hurt, turned to him.

"Mr. Carrington," she said, "the mystery deepens. It was a man in disguise, and no woman, that struck you so determined a blow."

CHAPTER VII

THE HAUNTED BARN AND ITS STRANGE INHABITANT

With the discovery that the servant from the Dene was without doubt a man in disguise, the mystery surrounding the house adjoining the Squire's residence was considerably deepened instead of being in any way solved.

Laurence Carrington, as, smarting under the burly housewife's blow, he conducted his companion back to the Manse, hardly fulfilled his duties as host in silently meditating as to his next step. Suddenly he recollected himself.

"Excuse me, Miss Scott," he said apologetically. "This discovery has rather alarmed me, and for the moment I almost forgot that I was not alone. Come, it is getting late, and your aunt will be worrying about you. You must try and forget all about this skeleton in father's cupboard. It will be giving you bad dreams, and that would never do."

But if the young man charged Selene to think no more, for the present, about the uncanny state of affairs, he was unable, or did not intend, to allow this first reverse to put an end to his attempts at the solution of the mystery. Having wished Miss Scott and her aunt "good-night" on their departure to bed, he lighted his pipe and stepped out through the French windows of the dining-room on to the lawn.

Fumbling unconsciously in one of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, which he had worn during the day and donned after dinner before starting off for the village, his hand came in contact with the small pistol which Head, the gardener, had found amongst the hay in the barn.

So many and varied had the events of the day been that he had almost forgotten the incidents of the stolen dinner and the rustling in the hay. Now it appeared to him that here was the most important clue he had as to the ident.i.ty of the attempted murderer of the Squire. It seemed to him extremely possible that this was the weapon used by the unknown cyclist, for whose else could it possibly be, when no one in any way connected with the Manse carried firearms, except the Squire, whose blunderbus was certainly not to be mistaken for this? Careful examination of the pistol failed, however, to reveal any sign of the maker's name, and the hope which had risen in Laurence's breast gave way to a feeling of disappointment.

But a question of deepest importance that suggested itself to the amateur investigator was how it was that, if the strange cyclist came from the adjoining house, he had ventured into the barn which stood well within the Manse grounds. Had he been some chance enemy--the poacher, for instance, whom Laurence had already set down as a possible suspect--there was nothing more probable than that he should have taken refuge in the barn, but in the other case it was hardly likely.

One thing was undeniable, he had been there. Whoever the mysterious person was, he had stolen the gardener's plate of dinner and likewise his old coat. It certainly seemed improbable that Major Jones-Farnell, would-be murderer or no, should stoop to the robbery of old clothes and food. The poacher idea rose in the young man's mind, but was at once dismissed as out of the question. The Squire's secret had to do with something or somebody more mysterious by far than a mere poacher.

If the intruder had been in the barn at lunch-time, it was possible that he might be there still, though he had certainly disappeared completely before the gardener's manoeuvres with the pitchfork.

At any rate, Laurence decided to have a look round before going to bed, and consequently strolled down to the barn and crept noiselessly inside.

The moons.h.i.+ne peeped in from a roof window, lighting up the whole of one side of the fine old rambling building as though it were broad daylight.

Puffing silently at his pipe, Laurence glanced round, peering up into the rafters, down on the floor, and into the loosely piled hay that surrounded him.

Suddenly, by that strange instinctive intuition that comes at times to us all, he became aware and convinced of the fact that he was not alone--that some one was looking at him!

Strive as he might to dispel the eerie idea from him he was unable to do so.

Under such circ.u.mstances, and bearing in mind the incidents of the last two days, any ordinary person might have turned tail and fled. But Laurence was no ordinary person, and he was as keen on the scent of his father's enemy as the traditional bloodhound. Thus it was that, instead of taking to flight from what was only an imaginary fear, he struck a match and held it above his head, gazing round him again for any trace of the person who he instinctively felt was watching him.

A second and a third match revealed nothing; but by the light of the fourth he scanned what was perhaps the darkest and remotest corner of the Cromwellian building. As he did so he fancied he saw something move on a ledge on which a roof support was fixed. In order to test his suspicions, he picked up a "stone," used for sharpening scythes, which happened to be on the ground in front of him, and flung it with all his athletic force and precision of aim at the indistinct ma.s.s which he believed to have moved a moment before.

A sudden shrill scream, about which there was something that (to use a well-worn phrase) froze the young fellow's blood with horror, broke upon the stillness of the great building, a scream which Laurence at once recognised as being exactly similar to that which the unknown cyclist had uttered when the lash of the carriage whip had caught him as he had fled away into the darkness.

And as that weird sound rent the air, the man who had caused it saw indistinctly in the gloom (for his last match had burnt itself out) a figure leap from the dark corner, and, with ape-like agility and speed, clamber up the rafters until it almost hung from the roof. Then, seizing some loose hay that had lodged in a cranny in the beams, it flung it down on the upturned face of the astonished spectator of this feat.

When Laurence had brushed away the hay from his eyes, the figure had disappeared, and, incredible though it may seem, no trace of it remained but the memory of that echoing, inarticulate shriek to prove that the apparition was not a mere phantom of the imagination.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SILENT HOUSE AND THE FOLKS THAT DWELT THERE

A sleepless night was Laurence's portion when, tired out, he flung himself upon his bed.

The mystery was deepening in an alarming fas.h.i.+on, and its intricacies were such as did not conduce to quiet sleep. That he had at last actually encountered his father's enemy he was quite convinced, but he was no nearer being able to account for the strange creature's enmity or even to recognise its ident.i.ty than before he had met with this last adventure.

A few facts about the unknown creature were very apparent. Firstly, it was strangely agile and cunning; secondly, its voice was as remarkable as its agility, which was hardly human; thirdly, it was in possession of a bicycle, and yet was unable to obtain food and clothing without having recourse to theft; fourthly, it was of peculiarly small stature for a man; and lastly, it was able to use firearms, but with the loss of the pistol it had probably been deprived of its only offensive weapon, since it had not ventured to attack its a.s.sailant in the barn.

Laurence used the word "it" because he was in no way decided in his own mind as to whether the thing was a man, a woman, or, the idea occurred to him, neither of these two. Not that he believed it to be something that was not human, but because the marvellous manner in which it had scaled the barn walls was so suggestive of the monkey race. The idea that the creature in the barn was a species of monkey he at once decided, of course, to be absurd. A monkey might have stolen the missing coat and dinner, have thrown the hay down in order to cover its retreat, and have uttered that piercing shriek on being hurt, but it was hardly likely to be able either to ride a bicycle or use a pistol.

That it was a woman was more possible, and the young investigator's foundation for the idea was the remark of Miss Scott that her friend had declared the person lurking in the Marquis's garden to be a black woman "with coloured skirts." This remark, it will be remembered, was very probably the cause of the Squire's sudden illness at luncheon, shortly after the arrival of Mrs. Knox and her niece.

A woman might have performed all the feats that the unknown person had.

She might have set light to the Marquis's house, believing the Squire to be yet in the building; she might have followed the carriage on a bicycle on discovering that the man she was d.o.g.g.i.ng had left (though how she came to have a bicycle was a mystery in itself); she might have "held up" the carriage and attempted to murder the old gentleman; and it was just as possible (or impossible) for her to clamber up the barn wall as for a man to do so. To be sure, she must be a very remarkable woman.

Since she was "black," she might be a negress or certainly some foreigner. Uncivilised and fierce she certainly was. But how came it that a negress (if such were the case) had so bitter an enmity against the harmless old Squire that it was the cause of all Mr. Carrington's careful precautions, and of the spirited attack on the high road? The mystery seemed hopelessly incapable of solution.

Morning came at last, and found Laurence no further advanced with his investigations. At one time he had decided to summon a detective, but recollecting how the Squire would take such an intrusion he considered it advisable to work alone.