A Queen's Error Part 12

A countrified-looking boy was running up from the opposite direction.

At the foot of the tower, however, was another matter; huddled up in a heap was the body of a man, with a coil of rope and some shattered masonry lying all around it.

By the body stood Botley, the game-keeper, scratching his head.

It was now very evident what had occurred.

The three miscreants who had tried to torture me had endeavoured to escape by letting themselves down by a rope from the top of the tower.

Two had succeeded and one had been killed. The reason of this was obvious, the rope had been fixed round one of the battlements and it had not been sufficiently strong to maintain the weight of the three men. The two lowest had probably got off with a shaking, the man who had got on the rope last had lost his life. All this was perfectly evident.

"Who is it?" shouted Lord St. Nivel to the keeper below.

"Doan't know, me lord," came back the answer, "he's a stranger to me."

The keeper had now been joined by the countrified boy, and the two turned the body over on to its face. I could see that it was the fairer of the two men who had acted under Saumarez' orders.

"I think we had better go down," suggested my cousin, the Guardsman; "we may be of some service there."

On the way down the winding staircase, a thought struck me.

"What has become of that body," I asked, "that was found on Lansdown yesterday morning?"

"What body?" replied my two cousins together.

"The body of an old lady."

"We have heard nothing of it," replied St. Nivel, "and we ought to have done so. But you have not told us what happened to _you_."

Going down the old stone staircase, I gave them a brief account of my arrest in London and journey down there, with my imprisonment during the night in the tower.

"Well," remarked St. Nivel, while his sister murmured a few words of sympathy, "I haven't quite got the hang of the thing yet, but you must tell us more at lunch."

We found that the man lying at the foot of the tower was certainly dead; his neck was broken.

We could therefore do nothing hut leave the gamekeeper in charge of the body while we despatched the boy to warn the police and fetch a doctor.

With a s.h.i.+lling in his pocket to get his dinner, the young yokel set off on his journey, and we strolled away.

"I don't think we'll shoot any more this morning, Jack," Ethel said, "this affair has made me feel a bit shaky."

"Then you had better come up to the house with us, Bill," said her brother, slapping me on the back, "and have some lunch. Then you can tell us all your adventures."

I readily agreed, and we had walked some little distance when I heard footsteps running behind us; we stopped and turned. It was the country boy we had sent to the police.

"I forgot to show you this yere sir," he said, opening his hand, in which he held something carefully clasped.

"What is it?" I asked as he addressed me.

"It's this yere _heye_, sir," he answered. "It don't belong to the dead 'un; he's got two."

I glanced into his open palm and beheld two halves of a brown artificial eye, made of gla.s.s, and much shot with imitation blood!

"No," observed my friend, Inspector Bull, "there's been no body found on Lansdown, and I should have heard of it if there had been without a doubt."

The inspector finished a liberal tumbler of Lord St. Nivel's Scotch whisky and soda, and set the tumbler carefully down on the table as if it were a piece of very rare china.

My cousin, who was standing on the hearthrug, laughed heartily.

"That was only another piece of the rogue's plot," he said. "They must have had a clever head to direct them."

"Yes," I put in, "a clever head with only one eye in it, if I'm not much mistaken."

The inspector gave me a doubtful look; then his eye reverted to the whisky decanter upon which it had been fondly fixed. St. Nivel observed it and pushed the whisky towards him.

"Thank you, my lord," said the police officer, helping himself with a look of intense satisfaction; he did not often get such whisky. "It's a curious thing, however, that this man with one eye should ha' been doing all these pranks right under my nose as it were, and I never even heard of him before."

Being aware of his methods, I was not at all surprised.

Even now, knowing that I was respectably connected, he even suspected me, and regarded me as an impostor with rich relatives.

This story of the finding of the body on Lansdown only confirmed his views of my powers of invention.

"As a matter of fact," observed Lord St. Nivel, "I am only a stranger in these parts, having borrowed a friend's house for a week's shooting; but no doubt you can tell me what this tower is, where my cousin was kept a prisoner, and which my sister and I came across by the merest chance."

"Cruft's Folly," replied the beaming inspector, with his whisky gla.s.s in his hand. "Cruft's Folly has stood where it does nearly a hundred years. It was built by some gentleman, I believe, a long while ago, to improve the landscape, just like Sham Castle over yonder."

"But does n.o.body live in it?"

"No, I've always understood it was quite empty and nearly a ruin."

"Then I have little doubt," said my cousin with a chuckle, "that your friends, Bill, simply appropriated it for their own uses."

"I suppose you'll have the place thoroughly searched, Mr. Bull, won't you?" I asked. "There may be something hidden there which will give you a clue to my a.s.sailants."

"You may rely upon that, Mr. Anstruther," replied the inspector, rising and slapping his chest, "but we shall have to communicate with the owner first."

Thus through the red-tapism of the law the chance was lost. Had the old tower of Cruft's Folly been searched at that moment the remainder of this history most certainly would never have been written.

CHAPTER VIII

SANDRINGHAM

When I got back to the comfort of the Magnifique, though my "cure" was but half completed, yet I determined to bring my visit to Bath to a close; it had been too exciting. I would come back and finish the course of water drinking and baths some other time.