The Ashiel mystery Part 28

"What?" cried Julia, "did you try to kill her too?"

"Why, if anyone had to be got rid of," he admitted defiantly, "it seemed better to go for a stranger, like her, than for my own uncle. Come, you must see that, surely! She was nothing to me, and, anyhow, my hand was forced. It's very hard that I should have been put in such a position. I'm the last person to do harm to a fly, but one must think of oneself."

Since it was no use denying the murder, he seemed to find some sort of satisfaction in telling Julia of his other crimes. And yet, though he tried hard to speak with an affectation of indifference, it was plain that he kept a watchful eye upon his listener, and was ready to fasten resentfully upon the first sign of horror, or even disapproval. For all his efforts, the tone of his disclosures was at once swaggering and suspicious; but he need have had no anxiety as to the spirit in which they would be received. It was clear that Julia brought to his judgment no remembrance of ordinary human standards of conduct. To her he was above such criticisms, as the Immortals might be supposed to be above the rules that applied to dwellers upon earth. What he did was right in her eyes, because he did it, and she admired his brutality, as she adored the rest of him, whole-heartedly, without reservation.

"I had a shot at her," he went on, "one day on the moor when she was with David; but I missed her. It was a rotten shot. I can't think how I came to do it. Then when she fell into the river-I saw her standing by it as I came home from stalking.... I had walked on ahead, and where the path runs along above the waterfall pool I happened to go to the edge and look over. There she was on a stone right at the edge, by the deepest part. It looked as if she'd been put there on purpose, and I should have been a fool to miss such a chance. It's no good going against fate. As a matter of fact I thought I'd got her sitting this time. I caught up the nearest piece of rock and dropped it down on her. That was a good shot, though I say it, but it hit her on the shoulder instead of the head as luck would have it, which was bad luck for me. However, in she went, and I thought all was well and lost no time in getting away from the place. If it hadn't been for that meddling fool Andy!... Well, then, at dinner, Uncle Douglas came out with the news that she was his daughter, not his intended, and everything looked worse than ever. Afterwards when she went to talk to him in the library, and pa.s.sed through the billiard-room where I was knocking the b.a.l.l.s about and feeling pretty savage, I can tell you, I happened, by a fluke, to ask her if she knew where David was. She said he'd gone into the garden.

"Then I saw my chance, and it seemed too good to miss. Why should I let my inheritance be stolen from me? I ran off to the gun-room for a gun. I meant to take David's rifle, but I found he hadn't cleaned it, so I left it alone and took mine, as the thing was really too important to risk using a strange gun unless it was absolutely necessary, and his is a little shorter in the stock than I like. I nipped back and let myself out of the pa.s.sage door into the enclosed garden. It was a black night, though I knew my way blindfolded about there. But the curtains of the library were drawn, and I couldn't see between them without stepping on the flower bed. I knew too much to leave my footmarks all over them, but I had to get on to the bed to have a chance of getting a shot. So I got the long plank the gardeners use to avoid stepping on the flower beds when they're bedding out, from the tool-house behind the holly hedge where I knew it was kept, and put it down near the hedge. It is held up clear of the ground by two cross pieces of wood, one at each end, you know, so there would be no marks left to identify me by.

"When I walked to the end of the plank, I could see straight into the middle of the room; but they must have been sitting near the fire, for no one was in sight. I could see the writing bureau and the chair in front of it, and dimly in the back of the room I could make out the face of the clock, but that was all.

"Well, I stood there for what seemed a long while. You've no idea how cramping it is to stand on a narrow plank with no room to take a step forward or back, for long at a time. And I don't mind telling you I got a bit jumpy, waiting there. If anyone chanced to come along, what could I say by way of explanation? I couldn't think of anything the least likely to wash. And somehow, in the dark, one begins to imagine things. I saw David coming at me across the lawn every other minute. And it seemed so hideously likely that he should come. I knew he was somewhere out in the grounds. By Jove, if he had, he'd have got the bullet instead of Uncle Douglas! But he didn't come. Those beastly shadows and shapes and whisperings and rustlings that seemed to be all round me, hiding in the night, turned out to be nothing after all. But when I didn't fancy him at my elbow, I imagined he was in the gunroom, wondering where the d.i.c.kens my rifle had got to.

"Oh, I had a happy half-hour among the roses, I tell you! A rifle is a heavy thing too. I leant it up against a rose-bush and tried to sit down on the plank, but it wouldn't do, and I saw I must bear it standing, or Uncle Douglas might cross in front of the slit between the curtains without my having time to get a shot. You must remember I'd been on the hill all day, so that I was very stiff to begin with. It got so bad that I began to think it was hardly worth the candle at last-and it's a wonder I didn't miss him clean-when, just as I was on the point of giving the whole thing up and going in again, he came suddenly into my field of vision, and actually sat down at the table.

"I took a careful aim and fired. I saw him fall forward, and then I jumped off the plank and hurled it back under the hedge before I ran for the house. I had left the door ajar, and I just stayed to close it, and then darted into the empty billiard-room and thrust my rifle under a sofa. It was a quick bit of work. I had counted on Juliet Byrne waiting a moment or two to see if she could do anything to help him before she roused the house, or it roused itself, and she was rather longer than I expected. I don't mind owning I got into a panic when minutes pa.s.sed and no one appeared, and I began to think I must have missed the old boy altogether. I was within an ace of going to make certain, when the door opened and in she came. Oh well, you know all the rest. That silly old a.s.s, David, was still mooning about in the garden, thinking of her, I suppose, which was very lucky for me."

Julia had listened with absorbed interest.

"I think it is wonderful," she said, "that you should have gone through all that for my sake. I shall always try to deserve it, my dear. Was it all, all for me, that you did it, truly?"

"Yes," Mark a.s.sured her, gruffly monosyllabic.

"But how was it," she asked caressingly, "that Sir David's footprints were found all over the rose-bed. What was he doing there?"

"That was an afterthought," Mark admitted. "It was a tophole idea. After every one had gone upstairs, I crept down and got my Mannlicher from where I had hidden it, and took it to the gun-room, where I cleaned it and put it in its usual place. It was lucky for me that David had left his weapon dirty. It was jolly unlike him to do it. I was thinking what a good thing it was, and how well things looked like turning out-for I thought I could manage the girl if she was able to prove that she really was a McConachan-and it struck me I ought to be able to contrive that the business should look a bit blacker against poor old David. Every one knew he'd had a row with Uncle Douglas about his beastly dog, and if I could only manufacture a little more evidence against him I knew I should be pretty safe, one way and another. I was going back to the garden to put by the gardener's plank, when I thought of using his boots. It didn't take long to find them among all the boots used that day by the household, which were ranged in a row in the place where they clean them in the back premises. His bootmakers' name was in them. I took them, and when I got to the garden door I put them on, and went out and trampled about among the roses till I was pretty sure that even the blindest country bobby couldn't fail to notice the tracks I'd left, though of course I couldn't see them myself in the dark. Then I got the plank out of the hedge and put it away where I'd found it. After that, I took the boots back, and went to bed; and very glad I was to get there. Now you've heard the whole story."

"How clever you are," murmured the girl. "There's no one like you," she said, "no one." Mark smiled rather fatuously. He evidently shared her opinion that his brains were something slightly out of the way. "And everything happened just as you'd planned," she went on admiringly. "They suspected Sir David from the first. I should have, myself, if I hadn't known it was you who had done it."

"Yes," said Mark, "they suspected him, the silly idiots! They might have known he hasn't the initiative to do a thing like that. And the girl can't prove her relations.h.i.+p to Uncle Douglas, just as I expected. I thought there might be some difficulty about that. But I wish I could find the will he made in her favour. I should feel safer then, for she told me he said he'd worded it so that she should get the money whether she was proved his daughter or not. And who knows what other mad clauses he may have put in it. Lately, for some reason I could never make out, I felt sure he had changed towards me. He let fall a hint one day that his legacies to me were conditional on my good behaviour. I don't feel easy about it at all. Some one must have been telling him things-poisoning his mind. But I've hunted high and low, and found nothing. I'm sick of looking over musty old bills."

"Oh, we shall find it between us now," said Julia hopefully. "I wish I had some idea where the list I want is, though," she added.

"There's that detective, too," pursued Mark. "That fellow Gimblet. I'm rather fed up with him. Not that he seems any use at his work, though he's supposed to be rather first-cla.s.s at it, I believe."

"Gimblet! Is that who it is? Mrs. Clutsam told me a London detective was here, but I didn't know who it was. I have met him before, and found him very easy to manage. I don't think you need be afraid of anything he may do."

"I shall be glad when he's off the place, anyhow," said Mark.

"I shall be glad when the whole business is over and forgotten," Julia rejoined. "I wish we could be married at once, Mark darling. But why can't it be given out that we are engaged. I don't understand why we should keep it a secret now. I can't stand seeing so little of you as I have these last few days."

"Be patient, darling, wait just a little longer. There are reasons, as I have told you. I must get my financial affairs straight, for one thing, before I allow you to tie yourself to me. Suppose I turn out to be a beggar? I couldn't let you marry me then, you know."

"Mark!" Julia's voice was full of reproach. "You know perfectly well how little I care about your money. I would be only too glad to marry you if you hadn't a penny. But perhaps you mean that if you were poor you wouldn't want to burden yourself with a wife?"

"You know how I adore you, Julia. How can you suggest such a thing? I couldn't even dream of a life without you. You show how little you know me. But, believe me, it is wisest to wait a short time longer before we are publicly engaged. You must take my word for it, and not made me unhappy by imagining such cruel things. Come, let us look for this list of yours. What were you doing-searching among the books?"

"Yes," said she, rising, as he went towards a bookshelf, and following him. "I thought it might be hidden between the leaves of one of these old volumes. One reads of such things."

"I wonder," he said absently. "The will, too, may be here. Is there a Bible anywhere? I believe that's a favourite place of concealment. Then, when the heir is virtuous and reads his Bible, he gets the legacy, you know; while, if he isn't, he doesn't. A sort of poetic justice is meted out. If I find it in that way I shall take it as a sign that I am really the virtuous one and that Heaven absolves me from all blame."

He spoke mockingly, but Julia answered very seriously:

"Of course you ought to have it; and if I don't blame you, why should anyone else?"

"Well," he said after a pause, "at all events I mean to get it, whether or no, if I have to pull down every stone of the place. That reminds me," he added, "where is the secret entrance you use? Through this old clock? Who would have thought it?"

In a moment Juliet realized that she was going to be caught. She had been so absorbed in listening to the dreadful revelations that had been made during the last half-hour that not till now had she considered how dangerous was her position.

As he spoke, Mark threw open the door of the clock case. Too late, she turned to fly; he caught her by the arm and, with a stifled oath, dragged her into the room.

"How long have you been there?" he cried, and fell to swearing horribly; while Julia stood by, not speaking, but looking at Juliet with an expression which frightened her more than all his violence.

CHAPTER XX

It did not occur to Juliet to deny that she had overheard their talk. She had been found in the act of spying on them, and it was inconceivable that they should believe she had not done so. Besides, she was raging at the thought of what she had heard, and her anger gave her a courage she might otherwise have found it hard to maintain.

"I have been there all the time," she declared stoutly. "I heard all you said, you wicked, wicked man. A murderer! Oh, how horrible it all is!"

Julia laid a hand on Mark's arm.

"She will tell what she knows," she said, trembling.

"She shall not," Mark stammered furiously. He seemed to be half suffocating with rage. "She shall not go unless she swears to say nothing. Swear it, I say!"

He seized Juliet by the shoulder and shook her violently to emphasize his words.

"I won't swear anything of the kind," she retorted, trying to break from his grasp. "Do you suppose you can kill me, too, without being found out? There is a detective here now, and Sir David Southern is not at hand to lay the blame on. You coward! How dare you touch me!"

The truth of her words seemed to strike home to Mark, for he left go of her suddenly, and stood, biting his nails and scowling, the picture of irresolution and malignance.

Juliet lost no time in following up any advantage she might have gained.

"I can't help knowing that you care for him," she said, addressing herself to Julia, "though I wouldn't have listened to that part if I could have helped it. But how can you? How can you? I can't understand how you can feel as you do about killing people, but at least if you did such a thing you would imagine it was for the good of your country, while this man thinks of nothing but his own selfish ends. Money, that is all he wants! How can you condone such a crime as his? To kill Lord As.h.i.+el, that good, kind man who had treated him like a son all his life, who did everything for him. And just for the sake of money! It's not even as if he wanted it really. He's not starving. He had everything, in reason, that he wanted. If he needed more, urgently, I believe he had only to tell his uncle, and it would have been given to him. Oh, it is beyond all words! He must be a fiend."

Indignation choked her. She spoke in bursts of trembling anger, her words sounding tamely in her own ears. All she could say seemed commonplace and inadequate beside the knowledge that this man was her father's murderer.

Even Julia, indifferent to every aspect of the case that did not touch upon her relations with her lover, was shaken by the scornful disgust with which the broken sentences were poured forth; and, if her infatuation for Mark was too complete to allow her to consider any action of his unjustifiable, still she realized, perhaps for the first time, the feelings with which other people would view the thing that he had done.

"You don't understand him," she faltered. "He didn't want money for himself alone. It was for me he did it. He was too proud to ask me to marry a poor man. You could never understand his love for me. How can I blame him? How many men would run such risks for the girl they loved? I am proud, yes proud, to be loved like that!"

"You believe his lies," Juliet cried contemptuously. "You believe he loves you so much? Why it is not two days since he came to me and asked me to marry him."

"What!" Julia spoke in a panting whisper. Her face had suddenly lost every particle of colour. "Say it's not true," she begged, turning miserably to the man.

He made an effort to deny the charge.