Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 24

"Not a bit of it, Johnny," she said. "My opinion has come round to Mr.

Policeman Stone's--that we must look indoors for the disturber. I have brought you out with me to talk about it. It is a great mystery--for I thought I could have trusted the servants and all the rest of you with my life."

It was a mystery--and no mistake.

"A great mystery," repeated Miss Deveen; "a puzzle; and I want you to help me to unravel it, Johnny. I intend to sit up to-night in the breakfast-room. But not being a.s.sured of my nerves while watching in solitude for thieves, or ghosts, or what not, I wish you to sit up with me."

"Oh, I shall like it, Miss Deveen."

"I have heard of houses being disturbed before in a similar manner," she continued. "There was a story in the old days of the c.o.c.k-Lane ghost: I think that was something of the same kind, but my memory is rather cloudy on the point. Other cases I know have been traced to the sudden mania, solely mischievous or otherwise, of some female inmate. I hope it will not turn out to have been Lettice herself."

"Shall I watch without you, Miss Deveen?"

"No, no; you will bear me company. We will make our arrangements now, Johnny--for I do not intend that any soul shall know of this; not even Miss Cattledon. You will keep counsel, mind, like the true and loyal knight you are."

The house had gone to rest. In the dark breakfast-room sat Miss Deveen and I, side by side. The fire was dying away, and it gave scarcely any light. We sat back against the wall between the fireplace and the door, she in one armchair, I in another. The secretary was opposite the fire, the key in the lock as usual; the window, closed and barred, lay to the left, the door to the right, a table in the middle. An outline of the objects was just discernible in the fading light.

"Do you leave the key in the secretary as a rule, Miss Deveen?" I asked in a whisper.

"Yes. There's nothing in it that any one would care to look at," she replied in the same cautious tone. "My cash-box is generally there, but that is always locked. But I think we had better not talk, Johnny."

So we sat on in silence. The faint light of the fire died away, giving place to total darkness. It was weary watching there, hour after hour, each hour seeming an age. Twelve o'clock struck; one; two! I'd have given something to be able to fall asleep. Just to speak a word to Miss Deveen would be a relief, and I forgot her injunctions.

"Are you thinking of ghosts, Miss Deveen?"

"Just then I was thinking of G.o.d, Johnny. How good it is to know that He is with us in the dark as in the light."

Almost with the last word, my ears, younger and quicker than Miss Deveen's, caught the sound of a faint movement outside--as though steps were descending the stairs. I touched Miss Deveen's arm and breathed a caution.

"I hear something. I think it is coming now."

The door softly opened. Some white figure was standing there--as might be seen by the glimmer of light that came in through the pa.s.sage window.

Who or what it was, we could not gather. It closed the door behind it, and came slowly gliding along the room on the other side the table, evidently feeling its way as it went, and making for the window. We sat in breathless silence. Miss Deveen had caught my hand and was holding it in hers.

Next, the shutters were unfastened and slowly folded back; then the window was unbolted and its doors were flung wide. This let in a flood of moonlight: after the darkness the room seemed bright as day. And the white figure doing all this was--Janet Carey in her nightgown, her feet bare.

Whether Miss Deveen held my hand the tighter, or I hers, I dare say neither of us could tell. Janet's eyes turned on us, as we sat: and I fully expected her to go into a succession of shrieks.

But no. She took no manner of notice. It was just as though she did not see us. Steadily, methodically as it seemed, she proceeded to search the room, apparently looking for something. First, she took the chintz cover off the nearest chair, and shook it out; turned over the chair and felt it all over; a small round stand was served the same; a blotting-case that happened to lie on the table she carried to the window, knelt down, and examined it on the floor by the moonlight, pa.s.sing her fingers over its few pages, unfolding a letter that was inside and shaking it out to the air. Then all that was left on the floor, and she turned over another chair, and so went on.

I felt as cold as charity. Was it her ghost that was doing this? How was it she did not see us sitting there? Her eyes were open enough to see anything!

Coming to the secretary, she turned the key, and began her search in it.

Pulling out one drawer first, she opened every paper it contained, shook them one by one, and let them drop on the floor. As she was commencing at the next drawer, her back towards us, Miss Deveen whispered to me.

"We will get away, Johnny. You go on first. No noise, mind."

We got out without being seen or heard. At least, there was no outcry; no sign to tell we had been. Miss Deveen drew me into the dining-room; her face, as it caught the glimmer, entering by the fan-light over the hall-door, looked deadly pale.

"I understand it all, Johnny. She is doing it in her sleep."

"In her sleep?"

"Yes. She is unconscious. It was better to come away. As she came round to search our part of the room, she might have found us, and awoke. That would have been dangerous."

"But, Miss Deveen, what is she searching for?"

"I know. I see it all perfectly. It is for a bank-note."

"But--if she is really asleep, how can she go about the search in that systematic way? Her eyes are wide open: she seems to examine things as though she _saw_ them."

"I cannot tell you how it is, Johnny. They do seem to see things, though they are asleep. What's more, when they awake there remains no consciousness of what they have done. This is not the first case of somnambulism I have been an eye-witness to. She throws the window and shutters open to admit the light."

"How can she have sense to know in her sleep that opening them will admit it?"

"Johnny, though these things _are_, I cannot explain them. Go up to your bed now and get to sleep. As I shall go to mine. You shall know about Janet in the morning. She will take no harm if left alone: she has taken none hitherto. Say nothing to any one."

It was the solution of the great puzzle. Janet Carey had done it all in her sleep. And what she had been searching for was a bank-note.

In the situation where Janet had been living as nursery-governess, a bank-note had disappeared. Janet was suspected and _accused_ of taking it. Const.i.tutionally timid and nervous, her spirits long depressed by circ.u.mstances, the accusation had a grave effect upon her. She searched the house for it incessantly, almost night and day, just as we had seen her searching the parlour at Miss Deveen's in her sleep, and then fell into a fever--which was only saved by great care from settling on the brain. When well enough, Miss Cattledon had her removed to London to Miss Deveen's; but the stigma still clung to her, and the incipient fever seemed still to hover about her. The day William Whitney left, she moved from Miss Cattledon's chamber to the one he had occupied: and that night, being unrestrained, she went down in her sleep to search. The situation of the room in which the note had been lost was precisely similar to this breakfast-room at Miss Deveen's--in her troubled sleep, poor girl, she must have taken it for the same room, and crept down, still asleep, to renew the endless search she had formerly made when awake. The night the policeman was watching in the summer-house, Lettice sat up with Janet; so that night nothing occurred. Lettice said afterwards that Miss Carey twice got out of bed in her sleep and seemed to be making for the door, but Lettice guided her back to bed again. And so there was the elucidation: and Janet was just as unconscious of what she had done as the bed-post.

Miss Deveen's medical man was called in, for brain-fever, escaped, appeared to be fastening on Janet in earnest now. He gave it as his opinion that she was no natural sleep-walker, but that the mind's disturbance had so acted on the brain and system, coupled with her fright at meeting the policeman at the Colosseum, as to have induced the result. At any rate, whatever may have caused it, and strange though it was, I have only given facts. And in the next paper we shall hear more about the bank-note.

JANET CAREY.

I.

It was a summer's evening, some two years or so previous to the events told of in the last chapter, and the sun was setting in clouds of crimson and gold. On the green lawn at the back of Rose Villa--a pretty detached house, about twenty minutes' walk from the town of Lefford--sat a lady in a gay dress. She was dark and plain, with crinkled black hair, and a rough voice. A girl of twelve, fair, pretty, and not in the least like her, sat on the same bench. Three younger girls were scampering about at some noisy play; and a boy, the youngest of all, lay on the gra.s.s, whistling, and knotting a whip-cord. The sun's slanting rays tinted all with a warm hue.

"Get up, d.i.c.ky," said the lady to the boy.

d.i.c.ky, aged five, whistled on, without taking any notice.

"Did you hear mamma tell you to get up, d.i.c.ky?" spoke the fair girl by her mother's side. "Get up, sir."

"Shan't," said d.i.c.ky.

"_You_ go in for me, Mina," said Mrs. Knox. "I want to know the time.

Arnold took my watch into town this morning to have the spring mended."

Mina seemed in no more hurry to obey than d.i.c.ky was. Just then a low pony-chaise, driven by a boy-groom, rattled out from the stable-yard at the side of the house. Mina looked across at it.

"It must be about a quarter-past eight," she said. "You told James not to be later than that in going to the station."