The Ashiel mystery by Mrs. Charles Bryce (page 4)

the bulls, and I shall soon know which is the horn.”

He walked round to the front of the statue, so that he faced the stooping figure of Pandora, and laid his hand upon one of the curved and projecting horns of the left-hand bull. Nothing happened, and he tried the next There were seven heads in all along the face of the great block, and he tested six of them without perceiving anything unusual. Was it possible that he was mistaken, and that, after all, the words of the message did not refer to the statue?

When he grasped the first horn of the last head, the hand that did so was shaking with excitement and suspense. It seemed, like the rest, to possess no attribute other than mere decoration. And yet, and yet–surely he had missed some vital point. He would go over them again. There remained, however, the last horn, and as he took hold of it with a premonitory dread of disappointment, he felt that it was loose in its socket, and that he could by an effort turn it completely over. With a triumphant cry he twisted it round, and at the same moment Lady Ruth started back with an exclamation of alarm.

She was standing where he had left her, and was nearly knocked down by the great slab of stone which, as Gimblet turned the horn of the bull, swung sharply out from the end of the pediment, till it hung like a door invitingly open and disclosing a hollow chamber within the stone.

Within the opening, on the floor at the far end, stood a large tin despatch-box.

The door was a good eighteen inches wide; plenty of room for Gimblet to climb in, swollen with exultation though he might be. In less than three seconds he had scrambled through the aperture and was stooping over the box. It seemed to be locked, but a key lay on the top of the lid. He lost no time in inserting it, and in a moment threw open the case and saw that it was full of papers.

Suddenly there was another cry from Lady Ruth as, for no apparent cause and without the slightest warning, the stone door slammed itself back into position, and he was left a prisoner in the total darkness of the vault. He groped his way to the doorway and pushed against it with all his strength. He might as well have tried to move the side of a mountain. But, after an interval long enough for him to have time to become seriously uneasy, the door flew open again, and the agitated countenance of Lady Ruth welcomed him to the outside world.

“Do get out quick,” she cried. “If it does it again while you’re half in and half out, you’ll be cracked in two as neatly as a walnut.”

Gimblet hurried out, clutching the precious box. No sooner was he safely standing on the turf than the door shut again with a violence that gave Pandora the appearance of shaking with convulsions of silent merriment.

“I wasn’t sure how it opened,” said Lady Ruth, “but I tried all the horns and got it right at last. How lucky I was with you!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Gimblet. “I am very thankful you were.”

They twisted the horn again, and stood together to watch the recurring phenomenon of the closing door.

“It must be worked by clockwork,” the detective said, and taking out his watch he timed the interval that elapsed between the opening and shutting. “It stays open for thirty seconds,” he remarked after two or three experiments. “No doubt the mechanism is concealed in the thickness of the stone. At all events it seems to be in good working order.”

Squatting on the grass, he opened the tin box, and examined the papers with which it was filled. A glance showed him that they were what he expected, and he replaced the box where he had found it, while Lady Ruth manipulated the horn of the bull.

“I have no right to the papers,” he explained to her, as they walked homeward in the gathering dusk. “It would be more satisfactory if a magistrate were present at the official opening of the statue, and I will see what can be done about that to-morrow. In the meantime, and considering that we have been interfering with other people’s property, I shall be much obliged if you will keep our discovery secret.”

And talking in low, earnest tones, he explained to her more fully all that was likely to be implied by the papers they had unearthed.

CHAPTER XVI

With her white paint and her scarlet smokestack, the _Inverashiel_–one of the two small steamers that during the summer months plied up and down the loch, and incidentally carried on communication between Inverashiel and Crianan–was a picturesque addition to the landscape, as she approached the wooden landing-stage that stood half a mile below the promontory on which the castle was built. It was the morning of Friday, the day following the funeral, and clouds were settling slowly down on to the tops and shoulders of the hills in spite of the brilliant sunset of the previous evening. The loch lay dark and still, its surface wore an oily, treacherous look; every detail of the _Inverashiel’s_ tub-like shape was reflected and beautifully distorted in the water, which broke in long low waves from her bows as she swerved round to come alongside the pier.

As the few passengers who were waiting for her crossed the short gangway, a shower burst over the loch and in a few minutes had driven every one into the little cabin, except the two or three men who constituted the officers and crew of the steamer. One of these was in the act of slackening the rope by which the boat had been warped alongside, when a running, gesticulating figure appeared in the distance, shouting to them to wait for him.

Waited for accordingly he was; and in a few minutes Gimblet, rather out of breath after his run, hurried on board, and with a word of apology and thanks to the obliging skipper turned, like the other passengers, towards the shelter of the cabin.

With his hand on the knob of the door he hesitated. Through the glass top he had just caught sight of a figure that seemed familiar. He had seen that tweed before; the short girl with her back to him was wearing the dress in which he had seen her on the Wednesday night, searching among Lord Ashiel’s papers in the library at the castle. It was Julia Romaninov beyond a doubt, and Gimblet drew back quickly and took up his position behind the funnels on the after-deck. In spite of the rain he remained there until the boat reached Crianan, leaning against the rail with his collar turned up and his soft felt hat pulled down over his ears, so that little of him was visible except the tip of his nose.

His mind, always active, was busier than usual as he watched the ripples roll away in endless succession from the sides of the _Inverashiel_–which looked so strangely less white on closer inspection–or followed the smooth soaring movements of the gulls that swooped and circled around her, as she puffed and panted on her way across the black, taciturn waters.

As they drew near to Crianan he concealed himself still more carefully behind a pile of crates, and not till Miss Romaninov had left the steamer did he emerge from his hiding-place and step warily off the boat.

The young lady was still in sight, making her way up the steep pitch of the main street, and the detective followed her discreetly, loitering before shop windows, as if fascinated by the display of Scottish homespuns, or samples of Royal Stewart tartan, and taking an extraordinary interest in fishing-tackle and trout-flies.

But, though the girl looked back more than once, the little man in the ulster who was so intent on picking his way between the puddles did not apparently provide her with any food for suspicion; and she made no attempt to see who was so carefully sheltered beneath the umbrella he carried.

At last they left: the cobble-stones of the little town and emerged upon the high road, which here ran across the open moorland.

It was difficult now to continue the pursuit unobserved: and Gimblet became absorbed in the contemplation of an enormous cairngorm, which was masquerading as an article of personal adornment in the window of the last outlying shop.

From this position–not without its embarrassments, since a couple of barefooted children came instantly to the door, where they stood and stared at him unblinkingly–he saw the Russian advancing at a rapid pace across the moor; and, look where he would, could perceive no means of keeping up with her unobserved upon the bare side of the hill.

Just as he decided that the distance separating them had increased to an extent which warranted his continuing the chase, he joyfully saw her slacken her pace, and at the same moment a man, who must have been sitting behind a boulder beside the road, rose to his feet out of the heather, and came forward to meet her. For ten long minutes they stood talking, driving poor Gimblet to the desperate expedient of entering the shop and demanding a closer acquaintance with the cairngorm. It is humiliating to relate that he recoiled before it when it was placed in his hand, and nearly fled again into the road. However, he pulled himself together and held the proud proprietress, a gaunt, grey-haired woman with knitting-needles ever clicking in her dexterous hands, in conversation upon the theme of its unique beauties until the subject was exhausted to the point of collapse.

Every other minute he must stroll to the door and take a look up and down the road. A friend, he explained, had promised to meet him in that place; and though the shopwoman plainly doubted his veracity, and kept a sharp eye that he did not take to his heels with the cairngorm, she did not go so far as to suggest his removing himself from the zone of temptation.

At last, when for the twentieth time he put his nose round the doorpost, he saw that the pair had separated, and were walking in opposite directions, the girl continuing on her way, while the man returned to the town. He was, indeed, not a hundred yards off.

Gimblet plunged once more into the shop, and fastened upon some pencils with a zeal not very convincing after his disappointing vacillation over the brooch. The gaunt woman cheered up, however, when he bought the first seventeen she offered him, and, the stock being exhausted, finished by purchasing a piece of india-rubber, a stylographic pen, and a penny paper of pins, which she pressed upon him as particularly suited to his needs and charged him fourpence for.

By the time he issued forth into the open air, his pockets full of packages, the stranger had passed the shop and was turning the corner of the next house. To him, now, Gimblet devoted his powers of shadowing.

There was no great difficulty about it. The man walked straight before him, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and as he strode along the wet roads Gimblet noted with satisfaction the long, narrow, pointed footprints that were deeply impressed in the muddy places. He had no doubt they were the same as those he had noticed on the beach on the day of his arrival at Inverashiel.

The stranger turned into the Crianan Hotel, which stands on the lake front, fifty yards from the landing-place of the loch steamers. Gimblet passed the door without pausing and went down to the loch, where he mingled with the boatmen and loafers who congregated by the waterside.

He kept, however, a strict eye on the door of the hotel, and after a quarter of an hour saw the object of his attentions emerge with fishing-rod and basket, and cross the road directly towards him. Gimblet had not been able to see his face before, but now he had a good look as he passed close beside him.

He was a tall, fair man, evidently a foreigner, but with nothing very striking about his appearance. A pointed yellow beard hid the lower part of his face, and, for the rest, his nose was short, his eyes blue and close together, and his forehead high and narrow. He looked closely at Gimblet as he went by, and for a moment the eyes of the two men met, both equally inscrutable and unflinching; then the stranger glanced aside and strode on to where a small boat lay moored. The detective turned his back while the fair man got in and pushed off into the loch.

“Gentleman going fishing?” he remarked to a man who lounged hard by upon the causeway.

“He’s axtra fond o’ the feeshin’,” was the reply, “for a’ that he’s a foreign shentleman.”

Waiting till the boat had become a distant speck on the face of the waters, Gimblet made his way into the inn and entered into conversation with the landlord, on the pretext of engaging rooms for a friend. The landlord was sorry, but the house was full.

“If ye wanted them in a fortnicht’s time,” he said, “ye could hae the hale hotel; but tae the end o’ the holidays we’re foll up. Folks tak’ their rooms a month in advance; they come here for the fishin’ on the loch, and because my hoose is the maist comfortable in the Hielands.”

“Indeed, I can well believe that,” Gimblet assured him. “I suppose you get a lot of tourists passing through, though, Americans, for instance?”

“We hardly ever hae a room tae tak’ them in. No, I seldom hae an American bidin’ here; they maistly gang doon the loch,” said the innkeeper.

“I thought,” said Gimblet, “that was a foreign-looking man whom I saw a little while ago, coming out of the hotel.”

“We hae ae gintleman bidin’ here wha belongs tae foreign pairts,” the landlord admitted. “A Polish gintleman, he is, Count Pretovsky, a vary nice gintleman. I couldna just cae him a tourist. He’s vary keen on the fishin’ and was up here for it last year as well. He has his ain boat and is aye on the water trailin’ aefter the salmon.”

“A great many sporting foreigners come to our island nowadays,” Gimblet remarked. “Does he get many fish?”

“Oh, it’s a grand place for salmon,” said the inn-keeper with obvious pride. “And there’s troots tac. And pike, mair’s the peety,” he added.

“Dear me,” said Gimblet, “just what my friend wants. I’m sorry you can’t take him in. I must tell him to write in good time next year if he wants a room.”

As he parted from the landlord upon the doorstep of the Crianan Hotel, the _Rob Roy_–the second of the two loch steamers–was edging away from the pier, under a cloud of black smoke from her funnel The rain had stopped; the passengers were scattered on the deck, and in the bows of the vessel the detective caught sight of Julia Romaninov’s tweed-clad form. She was leaning against the rail, and gazing at a distant part of the loch where a black speck, which might represent a rowing boat, could faintly be discerned. She had come back, then, from her moorland walk. It was as Gimblet had expected; and, though he chafed at the delay, he regretted less than he would have otherwise that he could not catch the _Rob Roy_.

The _Inverashiel_ would be due on her homeward trip in a couple of hours’ time, and meanwhile he had other business that must be attended to.

He went first to the post office, where he registered and posted to Scotland Yard a packet he had brought with him. Then, after asking his way of the sociable landlord of the hotel, he proceeded to the police station, a single-storied stone building standing at the end of a side street.

Here he made himself known to the inspector, and imparted information which made that personage open his eyes considerably wider than was his custom.

“If you will bring one of your men, and come with me yourself,” said Gimblet, at the conclusion of the interview, “I think I shall be able to convince you that a mistake has been made. In the meantime there will be no harm done by a watch being kept on the foreign gentleman who is at this moment trolling for salmon on the loch.”

The inspector agreed; and when the _Inverashiel_ started, an hour later, on her voyage down the loch, she carried the two policemen on her deck, as well as the most notorious detective she was ever likely to have the privilege of conveying.

It was nearly three o’clock when they landed on the Inverashiel pier.

The weather, which for the last few hours had looked like clearing, had now turned definitely to rain; clouds had descended on the hills, and the trees in the valleys stooped and dripped in the saturated, mist-laden air. Gimblet conducted the men to the cottage, where Lady Ruth anxiously awaited them.

“If you don’t mind their staying here,” he suggested to her, “while I go up to the castle and consult Lord Ashiel about a magistrate, it will be most convenient, on account of the distance.”

“By all means,” said Lady Ruth. “I feel safer with them. I expect you will find Miss Byrne up there. She has not come in to lunch, and I think she probably met Mark and went to lunch at the castle. She ought to know better than to go to lunch alone with a young man, and I am just wondering if she has changed her mind and accepted him after all. Girls are kittle cattle, but I’ve got quite fond of that one, and I hope she’s not forgotten poor David so soon. I really am feeling anxious about her.”

“I daresay she has only walked farther than she intended,” said Gimblet, “or perhaps she came to a burn or some place she couldn’t get over, and has had to go round a mile or two. Depend on it, that’s what’s happened. But I promise you that if she is at the castle I will bring her back when I return.”

CHAPTER XVII

Behind the shrubberies, which lay at the back of the holly hedge that surrounded the little enclosed garden outside the library, beyond the. end of the battlements, and reached by a disused footpath, a great tree stood upon the edge of the steep hillside and thrust its sweeping branches over the void.

Its trunk was grey and moss-grown; moss carpeted the ground between its protruding roots, but the bracken and heather held back, and left a half-circle beneath it, untenanted by their kind. It would seem that all vegetation fears to venture beneath the shade of the beech; and for the most part it stands solitary, shunned by other growing things except moss, which creeps undaunted where its more vigorous brothers lack the courage to establish themselves.

Here came Juliet that morning.

A week ago, David Southern had shown her the path to the tree. It had been a favourite haunt of his when he was a boy, he told her. It was a private chamber to which he resorted on the rare occasions when he was disposed to solitude; when something had gone wrong with his world he had been used to retire there with his dog, or, more seldom, a book. There he had been accustomed to lie, his back supported by the tree, and hold forth to the dog upon the troubles and difficulties of life and the general crookedness of things; or, if a book were his companion, he would gaze out, between the pages, at distant Crianan clinging faintly to the knees of Ben Ghusy, and watch the swift change of passing cloud and hanging curtain of mist upon the faces of the hills and loch.

It had been a place all his own; secret from every one, even from Mark, his companion during all those holidays that he had spent at Inverashiel. Somehow, David told Juliet–and it was a confidence he had seldom before imparted to anyone–he had never quite managed to hit it off with Mark. He couldn’t say why, exactly. No doubt it was his own fault; but there was no accounting for one’s likes and dislikes.

And with quick regret at having betrayed his carefully suppressed feelings in regard to his cousin, David had laughed apologetically, and spoken of other things.

Here, then, just as the steamer _Rob Roy_ was drawing close to the wooden landing-stage at the edge of the loch, with Julia Romaninov still standing in the bows; here, because she had once been to this place with him, because without her he had so often sat upon these mossy roots, came Juliet to dream of her love.

Like him, she seated herself against the tree trunk at the giddy brink of the precipitous rock; like him, her eyes rested on the smooth waters below her, or on the far-away misty distance where Crianan slumbered; but, unlike him, her eyes, as they looked, were filled with tears. Where was he now? Oh, David, poor unjustly treated David! In what narrow cell, lighted only by a high, iron-barred window–for so the scene shaped itself in her mind–with uncovered floor of stone, bare walls and a bench to lie on, was the man she loved wearing away his days under the burden of so frightful an accusation?

For the thousandth time Juliet’s blood boiled within her at the thought, and she grew hot with anger and indignant scorn. That anyone should have dared to suspect him! Why were such fools, such wicked, evil-working imbeciles as the police allowed to exist for one moment upon the face of the globe? But no doubt they had some hidden motive in arresting him, for it was quite incredible that they really imagined he had committed this appalling crime. She could not understand their motive, to be sure, but without doubt there must have been some reason which was not clear to her.

Oh, David, David! Was he thinking of her, as she was thinking of him? Did he know, by instinct, that she would be doing all that could be done to bring about his release? But was she? Again her mind was filled with the disquieting question, was there nothing that might be done, that she was leaving undone? Had she forgotten something, neglected something? She was sure Gimblet did not believe David to be guilty, but was he certain of being able to prove his innocence? He did not seem to have discovered much at present.

Suddenly, in the midst of her distress, she smiled to herself.

At least Miss Tarver had shown herself in her true colours, and was no more to be considered. Juliet felt that she could almost forgive her for her readiness to believe the worst. It was dreadful, yes, and shameful that anyone else should think for a moment that David could be capable of such a deed, but in Miss Tarver, perhaps, the thought had not been inexcusable. On the whole, it was so nice of her to break the engagement that she might be forgiven the ridiculous reason she had advanced for doing it. Of course, Juliet assured herself, it was a mere pretext, because _no_ one could possibly believe it. And in this manner she continued to reiterate her conviction that the suspicions entertained of her lover were all assumed for some darkly obscure purpose.

So the morning wore away. A shower or two passed down the valley, but under the thick tent of the beech leaves she scarcely felt it. She was, besides, dressed for bad weather; and the grey and mournful face of the day was in harmony with her mood.

There was something comforting in this high perch. She seemed more aloof from the troubles and despair of the last few days than she had imagined possible. There was a calm, a remoteness, about the grey mountains, disappearing and reappearing from behind their screen of cloud but unchanged and unmoved by what went on around and among them, that was in some way reassuring.

The burn that ran at the bottom of the hill on which she sat, hurrying down to the loch in such turbulent foaming haste, she was able to compare, with a sad smile, to herself. The loch, she thought, was wide and impassive as justice, which did not allow itself to be influenced by the emotions. The burn would get down just the same without so much turmoil and fuss; and she would see David’s name cleared, equally surely, if she waited calmly on events, instead of burning her heart out in hopeless impatience and anxiety.

As she gazed, with some such thoughts as these, down to the stream that splashed on its way below her, her attention was caught by a movement in the bushes half-way down the steep slope at the top of which she was sitting.

The day was windless and no leaf moved on any tree. There must be some animal among the shrubs that covered the embankment, some large animal, since its movements caused so much commotion; for, as she watched, first one bush and then another stirred and bent and was shaken as if by something thrusting its way through the dense growth.

What could it be? A sheep, perhaps; there were many of them on the hillsides. This must be one that had strayed far from the rest. And yet would a sheep make so much stir? Juliet drew back a little behind the trunk of the beech-tree. Could it be a deer? She could not hear any sound of the creature’s advance, for the air was full of the clamour of the burn, but she could trace the direction of its progress by shaking leaves and swinging boughs. It seemed to be gradually mounting the slope.

Suddenly a head emerged from the waving mass of a rhododendron, and with astonishment Juliet saw that it was that of Julia Romaninov.

Her first impulse was to lean forward and call her, but as she did so the cry died unheard upon her lips. For the manner of Julia’s advance struck her as very odd. The girl was bending nearly double, and moving with a caution that seemed very strange and unnecessary. What was the matter? Was she stalking something? Crouching as she was in the bushes, she would not be seen by anyone on the path below. Did she not want to be seen? It looked more and more like it. But why in the world should Julia creep along as if she feared to be observed? Where was she going, and why?

Suddenly Juliet came to a quick decision: she would find out what Julia Romaninov was doing.

She backed hurriedly into the bracken, and made her way slowly and cautiously around the clearing under the beech-tree to the edge of the hill again, keeping under cover of the fern and heather. When she peered over, Julia had disappeared from view beneath the rhododendrons.

For a minute Juliet’s eyes searched the side of the slope below. Then she drew back her head quickly, for she had caught sight of another bush shaking uneasily a little way beyond the gap in which she had had her first glimpse of the cause of the disturbance. Cowering low in the bracken she crept along the top, keeping a foot or two from the edge, where the rock fell nearly perpendicularly for a few yards before its angle changed to the comparatively gradual, though actually steep slope of the hill which Julia was climbing.

From time to time she looked cautiously between clumps of fern or heath, to make sure that she was keeping level with her unconscious quarry.

The front of the hill swung round in a bold curve till it reached the castle; and it soon became evident that, if both girls continued to advance along the lines they were following, they would converge at a point where the end of the battlemented wall met the great holly hedge that formed two sides of the garden enclosure.

Juliet perceived this when she was not more than a dozen yards from the corner, and dropped at full length to the soft ground, at a spot where she could see between the stalks and under the leaves, and yet herself remain concealed. She had not long to wait. In a minute, Julia’s face appeared over the brow of the hill. She pulled herself up by a young fir sapling that hung over the brink, and stood for a moment, flushed and panting after her long climb. She was dressed in a greenish tweed, which blended with the woodland surroundings, and her shoulder was turned to the place where Juliet lay wondering whether she would be discovered.

Fronting them, the end of the little turret, with which the wall of the old fortress now came to a sudden termination, could be seen rearing its grey stones above the dark glossy foliage of the hedge, which grew here with peculiar vigour and continued to the extreme edge of the cliff, and even farther.

What was Juliet’s surprise to see Julia, when she had found her breath, and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the world could she be doing?

Minutes passed, and she did not reappear. Juliet waited, her nerves stretched in expectation, but nothing happened. Overhead little birds, tomtits and creepers, played about the bark of the fir-trees; a robin came and looked at her consideringly, with a bright sensible eye; from two hundred feet below, the murmur of the burn rose constant and insistent; but no other sound broke the stillness, nor was there any sign of human life upon the top of the cliff.

At last the girl could stand it no longer. Her patience was exhausted. Curiosity urged her like a goad; and, if she had not much expectation of making any important discovery, she was at least determined to solve the mystery that now perplexed her.

Without more ado she got to her feet, and ran to the holly hedge. There, throwing herself down once more, she parted the leaves with a cautious hand, and followed the path taken by the Russian.

The hedge was old and very thick, more than three yards in width at this end of it. In the middle, the trunks of the trees that formed it rose in a close-growing, impassable barrier; but just opposite the place where Julia had vanished Juliet found that there was a gap, caused, perhaps, by the death in earlier days of one of the trees, or, as she afterwards thought more likely, by the intentional omission or destruction of one of the young plants. It was a narrow opening, but she managed to wriggle through it.

On the other side, progress was bounded by the wall, whose massive granite blocks presented a smooth unbroken surface. Where, then, had Julia gone? The branches did not grow low on this, as on the outer side of the hedge, and there was room to stand, though not to stand upright. Stooping uncomfortably, the girl looked about her, and saw in the soft brown earth the plain print of many footsteps, both going and coming, between the place where she crouched and the end of the wall. She looked behind her, and there were no marks. Clearly, Julia had gone to the end; but what then? The corner of the wall was at the very edge of the precipice; from what she remembered to have seen from below, the rock was too sheer to offer any foothold; besides why, having just climbed to the summit should anyone immediately descend again, and by such an extraordinary route? While these thoughts followed one another in her mind, Juliet had advanced along the track of the footsteps, and clinging tightly to the trunk of the last holly bush she leant forward and looked down.

As she thought, the descent was impossible: the rock fell away at her feet, sheer and smooth; there was no path there that a cat could take. It made her giddy to look, and she drew back hurriedly.

Where, then, could Julia have gone? Not to the left, that was certain, for then she would have emerged again into view. To the right? That seemed impossible. Still, Juliet leant forward again, and peered round the corner of the wall.

There, not more than a couple of feet away, was a small opening, less than eighteen inches wide by about a yard in height. Hidden by the overhanging end of the hedge, it would be invisible from below. Here was the road Julia had taken.

Juliet did not hesitate. She could reach the aperture easily, and it would have been the simplest thing in the world to climb into it, but for the yawning chasm beneath. Holding firmly to the friendly holly, and resisting, with an effort, the temptation to look down, she swung herself bravely over the edge and scrambled into the hole with a gasp of relief. It was, after all, not very difficult. She found herself standing within the entrance of a narrow passage built into the thickness of the wall. Beside the opening through which she had come, a little door of oak, grey with age and strengthened with rusty bars and cross-pieces of iron, drooped upon its one remaining hinge. Two huge slabs of stone leaning near it, against the wall, showed how it had been the custom in former centuries to fortify the entrance still more effectively in time of danger.

Juliet did not wait to examine these fragments, interesting though they might be to archaeologists, but hurried down the passage as quickly as she could in the darkness that filled it, feeling her way with an outstretched hand upon the stones on either side. As her eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, she saw that though the way was dark it was yet not entirely so: a gloomy light penetrated at intervals through ivy-covered loopholes pierced in the thickness of the outer wall; and she imagined bygone McConachans pouring boiling oil or other hospitable greeting through those slits on to the heads of their neighbours. But surely, she reflected, no one would ever have attacked the castle from that side, where the precipice already offered an impregnable defence; the passage must have been used as a means of communication with the outer world, or, perhaps, as a last resort, for the purpose of escape by the beleaguered forces.

After fifty yards or so of comparatively easy progress, the shafts of twilight from the loopholes ceased to permeate the murky darkness in which she walked, and she was obliged to go more slowly, and to feel her way dubiously by the touch of hands and feet.

The floor appeared to her to be sloping away beneath her, and as she advanced the descent became more and more rapid, till she could hardly keep her feet. She went very gingerly, with a vague fear lest the path should stop unexpectedly, and she herself step into space.

Presently she found herself once more upon level ground, when another difficulty confronted her: the walls came suddenly to an end. Feeling cautiously about her in the darkness, she made out that she had come to a point where another passage crossed the one she was following, a sort of cross-road in this unknown country of shade and stone. Here, then, were three possible routes to take, and no means of knowing which of them Julia Romaninov had gone by.

After a little hesitation, she decided to keep straight on. It would at all events be easier to return if she did, and she would be less likely to make a mistake and lose her way. So on she stumbled; and who shall say that Fate had not a hand in this chance decision?

Though the distance she had traversed was inconsiderable, the darkness and uncertainty made it appear to her immense, and each moment she expected to come upon the Russian girl. At every other step she paused and listened, but no sound met her ears except a slight, regular, thudding noise, which she presently discovered, with something of a shock, to be the beating of her own heart. The sound of her progress was almost inaudible. As the day was damp, she was wearing goloshes, and her small, rubber-shod feet fell upon the stone floor with a gentle patter that was scarcely perceptible.

At last she nearly fell over the first step of a flight of stairs.

She mounted them one by one with every precaution her fears could suggest. For by now the first enthusiasm of the chase had worn off, and the solitude and darkness of this strange place had worked upon her nerves till she was terrified of she knew not what, and ready to scream at a touch.

Already she bitterly regretted having started out upon this enterprise of spying. Why had she not gone and reported what she had seen to Mr. Gimblet? That surely would have been the obvious, the sensible course. It was, she reflected, a course still open to her; and in another moment she would have turned and taken it, but even as the thought crossed her mind she was aware that the darkness was sensibly decreased, and in another second she had risen into comparative daylight. As she stood still, debating what she should do, and taking in all that could now be distinguished of her surroundings, she saw that the stairs ended in an open trap-door, leading to a high, black-lined shaft like the inside of a chimney, in which, some two feet above the trap, an odd, narrow curve of glass acted as a window, and admitted a very small quantity of light. A streak of light seemed to come also from the wall beside it.

Juliet drew herself cautiously up, till her head was in the chimney, and her eyes level with the slip of glass.

With a sudden shock of surprise she saw that she was looking into the room which, above all others, she had so much cause to remember ever having entered.

It was, indeed, the library of the castle, and she was looking at it from the inside of that clock into which Gimblet had once before seen Julia Romaninov vanish.

The curtains were drawn in the room, but after the absolute blackness of the stone corridors the semi-dusk looked nearly as bright as full daylight to Juliet, and she had no difficulty in distinguishing that there was but one person in the library, and that person Julia.

She was standing by a bookshelf at the far end, near the window, and seemed to be methodically engaged in an examination of the books. Juliet saw her take out first one, then another, musty, leather-bound volume, shake it, turn over the leaves, and put it back in its place after groping with her hand at the back of the shelf. Plainly she was hunting for something. But for what? She had no business where she was, in any case, and Juliet’s indignation gathered and swelled within her as she watched this unwarrantable intrusion.

She would confront the girl and ask her what she meant by such behaviour. But how to get into the library?

Looking about her, she saw that the streak of light in the wall beside her came through a perpendicular crack which might well be the edge of a little door.

She pushed gently and the wood yielded to her fingers.

CHAPTER XVIII

Later on in the afternoon, when Gimblet arrived at the castle, he was immediately shown into the presence of Lord Ashiel, who was pacing the smoking-room restlessly, a cigarette between his teeth. He looked pale and haggard, the strain of the last few days had evidently been too much for him.

Gimblet greeted him sympathetically.

“You have not found your uncle’s will, I can see,” he began, “and you are fretting at the idea of keeping his daughter out of her fortune. But set your mind at rest; we shall be able to put that right. Is she here, by the way?” he added, remembering Lady Ruth’s anxiety.

“Here, of course not! What do you mean?” cried Mark, stopping suddenly in his walk.

“Well, I was sure she was not,” Gimblet replied, “but I promised to ask. Lady Ruth is rather upset because Miss Byrne did not come in to lunch. I told her she had probably gone for a longer walk than had been her intention,” he added soothingly, for Mark was looking at him with a disturbed expression.

He seemed relieved, however, by the detective’s suggestion.

“Yes, no doubt, that would be the reason,” he murmured, lighting a fresh cigarette, and throwing himself down in an easy-chair, with his hands clasped behind his head. “No, I haven’t found any will, and there’s not a corner left that I haven’t turned inside out. I suppose he never really made it. Just talked about it, probably, as people are so fond of doing. And now I’m at a loose end; all alone in this big house with no one to speak to and nothing to do with myself. It’s a beast of a day, or I should go out and try for a salmon, in self-defence. To-morrow I shall go South. And you, have you found out anything new about the murder yet?”

“I have found out one thing which you will be glad to hear,” said Gimblet, “and that is the place where the missing will is concealed.”

“What!” cried Mark, leaping to his feet. “Where is it? What does it say? Give it to me!”

“I haven’t got it,” Gimblet told him. “I don’t know what it says, but I know where to look for it. It is in the statue your uncle put up on the track known as the Green Way. I have found a memorandum of his which sets the matter beyond a doubt.”

And he related at length the story of the half-sheet of paper with the mysterious writing, and of how he had learnt by accident of the manner in which the statue fitted in with the obscure directions, omitting nothing except the fact that he had already acted on the information so far as to make certain of the actual existence of the tin box, and saying that he should prefer the papers to be brought to light in the presence of a magistrate.

“I believe there are other documents there besides the will,” he said, without troubling to explain what excellent reasons he had for such a belief. “I understood from your uncle that there might be some of an almost international importance. In case any dispute should subsequently arise about them, I wish to have more than one reliable witness to their being found. Can you send a man over to the lodge at Glenkliquart, and ask General Tenby to come back with him. I am told that he is a magistrate.”

Gimblet did not think it necessary to relate how he had obtained possession of the sheet of paper bearing the injunction to “face curiosity.” His adventures on that night savoured too strongly of house-breaking to be drawn attention to.

“Your uncle must have posted it to me in London the day before he died,” he said mendaciously. “It was forwarded here, and at first I could make neither head nor tail of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mark asked impatiently. “And yet,” he added reflecting, “I might not have seen to what it referred. Yes, of course I will send over for General Tenby. He can’t come for three or four hours, though, which will make it rather late. Are you sure we had not better open the thing sooner? The bull’s horn at the south-east corner turns like a key, you say? Suppose some one else finds that out and makes off with whatever may be hidden there.”

“I am absolutely sure we needn’t fear anything of the sort, because I have the best of reasons for being positive that no one has the slightest inkling of the secret,” Gimblet assured him. “There is a whole gang of scoundrels after the document of which your uncle told me, who are ready to spend any money, or risk any penalty, in order to obtain it. They will not be deterred even by having to pay for it with their lives. You may be quite sure that if anyone had suspected where it was concealed, it would not have been allowed to remain there, and we should find the _cache_ empty. But we may safely argue that they have not found it, since in that case they certainly would not hang about the neighbourhood.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Mark, “that you think there are any of these Nihilist people lurking about? That letter which came for Uncle Douglas–the letter from Paris–I guessed it meant something of the sort.”

“There is a foreigner staying at Crianan,” said Gimblet, “whom I have every reason to suspect. More than that, there has been a Russian in your very midst who, I am afraid, you will be shocked to hear, is hand in glove with him.”

“Whom do you mean?” exclaimed Mark, “not–not Julia Romaninov?” It seemed to the detective that he winced as he uttered the name of the girl. Silently Gimblet bowed his head, and for a minute the two men stood without a word. “Then,” stammered Mark, “you think that she–that she–Oh,” he cried, “I can hardly believe that!”

Gimblet did not reply, but after a few moments walked over to the writing-table and spread out a piece of notepaper. He kept his back turned towards the young man, who seemed thankful for an opportunity to recover his composure.

His face was still working nervously, however, when at length the detective turned and held out a pen towards him.

“Will you not write at once to General Tenby?” he suggested.

Mark sat down before the blotting-pad.

“He will be at home,” he said mechanically. “This weather will have driven them in early if they have been shooting.”

The note was written and dispatched by a groom on horseback, and then Gimblet bade an revoir to his host at the door of the castle.

“I will go back to the cottage,” he said; “I have an accumulation of correspondence that absolutely must be attended to, and I do not think there is anything to be done up here before General Tenby comes. Once we have the Nihilist papers in our hands I have a little plan by which I think our birds may be trapped. Will you meet me at the cottage at half-past six? The General will have to pass it on the way to Inverashiel, and we can stop him as he goes by.”

“It will be about seven o’clock, I expect,” said Mark, “when he gets down from Glenkliquart. I’ll be with you before he is. The Lord knows how I shall get through the time till he comes. I loathe writing letters, but this afternoon I’m dashed if I don’t almost envy you and your correspondence.”

“I know it is the waiting that tells on one,” Gimblet said, his voice full of kindly sympathy. “What you want is to get right away from this place. Its associations must be horrible to you. No one could really be astonished if you never set foot in it again.”

Mark laughed rather bitterly.

“That’s just what I feel like,” he said shortly. “My uncle killed; my cousin arrested; my friend accused. Miss Byrne refusing to let me behave decently to her about the money. Oh well,” he pulled himself up, and spoke in a more guarded tone, “one gets used to everything in time, no doubt, but just at present, I’m afraid, I am rather depressing company. See you later.”

They went their ways, Gimblet going forth into the drenching rain which was now falling down the road, through the soaking woodlands to the cottage, where the Crianan policemen still smoked their pipes undisturbed. Lady Ruth met him at the gate, running down in her waterproof when she saw him approaching.

“Where is Juliet?” she cried. “Wasn’t she at Inverashiel?”

“Hasn’t she come back?” asked Gimblet, answering her question by another.

“No sign of her. What can have happened? Mr. Gimblet, I am really getting dreadfully anxious. She must have gone on to the hills and lost her way in the mist.”

“She is sure to get back in time,” Gimblet tried to reassure her, though he himself was beginning to wonder at the girl’s absence. “Perhaps,” he added, “she is at Mrs. Clutsam’s. I daresay that’s the truth of it.”

“She can’t be there,” Lady Ruth answered. “Mrs. Clutsam told me she was going out all day, to-day, to visit her husband’s sister who is staying somewhere twenty miles from here on the Oban road, and longing, of course, to hear all about the murder at first hand. Relations are so exacting, and if they are relations-in-law they become positive Shylocks. Juliet may have gone to the lodge though, all the same, and stayed to keep the Romaninov girl company.”

She seemed to be satisfied with this explanation; and Gimblet had tea with her, and then went to write his letters.

Soon after six one of the policemen went down to the high road to lie in wait for General Tenby, and about twenty minutes past the hour wheels rattled on the gravel of the short carriage-drive, and the General drove up to the door. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man of between fifty and sixty, with a red face and a keen blue eye, and a precise, jerky manner.

“Ah, Lady Ruth! Glad to see you bearing up so well under these tragic circumstances,” he said, shaking hands with that lady, who came to the door to welcome him. “Poor Ashiel ought to have had shutters to his windows. Dreadful mistake, no shutters: lets in draughts and colds in the head, if nothing worse. These old houses are all the same. No safety in them from anything. Young McConachan wrote me an urgent note to come over. Don’t quite see what for, but here I am. Eh? What do you say? Oh, detective from London, is it? How d’ye do? Perhaps you can tell me what the programme is?”

“Young Lord Ashiel promised to meet us here at half-past six,” Gimblet told him. “We expect to put our hands on some important documents, and I was anxious you should be present.”

“Quite unnecessary. Absolutely ridiculous. Still, here I am. May as well come along.”

The General went on talking to Lady Ruth, but after a few minutes the inspector from Crianan sent in to ask if he could speak to him, and they retired together to Lady Ruth’s little private sitting-room, where they remained closeted for some time. While the old soldier was listening to what the policeman had to tell him, Gimblet began to show signs of restlessness. He went to the door and looked about him. The weather was clearing, the clouds breaking and scudding fast before a wind which had arisen in the North; a tinge of blue showed here and there in the interstices between them, while a veil of mist that trailed after them shone faintly orange in the rays of the hidden sun.

Gimblet went back and sat down in the drawing-room with the _Scotsman_ in his hand. He put it down after a few minutes, however, and began fidgeting about the room. Then he went and conferred with the second of the two policemen, and as he was talking to him the General and the inspector reappeared.

“I think,” said Gimblet, coming towards them, “that we will not wait any longer for Lord Ashiel.”

General Tenby, staring at him with rather a strange expression, nevertheless silently assented, and the four men started on their walk to the green way.

As they went up the glen a ray of sunshine emerged from between the flying clouds, and fell upon the statue at the end of the enclosed glade. Away to the right their eyes could follow the track of a distant shower; and as they went a rainbow curved across the sky, stretching from hill to hill like some great monumental arch set up for the celestial armies to march under on their return from the conquest of the earth.

“That statue,” Gimblet remarked to the General, who walked beside him, “is a specimen of the worst modern Italian sculpture. The figure of Pandora is modelled like a sack of potatoes; the composition is weak and unsatisfactory; and the pediment on which the whole group is poised large enough to support three others of the same size.”

The General grunted.

“I always understood that the late Lord Ashiel knew what he was about,” he said stiffly. “He told me himself that it cost him a great deal of money.”

Gimblet sighed. He could not help feeling that it was a pity Lord Ashiel had not earlier fallen into the habit of consulting him.

Still, he was bound to admit that though the stone group, regarded as a work of art, was altogether deplorable, the general effect of the erection, in its rectangular setting of forest, was excellent. The whole scene was one of peaceful and romantic beauty. Poets might have sat themselves down in that moist and shining spot; and, forgetful of the possibilities of rheumatism, found their muse inspiring beyond the ordinary.

Gimblet was at heart something of a poet, but he felt no inclination to communicate the feelings which the place and hour aroused in him to any of his companions; and it was in a silence which had in it something dimly foreboding that the party drew near to the statue.

In silence, Gimblet approached the great block of stone and laid his hand upon the projecting horn of the bull. Equally silently the two policemen had taken up positions at the end of the pedestal; the General stood behind them, alert and interested.

After a swift glance, which took in all these details, Gimblet turned the horn round in its socket.

The hidden door swung open, and there was a sound of muttered exclamations from the police and a loud oath from the General. Gimblet sprang round the corner of the pedestal, and there, as he expected, cowering in the mouth of the disclosed cavity, and looking, in his fury of fear and mortification, for all the world like some trapped vermin, crouched Lord Ashiel, glaring at his liberators with a rage that was hardly sane.

Beyond him, on the floor at the back, they could see the tin dispatch box standing open and empty.

The two policemen, acting on instructions previously given them, made one simultaneous grab at the young man and dragged him into the open with several seconds to spare before the door slammed to again, in obedience to the invisible mechanism that controlled it. They set him on his legs on the wet turf, and stood, one on each side of him, a retaining hand still resting on either arm.

For a moment Mark gazed from the General to the detective, his eyes full of hatred. Then he controlled himself with an effort, and when he spoke it was with a forced lightness of manner.

“I have to thank you for letting me out,” he said. “The air in there was getting terrible.” He paused, and filled his lungs ostentatiously, but no one answered him. Losing something of his assumed calmness, he went on, uneasily: “I just thought I’d come along and see if there was any truth in Mr. Gimblet’s story; and I was quite right to doubt it, since there isn’t. He’s not quite as clever as he thinks, for he was as positive as you like that my uncle’s will was hidden here, but as a matter of fact it’s not, as I was taking the trouble to make sure when that cursed statue shut me in. There’s nothing in it of any sort except an empty tin box.”

“There’s nothing in it now,” said Gimblet, speaking for the first time, “because I had no doubt you meant to destroy the will if you found it, so I removed it to a safe place last night. As for the other papers, I have sent them to London, where they will be still safer. I knew you would give yourself away by coming here. That’s why I told you the secret of the bull’s horn.”

Mark’s face was dreadful to see. He made a menacing step forward as if he would throw himself upon the detective. But the strong right hands of Inspector Cameron and Police Constable Fraser tightened on his arms and restrained his further action. He seemed for the first time to be conscious of their presence.

“Leave go of my arm,” he shouted. “What the devil do you mean by putting your dirty hands on me?”

“My lord,” said the inspector, “you had better come quietly. I am here to arrest you for the murder of your uncle, Lord Ashiel, and I warn you that anything you say may be used against you.”

“Are you going to arrest the whole family?” scoffed Mark. “Where’s your warrant, man?”

“I have it here, my lord,” replied the inspector, fumbling in his pocket for the paper the astonished General had signed when the inspector had imparted to him, in Lady Ruth’s little sitting-room, the information he had received from Mr. Gimblet.

As Inspector Cameron fumbled, the young man, with a sudden jerk which found them unprepared, threw off the hold upon his arms and leaped aside.

As he did so, he plunged his hand into his pocket and drew forth a little phial.

“You shall never take me alive,” he cried, and lifted it to his lips.

“Stop him!” shouted Gimblet.

Throwing his whole weight upon the uplifted arm, he forced the phial away from Mark’s already open mouth; the other men rushed to his assistance, and between them the frustrated would-be suicide was overpowered, and held firmly while the inspector fastened a pair of handcuffs over his wrists. When it was done he raised his pinioned hands, as well as he could, and shook them furiously at Gimblet.

“It’s you I have to thank for this,” he shouted. “Curse you, you eavesdropping spy. But there are surprises in store for you, my friend. You’ve got me, it seems, and you say you’ve got the will. You’ll find it more difficult to lay your hands on the heiress!”

The words and still more the triumphant tone in which they were uttered cast a chill upon them all.

“What do you mean?” cried Gimblet.

But not another syllable could be got out of the prisoner; and the inspector, besides, protested against questions being addressed to him.

With all the elation over his capture taken out of him, and with a mind full of brooding anxiety, Gimblet hurried on ahead of the returning party, and burst in upon Lady Ruth with eager inquiries.

But Juliet had not returned.

How was anyone to know that she had that morning made her way into the secret passage of the old tower, and watched through the slip of glass in the case of the clock what Julia Romaninov was doing in the library?

But leaving Gimblet and Lady Ruth to organize a search for her, we will return to Juliet in her hiding-place and see what was the end of her adventure.

CHAPTER XIX

When Juliet, incensed and indignant at the Russian’s behaviour, discovered the door in the clock and was on the point of opening it and making her presence known, a noise of steps in the passage made her pause. As she listened, there was the sound of a key turning in the lock, the library door was thrown suddenly open, and Mark stepped into the room.

Juliet saw Julia’s expression as she sprang round to face the newcomer. She saw it change, swift as lightning, from a look of horrified dismay to one of sudden transforming tenderness, as the girl recognized the intruder, that the hand already in the act of pushing open the door of the clock fell inert and limp to her side, and if she had been able to move she would have lost no time in retreating. She knew instinctively that she was seeing a secret laid bare which she had no right to spy upon. And yet, though her impulse was to fly from the place in embarrassment and confusion, something stronger than her natural discretion and delicacy held her where she stood. For Julia had not come here for the purpose of meeting Mark. She had come with a purpose less personal: something, Juliet felt convinced, that was in some way vaguely discreditable, and at the same time menacing. It could be for no harmless reason that she had taken this secret, dangerous way into the castle.

And so Juliet kept her ground, blushing at her role of spy, and averting her eyes as Julia dropped the book she was holding and ran forward to meet Mark, with that tell-tale look upon her face.

But Mark did not show the same pleasure. He stood, holding the handle of the door, which he had closed gently behind him, and looking with a certain sternness at the girl.

“Julia,” he said, “you here! What are you doing?”

“Oh, Mark,” she cried, not answering his question, “aren’t you glad to see me? It is so long, oh, it is so long since I saw you!”

She threw her arms round his neck with a happy laugh, and drew his face down to hers.

“Darling! darling!” she murmured. “How can we live without each other for one single day!”

She spoke in a low, soft voice. To Juliet, to whom every purling syllable was painfully audible, it sounded cooingly, like the voice of doves.

To the surprise of the girl to whom Mark had proposed marriage two days before, when she ventured to peep through her spy window, Mark’s arms were round Julia and he was kissing her ardently.

But after a moment he released himself gently.

“You haven’t told me, dear,” he said, “what you are doing here.”

His voice held a note of authority before which Julia’s assurance vanished.

“I–I wasn’t doing anything,” she muttered.

“Julia!” he remonstrated.

“Well,” she said, with some show of defiance, “I suppose anyone may take a book from the library.”

“Of course,” he said, “you may take anything of mine you want Still, as you are not staying in the house–In short, it seems to me that the more obvious course would have been to have said something to me about it; and besides,” he added, struck by a sudden thought, “how in the world did you get in? The door was locked, and the key is on the outside.”

“Oh, if you’re going to make such a fuss about nothing,” she exclaimed petulantly, her toe beginning to tap the boards, “it’s not worth explaining anything to you.” She turned away and walked towards the fireplace.

“I’m not making a fuss,” Mark said quietly, “but you must tell me, Julia, what you are doing here, and how you came. To speak plainly, I don’t believe you came for a book.”

“If you don’t believe me, what’s the good of my saying anything?” she retorted. “Oh, how horrid you are to-day, Mark. I don’t believe you love me a bit, any more.” And leaning her head against the mantelpiece, she burst into tears.

“You know it isn’t that, Julia,” he said, looking at her fixedly. “Don’t cry, there’s a dear, good girl. You know that I love you. Why, you’re the only thing in the whole world that I really want. But you must tell me how you came here. Tell me,” he repeated, taking her hands from her face, and forcing her to look at him, “what you want in the library. Tell me, Julia, I want to know.”

She seemed to struggle to keep silence, but to be unable to resist his questioning eyes.

“I suppose I must tell you,” she murmured; “it’s not that I don’t want to. But they would kill me if they knew. Oh, Mark, I ought not to tell you, but how can I keep anything secret from my beloved? Swear to me that you will never repeat it, or try to hinder me in what I have to do?”

He bent and kissed her.

“Julia,” he said, “can’t you trust me?”

“I do, I do,” she cried. “While you love me, I trust you. But if you left off, what then? That is the nightmare that haunts me. Mark, Mark, what would become of me if you were to change towards me?”

He kissed her again, murmuring reassuring words that did not reach Juliet’s ears. “So tell me now,” he ended, “what you were doing here.”

“Mark,” she said nervously, “you know where my childhood was passed?”

“In St. Petersburg,” he replied wonderingly.

“Yes, in Petersburg. And you know how things are there. It is so different from your England, my England. For I am English really, Mark, although that thought always seems so strange to me; since during so many years I believed myself to be a Russian. I am the daughter of English parents; my father was a very respectable London plumber of the name of Harsden, whose business went to the bad and who died, leaving my mother to face ruin and starvation with a family of five small children, of whom I was the last. When a lady who took an interest in the parish in which we lived suggested that a friend of hers should adopt one of the children, my mother was only too thankful to accept the proposal, and I was the one from whom she chose to be parted. I have never seen her since, but she is still alive, and I send her money from time to time.

“The lady who adopted me was Countess Romaninov, and I believed myself her child till a day or two before she died, when she told me, to my lasting regret, the true story of my origin. But I was brought up a Russian, and I shall never feel myself to be English. Somehow the soil you live on in your childhood seems to get into your bones, as you say here. It is true that I speak your language easily, but it was Russian that my baby lips first learned. My sympathies, my point of view, my friends, all except yourself, are Russian. And I have one essentially Russian attribute, I am a member of what you would call a Nihilist society.”

Mark interrupted her with an interjection of surprise, but she nodded her head defiantly, and continued:

“All my life, all my private ends and desires must be governed by the needs of my country. First and foremost I exist that the rule of the Tyrant may be abolished, and the Slav be free to work out his own salvation; he shall be saved from the fate that now overwhelms and crushes him; dragged bodily from under the heel of the oppressor. I am not the only one. We are many who think as one mind. And the day is not far distant when our sacrifices shall bear fruit. Ah, Mark, what a great cause, what a noble purpose, is this of ours! Perhaps I shall be able to convert you, to fire your cold British blood with my enthusiasm?”

She stopped and looked at him inquiringly. But he made no reply, and after a moment she continued, placing her hand fondly upon his shoulder as she spoke.

“Our plan is to terrify the rulers into submission. We must not shrink from killing, and killing suddenly and unexpectedly, till they abandon the wickedness of their Ways. They must never know what it is to feel safe. And we see to it that they do not. Death waits for them at the street corner, on their travels, at their own doorsteps. They never know at what moment the bomb may not be thrown, or the pistol fired. It is sad that explosives are so unreliable. There are many difficulties. You would not believe the obstacles that we find placed in our path at every turning. And for those who are suspected there is Siberia, and the mines. But it is worth it. It is worth anything to feel that one is working and risking all for one’s country, and one’s fellow-countrymen. It is an honour to belong to a band of such noble men and women. But now and then one is admitted who turns out to be unworthy. Yes, even such a cause as ours has traitors to contend with. And your uncle, Lord Ashiel, was one of them.”

“What,” said Mark incredulously, “Uncle Douglas a Nihilist? Nonsense. It’s impossible.”

“He was, really. For he joined the ‘Friends of Man’ when he was at the British Embassy at Petersburg long years ago; and no sooner had he been initiated than he turned round and denounced the society and all its works. Worse still, he declared his intention of hindering it from carrying out its programme. He would have been got rid of there and then, but as ill-luck would have it he had, by an unheard-of chain of accidents, become possessed of an important document belonging to the society. It was, indeed, a list of the principal people on the executive committee that fell into his hands, and he took the precaution of sending it to England, with instructions that if anything happened to him it should be forwarded to the Russian Police, before he made known his ridiculous objections to our programme. Here, as you will understand, was a most impossible situation with which there was apparently no means of coping.

“For years that one man hampered and frustrated our entire organization. He was practically able to dictate his own terms, for he announced his intention of publishing the list of names if we carried out any important project, and no device could be contrived to stop his being as good as his word. The tyrant has walked unscathed except by mere private enterprise, and the government we could have caused to crumble to the ground has flourished and continued to work evil as before. We have been crippled, paralysed in every direction. It was only last year that there seemed reason to think that Lord Ashiel had removed the document from the Bank of England where it had for so long been guarded, and there appeared to be a possibility that he now kept it in his own house. If that were so, there seemed a good chance of getting hold of it, and how proud I am, Mark, to think that it was I who was chosen to make the attempt!

“I came to England with the best introductions into society, and had no difficulty in making friends with your aunt and obtaining an invitation to stay here. Last year I did not succeed in gaining any information. Your uncle, for some reason, seemed rather to avoid me, and I did not make any headway towards gaining his confidence. I never could be sure if he suspected me. This year there was a question of replacing me by some one else, but it was judged that Lord Ashiel’s suspicions would be certainly awakened by the appearance of another Russian, so, in the hope that I was not associated in his mind with the people to which he had behaved so basely, I was ordered to try again.

“A member of the society, who occupies a high and responsible position on the council, accompanied me to the neighbourhood, and from time to time I report to him and receive his advice and instructions. He stays in Crianan, so that I have some one within reach to go to for advice. At least, so I am officially informed, but I know very well he is really there to keep watch on me, for it is not the habit of the society to trust its members more than is unavoidable. If it is possible, I go once a week to Crianan and make my report, but I can’t always manage to go, and then he rows across the loch after dark and I go out and meet him. He was to come on the night of the murder, and my first thought when I heard of it was that he might be caught in the shrubberies and mistaken for the murderer. But it appears that he had already taken alarm, and I am thankful to say he was able to escape in good time.”

“So David really did see some one wandering about that night,” Mark commented thoughtfully. “Ah, Julia, if you’d told me all this earlier everything might have been different. Poor old David need never have been dragged into it at all.”

She looked at him a moment, as if puzzled, and then continued her story.

“It was thought that I might be able to bring about your uncle’s death by some means that should have all the appearance of an accident, and so perhaps not involve action on the part of those who hold the document–that is, if it should prove not to be in his own keeping–for he had always assured the council that no decisive step would be taken except as a retort to signs of violence on our part, whether directed towards himself or others.

“I have not been able to find any trace of the list. I thought I had it one day in London, when I followed Lord Ashiel to a detective’s office, and managed to gain possession of an envelope given him by Lord Ashiel, but as far as I could make out it contained nothing of any importance. It was a bitter disappointment. You can imagine the consternation into which we were thrown by the murder. It seemed certain that his death would be attributed to our organization, and if anyone held the list for him it would be published immediately. Four days have passed, however, and my superior has received a cable saying that so far all is well. It looks more and more as if the list had been kept here, but I have hunted everywhere and found nothing. Oh, I have searched without ceasing since the moment I heard of his death! I came here even on the very night of the murder, and moved the body with my own hands in order to get at the bureau drawers. There is a secret way into the room through that old clock there, which leads into the grounds; I found it long ago, one day when I was exploring outside in the shrubberies. I have often been here, and searched, and searched again. Do you know anything of this document, Mark? If you do, I beg and implore you to give it to me. Otherwise I cannot answer for your life; and, as for our marriage, that is out of the question unless I am successful in my undertaking.”

It may be imagined with what amazement and growing horror Juliet listened to this avowal. That Julia, the girl with whom she had associated on terms of easy familiarity which had been near to becoming something like intimacy in the close contact and companionship of a country-house life, that this girl, an honoured guest in Lord Ashiel’s house, should have gained her footing there for her own treacherous ends, or at the bidding of a band of political assassins! Juliet could scarcely believe her ears as she heard the calm, indifferent tone in which Julia spoke of the drawbacks to “getting rid” of Lord Ashiel, and of the contemplated “accident” which was to have befallen him. She would have fled from where she stood, if mingled fear and curiosity to hear more had not rooted her to the spot. Her alarm was tempered by the presence of Mark. If this girl should discover her hiding there and show signs of the violence that might be expected from such a character, Mark would be there to protect her. She could trust him to know how to deal with the Russian, whose true nature must now be apparent to him.

But Mark, to her astonishment, had not drawn away from Julia with the repugnance and disgust that were to be expected. Instead, he was looking at her, strangely, indeed, but almost eagerly.

“It was you, then, who moved the body! To think that I never guessed!” he murmured, half to himself. “If I had known, I might have spared myself the trouble to–” Then more loudly he reproached his companion.

“And you have never said a word to me! Oh, Julia, you didn’t trust me.” He shook his head at her mournfully.

“Trust you!” she retorted. “Did you trust me? But I would have trusted you,” she added, gazing fondly into his eyes, “if I had dared risk the punishment that will surely be meted out to me if it is known I have done so. You don’t know how rigid the rules of our society are. But you haven’t told me yet if you have the list.”

“Not I,” he said. “I never heard of its existence. I suppose that anonymous letter that came addressed to Uncle Douglas after his death had something to do with that.”

“Did a letter come from Paris? They sent them to him from time to time. It prevented his suspecting me. But you will give me the list if you find it, won’t you? It means everything to me.”

“Of course I will,” he promised. “It is no earthly good to me, so far as I know. But you, when you were looking for it, did you, among all the papers you examined, ever come across such a thing as a will?”

“No, never,” she replied. “Mrs. Clutsam told me it could not be found. You may be sure, if I had discovered one which did not leave you everything, I should have destroyed it.”

“Dear little Julia!” Mark drew her to him and kissed her. “How sweet you are. There is no one like you!”

“Really? Do you really love me, Mark?”

“Darling, of course I do.”

“Will you always? Are you quite, quite sure that I am the one girl in all the world for you, as you are the one man for me?”

“Darling, you are the only one in the world I have ever so much as looked at.”

“Would you never, never forget me, or marry anyone else, no matter what happened?”

“Never,” he assured her, “never.”

She sighed contentedly.

“What should I do if you forgot me, Mark? I should die. But,” she added in a different tone, “I think I should kill you first!”

Mark laughed a little uneasily.

“Hush, hush,” he said, “you mustn’t talk so much about killing. A minute ago you were talking of killing my poor old uncle. If I took you seriously what should I think? It is lucky I love you as I do, otherwise doesn’t it occur to you that it might get you into trouble to talk in this wild way?”

“You can take me as seriously as you like,” she answered gravely. “I am serious enough, God knows. But I shouldn’t talk about it, even to you, if I didn’t _know_ it was safe. You see, I know you are like me.”

“Like you? I’m dashed if I am! How do you mean? I am like you?”

She looked at him squarely, and nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “you are like me. You would not hesitate to kill if you thought it necessary. You think just the same as me on that subject. Only you have gone farther than I have–yet.”

“Julia,” he cried, “what do you mean?”

“I mean that I know all about you, Mark,” she replied gravely. “I know what you think you have kept secret from me. I know it was you who killed your uncle.”

With a muffled cry Mark shook himself free, and sprang away from her.

“What are you saying?” he whispered hoarsely. “You are mad, girl! But I won’t have such lies uttered, I won’t have it, I tell you.”

With terrified amazement Juliet saw his face change, become ugly, distorted. But Julia showed no sign of alarm.

“Why get so excited?” she asked calmly. “What does it matter? Do you imagine I would betray you? I, who would sell my soul for you! I know you did it. It is no use keeping up this pretence of innocence to me, who had more right to kill him than you. Why shouldn’t you kill who you wish? But don’t say you didn’t do it. It is foolish. I saw you.”

“It is a lie. You can’t have seen me,” Mark declared again, but with less assurance. “You were in the drawing-room all the time. Lady Ruth and Maisie Tarver both said so. The drawing-room doesn’t even look out on the garden. There is no room that does, except the library, and you weren’t there then, anyhow.”

“I didn’t see you fire the shot,” said Julia, “but I saw you afterwards when you went to put back your rifle in the gun-room. I told you that after the first search in the grounds was over, and everyone had gone up to bed, I slipped out of the house by the door near the gunroom, and came round to the library to see if Lord Ashiel had carried the list on him. When I came back, I let myself in quietly by the door which I had left unbolted, and had just got half-way up the back stairs when I heard footsteps in the passage below, and crouched down behind the banisters. I saw you come along the passage, carrying an electric lantern in one hand and your rifle in the other. I saw you look round anxiously before opening the gun-room door and going in. When you had vanished, I hurried on up to my room, for it was not the time or place to tell you what I had seen, but I left a crack of my door open, and after rather a long while saw you pass along the passage to your own room; this time without your gun. I knew, of course, that you had been cleaning it and putting it away.”

She spoke with the indifference with which one may refer to a regrettable but incontrovertible fact, and Mark seemed to feel it useless to deny what she said.

“You had no right to spy on me,” he exclaimed angrily when she had done.

“Oh, Mark,” she cried, dismayed, “I wasn’t spying. It was the merest accident. And I think it’s horrid of you to mind my knowing. Why didn’t you tell me all about it before. I might have helped you, I’m sure.”

But he would have none of her endearments, and threw off the hand she laid upon his arm with a rough gesture.

“Mark, oh, Mark,” she wailed, “don’t be angry with me! You know I can’t bear it. I can bear anything but that. Don’t, don’t be angry with me.”

She had but one thought; it was for him, and he who ran might read it shining in the depths of her great eyes. After a few minutes of sulking, Mark relented.

“No one could be angry with you for long, Julia,” he declared.

Instantly she was once more all smiles.

“Don’t ever be angry with me again,” she urged, her hands in his. “And now that you have forgiven me, tell me all about it. What made you do such a dreadful thing, Mark? You must have had some good reason, I know. I never would doubt that.”

“There’s nothing much to tell,” he said unwillingly. “I had a good reason, yes. I must have money. It is for your sake, darling, that I must get it. I can’t marry you without it. I hadn’t meant to kill him, if I could get it without. He was ill, and had left his fortune to me. I thought I should get it in time, by letting Nature take her course. It was that or ruin, and I really had to do it for your sake, darling. I didn’t want to hurt the old boy. Why should I? It’s not a pleasant thing to have to do. But I had no choice–there was no other way of getting enough money, and I simply had to get it. It was his life or mine. You don’t understand. I can’t explain. It just had to be done, and there’s an end of it. Everything was going wrong. That girl, that Byrne girl, I imagined he was going to marry her. You know we all did. That would have spoilt everything. At first I thought she could be got out of the way, but she seemed to bear a charmed life.”

“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 passed through the billiard-room where I was knocking the balls 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 passage 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 dickens 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 passed 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 ass, 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 assured 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 relationship 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-class 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 Ashiel, 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.

“Of course. Not a word of truth in it. Damned nonsense,” he blustered.

But his eyes fell before Juliet’s scornful gaze, and Julia was not deceived.

“It can’t be true, oh, it can’t,” she moaned. “No man could be so vile.”

“No other man could,” Juliet amended. In spite of herself she was sorry for the girl, whose stricken face showed plainly the anguish she was undergoing. “Forget him, Julia; he is not worthy to tie your shoe-lace. He came to me after they had taken David away, and asked me first if I would take his inheritance even though I couldn’t prove my birth, which he must have known perfectly that I should never dream of doing, and then proposed I should marry him, saying that he was very fond of me, and that in that way justice would be done as regards Lord Ashiel’s money, however things turned out for me. I thought it honourable and generous at the time, and so did Lady Ruth when I told her–oh yes, she knows about it and can tell you it is true–but now I see that all he wanted was to be on the safe side, and, if I had accepted him and had turned out to have no claim upon his uncle’s fortune, he would have broken the engagement on some easy pretext. Can you deny it?” she demanded of Mark.

But he could not face her, though he made an effort again to brazen it out.

Every word she had spoken seemed to strike Julia like a blow. She shrank quivering away, and threw herself down on to a chair, her face hidden in her hands. Juliet went to her and touched her gently on the shoulder.

“Don’t think of him any more,” she said. “Presently you will hate yourself for having cared for a murderer. Just now, I know, your love for him makes you gloss over his crimes, but when you are yourself you will see how odious they are. Poor Julia, I hate to hurt you so, but it is better, isn’t it, that you should know? You will forget this madness. He is not worth your wasting another thought on. Think how shamefully he has deceived you. Think of all his lying words, of how he told you he had never looked at another woman.”

Julia raised her head and showed a face, white as chalk, in which the great brown eyes seemed to burn like fires of hatred.

“Yes,” she said in a hard, even voice. “I am thinking of it. I shall not forget him. No. Instead, I shall think of him day and night, be sure of that. I shall laugh as I think of him; laugh at the thought of him in his place in the dock, or in his prison cell. I shall laugh when I give my evidence against him, and most of all I shall laugh on the day when he is hanged. If his grave is to be found, I shall dance upon it. Oh, it will be a merry day for me, that day when the cord is tightened round his false neck!”

She went near to Mark, and hissed the last words into his face, leaning forward, with one hand on her own throat. But he seemed to shrink less before her vindictive passion than he had under the colder scorn of Juliet’s denunciations.

“Come, Juliet,” said Julia, calming herself a little, although hate was still blazing in her eyes, “let us leave this place. We must send for the police.”

“Julia,” said Mark, stepping forward, and speaking with some of his former assurance, “you condemn me unheard. Why should you believe this girl before me? It is not like you, Julia. It is not like the girl I love. For I do love you, darling, in spite of what you may think; and, till a few moments ago, I thought you loved me too. But I see now what your love is. One whiff of suspicion, one word of accusation, and without proof or evidence you condemn me, and your so-called affection disappears. Julia, I think you have broken my heart.”

Juliet gave vent to a derisive sound which can only be called a snort; but it was plain that his words, and more especially the manner of sad yet tender reproach in which they were uttered, were not without their effect on the other girl. Her eyes wavered uneasily; she twisted and tore at her handkerchief.

“I have heard what you have to say,” she murmured. “I saw that you could not deny what Juliet told me.”

“I did deny it. But what is the use of talking to you when you are in such a state? You are determined beforehand to disbelieve me. And I have no wish to justify myself to Miss Byrne, though I am willing to swallow my pride and do so to you.”

“Well,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, “justify yourself if you can. No one shall say I would not listen. God knows I shall be glad enough if you can clear yourself.”

“To begin with,” said Mark, “I admit that, superficially, there is truth in what you have heard. But only superficially, for the person I deceived was not yourself but this young lady. I certainly, as she suggests, never had the slightest intention of marrying her. For one thing I was absolutely certain she would refuse me, but it seemed a good precautionary move to make what might appear a generous proposal, and at the same time get a sort of mandate from the possible heiress herself to stick to my uncle’s fortune. You may be sure I should never have given it up, in any case, but it is as well to keep up appearances. The business was only a move in the game I am playing, and no more affects the sincerity of my love for you than any of the social equivocations we all find necessary from time to time. I love you, Julia, and you alone. How can you doubt it? I love you so much that I am willing to overlook your want of confidence in me, and to forgive the cruel things you said just now. Darling, how can I tell you, before a third person, what I feel for you? You are everything to me; and, if you no longer love me, I don’t care what happens. Give me up to the police if you like. The gallows is as good a place as another, without your love.”

Long before he had finished, all traces of resentment had vanished. When he ceased speaking, she gave in completely, and threw herself upon his breast, sobbing passionately, and begging his forgiveness for having doubted him for an instant, while he soothed and comforted her in a low tone. Juliet did not know what to do or which way to look. The two stood between her and the door, and she felt an absurd awkwardness about trying to pass them. Was it likely she would be allowed to go out free to denounce them? She was afraid of trying.

At last Julia was calm again, and there came a silence, during which the pair glanced at Juliet and then at each other.

“What’s to be done?” Julia asked at length, and then suddenly, without waiting for an answer, “I have an idea, Mark, that will save you. If her mouth can be stopped for a time, will you be able to get clear away?”

“I shall have to try, I suppose,” he replied, with a trace of his former sulkiness. “To think that everything should miscarry because of a slip of a girl!”

“You had better go to Glasgow and get on board some ship there which will take you to a place of safety. I shall have to stay behind till the matter of the list is settled one way or the other. But then, when I have reported to my superiors, I can join you, and we can begin life together in some far-off country. I shall be as happy in one place as in another with you, Mark; are you sure you will be, too, with only me?”

Mark hastened to reassure her on that point, but his tone as he said it did not carry conviction to Juliet. Julia, however, seemed satisfied.

“Miss Byrne can choose,” she continued. “Either she swears not to say a word till we are both safe away, or else we can shut her in the dungeon of the castle. I know where it is, in the wall of this tower. She will never be found there, and I can take her food from time to time till I am ready to join you. Isn’t that a good plan?”

Mark considered.

“I don’t think we will give her the option of swearing not to tell,” he said presently.

“As if I would ever promise such a thing!” Juliet interrupted, indignant.

“But,” he went on, ignoring this outburst, “otherwise I think your idea is good. Where is this dungeon? We may be disturbed at any minute, and enough time has been wasted already.”

“I will go first and show the way,” said Julia. “I have an electric torch,” and she stepped into the clock and lowered herself through the trap-door.

Mark motioned to Juliet to follow.

“Ladies first,” he said with a sneer.