by Marion Bryce
“You can imagine the scene: Lord Ashiel falling forward upon the writing-table under the light of the lamp; the scoundrel leaping from his post upon the plank, but not so quickly that he did not see the girl throw herself on her knees at the side of the fallen man. I can fancy the frenzied haste with which McConachan thrust the plank into the hedge and ran like a deer towards the door, which he had no doubt left open. I imagine him, then, tiptoeing to the door of the library and bending to listen, every nerve astretch. What he heard, no doubt reassured him; it may have been the voice of the girl calling upon her father, or it may have been the thud of her body falling upon the floor when she fainted. Perhaps, even, he may have stayed outside long enough to see her sink to the ground. Then he would steal back, shut the door as gently as he had opened it, and not breathe again till he found himself in the empty billiard-room, his tell-tale rifle still in his hand. No doubt he wished he had left it in the hedge at that moment, for he must have opened the billiard-room door with most lively apprehensions. Supposing the shot had been heard, and the household was rushing to the scene of the disaster? Supposing he opened the door to find the room full of people demanding an explanation of himself and his weapon? What explanation had he ready, I wonder? It must have taken all his nerve to turn the handle of the door.…
“But no one can deny the man his full share of courage and decision.
“I felt more and more sure that in some such manner the crime had been gone about; and yet there were many complications, and more than once it seemed as if my convictions had been too hastily formed. Later that same afternoon I found, upon the sand of a little bay below the castle, marks that told me as plainly as they told one of the keepers who joined me there that a strange man had landed from a boat on the night of the murder, and even, if our calculations were right, not far off the very hour in which the deed was done. From the tracks left by his boots, which were large and without nails and extraordinarily pointed for those of a man, I felt sure that here one had landed who was no native of these parts, and the theory of the unknown Russian seemed to take on new life and vigour. The tracks, as we now know, were no doubt those of the member of the Society of the Friends of Man who was living at Crianan, and who hoped to have word with Julia Romaninov. It was no doubt he whom Sir David saw lurking in the grounds, and it is natural to suppose that when he perceived himself to be observed he retreated to his boat and made off, abandoning his proposed meeting for that night.
“I was to be further bewildered before my first day of investigation came to an end. Young Lord Ashiel had spent the day in searching for the will; and, if my inward certainty that he himself would prove to be the guilty man should turn out to be right, I could very well understand that he was anxious to find it. For, from what his uncle had said to Miss Byrne, it seemed possible that he had so worded his last will and testament, that whoever succeeded to the great fortune he had to bequeath, it might not be Mark McConachan. But the will was not to be found, and there was no doubt to whose interest it was that it should never be found; so that I felt pretty sure that, if the successor to the title were once able to lay his hands on it, no one else would ever do so. However, he hadn’t found it yet, or the search would not be continued with such unmistakable ardour.
“Now I had a fancy myself to have a look for the will. I took the last words of the dead man to be an effort to indicate how I was to do so, and I had no idea of prosecuting my search under the eye of his nephew. Young Ashiel was to dine at the cottage here, with Lady Ruth; so I excused myself under pretence of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurried back to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by a window which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library. The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer out to his daughter, were only five. ‘Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps.’ I had decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point of investigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, but only one could be dealt with at a time, and a beginning must be made somewhere. Moreover, I had noticed a curious feature about that particular timepiece. It was clamped to the wall, which struck me as very suggestive; and I thought it quite likely I should be able to discover some kind of secret drawer concealed within, or behind, the tall black lacquered case, where the will and other papers of which Lord Ashiel had told me might be hidden. But in spite of my best efforts I came across nothing of the kind.
“I then examined the floor of the room at spots on its surface which were at a distance of about eleven steps from the clock, in the hope of finding some opening between the oak boards; but all to no purpose. I began to think that by some specially contrived mechanism the hiding-place might only be discernible at eleven o’clock, and though the idea seemed farfetched, I don’t like to leave any possibility untested, so I sat down to wait till the hour should strike.
“While I was waiting, I suddenly heard footsteps which appeared to come from inside the wall of the room, or from below the floor. I concluded instantly that there was a secret passage within the walls although I had failed to find the entrance, so I left the library quickly and quietly, and made my way to the garden, from which I was able to look back into the room through the window. By the time I took up my post of observation the person I had heard approaching had entered. To my surprise it was a young lady about whom I seemed to recognize something vaguely familiar, but whom I was not aware of ever having seen before. She was occupied in examining the papers in Lord Ashiel’s writing bureau, and after watching her for some time, I concluded that she must be Julia Romaninov; partly from certain foreign ways and gestures which she displayed, and partly from her present employment, as I knew of no one else who was interested in the papers of the dead man. I imagined that she knew of the possible relationship which Lord Ashiel supposed might exist between himself and her, and that she was searching for evidence of her birth. Whether she was staying at the castle, which I was told all visitors had left, or whether, like myself, she had made her way into it from outside, was a question I could not then determine, though the next day I discovered that she was stopping with Mrs. Clutsam at the fishing lodge, near by.
“The fact of her being still in the neighbourhood, the business I found her engaged upon—an unusual one, to put it mildly, for a young girl—and the hour, at which she had chosen to go about it, all gave me much food for thought, and I felt sure she could tell me news of the stranger who had landed in the bay and who wore such uncommonly pointed boots. When I recognized in her, on the following day, a young person who had, a few weeks previously, made me the victim of a barefaced and audacious robbery, I could no longer doubt that she and the unknown boatman were in league together; and, since no Englishman would be likely to wear boots so excessively pointed at the toes, I did not hesitate to conclude that they were both members of the Society of the Friends of Man, a conclusion which became a certainty when I subsequently saw them together. This discovery rather shook my belief in the guilt of young Ashiel, although I had an inward conviction that in spite of everything he would turn out to be the murderer. Still, I was after the Nihilist brotherhood as well, and I determined if possible to put a spoke in the wheel of that association when I had finished with the first and most important business.
“In the meantime, as I stood in the dark garden, watching the girl ransack the private papers of her dead host, I felt no fear of her finding what she was looking for. Lord Ashiel had convinced me that he would hide his secret affairs more carefully than that; and, as I expected, the time came when she gave up the search and departed the way she had come. And that way, to my astonishment, was through the grandfather’s clock I had spent so much time in examining. No sooner had she gone than I returned to the library, where I soon discovered that the hidden entrance lay through the one part of the clock I had not investigated. A trap in the floor could be opened by turning a small knob, and I found beneath it the top of that flight of stairs which we now know leads out to
the door under the battlements. There were fifteen steps in the flight, and my first idea was to examine the eleventh one of them. I was rewarded by the discovery of a concealed drawer, which in its turn disclosed a single sheet of paper.
“On it were written some words that I could not at first understand, but of which finally, by good luck, and with your help, Lady Ruth, I was able to decipher the meaning. They referred, in an obscure and veiled fashion, to the great statue erected by Lord Ashiel in that glen of which his wife had been so fond; where the beginning of the track used by the cattle drivers and robbers of old, which is known as the Green Way, leads up over the hills to the south. Guided by Lady Ruth, I found on the pedestal of the statue a spring, which has only to be pressed when a door in one end of the erection swings open, and discloses the hollow chamber in the middle of the pedestal. At the far end of the cavity was the tin box, of which the key lay temptingly on the top. I lost no time in springing towards it, for here I felt sure was all I wanted to find, but as I inserted the key in the lock the door slammed to behind me and I found myself shut in the dark interior of the pedestal. Luckily Lady Ruth was with me, and quickly let me out. I found that the door was controlled by an elaborate piece of clockwork, which is set in motion by the pressure upon the floor of the feet of any intruder, causing the door to shut almost immediately behind him. But for you, Lady Ruth, I should be there now. But the incident gave me an idea.
“I returned to the cottage with the papers, and found two telegrams. One was from the analyst in Edinburgh to whom I had sent the grains of dust collected in the gun-room, saying that among other ingredients lime was very predominant. Now there is no lime in a peaty soil such as this, and the gardener, to whom I talked of soils and manures, with an air of wisdom which I hope deceived him, told me that the rose-bed outside the library had received a strong dressing of it. There was also, said the report, traces of steel and phosphates, of which there is a combination known as basic slag, which the gardener had mentioned as being occasionally used. I considered that it was tolerably certain, therefore, that young Ashiel’s rifle had been the weapon the imprint of whose butt was still discernible on the bed when I went over it.
“The second telegram contained an answer from the colonel of his regiment, to whom I had written asking if there was anything in the record of Mark McConachan which would make it appear conceivable that he was badly in need of money, and likely to go to extreme lengths to obtain it. I had told the colonel as much about the case as I then knew, and pointed out that the life or death of a man whom I had strong reason to think innocent might depend upon his withholding nothing he might know which could possibly bear upon the matter. The telegram I received in reply was short but emphatic. ‘Record very bad,’ it said, ‘am writing,’ This was enough for me. I went over to Crianan, saw the police, and imparted my conclusions to the local inspector. I then proposed that a little trap should be laid, into which, if he were not guilty and had no intention of destroying his uncle’s will, there was no reason to imagine young Lord Ashiel would step. The inspector consented, and I returned, with himself and two of his men, to Inverashiel. You know how successful was the ruse I indulged in. I simply went to the young man, and told him I had discovered the place where his uncle had put his will and other valuable papers. I explained to him where it was and how the pedestal could be opened, but I said nothing about its shutting again. Neither, I am afraid, did I confess that I had already visited the statue and taken away the documents. I said, on the contrary, that I preferred not to touch the contents except in the presence of a magistrate, and suggested he should send a note to General Tenby at Glenkliquart to ask him to come over and be present when we removed the papers. This he did, and I then left him after he had promised to join us at the cottage in a couple of hours. I knew very well where we should find him at the end of those hours; and, as I expected, he was caught by the clockwork machinery of the pedestal door.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Sir Arthur Byrne took his adopted daughter back to Belgium on the following day, since, although she would have to return to England to give evidence against Mark in due course, some time must elapse before his trial came on, and he judged it best to remove her as far as possible from a place whose associations must always be painful.
Then ensued a series of weary long weeks for Juliet, in which she had no trouble in convincing herself that David had forgotten her. She heard nothing from him directly, though indirectly news of him filtered through in letters they received from Lady Ruth and Gimblet. He had not, it appeared, taken his cousin’s guilt as proved so readily as Mark had affected to do in his own case, refusing absolutely to hear a word of the evidence against him, and maintaining that the whole thing was a mistake as colossal as it was ghastly.
Only when he was persuaded unwillingly, but finally, that it was Juliet’s word which he must doubt if he were to continue to believe in Mark’s innocence, did he give in, and sorrowfully acknowledged himself convinced.
All this Lady Ruth wrote to the girl, together with the fact that Sir David was still in attendance on his mother, now happily recovering from the nervous shock she had sustained.
From Gimblet, and from Messrs. Findlay & Ince, they heard that by the will which the detective had found all Lord Ashiel’s money and estate were left to the adopted daughter of Sir Arthur Byrne, known hitherto as Juliet Byrne, with a suggestion that she should provide for his nephews to the extent she should think fit.
The will, though not technically worded, was perfectly good and legal, and Juliet could have all the money she was likely to want for the present by accepting the offer of an advance which the lawyers begged to be allowed to make.
Gimblet wrote, further, that the list of names of members of the Nihilist society entitled the “Friends of Man” which he had discovered at the same time as the will and, contrary to Lord Ashiel’s wishes, sent off by registered post to Scotland Yard, had been communicated to the heads of the police in Russia and the other European countries in which many of those designated were now scattered, with the result that a large number of arrests had been quietly made, and the society practically wiped out. The foreign guest of the Crianan Hotel was still at large. The name of Count Pretovsky was not on the list and nothing could be proved against him. He had moved on to another hotel farther west, where he was lying very low and continuing to practise the gentle art of the fisherman. A member of the Russian secret police was on his way to Scotland, however, and it was likely that Count Pretovsky would be recognized as one of the persons on Lord Ashiel’s list who were as yet unaccounted for.
Gimblet told them, besides, that he had succeeded in finding the widow of the respectable plumber named Harsden, whom Julia had mentioned as being her father. Mrs. Harsden corroborated the story, and said that it was certainly the Countess Romaninov to whom Mrs. Meredith had consigned the little girl they had given her.
Widely distributed advertisements also brought to light the nurses of the two children; both the nurse who had taken Julia out to Russia and the woman who had been with Mrs. Meredith when she took over the charge of the McConachan baby, quickly claiming the reward that was offered for their discovery. There was no longer any room for doubt that Juliet Byrne was the same person as Juliana McConachan, or that Julia Romaninov had begun life as little Judy Harsden.
All this scarcely sufficed to rouse Juliet from the apathy into which she had fallen. To her it seemed incredible to think with what excitement and delight such news would have filled her a few months earlier.
Now, since David plainly no longer cared for her, nothing mattered any longer. Her depression was put down to the shock she had suffered, and efforts were made to feed her up and coddle her, which she ungratefully resented.
She had nothing in life to look forward to now, so she told herself, except the horrible ordeal of the trial which she would be obliged to attend.
It was in the dejection now becoming habitual to her, that she sat idly one fine October
morning in her little sitting-room at the consulate. She had refused to play tennis with her stepsisters, not because she had anything else to do, but because nothing was worth doing any more, and because it was less trouble to sit and gaze mournfully through the open window at the yellow leaves of the poplar in the garden, as from time to time one of them fluttered down through the still air.
How unspeakably sad it was, she thought to herself, this slow falling of the leaves, like the gradual but persistent loss of our hopes and illusions, which eventually make each human dweller in this world of change feel as bare and forlorn as the leafless winter trees.
On a branch a few feet away, a robin perched, and after looking at her critically for a few moments lifted up its voice in cheerful song.
But she took no heed of it, and continued to brood over her sorrows.
All men were faithless. With them, it was out of sight, out of mind, and she would assuredly never, never believe in one again. The best thing she could do, she decided, was to put away all thought of such things, and forget the man whom she had once been so vain as to imagine really cared for her.
And just as she told herself for the hundredth time that she had given up all hope and had resigned herself to the rôle of broken-hearted maiden, the door opened, and David was shown in.
By good luck, she was alone. Lady Byrne was not yet down, and her stepsisters were out; so there was no one to see her blushes and add to her embarrassment.