After all, he might have been mistaken. What he had thought were light and running steps might have been in reality only dead leaves rustling in the slow night breeze. He looked at his watch. It was past eleven now, and only the faint and intermittent light of the stars shining here and there from behind a panoply of cloud, relieved the darkness beneath the trees. He wished he had more experience of life in the open air, of country life. A man felt so small, so lost, so insignificant in the heart of this great forest where forest had been since the beginning, where his remote, skin-clad ancestors would have felt so much more at home than he could ever be, with his sophisticated training of town and pavement. He found himself wondering if it could really be Sophy he had heard, and deciding that it was impossible. How could she, so small, shy, shrinking, ever have found the courage to penetrate into this sombre solitude at this dead hour of the night?
Abruptly he discovered that he was on the wrong path, one that was running north instead of due west, since the Charles the Second oak lay, he knew, due west of the castle, and, small knowledge as he had of the stars, he could at least recognize the north star, now shining directly ahead of him instead of on his left. By good luck he stumbled on a path that seemed to lead in the right direction. He followed it till it joined another, one also running west, and apparently more frequently used.
Suddenly he stiffened to attention. Always, all the small innumerable noises of the night, all the whispering movements of the little busy creatures that go about their business in the greater safety of the covering darkness, all had hushed to a wary stillness as he passed by, recognizing that here was something coming that was strange, unknown and formidable. Only his own footsteps, that even to himself sounded so clumsily, so almost indecently loud, broke that primaeval forestal tranquillity. Yet already his ears had in some measure attuned themselves to the all-pervading quiet, as if now they were recovering ancestral qualities only forgotten, not lost, in disuse; able, therefore, to distinguish quickly alien sounds that had no commerce with the life. He stood quite still and listened again, at once aware that here were sounds of approaching steps that differed altogether from those earlier ones that he had heard before. Hurried they were indeed, as those others also had been, but loud, uneven, clumsy, utterly alien to the life of the woods into which the earlier footsteps had seemed to merge, having with it something in common, as though they belonged to some belated dryad hurrying back to her tree home.
The steps came nearer. A man’s, undoubtedly. Ralph Hoyle, perhaps, Bobby thought, or else that unknown who might be the missing Bertram Two, as Bobby was beginning to call him in his thoughts, who again might turn out to be the sender of the mysterious ’phone message received by Ralph at the Glasgow hotel. Bobby found himself wondering with dark fear if that message had been to make an appointment in this forest loneliness that had perhaps already been kept.
A disturbing thought there in the black and silent night, for if that appointment had been made, then for what purpose in so lonely a spot and why from it was apparently only one returning?
Those hurrying, stumbling footsteps were nearer now. In the night the approaching form began to take shape, to be recognizable as a man. Bobby stepped out into the middle of the path where the darkness was at least less intense. He was preparing to utter a challenge. It never got spoken, for with a howl scarcely human in the intensity of its fear and its surprise, of what indeed seemed its despair, the unknown hurled himself at Bobby.
Taken by surprise, astonished, too, by the fury of the assault, Bobby reeled backwards. He caught his foot on the root of a tree and went headlong, his assailant with him. Over and over they rolled, locked in a close, embracing fury. Bobby tried to wrench himself free. He received a heavy blow on the side of the head from some heavy instrument, and for the moment was dazed. A second blow he managed to take on his elbow. He wrenched himself free by an effort that called for every ounce of his strength. A blow he aimed at the glimmering patch of whiteness in the dark that he took for a face, had full effect. His assailant went sprawling, his grip loosened. Bobby got to his feet. His electric torch was still in his hand. He switched it on, turned its ray on the huddled form at his feet, almost indistinguishable from the bush into which it had been hurled by Bobby’s well-aimed blow. But if the sharp, searching ray of the torch showed that, it showed also the muzzle of a pistol pointing straight at Bobby.
For an interminable moment, from the heart of the bush, that muzzle pointed thus, its deadly threat hanging suspended in the clear light of the ray from the electric torch. There flashed into Bobby’s mind the thought that he made an excellent target. Then he thought that now he would never know who it was, for while the prostrate man held the pistol steady in one hand, he kept the other before his face, his hand and the branches of the bush concealing it completely.
“Get out, clear out, keep out,” a high-pitched, screaming voice cried at him, a voice in which there mingled menace and panic in a way that Bobby knew, for he had heard it before at other times, carried with it deadly warning, the menace and the panic each reinforcing and strengthening the other.
He gathered himself together for a spring, his only chance. He thought:— ‘He can’t miss,’ and then again:— ‘He is as scared as I am—more.’ A stone came flying over his shoulder, thrown from behind. A yelp showed that it had hit its mark. The pistol muzzle wavered. Bobby sprang. In the bush, fortunately it was not a bramble bush, not thorny, they wrestled to and fro, threshing confusedly in the dark. Then Bobby found himself uppermost, found his fingers grasping a coat collar, hauled with vigour, discovered he was standing upright, a little breathless, a trifle dishevelled, at his feet a limp, unresisting form whining incoherent protests, from which Bobby could distinguish that there had never been even the most remote intention of firing, that sooner would the speaker have shot himself than Inspector Owen, whom he had failed to recognize, and had absurdly mistaken for a highway robber, that he had only found the pistol that night, that he had fully intended to take it straight to Inspector Owen, that for that service he had expected to be thanked or even to receive some small reward, not to be knocked about something terrible as he had been, and the sight of one eye probably lost for ever, owing to a blow received from a stone, which, in his considered opinion, was hardly to be expected from a gentleman like Inspector Owen.
“Get up,” said Bobby with an unsympathetic though not very severe application of the toe of his boot to an appropriate part of the anatomy of one whom he had now recognized to be Martin, the castle butler. “So it’s you, is it? Well, what have you been playing at?”
“Playing?” groaned Martin bitterly, “playing?” and indeed with his torn clothing, his bruised eye, his nose and mouth still oozing blood from the blow dealt by Bobby, he looked anything but playful. “Playing?” he repeated still more bitterly.
Bobby was thinking:—
‘Who threw that stone? someone threw that stone. Who?’
Martin went on whining:—
“It hit me in the eye, right in the eye, I expect I shall be blind in one eye, who will want a one-eye’d butler?”
Bobby, swinging his torch to and fro, searching the ground, saw now what he had been seeking—a pistol lying near the bush where it had been jerked from Martin s grasp. He picked it up. It was a Colt automatic point thirty-two. He said:—
“How did you get this?” Then he said: “Is this what was used for the murder?”
“I don’t know,” whined Martin. “How should I know? It might be. I thought to myself, I thought: ‘What’s he talking so much about that old oak for?’ and I thought if I went there and I found anything same as I did, it being there all right, the pistol I mean, and I said to myself, I said, that’ll be a help, I said, and maybe a trifle of a reward, too, just by way of acknowledgement, instead of which there’s all my teeth out and very likely an eye gone as well. Who’ll want a one-eye’d butler?”
“Shut up,” ordered Bobby roughly. “Quiet.”
H
e listened. He could hear them distinctly now. Fresh foot-steps approaching and the sound of voices raised in argument.
Martin, seeing how intently Bobby was listening, seemed to think it an opportunity. He was trying to slip away when Bobby shot out an arm and caught him by the collar and jerked him back.
“You’ll have a lot to explain if that does turn out to be the murder weapon,” he said grimly. “Won’t look too good for you, you know.”
Martin began to babble excuses, protests, explanations, but once again Bobby cut him short.
“Keep that till later on,” he said, “and don’t spend the time thinking up lies. It’ll only make things worse for you if you do, and they look bad enough already.”
By now the newcomers had drawn near. Bobby threw the light of his torch on them. They were three in number. Two of them were the plain clothes men Bobby had asked should be sent to watch the oak. Between them was the missing Ralph Hoyle, indignant and protesting. He recognized Bobby at the same time.
“What in blazes is all this?” he demanded. “What’s the game?”
“Don’t know,” Bobby answered. “Can’t give it a name yet. It might be saving your life—or even your honour. Do you mind falling down?”
“What?” said Ralph, thinking he had not heard correctly. “What’s that?”
“Yours not to reason why,” murmured Bobby; and, taking Ralph completely by surprise, very neatly tripped him up and deposited him full length on the ground. “Lie still, you fool,” he added in a quick whisper to the considerably astonished and even annoyed Ralph, and then in a loud voice, indeed in a very loud voice:— “He’s fainted. It’s a deep wound, probably fatal.”
“What the hell?” protested Ralph furiously.
But Bobby had leaped away. He had heard a quick, rustling movement behind one of the trees. A moment later he emerged, accompanied by Sophy.
“I thought that dodge would work,” he said complacently. “Gave herself away at once.”
“What the hell?” repeated Ralph, making up for want of originality in expression by even greater depth of feeling.
“Now, now,” said Bobby, soothingly this time, “you said that before.”
“Oh, he isn’t hurt, he isn’t hurt a scrap,” declared Sophy.
“Well, aren’t you glad?” asked Bobby, innocent now.
Enlightenment came to Sophy as she glanced from Bobby, looking now a trifle smug, to Ralph, looking much more than a trifle bewildered. To Bobby she said with tremendous emphasis:—
“You—you beast.”
“What in thunder—” began Ralph, and then gave it up for sheer want of words to continue.
“I suppose what you mean,” observed Bobby, “is: What is Miss Longden doing here at this time of night?”
“I was having a walk,” said Sophy hurriedly.
“Well, now, think of that,” murmured Bobby.
“I suppose,” said Ralph, throwing in his hand, “this is some sort of new game—charades, probably.”
“How did you know?” demanded Sophy, still indignant, of Bobby.
“Detectives always know,” answered Bobby impressively, and Sophy wasn’t at all impressed and said very loudly.
“Fiddlesticks.”
“Well,” explained Bobby, “when at what is called the psychological moment a detective sees a stone arrive out of the blue, a well-aimed stone, and it saves what is called, vulgarly, that detective’s bacon, and when he remembers that a young lady who thinks that to hit the mark all you have to do is to aim straight, is somewhere about, then he adds two and two together and decides that the answer makes—Miss Longden.”
“I think it’s very horrid of you,” said Sophy, unappeased.
“It hit me in the eye,” wailed Martin. “I expect I shall lose the sight. Who’ll want a one-eye’d butler?”
“Martin, too,” groaned Ralph, who had not previously noticed him. Resignedly he asked Bobby:— “Who else have you got in your pocket?”
“It’s like this,” began Martin, but Bobby stopped him.
“You keep quiet,” he said. “You’ve plenty to explain, but that can wait.” To the two plain clothes men, he said:— “Got a car anywhere around? Good. Take this man to headquarters. Detained for inquiries.”
They departed, Martin still bewailing his injuries, still protesting the excellence of his explanation if only it were listened to. But Bobby was in no hurry to hear it. His experience told him that Martin would be the readier to talk the more his panic increased with the reluctance shown to listen to him. He would be sure to think that that reluctance was due to the police believing that they had all necessary information already. Which would make him all the more anxious to give his own version. To the still very bewildered Ralph, Bobby said:—
“He had the pistol I think was used in the murder of Lord Wych.”
“Martin? Martin had it?” repeated Ralph. “You mean Martin is the murderer?”
Bobby did not answer. He was deep in his own thoughts. Ralph, looking at Sophy, suddenly forgot all about Martin.
The utter bewilderment her appearance had caused him changed abruptly to an almost equally bewildered admiration, for now it was as though he had never seen her before. Strangely lovely she looked in the dim light beneath the trees that the two beams, one from Bobby’s strong electric torch, another from one of Ralph’s that he had now produced, shone on the tree trunks and the foliage around, mingling with the faint starlight falling through the leaves and branches overhead. The hard daylight might have deprived her of some of that strange beauty which at the moment was hers, for beauty it was that hung about her now till it seemed as though she were some strange, ethereal spirit of the woods that hovered there, hesitant upon the point of going.
“It’s Miss Longden,” Ralph muttered. “Is it?” he said, still bewildered. It seemed he could hardly believe what he saw, almost as though he thought it must be some phantom of his own imagination that hovered there. He said again:— “Why, Miss Longden...?”
“Well, don’t ask her, because she won’t tell,” Bobby interposed with a faint grin; and then froze to sudden attention as he realized that the magazine of the automatic he was holding had only one cartridge left.
Three had been fired at Lord Wych. One was left. What had become of the others? Why had they been fired? Why? and—at what mark?
He said abruptly to Ralph:—
“I must hurry off. You can see Miss Longden home.”
With that he nodded to them and hurried away, and as he did so it came into his mind that Olive, a matchmaker like all women, would highly approve of what he had just done, and of the opportunity he had thus almost accidentally given Ralph.
“Oh, well,” he thought, “if they send me a piece of the wedding cake I shall have earned it,” and with that he dismissed all thought of them from his mind that he might busy it with grimmer things.
CHAPTER XX
ACCUSATION
When, after an almost all night long conference with Colonel Glynne and but an hour or two of hurriedly snatched sleep, Bobby arrived at the castle next morning it was to hear from an excited maid the information that the engagement of Miss Anne to the new Lord Wych was to be formally announced that day.
Bobby said that was grand. Notwithstanding murders and disappearances and so on, it was engagements and betrothals and marriages that really mattered. The maid agreed heartily—heartily is the appropriate word here. Bobby said he must find Lord Wych to congratulate him. But no one seemed to know where the happy man was to be found, so at a venture Bobby wandered off to that remote and hidden seat in a solitary portion of the grounds where once before he had found him.
He greeted Bobby with a scowl and a general air of ‘Hast thou found me, oh, mine enemy?’ and Bobby beamed on him in response.
“I heard the happy news up at the castle,” he explained. “I just couldn’t help coming along to congratulate you.” He sat down by the other’s side, produced a cigarette, offered his case to h
is companion, and beamed afresh at a sulky refusal. For a moment or two he smoked in silence. Then he said gently:—
“Well, she’s brought it off all right.”
His lordship squirmed.
“I knew she would,” said Bobby meditatively. “Not much Miss Anne wants she doesn’t get.” He added:— “Just as she’s got you.”
Once more his lordship squirmed.
“I have more good news for you,” Bobby went on.
His lordship looked at him suspiciously.
“The Wychshire Dragoons are ordered on active service. As a mechanized unit they expect to lead the attack.” (This, by the way, was an addition of Bobby’s own, but then there is much virtue in an ‘expect’.) “I expect” (again, how useful a word is ‘expect’) “you’ll be given a commission direct without having to bother to apply. That’ll be so you can lead them into action, like that chap in the picture in the castle. You know. The one showing an earlier Lord Wych waving his sword in the air to lead the way to the enemy.”
“They don’t catch me,” said his lordship sourly.
“Shot at dawn,” murmured Bobby. “That’s what happens in war to chaps who try to shirk.”
His lordship didn’t so much squirm this time as turn pea green. He suffered from a vivid imagination, and he actually saw a picture of himself standing against a wall with half a dozen grim looking men, all extremely like Bobby, standing opposite, rifles in their hands.
“Look here,” Bobby said. “You are in a spot. A bad spot. If you’re a British lord, you’ve got to live up to it— and Miss Anne’s there to see you jolly well do. There’s a war on, and the Earl Wych will have to be in the thick of it. Or people will talk. Talk a lot. You know best what that may lead to. Well, there it is. Hadn’t you better make a clean breast of it?”
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