"But--but----" I faltered. "Do you think that--that Harry Foster was there too--up there where I went--in the tunnel which led from the Backwater?"
He shook his head.
"No," he said, "the rings had pa.s.sed through some sort of a furnace.
So almost certainly would poor Harry."
He paused for a moment, but I knew full well what he was thinking--it was about my father.
"But why not hand the whole over to the police, if you know all that about the people at Deep Moat Grange?"
He laid his hand on mine and patted it.
"I learned long ago not to confound the innocent with the guilty," he said. "Besides, it is only now that even I begin to see little more clearly. And the police did little enough when they were here. I suppose you would have me deliver the rings to old Codling, and see him crawl up the tunnel as you did?"
I saw that it was no use to contradict Mr. Ablethorpe for the present.
He had still the detective fever upon him, and his manoeuvring had been for the purpose of getting the poor "naturals" out of harm"s way, when he should be ready to denounce the guilty.
"By the way," he said, "do you know that for the moment I am at a standstill? Old Hobby Stennis has gone off on one of his journeys.
And till he comes back I can do nothing. Your friend of the snaky curls is in sole possession of the Grange. Miss Orrin has disappeared.
It must be a sweet spot! h.e.l.lo, what"s that?"
And through the window of the retail shop, now bright with the extra lighting of Sat.u.r.day night, we saw Mad Jeremy. He was bending over several melodeons which Tom Hunt, our first shopman, had handed down to him, picking up one with a knowing air, trying the keys and stops, his ringlets falling about his ears, a cunning smile on his lips, and his little, quick, suspicious eyes darting this way and that to see whether or not he was observed.
At last his choice fell on a most gorgeous instrument, one that had just come in. He asked the price, chaffed a a while for the form, and then, drawing out a fat, well-filled pocket-book, slapped down in payment a Clydesdale bank-note for a hundred pounds!
CHAPTER XXVIII
SAt.u.r.dAY, THE TENTH OF FEBRUARY
This was on the evening of Sat.u.r.day, the tenth of February, a day never to be forgotten by me and by many more. I will try to place here in order the events which happened both at Deep Moat Grange and at Breckonside during the succeeding forty-eight hours. Of course, there is some part that can only be guessed at, and part is known solely by the maunderings of a criminal maniac. But still, I think, I have now got the whole pretty straight--as straight as it will ever be known on this side time. At any rate, it is my account or none. For no one else can know what I know.
As Mr. Ablethorpe had informed me, he was at a standstill in his researches. And the reason was that Mr. Hobby Stennis, the "Golden Farmer," as he was called, had departed on one of his frequent journeys.
So much was true. The master of Deep Moat Grange had indeed been absent for three days. But he had returned that same Sat.u.r.day morning about ten o"clock. He had been disgusted to find the house empty.
Probably, also, he was in a very bad temper owing to the failure of some combination or other he had counted upon. He found nothing prepared for his reception. Miss Orrin and her sisters were gone, and Mad Jeremy in one of his maddest and most freakish humours.
Now, of all times for arriving from a journey the noon is the worst.
In the evening one dines. Later, one may have supper. Later still, one sleeps. In the morning everybody is astonished, and says: "How brisk and early you are to-day!" This pleases you, and you step about the place and come in sharp-set for breakfast. But in the forenoon it is a long time till lunch or dinner. Every one is busy. The clothes in which you have attempted to sleep feel as if filled with fine sand.
You want to kick somebody, and if there is n.o.body whom you can reasonably kick, you feel worse.
Well, this is how Hobby felt. He wanted breakfast, and Mad Jeremy informed him that there was no bread. If he wanted any he could act as baker and bake a batch for himself.
"Go and get me something to eat, you rascal!" cried Mr. Stennis threateningly. And as he raised his riding-whip, Jeremy cowered. But it was with his body only. His eyes kept on those of his master, and they were those of a beast that has not been conquered--or, if vanquished, not subdued.
With impish spitefulness he set about gathering together all the orts and sc.r.a.ps of his own various disorganized meals, and brought them in, piled on a plate, to his master. Hobby Stennis was in no mood for amus.e.m.e.nt. He had his riding-whip still in his hand. He raised it, and, as one would strike a hound, he lashed Jeremy across the face.
The madman did not flinch--he only stood, with a certain semblance of meekness, shutting his eyes as the blows descended, as a dog might.
Once, twice, thrice, the whip cut across cheek and brow and jaw.
Jeremy put up his fingers to feel the weals which rose red and angry.
But he said nothing. Only his eyes followed his master as he went out.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "He raised his riding whip, and, as one would strike a hound he lashed Jeremy across the face."]
Mr. Stennis, still furiously angry, threw plate and contents out of the window. They fell in the muddy, ill-cared-for yard. The plate shivered, and Jeremy, after whimpering a little like a punished child, went outside also, got on his knees, and patiently gathered them together again, swinging his head with the pitiable and impotent vengeance of a child. Only Mad Jeremy was very far indeed from being a child.
Muttering to himself, Mr. Stennis strode away across the drawbridge, which still bore the footmarks of the mob which, in the time of his illness, had crossed and recrossed it. Part of the bal.u.s.trade had been kicked away, and hung by a tough twisted oak splinter, yawning over the Moat to the swirl of the wet February wind.
He walked forward, never hesitating a moment, his switch still in his hand, cutting at the brownish last year"s brackens which, having doubled over halfway up the stem, now trailed their broad leaves in the bleak, black February sop.
Straight for Mr. Ball"s the master of the Grange took his way. He followed the narrow path which, skirting the Backwater, crosses a field, and then drops over the high March dike into the road quite close to the cottage of Mr. Bailiff Ball. It was almost dinner-time, and with a word Mr. Stennis explained the situation. Mrs. Ball swept all the too genial horde of children into the kitchen, and set herself to serve a meal to the owner of the Grange and his bailiff.
The first plateful of Scots broth, with its stieve sustenance of peas, broad beans, and carrots, together with curly greens and vegetables almost without number, put some heart into Mr. Stennis--though his anger against Jeremy for the insult offered to him in his own house did not in the least cool.
"I always like broth that a man can eat conveniently with knife and fork," said Mr. Ball, striving to be agreeable. "Let me give you another plateful, sir."
But Mr. Stennis declined. The thought of Jeremy and his plate of orts returned to his mind and he choked anew with anger.
"I will teach him!" he said aloud, frowning and pursing his mouth.
Mr. Ball was far too wise a man to ask a question. He kept his place, worked the out-farms, deserved the confidence of his master, and convinced all the world that he had nothing to do with the ill-doings of the garrison at the "Big Hoose" by carefully guarding his speech.
As a matter of fact, he made it his business to know nothing except in which field to sow turnips, and the probable price he would get for the wintering sheep that ate them out of the furrows.
Never was a man better provided with deaf and blind sides than Mr.
Bailiff Ball. And, being a man with a family, he had need of them at Deep Moat Grange.
So he did not inquire who it was that Mr. Hobby Stennis meant to teach, nor yet what was the nature of the proposed lesson. If knowledge is power, carefully cultivated ignorance sometimes does not lack a certain power also.
Mr. Stennis ate of the boiled mutton which followed, and of the boiled cabbage withal--of potatoes, mealy and white, such as became the bailiff of several large unlet farms, and a man whose accounts had never been called in question by so much as a farthing.
Mr. Stennis ate of pancakes with jam rolled inside, and of pancakes on which the b.u.t.ter fairly danced upon the saffron and russet surfaces, so hot were they from the pan. He drank pure water. He refused to smoke, which Mr. Ball did every day and all day long. Mr. Stennis was an example--a man without vices.
Then these two, master and man--though by no means "like master, like man"--strolled about the fields discussing what was to be done with this parcel of bullocks, or what line of crops would do best on the Nether Laggan Hill, or the Broomy Knowe. Mr. Bailiff Ball wished heartily that his master would be gone. But he was not in a position to tell him so. At last, after two o"clock, Mr. Stennis suddenly, and without any preliminaries, bade him "good-day" and so betook himself through the misty willow copses along the Backwater, on which the haze of spring was greening already, towards the house of Deep Moat Grange.
It was not the least of Elsie"s troubles to keep herself "nice" in the back half of the monks" oven, near the bakehouse. Soap she had--a whole bar of it. And with the water which she dipped up from the trap-door behind her bed, she washed her single turn-over collar again and again--as well as her handkerchiefs and other "white things"--drying them rapidly and well in front of the dividing wall of the oven.
Starch, however, was beyond her, and ironing also. Still she was clean, which to Elsie Stennis was very near indeed to being G.o.dly.
Jeremy had been idle for several days, but it chanced that that very Sat.u.r.day morning he had set the furnace a-going, and had begun to prepare a batch of bread. Notwithstanding, he had been strangely unsettled. He had looked in several times on Elsie, even bringing in a little washing soda for her laundry work, but had departed always without saying anything of his intentions. Never on any occasion had he mentioned her fellow-prisoner, my father. And he, on his part, had strictly forbidden Elsie to say anything of their converse one with another. Not that Elsie would have done that in any case. She had too much the instinct of playing the game.
Usually when Jeremy came in, he would bring with him a Jew"s-harp, and, curling himself up in one corner of the settle, he would extract tunes from that limited instrument with a strange weird combination of voice and tw.a.n.g of the metallic tongue.
Or with a mandolin, of which he had somehow become possessed, he would lean against the table, stretch his long legs, shake back his snaky curls, swinging his body to and fro, and improvise such music as never has been heard on earth before.
But ever and anon, between bursts of strange melody--for there was a certain attraction in every sound he produced--he would return to the subject of the new cargo of melodeons which had just been received at Yarrow"s, down in the village. He would have one he declared, whatever old Hobby might say, the skinflint--who would not let poor Jeremy have a single goldpiece of all he had won for him by his own strong hands.
He would let him see, however, when he came back, who was master. And if he would not, then he, Jeremy Orrin, knew somebody--perhaps not so far away--who would give him not only one, but many melodeons, for one smell of the fresh air.