"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes."
He ran to it and tore open the door and from within very tenderly and gently he lifted down the half-swooning Ella who, securely gagged and tightly bound, had been thrust into its interior to conceal her from him.
Hurriedly he freed her from her bonds and from the handkerchief that was tied over her mouth and holding her in his arms like a child, pressing her close to his heart, he carried her lightly out of that dreadful room.
Only once did she stir, only once did she speak, when lifting her pale, strained face to him she murmured very faintly something in which he just caught the words:
"Deede Dawson."
"He"ll trouble us no more nor any one else, I think," answered Rupert, and she said no more but snuggled down in his arms as though with a feeling of perfect security and safety.
He took her to her own room and left her with her mother, and then went down to the hall and took a chair and sat at the front door.
All at once he felt very tired and one of his shoulders hurt him, for he had strained a muscle there rather badly.
His one desire was to rest, and he did not even trouble to go round to the back of the house to see what had happened to Deede Dawson, though indeed that was not a point on which he entertained much doubt.
For a long time he sat there quietly, till at last his father arrived in a motor-car from Wreste Abbey, together with a police-inspector from the county town whom he had picked up on the way.
Rupert took them into the room where Deede Dawson"s chessmen and the board were still standing and told them as briefly as he could what had happened since the first day when he had left his home to try to trace out and defeat the plot hatched by Walter Dunsmore and Deede Dawson.
"You people wouldn"t act," he said to the inspector. "You said there was no evidence, no proof, and I daresay you were right enough from the legal point of view. But it was plain enough to me that there was some sort of conspiracy against my uncle"s life, I thought against my father"s as well, but I was not sure of that at first. It was through poor Charley Wright I became so certain. He found out things and told me about them; but for him the first attempt to poison my uncle would have succeeded. Even then we had still no evidence to prove the reality of our suspicions, for Walter destroyed it, by accident, I thought at the time, purposely, as I know now. It was something Walter said that gave Charley the idea of coming here. Then he vanished. He must have roused their suspicions somehow, and they killed him. But again Walter put us all off the scent by his story of having seen Charley in London, so that it was there the search for him was made, and no one ever thought of Bittermeads. I never suspected Walter, such an idea never entered my head; but luckily I didn"t tell him of my idea of coming to Bittermeads myself to try to find out what was really going on here. He knew nothing of where I was till I told him that day at Wreste Abbey, then of course he came over here at once. I thought it was anxiety for my safety, but I expect really it was to warn his friends. When I saw him here that night I told him every single thing, I trusted the carrying-out of everything I had arranged to him. If it hadn"t been for a note Miss Cayley wrote me to warn me, I should have walked right into the trap and so would my father too."
The police-inspector asked a few questions and then made a search of the room which resulted in the discovery of quite sufficient proof of the guilt of Deede Dawson and of Walter Dunsmore.
Among these proofs was also a hastily-scribbled note from Walter that solved the mystery of John Clive"s death. It was not signed, but both General Dunsmore and Rupert knew his writing and were prepared to swear to it. Beginning abruptly and scribbled on a torn sc.r.a.p of paper, it ran:
"I found Clive where you said, lucky you got hold of the note and read it before she sent it, for no doubt she meant to warn him. Take care she gets no chance of the sort again. I did Clive"s business all right.
She saw me and I think recognized me from that time she saw me over the packing-case business, before I took it out to sink it at sea. At any rate, she ran off in a great hurry. If you aren"t careful, she"ll make trouble yet."
"Apparently," remarked the inspector when he had read this aloud, "the young lady was very luckily not watched closely enough and did make trouble for them. Could I see her, do you think?"
"I don"t know, I"ll go and ask," Rupert said.
Ella was still very shaken, but she consented to see the inspector, and they all went together to her room where she was lying on her bed with her mother fussing nervously about her.
She told them in as few words as possible the story of how she had always disliked and mistrusted the man whom so unfortunately her mother had married, and how gradually her suspicions strengthened till she became certain that he was involved in many unlawful deeds.
But always her inner certainty had fallen short of absolute proof, so careful had he been in all he did.
"I knew I knew," she said. "But there was nothing I really knew. And he made me do all sorts of things for him. I wouldn"t have cared for myself, but if I tried to refuse he made mother suffer. She was very, very frightened of him, but she would never leave him. She didn"t dare.
There was one night he made me go very late with a packing-case full of silver things he had, and he wouldn"t tell me where he had got them. I believe he stole them all, but I helped him pack them, and I took them away the night Mr. Dunsmore came and gave them to a man wearing a mask.
My stepfather said it was just a secret family matter he was helping some friends in, and later on I saw the same man in the woods near here one day--the day Mr. Clive was killed by the poachers--and when he came another time to the house I thought I must try to find out what he wanted. I listened while they talked and they said such strange things I made up my mind to try to warn Mr. Dunsmore, for I was sure there was something they were plotting."
"There was indeed," said Rupert grimly. "And but for that warning you sent me they would have succeeded."
"Somehow they found out what I had done," Ella continued. "As soon as I got back he kept looking at me so strangely. I was afraid--I had been afraid a long time, for that matter--but I tried not to show it. In the afternoon he told me to go up to the attic. He said he wanted me to help him pack some silver. It was the same silver I had packed before; for some reason he had got it back again. This time I had to pack it in the little boxes, and after I had finished I waited up there till suddenly he ran in very quickly and looking very excited. He said I had betrayed them, and should suffer for it, and he took some rope and he tied me as tightly as he could, and tied a great handkerchief over my mouth, and pushed me inside the wardrobe and locked it. I think he would have killed me then only he was afraid of Mr. Dunsmore, and very anxious to know what had happened, and why Mr. Dunsmore had come home, and if there was any danger. And I was a long time there, and I heard a great noise, and then Mr. Dunsmore opened the door and took me out."
CHAPTER x.x.xI. CONCLUSION
Three months had pa.s.sed, and in a quiet little cottage on the outskirts of a small country town, situated in one of the most beautiful and peaceful vales of the south-west country, Ella was slowly recovering from the shock of the dreadful experiences through which she had pa.s.sed.
She had been ill for some weeks, but her mother, fussily incompetent at most times, was always at her best when sickness came, and she had nursed her daughter devotedly and successfully.
As soon as possible they had come to this quiet little place where people, busy with their own affairs and the important progress of the town, had scarcely heard of what the newspapers of the day called "The Great Chobham Sensation."
But, in fact, very much to Rupert"s relief, comparatively little had been made known publicly, and the whole affair had attracted wonderfully little attention.
The one public proceeding had been the inquest of Deede Dawson, and that the coroner, at the request of the police eagerly searching for Walter Dunsmore, had made as brief and formal as possible. Under his direction the jury had returned a verdict of "justifiable homicide," and Ella"s illness had had at least one good result of making it impossible for her to attend to give her evidence in person.
At a trial, of course, everything would have had to be told in full, but both Allen, Deede Dawson"s accomplice, and Walter Dunsmore, his instigator and employer, had vanished utterly.
For Walter the search was very hot, but so far entirely without result.
Now could Allen be found. He was identified with a fair degree of certainty as an old criminal well known to the authorities, and it was thought almost certain that he had had previous dealings with Deede Dawson, and knew enough about him to be able to force himself into Bittermeads.
Of the actual plot in operation there he most likely knew little or nothing, but probably Deede Dawson thought he might be useful, and the store of silver found in the attic that Ella had been employed in packing ready for removal was identified as part of the plunder from a recent burglary in a northern town.
It was thought, therefore, that both Allen and Deede Dawson might have been concerned in that affair, that Deede Dawson had managed to secure the greater share of the booty, and that Allen, on the night when Rupert found him breaking into Bittermeads, was endeavouring to get hold of the silver for himself.
But the actual facts are not likely now ever to be known, for from that day to this nothing has been heard of Allen. His old haunts know him no more, and to his record, carefully preserved at Scotland Yard, there have been no recent additions.
One theory is that Deede Dawson, finding him troublesome, took effectual steps to dispose of him. Another is that Deede Dawson got him away by either bribes or threats, and that, not knowing of Deede Dawson"s death, he does not venture to return.
In any case, he was a commonplace criminal, and his fate is of little interest to any one but himself.
It was Walter for whom the police hunted with diligence and effort, but with a total lack of success, so that they began to think at the end of three months that he must somehow have succeeded in making his way out of the country.
During the first portion of this time Rupert had been very busy with a great many things that needed his attention. And then Lord Chobham, his health affected by the crimes and treachery of a kinsman whom he had known and trusted as he had known and trusted Walter, was attacked by acute bronchitis which affected his heart and carried him off within the week. The t.i.tle and estates pa.s.sed, therefore, to General Dunsmore, and Rupert became the Honourable Rupert Dunsmore and the direct heir. All this meant for him a great deal more to see to and arrange, for the health of the new Lord Chobham had also been affected and he left practically everything in his son"s hands, so that, except for the letters which came regularly but had been often written in great haste, Ella knew and heard little of Rupert.
But today he was to come, for everything was finally in order, and, though this she did not know till later, Walter Dunsmore had at last been discovered, dead from poison self-administered, in a wretched lodging in an East End slum. Rupert had been called to identify the body and he had been able to arrange it so that very little was said at the inquest, where the customary verdict of "Suicide during temporary insanity" was duly returned by a quite uninterested jury.
That the last had been heard of the tragedy that had so nearly overwhelmed his life, Rupert was able now to feel fairly well a.s.sured, and it was therefore in a mood more cheerful than he had known of late that he started on his journey to Ella"s new residence.
He had sent a wire to confirm his letter, and it was in a mood that was more than a little nervous that she busied herself with her preparations.
She chose her very simplest gown, and when there was absolutely nothing more to do she went into their little sitting-room to wait alone by the fire she had built up there, for it was winter now and today was cold and inclined to be stormy.
Rupert had not said exactly when she was to expect him, and she sat for a long time by the fire, starting at every sound and imagining at every moment that she heard the front-door bell ring.
"I shall not let him feel himself bound," she said to herself with great decision. "I shall tell him I hope we shall always be friends but that"s all; and if he wants anything more, I shall say No. But most likely he won"t say a word about all that nonsense, it would be silly to take seriously what he said--there."
To Ella, now, Bittermeads was always "there," and though she told herself several times that probably Rupert had not the least idea of repeating what he had said to her--there--and that most likely he was coming today merely to make a friendly call, and that it would never do for either of them to think again of what they had said when they were both so excited and overwrought, yet in her heart she knew a great deal better than all that.
But she said to herself very often:
"Anyhow, I shall certainly refuse him."