Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless sky.
True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high shooting-boots and a tam-o"-shanter hat, while I also had on an old shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could prod likely spots.
On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely corner, but she replied:
"I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years, while this is only my first season here."
"Very well," I answered. "Let us place ourselves in the position of the murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle, examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in beneath a thicket and well escape observation."
And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness which showed that the fact of the woman"s body being there was no mere surmise.
All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
Even Muriel"s thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly exclaimed:
"Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?"
My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to scramble through almost impa.s.sable thickets; yet we found no trace of any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at that spot.
More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in such circ.u.mstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and watchful.
When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.
Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went, beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.
For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely point. To carry the body far would require a.s.sistance, and in my own mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.
"This is a most likely place," declared my dainty little companion as we approached it. "Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end," she cried with enthusiasm.
Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream, and then by springing from stone to stone--sometimes slipping into the water, be it said--we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident, and wringing out her wet skirt, said:
"It doesn"t matter in the least, if we only find what we"re in search of."
And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would openly denounce the a.s.sa.s.sin.
As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circ.u.mstances in connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack Durnford"s words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Bulwark_ and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed--that girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.
The afternoon pa.s.sed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy was marvelous--and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of convicting the guilty one?
Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.
The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make our exit. We were pa.s.sing around a sharp bend in the glen where the boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.
"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.
We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to being disturbed.
Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by the utterance of a single word.
To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its summit.
Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the glen.
"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"
"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in the neighborhood. They"ve lost their way most probably."
"But I don"t think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had something over his shoulder?"
"Wasn"t it a gun? I thought it was."
"No, he wasn"t carrying it like he"d carry a gun. It was short--and seemed more like a spade."
"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain of that?"
"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."
"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for the moment I can"t recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been recently disturbed.
"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down there! They"ve just been burying something!"
Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:
"I really believe they have concealed something!"
Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed, we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn over the place which, if approached from any other point than the high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the ground had ever been interfered with.
Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged silence full of wonder and antic.i.p.ation. With a spade we should have soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our progress was very slow and difficult.
At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel, standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground, suddenly cried:
"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why--whatever is that?"
I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected that I was held dumb and motionless.
By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased rather than diminished.
I gave vent to an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of complete bewilderment, and looked blankly into my companion"s face.
The amazing enigma was surely complete!