"They"re queer folk i" t" grange," said the stable boy, as they drove away. "There"s a barrow-night and a lady as n.o.body ever sees, an" a dochtor, an" a man--him as kem for ye."
"Surely they are well known here?"
"Not a bit of it. On"y bin here about a week. T" doctor chap"s very chirpy, but yon uther is a rum "un."
Green was certainly puzzled very greatly by the unexpected developments of the last few minutes, but he was discreet and well trained.
He liked his young master, and would do anything to serve his interests.
Moreover, the ways of millionaires were not the ways of other men. All he could do was to hear and obey.
He slept none the less soundly because his master chose voluntarily to bury himself, even for a little while, in such a weirdly tumbledown, old mansion as the Grange House.
CHAPTER XVIII.
"_Revenge is Mine; I Will Repay._"
"Can"t I have a light?" said Philip, with head screwed round to ascertain if the doctor were following him.
Some sense, whether of sight or hearing he knew not, warned him of movement near at hand, an impalpable effort, a physical tension as of a man laboring under extreme but repressed excitement.
He paid little heed to it. All the surroundings in this weird dwelling were so greatly at variance with his antic.i.p.ations that he partly expected to find further surprises.
Dr. Williams did not answer. Philip advanced a halting foot, a hesitating hand groping for a door.
Instantly a stout rope fell over his shoulders, a noose was tightly drawn, and he was jerked violently to the stone floor of the pa.s.sage. He fell p.r.o.ne on his face, hurting his nose and mouth. The shock jarred him greatly, but his hands, if not his arms, were free, and, with the instinct of self-preservation that replaces all other sensations in moments of extreme peril, he strove valiantly to rise.
But he was grasped by the neck with brutal force, and some one knelt on his back.
"Philip Anson," hissed a man"s voice, "do you remember Jocky Mason?"
So he had fallen into a trap, cunningly prepared by what fiendish combination of fact and artifice he had yet to learn. Jocky Mason, the skulking criminal of Johnson"s Mews. Was he in that man"s power?
Under such conditions a man thinks quickly. Philip"s first ordered thought was one of relief. He had fallen into the clutches of an English brigand. Money would settle this difficulty, if all other means failed.
"Yes, yes," he gurgled, half-strangled by the fierce pressure on his throat.
"You hit me once from behind. You can"t complain if I do the same. You sent me to a living h.e.l.l for ten years--not your fault that it wasn"t forever. Lie still! Not all your money can save you now. I am judge and jury, and h.e.l.l itself. You are dying--dying--dead!"
And with the final words drawled into his ears with bitter intensity, Philip felt a terrible blow descend on his head. There was no pain, no fear, no poignant emotion at leaving all the world held so dear to him.
There was an awful shock. A thundercloud seemed to burst in his brain, and he sank into the void without a groan.
Now, in falling, the hard, felt hat he wore dropped in front of his face. The first wild movement of his head tilted it outward, but the savage jerk given by his a.s.sailant brought the rim slightly over his skull again.
In the almost complete darkness of the pa.s.sage, Mason could not see the slight protection this afforded to his victim, and the sledge-hammer blow he delivered with a life-preserver--that murderous implement named so utterly at variance with its purpose--did not reveal the presence of an obstacle.
He struck with a force that would have stunned an ox; it must have killed any man, be he the hardest-skulled aborigine that ever breathed.
But the stout rim of the hat, though crushed like an eggsh.e.l.l, took off some of the leaden instrument"s tremendous impact. Philip, though quite insensible, was not dead. His sentient faculties were annihilated for the time, but his heart continued its life-giving functions, and he breathed with imperceptible flutterings.
Mason rose, panting with excitement, glutted with satisfied hate. He lifted his victim"s inert form with the ease of his great strength.
"Come on!" he shouted, and strode toward a door which he kicked open.
A step sounded haltingly in the pa.s.sage. Grenier, the _soi-disant_ doctor, livid now and shaking with the ague of irretrievable crime, stumbled after his more callous a.s.sociate. Unconsciously he kicked Philip"s hat to one side. He entered the room, an apartment with a boundless view of the sea.
Here there was more light than in the kitchen. The windows faced toward the northwest, and the last radiance of a setting sun illumined a wall on the right.
"Not there!" he gasped. "In this chair; his face--I must see his face!"
Mason, still clasping his inanimate burden, laughed with a snarl.
"Stop that," he roared. "Pull yourself together. Get some brandy. I"ve done my work. If you can"t do yours, let me finish it."
"Oh, just a moment! Give me time! I hate the sight of blood. Get a towel. Bind it round his neck. His clothes! They will be saturated. And wipe his face. I must see his face."
Grenier was hysterical; he had the highly strung nervous system of a girl where deeds of bloodshed were concerned. While Mason obeyed his instructions he pressed his hands over his eyes.
"Bring some brandy, white-liver. Do you want me to do everything?"
This gruff order awoke Grenier to trembling action. He went to a cupboard and procured a bottle. Mason, having placed Anson in a chair and steadied his head against the wall, seized half a tumblerful of the neat spirit and drank it with gusto. The other, gradually recovering his self-control, was satisfied with a less potential draught.
"It will be dark soon," growled Mason. "We must undress him first, you said."
"Yes. If his clothes are not blood-stained."
"Rot! He must go into the water naked in any case. The idea is your own."
"Ah! I forgot. It will soon be all right. Besides, I knew I should be upset, so I have everything written down here--all fully thought out.
There can be no mistake made then."
He produced a little notebook and opened it with uncertain fingers. He glanced at a closely written page. The words danced before his vision, but he persevered.
"Yes. His coat first. Then his boots. Clothes or linen stained with blood to be burned, after cutting off all b.u.t.tons. Now, I"m ready. I will not funk any more."
His temperament linked the artistic and criminal faculties in sinister combination, and he soon recovered his domination in a guilty partnership. It must have been the instinct of the pickpocket that led him to appropriate Philip"s silver watch, with its quaint shoelace attachment, before he touched any other article.
"Queer thing," he commented. "A rich man might afford a better timekeeper. But there"s no accounting for tastes."
Mason, satiated and stupefied, obeyed his instructions like a ministering ghoul. They undressed Philip wholly, and Grenier, rapidly denuding himself of his boots and outer clothing, donned these portions of the victim"s attire.
Then the paint tubes and the other accessories of an actor"s make-up were produced. Grenier, facing a mirror placed on a table close to Philip, began to remodel his own plastic features in close similitude to those of the unconscious man. He was greatly a.s.sisted by the fact that in general contour they were not strikingly different.
Philip"s face was of a fine, cla.s.sical type; Grenier, whose nose, mouth and chin were regular and pleasing, found the greatest difficulty in controlling the shifty, ferret-like expression of his eyes. Again, Philip had no mustache. The only costume he really liked to wear was his yachting uniform, and here he conformed to the standard of the navy. The shaven lip, of course, was helpful to his imitator. All that was needed was an artistic eye for the chief effect, combined with a skilled use of his materials. And herein Grenier was an adept.
But the light was growing very uncertain.