Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures

Vara could not catch Mirren Douglas's reply, but she could hear Mistress Fraser's next words; for that voluble lady always spoke as if it were all important that the next two parishes should have a chance of benefiting by her wisdom.

"Hoots, no! Gie yoursel' nae thocht aboot the lassie. She has Gavin wi' her, and I'se warrant she'll be keepin' her bit trysts, just as you and me had in the days that's lang bygane. Come your ways in, Gibby. Dinna stand hingin' a leg there!"

Sandyknowes was therefore safe so long as the Frasers remained. The way was clear for Vara to run through the woods to warn Cleg. So, plucking Gavin to her, she lifted him in her arms and ran towards Barnbogle as hard as she could. But the wild beast and the "Awfu' Woman" had a long start of her.

ADVENTURE LVII.
FIGHTING THE BEASTS

General Theophilus Ruff was at home. He had, in fact, never been away. That very morning his lawyer had visited Barnbogle, and had stayed all day in the little brick addition, with two of his clerks within call in the kitchen behind, writing and witnessing deeds. The General sent Cleg into Netherby in the forenoon upon half-a-dozen errands, and in the afternoon he told him that he was free to do what he wished with his time. Whereupon Cleg went and got a pail of whitewash to brighten up the byre and stables of Sandyknowes, a job which he had been promising himself as a treat for a long time.

After the General had dismissed the solicitor and his two clerks to go back to the town of Drumnith, he withdrew into his room and occupied himself with the arrangement and docketing of multitudinous papers. When Cleg came back he made his supper by himself in the brick addition, and was just sitting down with the paper-covered threepenny novel which represented literature to him, when the door opened and the General came in with a roll of papers in his hand. His hair stood nearly straight up, and his eyes were bloodshot and starting from his head. A great change had come over him since the morning.

"Cleg," he said abruptly, "you are going to lose your place."

Cleg stood on his feet respectfully. He was not much astonished. He had been waiting for an announcement like this ever since he found what manner of man his impulsive master was. His first thought was that he would be able largely to increase the flower business.

"Verra weel, sir," said Cleg, glancing straight at the General, who stood commandingly in the doorway, looking, in spite of his disarray, imposing enough in his undress uniform; "verra weel, sir. Ye hae been kind to me."

"Ah," said the General, "I mean that ye are going to lose your master, not that he wishes you to leave your place. I have a long journey to depart upon. I am going upon active service in another world. Three times yestreen I heard the black dog summon me below the window."

"That maun hae been Tam Fraser's collie," said Cleg promptly, "nesty brute that he is. I'll put a chairge o' number five in his tail the next time he comes yowlin' and stravagin' aboot here!"

"No," said the General, without paying much attention, "it was the Death Dog, which only appears when one of my race is about to die. My hours of life are numbered, or at least I believe they are, which is exactly the same thing. You will find that you are not left with the empty hand, Cleg, my man. See that ye use it as wisely as ye have used my money. For I have proved you an honest lad, and that to the hilt – never roguing your master of a pennyworth, high or low, indoor or out, and saving of the Danish butter when you fried the fish."

"Thank ye," said Cleg, "I am no o' high family, ye see. Nae dowgs come aboot when the Kellys dee that I ken o', but if your yin bothers ye I'll shoot him. Gin Rab Wullson the polissman hears tell o' it, he'll be at us to tak' oot a leesence for him."

The General held out his hand.

"Good-bye," he said, "it is likely that I'll be waiting for you on the waterside when you land. I have a tryst to-day with the old Ferryman. The Black Dog has looked my way. I hear the lapping of the water against the boat's sides, and I have coined my gold for drachmas to pay my passage."

"Guidnicht, sir," answered Cleg, briskly; "will ye hae herrin' or bacon to your breakfast the morn's mornin'?"

Cleg was accustomed to the General's megrims, and did not anticipate anything special from this solemn harangue.

"Nae fears, sir," he said, encouragingly; "you tak' your comfortable sleep; the black collie will never trouble ye. I'll leave the outer door on the jar, an' faith! I'll hae a shot at him if he comes youchin' aboot this hoose."

"Come up, Cleg," said Theophilus Ruff, as he stood by the door, "come up in a quarter of an hour, and I'll take my pipe as usual."

"Aye, General," said Cleg, "I'll be up. Did ye say herrin'?"

The General went out without answering, and Cleg turned unconcernedly to his immediate business of scouring the pans and setting the kitchen to rights. He was naturally neat-handed, and by this time no work, indoors or out, came wrong to him.

He was whistling cheerily and burnishing a tin skillet when a slight noise at the outer door startled him. He dropped the can, and it rolled with a clatter under the dresser.

"That dowg o' Fraser!" he said to himself. "I'll 'Black Dog' him!"

But before he could rise he felt his arms pinioned from behind, and ere he could make any effective resistance he was thrown upon his back on the floor. Cleg struggled gallantly, and it might have proved successfully; but the face which looked hatefully into his took from him in a moment all power of resistance.

It was his father's face, livid with hate and vile determination. Tim Kelly coolly directed Sal Kavannah to sit upon the lad's feet, while he himself trussed up his hands and arms as if he had been a fowl ready for the market. Cleg suffered all this without showing the least concern. He had no hope of pity. But he steeled himself to be silent, and faithful to his benefactor.

His father shut the kitchen door. Then he looked carefully round the brick house, and seemed infinitely relieved to find the door into the house unlocked, as the General had left it when he went out for Cleg to follow.

Presently Tim Kelly came back and kneeled by his son's side.

"Now, young serpent," he said, "the reckoning day has come at long and last 'twixt you and me! You have got to tell me where the old chap keeps his keys, and that mighty sharp – or I will see the colour of your blood, sorrowful son o' mine though you be!"

But Cleg maintained a steady silence. Whereupon his father set his fingers to his throat.

"I know a way to make you speak," he said. "Sal, take him by the feet and throw him over that bed."

Sal Kavannah did as she was bid, and between them they threw Cleg across his own bed with his head hanging down on the other side.

"Don't ye be thinking," said his father, bending over him, "that because I had the ill luck to be father to the likes o' you, that will do ye any good."

Cleg still held his peace, biting speech down with a proud, masterful heart. He was resolved that, even if he killed him, his father should not draw a single word out of him.

At that moment a loud clang sounded through the archway which led into the dark house of Barnbogle. Cleg's eyes went in spite of him towards the door. He knew that in a moment more the General would appear in the doorway; and he feared that his father would kill him with the revolver which, when on business errands, he always carried attached to his waist by a leather strap.

Cleg started up as far as he could for his bonds and his father's fierce clutch upon his throat.

"General," he cried, "run back to the strong-room – back as fast as you can to the strong-room!"

Then Cleg heard with gratitude the sound of retreating footsteps outside in the passage.

Timothy Kelly rose from his knees with an oath. He felt that he had been tricked. His revolver was in his hand, and he pointed it at his son's forehead. His fore-finger hooked itself on the trigger. Cleg Kelly instinctively shut his eyes not to see the flash. But Sal Kavannah jerked up her companion's arm.

"You waste time, man," she said; "through the door after the old fellow!"

Tim Kelly lifted the slant-headed bar of iron which he had brought with him to be inserted, if need were, under the sashes of the windows; and as he ran out of the kitchen he struck his son heavily over the head with this, leaving him lying in his blood upon the bed.

Through the long, vaulted passages the villain ran, with his accomplice in crime close upon his heels. The door which divided the little brick building from the main house of Barnbogle closed after them. Something like a tall, flitting white-robed figure seemed to keep a little way before them. They followed till it vanished through the open door of the strong-room. In a moment both Tim Kelly and Sal Kavannah darted in after it, and immediately, with a clang which resounded through the whole house, the door closed upon pursuers and pursued. Then, through the silence which ensued, piercing even the thick walls of the old mansion, ringing all over the country-side, came three loud screams of heart-sickening terror. And after that for a space again there fell silence upon the strange house of Barnbogle, with its mad master and its devilish visitants like wild, predatory beasts of the night. But Cleg Kelly heard nothing; for the blow from his father's arm had left him, as it proved, wounded and nigh unto death.

Vara we left panting along the road upon her quest of mercy, listening fearfully for the feet of the pursuer. She dared not leave Gavin behind her, but toiled under his load all the way – now stumbling in the darkness and now falling headlong. The lad cried bitterly, but Vara persevered, for she had the vision of Cleg before her, helpless in the hands of the cruel enemies who were also hers.

When she came to the main door of the house of Barnbogle she found it barred and locked, while the gloomy front loomed above with the windows like still blacker gashes on its front. However, she remembered Cleg's description, and, taking Gavin by the hand, she ran as swiftly as she could through the dense coppice round to the little brick addition.

She had just reached the closed door when the three shrieks of terrible distress pealed out upon the night silences.

But Vara nerved herself, and, lifting the latch, pushed the kitchen door open. There across the bed, within three feet of her, lay Cleg, bound, bleeding, and insensible. Vara set down Gavin, sprang towards Cleg, and took him up in her arms. Hastily she unloosed him from his bonds, and dashed water upon his face. But his head fell heavily and loosely forward, and it was with a terrible sinking of the heart that the thought flashed upon her that her friend was already dead. The house continued to resound with cries of fear, demoniac laughter, screams of ultimate agony. At any moment the fiends who made them might burst upon her. Yet she could not leave Cleg to the mercy of the merciless.

With eager hands she tore the sheet from the bed, and, wrapping him in it, she lifted him in her arms and staggered into the night. Gavin came after her, speechless with fear, clutching tightly the skirts of her dress.

So, fainting and staggering, Vara bore Cleg across the marsh and up to the little house of Sandyknowes. She was just able to put Cleg Kelly into the arms of Mirren Douglas and sink fainting on the floor.

When she came to herself Tam Fraser and the doctor from Netherby were bending over her.

"What was the maitter – wha hurt the laddie?" asked Tam Fraser.

"The House! The terrible House!" was all that Vara could say.

Cleg Kelly was not dead. The doctor reported him to be suffering from a severe concussion of the brain, which might probably prevent a return to consciousness for some days.

A band of men hastily equipped themselves and set out for the house of Barnbogle. They stole up to the door of the kitchen. It stood open, as Vara had left it. The light streamed out upon the green foliage and the trampled grass. But inside there was only silence, and all around a wild scene of confusion. The skillet which Cleg had been burnishing lay upon the hearthstone. There was blood upon the stones of the floor where he had been thrown down, and again on the bed from which Vara had lifted him. But about all the house there was only silence.

The blacksmith of the nearest village brought a forehammer, and with great difficulty he and his apprentice broke a way into the house itself through one of the barred upper windows. But the whole mansion within was entirely in order. The iron fronts of the safes in the hall had not been tampered with. The red iron door of the strong-room in the rock underground was close and firm – far beyond the art of Netherby smiths to burst open.

It was considered, therefore, that the General must be from home, on one of his ever-recurring journeys, and that his servant Cleg had been attacked by the ruffians who had run off at the sound of the alarm raised by Vara.

Yet it was thought somewhat strange that, as the men came back through the empty house, they should find an iron crowbar, stained with blood, lying at the top of the steps which led to the strong-room.

ADVENTURE LVIII.
WITHIN THE RED DOOR

Cleg hovered long between life and death. The Netherby doctor made his rounds twice a day in the direction of Sandyknowes in order to watch the case. Vara and Mirren Douglas waited unweariedly upon him. It seemed so strange a thing to them to see their lightsome, alert Cleg thus lie senseless, speechless, turning his head only a little from side to side occasionally, and keeping his eyes fixed steadfastly upon the ceiling.

After the first night of stupor Cleg slept heavily and constantly for nearly ten days, without being able either to speak or so much as tell his own name.

The Netherby doctor raised each of the patient's eyelids when he came, but the pupil remained dull. Every day the doctor would say, "Do not be alarmed. This is a well-marked stage of the trouble, though no doubt it is in this case somewhat unduly prolonged."

And so it proved, for Cleg did not come to himself until twelve days after the night when Vara found him lying in the brick addition, with the lamp lighted and signs of hideous outrage all about him on the floor. A watch had been kept all the time by the county authorities upon Barnbogle House, and every possible attempt had been made to communicate with the owner. All places which he was known to visit had been watched.

The steamers on the Caledonian Canal, the ferries to the Island of Arran, the passenger boats to Orkney and Shetland had been carefully examined; but so far it was all in vain. No one answering to the description of General Theophilus Ruff could anywhere be found. Yet there was nothing remarkable in this. For the mad General had been in the habit of going off suddenly on tours by himself, by rail and steamboat, without consulting any one. Upon his travels by sea he had been distinguished by his habit of taking the officers under his protection, and offering them advice upon the subject of their profession, especially as to the proper way to handle a ship – advice which, strangely enough, was not always received in good part.

But the mad soldier could nowhere be found. His lawyers continued the search in other directions. They came to Netherby, and made very particular inquiries as to the doings of Cleg during the day which had ended so disastrously. Now it chanced that, even while Cleg himself lay unconscious upon the bed at Sandyknowes, every hour of his day could be accounted for; that is, up to the moment when he had gone home to prepare supper for his master. The General had ordered a new fence of barbed wire to be erected by the side of the railway, and Cleg had been out all the forenoon superintending its erection, after having been sent to Netherby by the General. He had been engaged in whitewashing the office-houses at Sandyknowes in the afternoon.

So close was the inquiry, that the chief of the Netherby police asked more than once of the detective employed by General Ruff's lawyers if he had any cause for suspicion against the young man Kelly.

"None whatever," said the detective, "so far as I know. But I understand that important testamentary dispositions will affect the young man – that is, if he gets better and the General does not turn up."

Cleg did get better, but not suddenly or indeed speedily.

One morning, when the doctor came from Netherby, Cleg of his own accord twitched an eyelid up and glanced at him.

"Doctor Sidey!" he said feebly, "have I been ill?"

Without answering, the doctor took his hand and bent over him.

His breathing was weak and irregular, but still perceptibly stronger.

"He'll do!" said Doctor Sidey of Netherby to Mirren Douglas, "but, mind you, he is to be asked no questions till I can ask them myself."

So for nearly a week more Cleg lay in the dusky room, with the bees humming drowsily outside the wall on sunny days, and the sounds of the little farmyard of Sandyknowes coming to him softened by distance. Vara looked in many times a day, as she passed the window to bring home the cows, or going with a can to the well; and always at sight of her Cleg smiled happily.

Or Mirren came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron, and Cleg smiled again. Then Vara brought him his low diet of milk and cornflour. But she did not speak to him. He looked at her in a manner so pathetic in its weakness that Mirren Douglas had often, perforce, to go into a corner and dry her eyes with her apron.

"He used to be so strong and cheery!" she said, as if explaining the matter to the world in general.

Then Vara would briskly leave the room to bid Boy Hugh hush his noisy calls to the chickens outside. Whereat Cleg Kelly would shake his head; but whether because Vara had left the room, or because he liked the simple, cheerful sounds of the yard coming into his chamber, Mirren Douglas did not know.

It was a clear morning, about seven o'clock, when Cleg came fully to himself. The trees upon the slope opposite stood black and hard against a pale green midwinter sky. Cleg watched the light grow clearer behind them as a chill wind from the south swayed the branches away from him. He had a delicious sense of reposefulness and physical well-being. But this was suddenly crossed and obliterated by the thought which came to him that he had lost his place. How long had he been lying here? He could not remember. His master – where was he? That hideous vision of his old life which swept over him like a very eruption of devildom – was it a dream, or a reality?

"The doctor! the doctor!" cried Cleg; "send for him quickly. I have something I must tell him."

And Vara sped obediently away, putting forth all the strength in her lithe young limbs to bring Doctor Sidey to Cleg Kelly as quickly as possible.

When he came in he looked at Cleg quickly.

"Worse?" he queried, half to the patient and half to Mirren Douglas, who stood by with folded hands.

"No," said Cleg, "not worse, doctor. But I have something to tell you which cannot wait."

The doctor motioned Vara and Mirren out of the room. And then, in hurried, breathless sentences, Cleg told the doctor of all that had taken place on the night of the attack. He still thought that it had been just the night before, and the doctor did not undeceive him.

"And the robbers are still in the house wi' my maister," Cleg asserted. "I think he is shut up in the strong-room. If he doesna come oot soon the room must be forced. But he never stays in it more than a night at a time, so he is sure to come oot in the mornin'."

"What did you say?" cried the doctor, surprised out of himself. "General Ruff in the strong-room – two robbers with him in the house! Why, it is plainly impossible – it is three weeks on Tuesday since you were hurt."

"The General was in the house when I was attacked," repeated Cleg. "I heard him go into the strong-room and shut the door."

The doctor went into Netherby and telegraphed to the General's lawyers, who lived in the larger town of Drumnith. The two heads of the firm arrived by the next train, and, as a result of a conference with the doctor and Cleg, an urgent message was sent to the great firm of safe and strong-room makers who had engineered the safety appliances, to come and open the room in which lay the most hidden treasures of General Theophilus Ruff.

In response to this urgent application three skilled mechanicians came down that same night, and by five in the morning they stood ready to break in the door. The foreman of Messrs. Cox & Roskell's declared that no power existed by which, in the absence of the keys and the knowledge of the time and word combinations, the lock could be opened without violence.

But the lawyers promptly decided that at all hazards the room must be reached. So, very philosophically, the foreman proceeded to demolish the work of his own hands and brain – the preparation and fitting of which had cost him so many weeks.

He inserted two dynamite cartridges on either side of the red iron door, boring holes for their reception in the rock itself, so that the frame might be started bodily from its bed. Then he placed other two under the step which led to the room. There were present only the three artisans, the two lawyers from Drumnith of the firm of Hewitson & Graham, together with Doctor Sidey, who had constituted himself Cleg's representative, and had insisted either on having the regular police called in or upon being present himself.

These six men stood far back from the house while the dynamite was exploded. The foreman timed the fuse with his watch. Presently there came a little jar of the earth, as if a railway train were passing underneath. But the great bulk of the building stood firm. The lawyers and the doctor were eager to run forward. But the foreman held them back till the fumes had had time to clear out of the stone narrow passages and to dissipate themselves through the glassless windows.

Then they went below, each carrying a lantern. The doctor had in his pocket also a case of surgical instruments and the strongest restoratives known to his art.

When they arrived in the passage they found the mighty iron door fallen outward, frame and all. It lay with the time lock and the letter attachment still in their places, leaving a black, cavernous opening, into which the light of the bull's-eye lanterns refused to penetrate.

The foreman stooped as he came up.

"It's not a pennypiece the worse," he said, examining the fallen door with professional solicitude.

But the doctor pushed him aside and entered. As he shed the light of his lantern around he gasped like a man in extremity, for surely a stranger or a more terrible sight the eyes of man had never looked upon.

Two dark forms, those of a man and a woman, were upon the floor, the man prone on his face with his hands stretched out before him, the woman crouched far back in the corner with her mouth wide open and her eyes starting from her head with absolute and ghastly terror. Yet both eyes and mouth were obviously those of a corpse. In the centre of the room were three coffins laid upon narrow tables, the same that Cleg had so often seen. But now they were all three open, and in each reclined a figure arrayed in white, with the head raised on a level with the coffin lid.

In the coffin in the centre lay General Theophilus Ruff, with an expression of absolute triumph on his face. He appeared to lean forward a little towards the woman in the corner, and his dead wide-open eyes were fixed upon her. An empty opium box lay by his side. A revolver lay across his knees, evidently fallen from his right hand, which hung over the coffin edge. His Oriental pipe stood on the floor, and the amber mouthpiece was still between his lips.

But the other two coffins contained the strangest part of the contents of this room of horrors. To the right of the General lay the perfectly preserved body of a woman, whose regular features and delicate skin had only been slightly marred at the nostrils by the process of embalming. She was dressed in white, and her hands were crossed upon her bosom. A man, young and noble-looking, lay in the same position in the other coffin upon the General's left.

But the most wonderful thing was that the necks of both the man and the woman were bound about with a red cord drawn very tight midway between the chin and the shoulder. Upon the breast of the man on the left were written in red the words:

"False Friend."

And on the breast of the fair woman upon the right the words:

"False Love."

A row of tall candlesticks stood round the coffins, six on either side. The great ceremonial candles which they had once contained had burned down to the sockets and guttered over the tops. The floor was strewn with the contents of drawers and papers, and with dainty articles of female attire. A small glove of French make lay at the doctor's feet.

He lifted it and put it into his pocket mechanically, before turning his attention to the bodies in this iron charnel-house. They were, of course, all long since dead. The weasel-faced man on the floor had a bullet through the centre of his forehead. The woman in the corner, on the other hand, was wholly untouched by any wound; but from the expression on her face she must have died in the most instant and mortal terror.

When the first wild astonishment of the searchers had abated a little, the lawyers ordered the men from Messrs. Cox & Roskell's to open the various receptacles in the strong-room. Strangely enough, nothing whatever was found in them, excepting some articles of jewelry and a packet of letters in a woman's hand, which the lawyers took possession of. The three confidential artificers from London remained in charge till measures should be taken to clear out the strong-room.

The doctor examined Cleg with care and tact, for it was to him that the lawyers looked for the explanation of the mystery. But first they provided the mechanicians with very substantial reasons for secrecy, if they would give their services to prevent a scandal in these very remarkable family circumstances. The men, accustomed to secrecy, and recognising the future and personal application of the lawyers' logic, readily promised.

So far as the doctor could make out, this was what had happened. Cleg told the truth fully, but he made no discovery of the relationship in which he stood to the man who had so murderously attacked him. Nor yet did he say anything of his knowledge of Sal Kavannah's identity. After a little study and piecing of evidence, however, the process of events seemed fairly clear.

When Cleg first sent his warning cry through the house, the General had doubtless been engaged in arranging for his expected departure out of the life which had brought so little happiness to him. For, like an Oriental, he knew, or supposed that he knew, the exact moment of his death – though, as we now know, his first impression had proved erroneous.

For some unknown purpose he had left the strong-room and hastened through the passages till he had heard the hideous uproar in the kitchen, whereupon he had promptly retreated to the strong-room, in all probability to get his revolver. While there a mad idea had crossed his mind to receive his visitors in his coffin. At any rate, upon entering he left the red door open behind him. A few moments later Tim Kelly came rushing in hot upon the trail, followed by the woman Kavannah. His hands were wet and red with his son's blood. His heart was ripe for murder. And this was the sight which met him – a room with open coffins in a row and three dead folk laid upon them, six great candles burning upon either side – all the horrors of a tomb in the place where he had counted to lay his hand upon uncounted treasure.

Then, while Timothy Kelly and Sal Kavannah stood a moment looking with fearful eyes on the tall ceremonial candles, which must have been specially ghastly to them on account of their race, the strong door swung noiselessly to upon its hinges; for the water balance had filled up, and they found themselves trapped.

What happened after this was not so clear. Probably the robber was proceeding in his desperation to rifle the open depositories of the letters and gear, which the searchers found strewed up and down the floor, when Theophilus Ruff sat up suddenly in the centre coffin, with his revolver in his hand, just as Cleg had seen him the first time he entered the chamber of death. Whether the ruffian had first attacked the madman, or whether he had simply been shot down where he stood, will never be known. But certain it is that he died instantly, and that the horror of the sight killed Sal Kavannah where she sat crouched low in the corner, as if trying to get as far as possible from the grisly horrors of the three coffins.

Then, having done his work, Theophilus Ruff calmly swallowed all that remained of his drugs, and slept himself into the land where vengeance is not, with the mouthpiece of his pipe in his mouth and his revolver upon his knees.

The heads of the embalmed bodies were turned so that they looked towards Theophilus Ruff as he sat in his coffin. For twenty years it is probable that he had gone to sleep every night with those dead faces looking at him.

The coffins were buried as privately as possible, the two embalmed bodies being laid within the private mausoleum at the foot of the garden; for in noble families a private burying-place is a great convenience in such emergencies. Here also Tim Kelly and Sal Kavannah took their places with nobler sinners, and no doubt they lie there still, mixing their vulgar earth with finer clay, and so will remain until the final resurrection of good and evil.

Doctor Sidey certified truthfully that the death of General Theophilus Ruff was due to an overdose of opium. And as there is no coroner's inquest in Scotland (another convenience), matters were easily arranged with the Procurator-Fiscal of the county – who was, in fact, a friend of the distinguished and discreet firm of Hewitson & Graham at Drumnith.