Henty George Alfred
Colonel Thorndyke's Secret
“Yes, Sir Charles, but you see it was a pretty hard frost last night, and I cannot find any marks at all. The ground must have been like iron about the time when the ladder was placed there.”
The gardener, on being called in, said that the ladder was always hung up outside the shed at the back of the house; there was a chain round it, and he had found that morning that one of the links had been filed through.
“The Squire was most particular about its being locked, as Mr. Mark knows, so that it could not be used by any ill disposed chaps who might come along at night. The key of the padlock was always hung on a nail round the other side of the shed. The Squire knew of it, and so did Mr. Mark and me; so that while it was out of the way of the eyes of a thief, any of us could run and get it and undo the padlock in a minute in case of fire or anything of that sort. I have not used the ladder, maybe, for a fortnight, but I know that it was hanging in its place yesterday afternoon.”
“I expect the fellow was prowling about here for some time,” Mark said. “I was chatting with my father in the library when I thought I heard a noise, and I threw open the window, which had by some carelessness been left a little open, and went out, and listened for nearly an hour, but I could hear nothing, and put it down to the fact that I was nervous owing to what had happened early in the evening, and that the noise was simply fancy, or that the frost had caused a dry branch of one of the shrubs to crack.”
“How was it you did not notice the window was open as you went in?”
“The curtains were drawn, sir. I glanced at that when I went into the room with my father. After being shot at once from outside, it was possible that we might be again; though I own that I did not for a moment think that the fellow would return after the hot chase that I gave him. I suppose after I went in he looked about and found the ladder; it is likely enough that he would have had a file with him in case he had any bars to cut through to get into the house, but to my mind it is more likely that he knew where to find the ladder without any looking for it; it has hung there as long as I can remember.”
“Yes, sir,” the gardener said, “I have worked for the Squire ever since he came here, and the ladder was bought a week or two after he took me on, and the Squire settled where it should be hung, so that it might be handy either in case of fire or if wanted for a painting job. This aint the first ladder; we got a new one four years ago.”
“It is singular that the man should have known which was the window of your father’s room.”
“Very singular,” Mark said.
Shortly after the doctor left, and Mark had a long talk with the magistrate in the library, and told him his reasons for suspecting that the murderer was Arthur Bastow.
“It certainly looks like it,” the magistrate said thoughtfully, after he had heard Mark’s story, “though of course it is only a case of strong suspicion, and not of legal proof. Your father’s recognition of the voice could have scarcely been accepted as final when he heard but three words, still the whole thing hangs together. The fellow was, I should say, capable of anything. I don’t know that I ever had a prisoner before me whose demeanor was so offensive and insolent, and if it can be proved that Bastow is in England I should certainly accept your view of the case. He would probably have known both where the ladder was to be found and which was the window of your father’s bedroom.”
“I should certainly think that he would know it, sir. The bedroom was the same that my grandfather used to sleep in, and probably during the years before we came here young Bastow would have often been over the house. The first year or two after we came he was often up here with his father, but I know that my father took such an objection to him, his manner and language were so offensive, that he would not have me, boy as I was—I was only about eleven when he came here—associate with him in the smallest degree. But during those two years he may very well have noticed where the ladder was.”
“Do you intend to say anything about all this tomorrow at the inquest, Mark?”
“I don’t think I shall do so,” Mark said moodily. “I am certain of it myself, but I don’t think any man would convict him without stronger evidence than I could give. However, that business in Australia will be sufficient to hang him.”
“I think you are right, Mark. Of course, if you do light upon any evidence, we can bring this matter up in another court; if not, there will be no occasion for you to appear in it at all, but leave it altogether for the authorities to prove the Sydney case against him; it will only be necessary for the constables who got up the other case against him to prove his sentence, and for the reports of the Governor of the jail to be read. There will be no getting over that, and he will be hung as a matter of course. It will be a terrible thing for his unhappy father.”
“I do not think that he is likely to come to know it, sir; the shock of the affair yesterday and that of this morning have completely prostrated him, and Dr. Holloway, who was up with him before you arrived, thinks that there is very little chance of his recovery.”
When the magistrate had left, Mark sent a request to Mrs. Cunningham that she would come down for a few minutes. She joined him in the drawing room.
“Thank you for coming down,” he said quietly. “I wanted to ask how you were, and how Millicent is.”
“She is terribly upset. You see, the Squire was the only father she had ever known; and had he been really so he could not have been kinder. It is a grievous loss to me also, after ten years of happiness here; but I have had but little time to think of my own loss yet, I have been too occupied in soothing the poor girl. How are you feeling yourself, Mark?”
“I don’t understand myself,” he said. “I don’t think that anyone could have loved his father better than I have done; but since I broke down when I first went to my room I seem to have no inclination to give way to sorrow. I feel frozen up; my voice does not sound to me as if it were my own; I am able to discuss matters as calmly as if I were speaking of a stranger. The one thing that I feel passionately anxious about is to set out on the track of the assassin.”
“There is nothing unusual in your state of feeling, Mark. Such a thing as this is like a wound in battle; the shock is so great that for a time it numbs all pain. I have heard my husband say that a soldier who has had his arm carried off by a cannon ball will fall from the shock, and when he recovers consciousness will be ignorant where he has been hit. It is so with you; probably the sense of pain and loss will increase every day as you take it in more and more. As for what you say about the murderer, it will undoubtedly be a good thing for you to have something to employ your thoughts and engage all your faculties as soon as this is all over. Is there anything that I can do?”
“No, thank you; the inquest will be held tomorrow. I have sent down to Chatterton to come up this afternoon to make the necessary preparations for the funeral. Let me see, today is Wednesday, is it not? I seem to have lost all account of the time.”
“Yes, Wednesday.”
“Then I suppose the funeral will be on Monday or Tuesday. If there is any message that you want sent down to the town, one of the grooms will carry it whenever you wish.”
“Thank you; ‘tis not worth sending particularly, any time will do, but I shall want to send a note to Mrs. Wilson presently, asking her to come up the first thing tomorrow morning.”
“He can take it whenever, you like, Mrs. Cunningham. I have nothing to send down for, as far as I know. I suppose you have heard that the doctor thinks very badly of Mr. Bastow?”
“Yes. Ramoo is sitting with him now.”
“Then I think, if you will write your note at once, Mrs. Cunningham, I will send one down to Dr. Holloway, asking him to send an experienced nurse. He said he should call again this afternoon, but the sooner a nurse comes the better.”
That afternoon Mark wrote a letter to the family solicitors, telling them of what had taken place, and stating that the funeral would be on the following Tuesday, and asking them to send down a clerk with his father’s will, or if one of the partners could manage to come down, he should greatly prefer it, in view of the explanations that would be necessary. He had already sent off a letter to the head of the Detective Department, asking him to send down one of his best men as soon as possible. Then he went out into the garden, and walked backwards and forwards for about two hours, and then returned to what he thought would be a solitary meal. Mrs. Cunningham, however, came down. She had thoughtfully had the large dining table pushed on one side, and a small one placed near the fire.
“I thought it would be more comfortable,” she said, “as there are only our two selves, just to sit here.”
He thanked her with a look. It was a nice little dinner, and Mark, to his surprise, ate it with an appetite. Except the cup of tea that he had taken in the morning, and a glass of wine at midday, he had touched nothing. Mrs. Cunningham was a woman of great tact, and by making him talk of the steps that he intended to take to hunt down the assassin, kept him from thinking.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Cunningham,” he said, when the dinner was over. “I feel very much better.”
“I have brought down my work,” she said, “and will sit here while you drink your wine and smoke a pipe. Millicent has gone to bed, completely worn out, and it will be pleasanter for us both to sit here than to be alone.”
Mark gladly agreed to the proposal. She turned the conversation now to India, and talked of her life there.
“I was not out there very long,” she said. “I was engaged to my husband when he first went out, and six years afterwards joined him there, and we were married. Your uncle, who was a major of his regiment, gave me away. My husband got his company six months afterwards, and was killed three years later. My pension as his widow was not a large one, and when your uncle offered me the charge of his daughter I was very glad to accept it. He gave some idea of his plans for her. I thought they were very foolish, but when I saw that his mind was thoroughly made up I did not attempt to dissuade him. He said that when he came home to England (and he had no idea when that would be) he should have me here, as head of his establishment, and it would be given out that the child was his ward. I hoped that he would alter his mind later on, but, as you know, he never did.”
“Well, of course, she will have to be told now,” Mark said.
“Do you think so? It seems to me that it were better that she would go as she is, at any rate, until she is twenty-one.”
“That would be quite impossible,” Mark said decidedly. “How could I assume the position of master here? And even if I could, it would be a strange thing indeed for me to be here with a girl the age of my cousin, even with you as chaperon. You must see yourself that it would be quite impossible.”
“But how could she live here by herself?”
“I don’t think she could live here by herself,” Mark said, “especially after what has happened. Of course, it has all got to be talked over, but my idea is that the place had better be shut up, and that you should take, in your own name, a house in London. I suppose she will want masters for the harp, and so on. For a time, at any rate, that would be the best plan, unless you would prefer some other place to London. We have done our best to carry out my uncle’s wishes, but circumstances have been too strong for us, and it cannot be kept up any longer; but there is no reason, if you and she prefer it, why she should not be known, until you return here, by her present name. Of course the affair will create a great deal of talk down here, but in London no one will know that Millicent is an heiress, though it is hardly likely that you will make many acquaintances for a time.”
“Have you known it long, Mark? I thought that you were kept in ignorance of it.”
“I only heard it yesterday evening, Mrs. Cunningham; after that shot through the window my father thought I ought to know all about it, for the attempt might be repeated more successfully. He told me all about her, and about the treasure.”
“What treasure?” Mrs. Cunningham said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He then told her of the story his uncle had related, and how he had been prevented from giving full instructions for its discovery, the only clew being a gold coin and the word Masulipatam, and that this treasure had been left equally divided between him and Millicent by his will.
“He told me that he should provide for you,” Mrs. Cunningham remarked, “when I said that it would be unfair that you should be brought up believing yourself the heir. I never heard any more about it, but I am glad that it is so.”
“I fancy the chance of its coming to either of us is very small,” Mark said; “a coin and a word are not much to go upon. I have not the most remote idea what they mean, and whether the treasure is in England or in India, Heaven only knows.”
“Possibly, when he made the will, he may have told the solicitors where it was, and instructed them to keep it secret until the time that Millicent came into possession of the estate.”
“It is just possible he did so, Mrs. Cunningham, but the efforts he made to speak at the last moment would almost seem to show that he had not told them, for, if he had, the matter would have been of no vital importance one way or the other. Will Millicent be well enough to come down in the morning?”
“I hope so.”
“I hope so, too; but, at any rate, keep her up in her room till the afternoon. The inquest will be at eleven o’clock, and it is better that she should not come down until everyone has gone away.”
CHAPTER IX
Directly after breakfast was over the next morning the Rector came in.
“I would not come in yesterday, Mark,” he said. “I knew that you would be best alone; and, indeed, I was myself so terribly upset by the news that I did not feel equal to it. I need not say how deeply I and my wife sympathize with you. Never did a kinder heart beat than your father’s; never have I seen people so universally grieved as they are in the village. I doubt whether a man went to work yesterday, and as for the women, had it been a father they had lost they could not be more affected.”
“Yes, he will be greatly missed,” Mark said unsteadily; “and, between ourselves—but this must go no further—I have a suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that the hand that dealt this blow is the same that caused the vacancy that brought you here.”
“Do you mean Arthur Bastow?” Mr. Greg said in amazement. “Why, I thought that he was transported for fifteen years.”
Then Mark told the Rector the inner history of the past six months, and of the report they had had from the officer at Bow Street of the personal appearance of the wounded man.
“Other things are in favor of it,” he went on. “My father’s watch and purse were untouched, and a stranger on a dark night would be hardly likely to have discovered the ladder, or to have had a file in his pocket with which to cut through a link, though this might have been part of the apparatus of any burglar. Then, again, an ordinary man would hardly have known which was my father’s bedroom, except, indeed, that he saw the light there after those in the ladies’ rooms were extinguished; but, at any rate, he could not have told which was my father’s and which was mine. But all this is, as I said, Mr. Greg, quite between ourselves. I had a long talk yesterday with Sir Charles Harris, and, as he said, there is no legal proof whatever, strong as the suspicion is; so I am going to say nothing on the subject at the inquest. The scoundrel’s poor father is dying, happily in ignorance of all this. Dr. Holloway was up with him all night, and told me this morning before he drove off that it is very unlikely that he will get through the day.”
“It is all very terrible, Mark; but I cannot deny that everything points to the man. Surely no one else could have cut short so useful a life, for certainly no ordinary degree of hatred would drive a man, however brutal his nature, to commit such a crime, and to run the risk of hanging for it. Let us take a brisk walk in the garden for an hour—that will be the best thing for you. I will stop with you until the inquest is over, and then you had better come over and have lunch with us.”
“Thank you; I cannot do so,” Mark said, “though I should like to. In the first place, Millicent will come downstairs this afternoon, and I should like to be in to meet her. Had it not been for that I might have come, as I can walk across the fields to the Rectory without passing through the village. There is another reason. I sent up yesterday by the coach a letter to be delivered at once by hand, and I expect a detective down here by one o’clock. I don’t know that he will do any good; but at the same time it will give me something to do, and at present there is nothing I dread so much as sitting alone. Fortunately, yesterday evening Millicent went to bed at five o’clock, and Mrs. Cunningham sat with me all the evening, and her talk did me a great deal of good.”
The inquest occupied a very short time, the only point on which many questions were asked being as to the firing through the window. Mark stated that it was already so dark that although he was within fifty yards of the man when he mounted and rode off, he could not give any very distinct description of his figure. It struck him as being that of a man of medium height.
“You have made out that the bullet was intended for your father?”
“I cannot say that, sir, it went between his head and that of Mr. Bastow, but it might have been meant for either.”
“Was your father impressed with the idea that it was an attempt to murder him?”
“He naturally thought so. Mr. Bastow can assuredly have no enemies, while my father, as a magistrate, may have made some. He certainly thought it was an attempt to murder him, and was so impressed by the fact that when we went to the library later on he went into certain family matters with me that he had never communicated before, and which, had it not been for this, he would not have entered into for some years to come.”
“He had his opinion, then, as to who was his assailant?”
“He had, sir, but as it was but an opinion, although there were several facts that seemed to justify the conviction, there was no proof whatever, and therefore I do not think myself justified in saying what that opinion was.”
“Do you entertain the same opinion yourself?”
“I do,” Mark said emphatically; “but until I can obtain some evidence in support of what is really but a matter of opinion, and because, were I to give the name, it would lessen my chance of obtaining such evidence, I decline to mention the name.”
“You have no doubt that the author of the second attempt is the same as that of the first?”
“Personally, I have no doubt whatever; it stands to reason that it is barely possible that two men could have, unknown to each other, made up their minds to murder my father on the same evening.”
The constable’s evidence added nothing to that given by Mark. He had been down to the lane where the man pursued had mounted. The reins of the horse had apparently been thrown over a gatepost, and he thought it had been standing there for some little time, for there were marks where it had scraped the ground repeatedly. He had followed the marks of its hoofs for some distance; it had gone at a gallop for about half a mile, and then the pace had slackened into a trot. It continued until the lane fell into the main road, but beyond this he had been unable to distinguish it from the marks of the traffic in general.
“You found no footprints whatever near the foot of the ladder, or anywhere else round the house?”
“None whatever, sir.”
“There were no signs of any other window or door save that of Mr. Thorndyke’s room being attempted?”
“None at all, sir.”
There was but a short consultation between the jurors, who at once returned a verdict of “Willful murder by some person or persons unknown.”
Dr. Holloway had, after giving evidence, returned at once to Mr. Bastow’s room. The only point of importance in his evidence was the statement that the wound must have been fatal at once, the heart itself having been penetrated. It had been inflicted by a dagger or a narrow bladed knife.
“Do you mean that it was an unusually small dagger, Dr. Holloway?”
“I should say it was a very fine dagger; not the sort of weapon that you would expect to find a highwayman carry, if he carried one at all, but rather a weapon of Spanish or Italian manufacture.”
“Not the sort of wound that a rapier would make?”
“Yes, the wound itself might have been very well made by a light rapier, but there was a slight bruise on the flesh on each side of the wound, such a mark as might be made by the handle or guard of a dagger, and sufficiently plain to leave no doubt in my mind that it was so made.”
“Had the wound a downward course, or was it a straight thrust?”
“A straight thrust,” the doctor replied. “My idea is that the two men were grappling together, and that as Mr. Thorndyke was a very powerful man, his assailant, who probably was approaching the bed with the dagger in his hand, plunged it into him; had he struck at him I should certainly have expected the course of the wound to be downward, as I fancy a man very seldom thrusts straight with a dagger, as he would do with a rapier.”
When the inquest was over, Mark, going out into the hall, found the doctor waiting there for him.
“Mr. Bastow breathed his last some ten minutes ago. I saw when I went up to him just before I gave my evidence that it was likely that he would die before I returned to the room.”
“I am very sorry,” Mark said, “although I expected nothing else from what you told me: He was a very kind hearted man; no one could have had a kinder or more patient tutor than he was to me, while my father regarded him as a very dear and valued friend. I am expecting the undertaker here in a few minutes, and they can both be buried at the same time.”
It was late in the afternoon before Millicent came down with Mrs. Cunningham. The news of Mr. Bastow’s death had set her tears flowing afresh; she had been very fond of him, and that he and the Squire should have been taken at once seemed almost beyond belief. She had, however, nerved herself to some degree of composure before she went down to meet Mark; but although she returned the pressure of his hand, she was unable for some time to speak. Mrs. Cunningham thought it best to speak first on the minor grief.
“So Mr. Bastow has gone, Mark?”
“Yes, Dr. Holloway thought very badly of him yesterday, and said that he had but very faint hope of his rallying. I cannot help thinking that it was best so. Of course, he was not a very old man, but he has for some years been a very feeble one, and now that Millicent and I have both given up our studies with him, I think that he would have felt that his work was done, and would have gone downhill very fast.”
“I think so, too,” Mrs. Cunningham agreed. “I am sure that even had the Squire’s death come quietly, in the course of nature, it would have been a terrible blow to him. He was fond of you and Millicent, but his affection for your father was a passion; his face always lit up when he spoke to him. I used to think sometimes that it was like an old dog with his master. It was quite touching to see them together. I think, Mark, with you, that it is best that it should be as it is.”
Gradually the conversation turned to other matters. Millicent was, however, unable to take any part in it, and half an hour later she held out her hand silently to Mark and left the room hurriedly. The next day she was better, and was able to walk for a time with Mark in the garden and talk more calmly about their mutual loss, for to her, no less than to Mark, the Squire had been a father.
“‘Tis strange to think that you are the Squire now, Mark,” she said as they sat together in the dining room on the evening before the funeral.
“You will think it stranger still, Millicent,” he said, “when I tell you that I am not the Squire, and never shall be.”
She looked up in his face with wonder.
“What do you mean, Mark?”
“Well, dear, you will know tomorrow, as Mr. Prendergast, one of the family solicitors, is coming down; but I think it is as well to tell you beforehand. It has been a curious position all along. I never knew it myself till my father told me when we went into the library after the shot was fired. The news did not affect me one way or the other, although it surprised me a great deal. Like yourself, I have always supposed that you were my father’s ward, the daughter of an old comrade of his brother’s. Well, it is a curious story, Millicent. But there is no occasion for you to look frightened. The fact is you are my uncle’s daughter and my cousin.”
“Oh, that is not very dreadful!” she exclaimed in a tone of relief.
“Not dreadful at all,” Mark said. “But you see it involves the fact that you are mistress of this estate, and not I.”
Millicent stood up suddenly with a little cry. “No, no, Mark, it cannot be! It would be dreadful, and I won’t have it. Nothing could make me have it. What, to take the estate away from you when you have all along supposed it to be yours! How could I?”
“But you see it never has been mine, my dear. Father might have lived another five-and-twenty years, and God knows I have never looked forward to succeeding him. Sit down and let me tell you the story. It was not my father’s fault that he reigned here so long as master, it was the result of a whim of your father’s. And although my father fought against it, he could not resist the dying prayer of my uncle.”
He then related the whole circumstances under which the girl had been brought up as Millicent Conyers, instead of Millicent Conyers Thorndyke, and how the estate had been left by Colonel Thorndyke’s will to his brother until such time as Millicent should come of age, or marry, and how he had ordered that when that event took place the rest of his property in money and jewels was to be divided equally between Mark and herself.
“It must not be, Mark,” she said firmly. “You must take the estate, and we can divide the rest between us. What is the rest?”
“To begin with,” Mark said cheerfully, “there are 25,000 pounds, the accumulations of the rents of the estate after the death of my grandfather up to the time when the Colonel returned from India; and there are, besides, a few thousands, though I don’t exactly know how many, that my father paid over to the solicitors as the surplus of the rents of the estates after paying all expenses of keeping up this house. He very properly considered that although he had accepted the situation at your father’s earnest wish, he ought not to make money by doing so. If we put it down at 30,000 pounds altogether, you see there is 15,000 pounds for each of us. A very nice sum for a young man to start life with, especially as I shall have my father’s estate near Hastings, which brings in 500 pounds a year; and as the rents of this have been accumulating for the last ten years, my share will be raised from 15,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds. Besides this, there is the main bulk of the Colonel’s fortune made in India. That seems to be worth about 100,000 pounds but I must own that the chance of getting it seems very small.”
“How is that, Mark?”
Mark told her the whole story.
“I mean to make it my business to follow the matter up,” he said. “I think that the chance of ever finding it is very small. Still, it will give me an object to begin life with.”
“Oh, I hope that you will never find it!” she exclaimed. “From what you say it will be a terrible danger if you do get it.”
Mark smiled.
“I hardly think so, Millicent. I cannot believe that people would be following up this thing for over fifteen years, for it was many years before the Colonel came home that he got possession of these diamonds. Even Hindoos would, I think, have got sick of such a hopeless affair long before this; but as they may ever since your father’s death have been watching us, although it hardly seems possible, I shall follow out the Colonel’s instructions, and get rid of those particular diamonds at once. I shall only keep them about me long enough to take them to Amsterdam and sell them there. The Colonel said they were the finest diamonds that he ever saw, and that he really had no idea of what they were worth. However, that is for the future.”
“Mrs. Cunningham has known this all along, Mark?”
“Not about the money affairs, but of course she knew that you were my cousin. She brought you from India, you see, and has known all along that the Colonel was your father. She knows it, and the family solicitors know it, but I believe no one else, except, perhaps, Ramoo. I am not sure whether he was in uncle’s service when you were sent over in Mrs. Cunningham’s charge. He may know it or he may not, but certainly no one else does, except, as I say, the solicitors and myself. Possibly some other of the Colonel’s old comrades knew that there was a child born; but if they were in England and happened to hear that my father had succeeded to the estate, they would, of course, suppose that the child had died.”
“Then,” Millicent said, in a tone of relief, “there can be no reason why anyone else should know anything about it. I will see Mr. Prendergast when he comes down tomorrow, and beg him to say nothing about it; 15,000 pounds is quite enough for any girl; and besides, you say that my father’s greatest wish was that I was not to be married for money, and after all the pains that have been taken, his wish will not be carried out if I am to be made owner of the estate.”
“You won’t be able to persuade Mr. Prendergast to do that,” Mark said, smiling. “It is his duty simply to carry out the provisions of your father’s will, and to place you in possession of the estate; and if he would keep silence, which he certainly won’t, you don’t suppose that I would.”
