Lang Andrew
The Disentanglers
II. The Emu’s Feathers
The landscape through which Merton passed on his northward way to Kirkburn, whither Logan had summoned him, was blank with snow. The snow was not more than a couple of inches deep where it had not drifted, and, as frost had set in, it was not likely to deepen. There was no fear of being snowed up.
Merton naturally passed a good deal of his time in wondering what had occurred at Kirkburn, and why Logan needed his presence. ‘The poor old gentleman has passed away suddenly, I suppose,’ he reflected, ‘and Logan may think that I know where he has deposited his will. It is in some place that the marquis called “the hidie hole,” and that, from his vagrant remarks, appears to be a secret chamber, as his ancestor meant to keep James VI. there. I wish he had cut the throat of that prince, a bad fellow. But, of course, I don’t know where the chamber is: probably some of the people about the place know, or the lawyer who made the will.’
However freely Merton’s consciousness might play round the problem, he could get no nearer to its solution. At Berwick he had to leave the express, and take a local train. In the station, not a nice station, he was accosted by a stranger, who asked if he was Mr. Merton? The stranger, a wholesome, red-faced, black-haired man, on being answered in the affirmative, introduced himself as Dr. Douglas, of Kirkburn. ‘You telegraphed to my friend Logan the news of the marquis’s illness,’ said Merton. ‘I fear you have no better news to give me.’
Dr. Douglas shook his head.
A curious little crowd was watching the pair from a short distance. There was an air of solemnity about the people, which was not wholly due to the chill grey late afternoon, and the melancholy sea.
‘We have an hour to wait, Mr. Merton, before the local train starts, and afterwards there is a bit of a drive. It is cold, we would be as well in the inn as here.’
The doctor beat his gloved hands together to restore the circulation.
Merton saw that the doctor wished to be with him in private, and the two walked down into the town, where they got a comfortable room, the doctor ordering boiling water and the other elements of what he called ‘a cheerer.’ When the cups which cheer had been brought, and the men were alone, the doctor said:
‘It is as you suppose, Mr. Merton, but worse.’
‘Great heaven, no accident has happened to Logan?’ asked Merton.
‘No, sir, and he would have met you himself at Berwick, but he is engaged in making inquiries and taking precautions at Kirkburn.’
‘You do not mean that there is any reason to suspect foul play? The marquis, I know, was in bad health. You do not suspect – murder?’
‘No, sir, but – the marquis is gone.’
‘I know he is gone, your telegram and what I observed of his health led me to fear the worst.’
‘But his body is gone – vanished.’
‘You suppose that it has been stolen (you know the American and other cases of the same kind) for the purpose of extracting money from the heir?’
‘That is the obvious view, whoever the heir may be. So far, no will has been found,’ the doctor added some sugar to his cheerer, and some whisky to correct the sugar. ‘The neighbourhood is very much excited. Mr. Logan has telegraphed to London for detectives.’
Merton reflected in silence.
‘The obvious view is not always the correct one,’ he said. ‘The marquis was, at least I thought that he was, a very eccentric person.’
‘No doubt about that,’ said the doctor.
‘Very well. He had reasons, such reasons as might occur to a mind like his, for wanting to test the character and conduct of Mr. Logan, his only living kinsman. What I am going to say will seem absurd to you, but – the marquis spoke to me of his malady as a kind of “dwawming,” I did not know what he meant, at the time, but yesterday I consulted the glossary of a Scotch novel: to dwawm, I think, is to lose consciousness?’
The doctor nodded.
‘Now you have read,’ said Merton, ‘the case published by Dr. Cheyne, of a gentleman, Colonel Townsend, who could voluntarily produce a state of “dwawm” which was not then to be distinguished from death?’
‘I have read it in the notes to Aytoun’s Scottish Cavaliers,’ said the doctor.
‘Now, then, suppose that the marquis, waking out of such a state, whether voluntarily induced (which is very improbable) or not, thought fit to withdraw himself, for the purpose of secretly watching, from some retreat, the behaviour of his heir, if he has made Mr. Logan his heir? Is that hypothesis absolutely out of keeping with his curious character?’
‘No. It’s crazy enough, if you will excuse me, but, for these last few weeks, at any rate, I would have swithered about signing a fresh certificate to the marquis’s sanity.’
‘You did, perhaps, sign one when he made his will, as he told me?’
‘I, and Dr. Gourlay, and Professor Grant,’ the doctor named two celebrated Edinburgh specialists. ‘But just of late I would not be so certain.’
‘Then my theory need not necessarily be wrong?’
‘It can’t but be wrong. First, I saw the man dead.’
‘Absolute tests of death are hardly to be procured, of course you know that better than I do,’ said Merton.
‘Yes, but I am positive, or as positive as one can be, in the circumstances. However, that is not what I stand on. There was a witness who saw the marquis go.’
‘Go – how did he go?’
‘He disappeared.’
‘The body disappeared?’
‘It did, but you had better hear the witness’s own account; I don’t think a second-hand story will convince you, especially as you have a theory.’
‘Was the witness a man or a woman?’
‘A woman,’ said the doctor.
‘Oh!’ said Merton.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the doctor. ‘You think, it suits your theory, that the marquis came to himself and – ’
‘And squared the female watcher,’ interrupted Merton; ‘she would assist him in his crazy stratagem.’
‘Mr. Merton, you’ve read ower many novels,’ said the doctor, lapsing into the vernacular. ‘Well, your notion is not unthinkable, nor pheesically impossible. She’s a queer one, Jean Bower, that waked the corpse, sure enough. However, you’ll soon be on the spot, and can examine the case for yourself. Mr. Logan has no idea but that the body was stolen for purposes of blackmail.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We must be going to catch the train, if she’s anything like punctual.’
The pair walked in silence to the station, were again watched curiously by the public (who appeared to treat the station as a club), and after three-quarters of an hour of slow motion and stoppages, arrived at their destination, Drem.
The doctor’s own man with a dog-cart was in waiting.
‘The marquis had neither machine nor horse,’ the doctor explained.
Through the bleak late twilight they were driven, past two or three squalid mining villages, along a road where the ruts showed black as coal through the freezing snow. Out of one village, the lights twinkling in the windows, they turned up a steep road, which, after a couple of hundred yards, brought them to the old stone gate posts, surmounted by heraldic animals.
‘The late marquis sold the worked-iron gates to a dealer,’ said the doctor.
At the avenue gates, so steep was the ascent, both men got out and walked.
‘You see the pits come up close to the house,’ said the doctor, as they reached the crest. He pointed to some tall chimneys on the eastern slope, which sank quite gradually to the neighbouring German Ocean, but ended in an abrupt rocky cliff.
‘Is that a fishing village in the cleft of the cliffs? I think I see a red roof,’ said Merton.
‘Ay, that’s Strutherwick, a fishing village,’ replied the doctor.
‘A very easy place, on your theory, for an escape with the body by boat,’ said Merton.
‘Ay, that is just it,’ acquiesced the doctor.
‘But,’ asked Merton, as they reached the level, and saw the old keep black in front of them, ‘what is that rope stretched about the lawn for? It seems to go all round the house, and there are watchers.’ Dark figures with lanterns were visible at intervals, as Merton peered into the gathering gloom. The watchers paced to and fro like sentinels.
The door of the house opened, and a man’s figure stood out against the lamp light within.
‘Is that you, Merton?’ came Logan’s voice from the doorway.
Merton answered; and the doctor remarked, ‘Mr. Logan will tell you what the rope’s for.’
The friends shook hands; the doctor, having deposited Merton’s baggage, pleaded an engagement, and said ‘Good-bye,’ among the thanks of Logan. An old man, a kind of silent Caleb Balderstone, carried Merton’s light luggage up a black turnpike stair.
‘I’ve put you in the turret; it is the least dilapidated room,’ said Logan. ‘Now, come in here.’
He led the way into a hall on the ground-floor. A great fire in the ancient hearth, with its heavy heraldically carved stone chimney-piece, lit up the desolation of the chamber.
‘Sit down and warm yourself,’ said Logan, pushing forward a ponderous oaken chair, with a high back and short arms.
‘I know a good deal,’ said Merton, his curiosity hurrying him to the point; ‘but first, Logan, what is the rope on the stakes driven in round the house for?’
‘That was my first precaution,’ said Logan. ‘I heard of the – of what has happened – about four in the morning, and I instantly knocked in the stakes – hard work with the frozen ground – and drew the rope along, to isolate the snow about the house. When I had done that, I searched the snow for footmarks.’
‘When had the snow begun to fall?’
‘About midnight. I turned out then to look at the night before going to bed.’
‘And there was nothing wrong then?’
‘He lay on his bed in the laird’s chamber. I had just left it. I left him with the watcher of the dead. There was a plate of salt on his breast. The housekeeper, Mrs. Bower, keeps up the old ways. Candles were burning all round the bed. A fearful waste he would have thought it, poor old man. The devils! If I could get on their track!’ said Logan, clenching his fist.
‘You have found no tracks, then?’
‘None. When I examined the snow there was not a footmark on the roads to the back door or the front – not a footmark on the whole area.’
‘Then the removal of the body from the bedroom was done from within. Probably the body is still in the house.’
‘Certainly it has been taken out by no known exit, if it has been taken out, as I believe. I at once arranged relays of sentinels – men from the coal-pits. But the body is gone; I am certain of it. A fishing-boat went out from the village, Strutherwick, before the dawn. It came into the little harbour after midnight – some night-wandering lover saw it enter – and it must have sailed again before dawn.’
‘Did you examine the snow near the harbour?’
‘I could not be everywhere at once, and I was single-handed; but I sent down the old serving-man, John Bower. He is stupid enough, but I gave him a note to any fisherman he might meet. Of course these people are not detectives.’
‘And was there any result?’
‘Yes; an odd one. But it confirms the obvious theory of body-snatching. Of course, fishers are early risers, and they went trampling about confusedly. But they did find curious tracks. We have isolated some of them, and even managed to carry off a couple. We dug round them, and lifted them. A neighbouring laird, Mr. Maitland, lent his ice-house for storing these, and I had one laid down on the north side of this house to show you, if the frost held. No ice-house or refrigerator here, of course.’
‘Let me see it now.’
Logan took a lighted candle – the night was frosty, without a wind – and led Merton out under the black, ivy-clad walls. Merton threw his greatcoat on the snow and knelt on it, peering at the object. He saw a large flat clod of snow and earth. On its surface was the faint impress of a long oval, longer than the human foot; feathery marks running in both directions from the centre could be descried. Looking closer, Merton detected here and there a tiny feather and a flock or two of down adhering to the frozen mass.
‘May I remove some of these feathery things?’ Merton asked.
‘Certainly. But why?’
‘We can’t carry the clod indoors, it would melt; and it may melt if the weather changes; and by bad luck there may be no feathers or down adhering to the other clods – those in the laird’s ice-house.’
‘You think you have a clue?’
‘I think,’ said Merton, ‘that these are emu’s feathers; but, whether they are or not, they look like a clue. Still, I think they are emu’s feathers.’
‘Why? The emu is not an indigenous bird.’
As he spoke, an idea – several ideas – flashed on Merton. He wished that he had held his peace. He put the little shreds into his pocket-book, rose, and donned his greatcoat. ‘How cold it is!’ he said. ‘Logan, would you mind very much if I said no more just now about the feathers? I really have a notion – which may be a good one, or may be a silly one – and, absurd as it appears, you will seriously oblige me by letting me keep my own counsel.’
‘It is damned awkward,’ said Logan testily.
‘Ah, old boy, but remember that “damned awkward” is a damned awkward expression.’
‘You are right,’ said Logan heartily; ‘but I rose very early, I’m very tired, I’m rather savage. Let’s go in and dine.’
‘All right,’ said Merton.
‘I don’t think,’ said Logan, as they were entering the house, ‘that I need keep these miners on sentry go any longer. The bird – the body, I mean – has flown. Whoever the fellows were that made these tracks, and however they got into and out of the house, they have carried the body away. I’ll pay the watchers and dismiss them.’
‘All right,’ said Merton. ‘I won’t dress. I must return to town by the night train. No time to be lost.’
‘No train to be caught,’ said Logan, ‘unless you drive or walk to Berwick from here – which you can’t. You can’t walk to Dunbar, to catch the 10.20, and I have nothing that you can drive.’
‘Can I send a telegram to town?’
‘It is four miles to the nearest telegraph station, but I dare say one of the sentinels would walk there for a consideration.’
‘No use,’ said Merton. ‘I should need to wire in a cipher, when I come to think of it, and cipher I have none. I must go as early as I can to-morrow. Let us consult Bradshaw.’
They entered the house. Merton had a Bradshaw in his dressing-bag. They found that he could catch a train at 10.49 A.M., and be in London about 9 P.M.
‘How are you to get to the station?’ asked Logan. ‘I’ll tell you how,’ he went on. ‘I’ll send a note to the inn at the place, and order a trap to be here at ten. That will give you lots of time. It is about four miles.’
‘Thank you,’ said Merton; ‘I see no better way.’ And while Logan went to pay and dismiss the sentries and send a messenger, a grandson of the old butler with the note to the innkeeper, Merton toiled up the narrow turnpike stair to the turret chamber. A fire had been burning all day, and in firelight almost any room looks tolerable. There was a small four-poster bed, with slender columns, a black old wardrobe, and a couple of chairs, one of the queer antiquated little dressing-tables, with many drawers, and boxes, and a tiny basin, and there was a perfectly new tub, which Logan had probably managed to obtain in the course of the day. Merton’s evening clothes were neatly laid out, the shutters were closed, curtains there were none; in fact, he had been in much worse quarters.
As he dressed he mused. ‘Cursed spite,’ thought he, ‘that ever I was born to be an amateur detective! And cursed be my confounded thirst for general information! Why did I ever know what Kurdaitcha and Interlinia mean? If I turn out to be right, oh, shade of Sherlock Holmes, what a pretty kettle of fish there will be! Suppose I drop the whole affair! But I’ve been ass enough to let Logan know that I have an idea. Well, we shall see how matters shape themselves. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’
Merton descended the turnpike stair, holding on to the rope provided for that purpose in old Scotch houses. He found Logan standing by the fire in the hall. They were waited on by the old man, Bower. By tacit consent they spoke, while he was present, of anything but the subject that occupied their minds. They had quite an edible dinner – cock-a-leekie, brandered haddocks, and a pair of roasted fowls, with a mysterious sweet which was called a ‘Hattit Kit.’
‘It is an historical dish in this house,’ said Logan. ‘A favourite with our ancestor, the conspirator.’
The wine was old and good, having been laid down before the time of the late marquis.
‘In the circumstances, Logan,’ said Merton, when the old serving man was gone, ‘you have done me very well.’
‘Thanks to Mrs. Bower, our butler’s wife,’ said Logan. ‘She is a truly remarkable woman. She and her husband, they are cousins, are members of an ancient family, our hereditary retainers. One of them, Laird Bower, was our old conspirator’s go-between in the plot to kidnap the king, of which you have heard so much. Though he was an aged and ignorant man, he kept the secret so well that our ancestor was never even suspected, till his letters came to light after his death, and after Laird Bower’s death too, luckily for both of them. So you see we can depend on it that this pair of domestics, and their family, were not concerned in this new abomination; so far, the robbery was not from within.’
‘I am glad to hear that,’ said Merton. ‘I had invented a theory, too stupid to repeat, and entirely demolished by the footmarks in the snow, a theory which hypothetically implicated your old housekeeper. To be sure it did not throw any doubt on her loyalty to the house, quite the reverse.’
‘What was your theory?’
‘Oh, too silly for words; that the marquis had been only in a trance, had come to himself when alone with the old lady, who, the doctor said, was watching in the room, and had stolen away, to see how you would conduct yourself. Childish hypothesis! The obvious one, body-snatching, is correct. This is very good port.’
‘If things had been as you thought possible, Jean Bower was not the woman to balk the marquis,’ said Logan. ‘But you must see her and hear her tell her own story.’
‘Gladly,’ said Merton, ‘but first tell me yours.’
‘When I arrived I found the poor old gentleman unconscious. Dr. Douglas was in attendance. About noon he pronounced life extinct. Mrs. Bower watched, or “waked” the corpse. I left her with it about midnight, as I told you; about four in the morning she aroused me with the news that the body had vanished. What I did after that you know. Now you had better hear the story from herself.’
Logan rang a handbell, there were no other bells in the keep, and asked the old serving-man, when he came, to send in Mrs. Bower.
She entered, a very aged woman, dressed in deep mourning. She was tall, her hair of an absolutely pure white, her aquiline face was drawn, her cheeks hollow, her mouth almost toothless. She made a deep courtesy, repeating it when Logan introduced ‘my friend, Mr. Merton.’
‘Mrs. Bower,’ Logan said, ‘Mr. Merton is my oldest friend, and the marquis saw him in London, and consulted him on private business a few days ago. He wishes to hear you tell what you saw the night before last.’
‘Maybe, as the gentleman is English, he’ll hardly understand me, my lord. I have a landward tongue,’ said Mrs. Bower.
‘I can interpret if Mr. Merton is puzzled, Mrs. Bower, but I think he will understand better if we go to the laird’s chamber.’
Logan took two lighted candles, handing two to Merton, and the old woman led them upstairs to a room which occupied the whole front of the ancient ‘peel,’ or square tower, round which the rest of the house was built. The room was nearly bare of furniture, except for an old chair or two, a bureau, and a great old bed of state, facing the narrow deep window, and standing on a kind of daïs, or platform of three steps. The heavy old green curtains were drawn all round it. Mrs. Bower opened them at the front and sides. At the back against the wall the curtains, embroidered with the arms of Restalrig, remained closed.
‘I sat here all the night,’ said Mrs. Bower, ‘watching the corp that my hands had streikit. The candles were burning a’ about him, the saut lay on his breast, only aefold o’ linen covered him. My back was to the window, my face to his feet. I was crooning the auld dirgie; if it does nae guid, it does nae harm.’ She recited in a monotone:
‘When thou frae here away art past —
Every nicht and all —
To Whinny-muir thou comest at last,
And Christ receive thy saul.
‘If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon —
Every nicht and all —
Sit thee down and put them on,
And Christ receive thy saul
‘Alas, he never gave nane, puir man,’ said the woman with a sob.
At this moment the door of the chamber slowly opened. The woman turned and gazed at it, frowning, her lips wide apart.
Logan went to the door, looked into the passage, closed the door and locked it; the key had to be turned twice, in the old fashion, and worked with a creaking jar.
‘I had crooned thae last words,
And Christ receive thy saul,
when the door opened, as ye saw it did the now. It is weel kenned that a corp canna lie still in a room with the door hafflins open. I rose to lock it, the catch is crazy. I was backing to the door, with my face to the feet o’ the corp. I saw them move backwards, slow they moved, and my heart stood still in my breist. Then I saw’ – here she stepped to the head of the bed and drew apart the curtains, which opened in the middle – ‘I saw the curtain was open, and naething but blackness ahint it. Ye see, my Lord, ahint the bed-heid is the entrance o’ the auld secret passage. The stanes hae lang syne fallen in, and closed it, but my Lord never would have the hole wa’ed up. “There’s nae draught, Jean, or nane to mention, and I never was wastefu’ in needless repairs,” he aye said. Weel, when I looked that way, his face, down to the chafts, was within the blackness, and aye draw, drawing further ben. Then, I shame to say it, a sair dwawm cam ower me, I gae a bit chokit cry, and I kenned nae mair till I cam to mysel, a’ the candles were out, and the chamber was mirk and lown. I heard the skirl o’ a passing train, and I crap to the bed, and the skirl kind o’ reminded me o’ living folk, and I felt a’ ower the bed wi’ my hands. There was nae corp. Ye ken that the Enemy has power, when a corp lies in a room, and the door is hafflins closed. Whiles they sit up, and grin and yammer. I hae kenned that. Weel, how long I had lain in the dwawm I canna say. The train that skirled maun hae been a coal train that rins by about half-past three in the morning. There was a styme o’ licht that streeled in at the open door, frae a candle your lordship set on a table in the lobby; the auld lord would hae nae lichts in the house after the ten hours. Sae I got to the door, and grippit to the candle, and flew off to your lordship’s room, and the rest ye ken.’
‘Thank you, very much, Mrs. Bower,’ said Logan. ‘You quite understand, Merton, don’t you?’
‘I thoroughly understand your story, Mrs. Bower,’ said Merton.
‘We need not keep you any longer, Mrs. Bower,’ said Logan. ‘Nobody need sit up for us; you must be terribly fatigued.’
‘You wunna forget to rake out the ha’ fire, my lord?’ said the old lady, ‘I wush your Lordship a sound sleep, and you, sir,’ so she curtsied and went, Logan unlocking the door.
‘And I was in London this morning!’ said Merton, drawing a long breath.
‘You’re over Tweed, now, old man,’ answered Logan, with patriotic satisfaction.
‘Don’t go yet,’ said Merton. ‘You examined the carpet of the room; no traces there of these odd muffled foot-coverings you found in the snow?’
‘Not a trace of any kind. The salt was spilt, some of it lay on the floor. The plate was not broken.’
‘If they came in, it would be barefoot,’ said Merton.
‘Of course the police left traces of official boots,’ said Logan. ‘Where are they now – the policemen, I mean?’
‘Two are to sleep in the kitchen.’
‘They found out nothing?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Let me look at the hole in the wall.’ Merton climbed on to the bed and entered the hole. It was about six feet long by four wide. Stones had fallen in, at the back, and had closed the passage in a rough way, indeed what extent of the floor of the passage existed was huddled with stones. Merton examined the sides of the passage, which were mere rubble.
‘Have you looked at the floor beneath those fallen stones?’ Merton asked.
‘No, by Jove, I never thought of that,’ said Logan.
‘How could they have been stirred without the old woman hearing the noise?’
‘How do you know they were there before the marquis’s death?’ asked Merton, adding, ‘this hole was not swept and dusted regularly. Either the entrance is beneath me, or – “the Enemy had power” – as Mrs. Bower says.’
‘You must be right,’ said Logan. ‘I’ll have the stones removed to-morrow. The thing is clear. The passage leads to somewhere outside of the house. There’s an abandoned coal mine hard by, on the east. Nothing can be simpler.’
‘When once you see it,’ said Merton.
‘Come and have a whisky and soda,’ said Logan.
