XLVI
The adaptability of Miss Wenner was never more strikingly illustrated than in her greeting of Dick Alford. There was a coyness, a shy friendliness in her glance, which might have deceived an uninitiated spectator into believing that they were old lovers, parted by cruel circumstances and meeting after an absence of years. Dick, weary and heartbroken as he was, found in her the first cause for amusement he had had in twenty-four hours.
He had had rooms prepared for them in the east wing, which was opposite to that in which his own room and Harry’s were situated. There were two small apartments with a connecting door, which he had assigned to Leslie and her guest. The next room had been prepared for Arthur, and was adjoining.
“I’ve moved Puttler to this wing, too,” he explained, “though I don’t suppose the poor fellow will get very much sleep for a night or two.”
After he had shown them the rooms he took his departure, and Leslie followed him along the corridor and overtook him at the head of the stairs.
“There is really nothing I can do, I suppose, Dick?” For she had accepted the story of the disordered accounts as being a plausible excuse on his part to get her to Fossaway Manor.
To her surprise he said, “Yes,” and took her below to the study.
“Here are the estate accounts. I haven’t touched them for three or four days. Do you know anything about figures?”
She nodded wisely.
“Will you start in by checking these wages sheets? You’ll find the books on the shelf, and you will be able to get the hang of my rather simple system.”
He gave her instructions how to deal with the bills that had accumulated, and left her very contented. It was half-an-hour before she remembered that she had left Mary Wenner in her room, and hurried upstairs to apologize. She was to find Mary a very capable assistant, for not only was the girl efficient in her work, but she knew all the domestic mysteries of Fossaway.
The two girls lunched alone, for Dick had sent a message to say that he would not be back in time.
“The place gives me the creeps,” said Mary with a shudder, and her nervousness was not affectation. “The whole thing is frightful! Poor Thomas killed, and Harry taken away heaven knows where—— Oh!” She sprang to her feet, and her face had gone pale. “I know where Harry is,” she said, quivering with excitement. “I know, I know!”
“Where?” asked the wondering Leslie.
The girl ran out of the room into the hall.
“Where is Mr. Alford?” she asked quickly. “I must see him at once.”
“He telephoned from Red Farm,” said Leslie. “Perhaps we can get him.”
She turned the handle of the old-fashioned instrument and gave the Red Farm number.
“Is that you, Dick? How lucky!”
“I expected it was you. Is anything wrong?” he asked anxiously.
“No; Mary Wenner has something she wants to tell you.” She lowered her voice. “She thinks she knows where Harry is hidden.”
There was a silence at the other end.
“She’s not——”
“No, no, no.” With Mary within earshot, it was impossible to assure Dick that the girl was not trying to make a sensation.
“I’ll come over right away,” he said.
They went out to the head of the drive to meet him, and Mary offered her theory.
“I must have been mad not to have told you about this before. I don’t know where my wits have gone,” she said. “After all my treasure-hunting and the horrible experience I had that night with Gilder, and not to think of it now, when I practically came down to show Mr. Gwyn the place—well, I’m surprised at myself!”
Dick listened with growing impatience to this preliminary.
“Where do you think my brother is?”
“Where?” said Miss Wenner triumphantly. “Why, under the Abbey—that’s where. I’ll show you.”
They walked side by side across the meadow, and as they went Miss Wenner related the startling story of her adventures after treasure.
“Of course, I always knew that it didn’t belong to me, even if I found it,” she said virtuously; “but Mr. Gilder was so very pressing that I couldn’t very well refuse him, especially after what he’d written in vanishing ink, though I’ve got the ink back again, as he’ll find out one of these days.”
Leslie listened, scarcely crediting her ears. Yet, unless Mary Wenner had an imagination of a particularly inventive nature, it was hardly likely that she could have made the story up.
Dick examined the great corner-stone of the tower. He stood by, watching curiously, whilst, with a pair of scissors which she took from her bag, the girl pressed back the catch and sent the corner-stone turning noisily on its invisible hinge.
The opening was between twelve and fifteen inches wide. A stout man could never have entered by that way, as Dick pointed out.
“You had better stay here; I’ll go down,” he said.
“You’ll want a light,” warned Mary.
There was a lamp in his pocket. He had spent the morning peering into impossible dark places. In a second he had disappeared down the moss-grown stairs, and Leslie waited with palpitating heart for his reappearance. Presently they heard his voice.
“Come down.”
“Not me,” said Mary hastily. “I’ve been there once, thank you!”
And Leslie went alone guided by the light he showed from step to step.
Now she was standing with him in the vaulted room. He tried first one and then the other of the two doors leading from the antechamber, but neither yielded to his touch. It was pitch dark save for the fan-shaped ray of the lamp. He swept the light along wall and floor, and presently she saw the focus halt upon a broken flagstone.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. He had moved the light to the narrow entrance of the room. “Up you go; there is nothing here but mice and memories. I have always known there were underground vaults in the Abbey. In fact, I think there was a report on them by one of my recent forbears.”
Although he was immediately behind her, his voice seemed to come from a distance. She was walking, and he gave her no help with his lamp, so that she had to feel her way up. Turning her head, she saw that he was ascending the stairs backward, keeping the light covering the stairs below.
“Hurry,” he said tersely, and she stumbled up the remaining steps and emerged into the blessed daylight.
It was some time before he joined them, and when he came out she saw that he was white to the lips.
“What did you see, Dick?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said, and slammed the stone door tight.
Of the little party, only Miss Wenner was unaffected by the atmosphere which Dick Alford brought from that vaulted room.
“… so far as Mr. Gilder said—and I don’t trust the man entirely, as you can well understand, Leslie—there were only pieces of music in lead cylinders—that was the word, ‘cylinders.’ To me they looked rather more like rolls. And this Black Abbot must have cleared them out whilst we had gone. Mr. Gilder was disappointed. In fact, he was quite rude to me over the telephone. I do think a gentleman should keep his temper in all circumstances, don’t you, dear?”
Leslie agreed mechanically.
What had Dick seen? What object was it that showed for a second in the light of his lamp?
Near to the house he made an excuse to them. He had to go back to Red Farm to finish his interview with the obstinate Mr. Leonard; but he did not take his car. He said he would take the short cut, and Leslie thought it was not the moment to question him. She watched him until he disappeared in the fold of the ground. He was heading for the Abbey. The other girl had gone in to finish her lunch, and Leslie hesitated. The thought of his going back to that dark room again filled her with blind panic. She wanted to call out to him and bring him back, but he was out of hearing now, and she obeyed an impulse and went after him.
He was not in sight until she climbed the second of the gentle slopes. Here she stopped; he might resent being overlooked, and she lay down on the grass, watching him. She saw him come to the square tower, pause at the corner, and disappear apparently into space. From such a distance, the effect of his entry was eerie. The entrance was so small that he seemed to melt into the solid stonework. Ten minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, and then a long, interminable wait; she heard the village clock strike two. A lark in the blue was singing his passionate song; over by Red Farm a donkey was braying—a ludicrous accompaniment to what might be stark tragedy.
She was on the point of rising and running across to the ruins, to follow him into the depths, when he appeared again. He came slowly forth, turned and closed the stone door and leaned against it, his head on his arm, a picture of tragic despair.
She stopped and sank down on her knees, the better to escape observation, and presently he walked slowly away, and it was the gait of a broken man.