LVI
A high official from Scotland Yard had arrived and was interviewing Dick in the library.
“I am wholly responsible. I have always known my brother was queer, and about a year ago I was certain that the horrible taint of madness which his poor mother transmitted to him was developing in a way which could only have one end. I begged of him to see a medical man, but he hated doctors. I brought down the best alienists from London in various guises, sometimes as bailiffs, and occasionally as prospective buyers of our property, but in their presence he behaved so rationally that it was impossible that I could get a certificate.
“My own position was a very delicate one. I am, as you know, the heir to the property. Any step I took meant that the estate came into my hands, and that eventually, when poor Harry died, as one doctor told he must die in a few years, I should be branded with the stigma of having put him away, and I was anxious to save the family name. My chief anxiety was that he should never marry.”
“Wasn’t it easy enough to take the girl into your confidence?”
Dick was silent for a while.
“Not in this case. There were reasons why——”
And the official, dimly understanding, changed the subject.
“Then you were the Black Abbot?”
“Mostly,” confessed Dick. “My brother was terrified of the Abbot and would never go out if there was a rumour that the Black Abbot was about. I was especially anxious to keep him in the house, where, under my eye, there was no chance for him to indulge in these extraordinary paroxysms that have really alarmed the countryside. The man whom the villagers feared and whom they call the Black Abbot, is really Harry. I was a very silent Black Abbot,” he smiled faintly, “and I had no other purpose than to keep Harry indoors. I’m going to say I did not always succeed.”
“I’m afraid the truth will have to come out now,” said the official, shaking his head.
“I wish it had come out last week,” replied Dick bitterly.
“Do you think your brother is responsible for the disappearance of Miss Gwyn?”
“Undoubtedly. He must have attracted her to the window and persuaded her to come down into the grounds. He was very plausible; no man would dream that he was not sane, only I, who have seen”—he drew a long breath—“what I have seen. I’ll tell you this, Colonel,” he said, with sudden vehemence, “not all the lordship of Chelford, not all the estates, not even the Chelford treasure, would make me live again my life of the past five years! There are times,” he said, his voice trembling with passion, “when I feel I would like to dig up the Abbey and scatter its stones in the dust, raze this house to the ground, and turn the place into a public park.” He laughed at his own excess. “I am talking like an idiot. This place belongs to a family that knows not Harry. He is just a terrible accident. My dear mother often told me how worried my father was about Harry, his queer, secretive ways. And yet in a way he is a sportsman, one of the best shots in England as a boy, a great runner, and a wonderful fellow over a country, until about eight years ago, when this treasure bug got into his brain and he shut himself away from us all and gave his mind and his soul to this wild chase.”
“The gold?”
Dick shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If it were only the gold, that would have been an intelligent interest in life.”
He described Harry’s search for the elixir, the famous Life Water of which the ancient Chelford had written in his diary.
“It is probably no more than a flask of a native wine—Arac or the like,” said Dick. “Poor Harry!”
Miss Wenner had intended to leave by the early morning train but had changed her mind. Possibly the arrival of Fabrian Gilder had been a factor. She had one solution for Leslie’s disappearance.
“Have you searched the Abbey?” she asked, not once but a dozen times.
Dick was weary; the Abbey had been his first thought. He had suspected this was Harry’s hiding place, and with his own hands had taken a basket of provisions for him, but this, he saw, was untouched.
There was one possibility about the underground cavern, and that was the second door, and he had ordered the blacksmith and his assistant to be at the stone tower at two o’clock that afternoon, with instruments, one of which had to be procured from London.
The presence of Miss Wenner was not as distasteful to Gilder as he thought it would have been. To use a phrase of childhood, she was “on his side.” In very truth, Miss Wenner was on anybody’s side if that person happened to be agreeable to her.
They were walking through the rosary before lunch, and certainly the trend of Mary Wenner’s remarks was very comforting to a man who had been so badly rebuffed.
“If I had my way, Fabrian, dear”—she assumed all the rights and privileges of an engagement which was somewhat illusory and he made only a feeble resistance—“if I had my way I’d put you in charge of this case. After all, you are the very man to solve this mystery and I must say you could have knocked me down with a feather when you told me you were fifty—you don’t look a day more than thirty—and you’ve got experience, you’re a lawyer, you’re up to all kinds of artfulness——”
“Not to all kinds,” said Gilder with a grim recollection of a certain blank check.
“Well, to most kinds,” conceded Miss Wenner. “And what are they all doing? This Dick Alford and this so-called detective? They’re just standing around, scratching their heads, whilst you could go, as it were, to the real heart of the mystery. Don’t deny it—I’m sure you would, Fabe.”
“Don’t call me Fabe, Mary,” he asked gently. “If you want to call me by my Christian name, let us have all the three syllables.”
“You’re a man of the world, Fabrian”—she accentuated the word as she would have done “Mary Ann”—“you understand the ins and outs of everything. Why don’t they come to you like men and say, ‘Mr. Gilder, what is your opinion of this mystery?’ Instead of which, they don’t so much as ask you if you’ve got a mouth!”
“Perhaps they know that,” said Gilder in good humour.
He lifted his head suddenly, a frown on his face. He had heard a shot; more than a shot, the whirr and whine of a bullet.
“What——”
Something fell at his feet with a “plop!” He saw a little hole, and, stooping, dug out a bullet with his fingers.
“Where on earth did that come from?”
He looked up at the sky, but the aëroplane which was later to make an appearance, and which had nothing to do with this mysterious shooting, was not yet in sight.
Dick had heard the shot and was running across the lawn.
“Did you——” he began.
Plop!
They heard it again, and presently Dick saw leaves fall from a laurel bush and heard the thud of an impact. One of the police who were still patrolling the grounds shouted to him, but he could not hear what he was saying, and raced across to him. Nearer at hand, he saw that the man was pointing to the ruins.
“It came from there,” shouted the constable, and Dick changed direction.
He was flying up the slope when the third shot sounded, and this time he located it with fair accuracy. Somebody was shooting from the tower.
Happily, he had made preparations for the blacksmith’s visit, and there was an assortment of lanterns near the entrance. He stopped long enough to light one, and, slipping back the catch with his knife, he pushed aside the stone corner piece and ran down the stairs. The room was empty. He tried the mystery door; that, too, was closed. Somebody shouted his name from the landing above and he answered:
“Come down, Gilder. There’s nobody here.”
Gilder descended the steps gingerly and looked round with his keen, shrewd eyes. And then he remembered and pointed to the slab.
“Have you tried that? I meant to tell you before.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I rather think that the stone turns on a pivot. If that is the case, there are pretty stout supports underneath that will want cutting through.”
Gilder sprawled flat on the floor, his ear to the crack.
“There’s nothing there that is audible,” he said. “Can’t you smell anything?”
He put his nose to the crack.
“There’s a petrol light burning down there, or else it has been burning recently.”
Flat on his face, Dick sniffed.
“Yes,” he said, and called: “Leslie!”
There was no answer. He called again, with a like result.
Gilder went up the stairs and searched amongst the tools that had been brought in readiness for the afternoon’s investigation. He selected two saws and a second lantern, and, lighting this, he descended to Dick’s side.
“It is pretty sure to be an oaken support; these old builders seldom used iron,” he said.
Throwing off his coat, he rolled up his sleeves. The thin blade of the saw worked down between the stones and after a while he began sawing gingerly.
“It’s wood,” he said. “You’ll find yours is the same.”
They both worked at one end, for, as he pointed out, there would only be one bar, the other end of the stone being bevelled to meet the edge of the floor. The wood was like rock, and both men were hot before they had half-sawn through the support. Presently Dick drew out his saw. He had gone through the oak and had heard the loose end fall below. A few seconds later, Gilder’s saw passed through the last obstruction. Gingerly he put his foot on the edge and pressed down, and the stone trap swung open.
They looked down into a dark vault; and now the smell of the burning lamp was very pungent. Dick lowered the lantern and peered down. He could see no sign of human life. He caught a view of the end of a bed, a table, and, on the floor, a rifle. He reached the bottom and, swinging his lantern round, called:
“Leslie!”
A mocking echo came back to him from the little cavern at the far end of the apartment. The place was empty; the man and woman who, five minutes before, had fought in a death struggle, had disappeared.