Collected works of j s f.., p.229
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 229
“I quite understand,” I said, and bowed myself out of the room.
When I left Saxonstowe Park next day the Duke of Saxonstowe and Stella Manning were engaged to be married, and I had an invitation to the wedding. I did not think much about that just then; I had to see Mrs. Duquesne. And when I found myself alone with her, I went straight to the point.
“Mrs. Duquesne,” I said, “I have come to ask your pardon. I accused you yesterday of being the author of what we will call the ring mystery. I have discovered that you are absolutely and entirely innocent. I humbly beg your pardon.”
Mrs. Duquesne eyed me keenly.
“Of course, you know who did it?” she remarked coolly.
“Oh, of course I do!” said I.
“Not Stella Manning?” she said.
“Most certainly not Miss Manning,” I replied. Then, after an interval of silence, I added softly: “Miss Manning is to be married to the Duke of Saxonstowe very shortly.”
Mrs. Duquesne turned away from me and picked up her fancy-work.
“Good-day!” she said. “You can find your way out.” I found it.
CHAPTER VII. THE HOUSE ON HARDRESS HEAD.
THAT THE MOST desperate adventures of our lives are those into which we are plunged without warning is, I fancy, the belief of all men in whose careers adventure has played a considerable part. There are times when a man is prepared for adventure of the supremely dangerous sort, and as often as not those times yield nothing very exciting; there are others when he is expecting nothing but the ordinary, and suddenly finds himself confronted by a situation that will try his nerve to the last degree of endurance. Certainly, the most desperate situation I ever found myself in, during my career as a specialist in criminology, was forced upon me as suddenly as a lightning flash breaks out of a summer sky. At one moment I was wrapped in a confident security, the next I was facing death.
It was in the late summer of 19 — that I had occasion to travel down to the North of England in connection with a certain notorious blackmailing case. My business obliged me to remain overnight in a small seaside resort, Greyscale, the one place of any size (and it was no more than a village) on Wearcombe Bay, an inlet of the Irish Sea, which has a reputation for its sudden and violent storms.
The season at Greyscale was over; it had been a particularly wet and unfriendly summer, and in the little hotel to which I betook myself there was no other guest. And as it was barely five o’clock when I arrived within its doors, I decided, rather than wait for dinner, to have an old-fashioned, north-country high tea, and afterwards, the September evening then promising to turn out finely, to explore the neighbourhood as well as I could while the light lasted. Over an excellent cold ham I asked the waiter what there was of special interest in the vicinity. He shrugged his shoulders.
“No old ruins — castles, churches, eh?” I asked.
“Nothing nearer than Burton Abbey, and that’s twenty miles off, sir,” he answered. “No, sir, there’s nothing to see here; and nothing to do, either,” he added with another shrug.
“What do the people do who come here, then?” I asked.
“There are only two sorts do come here, sir,” he answered. “One’s invalids and the other’s children. The children play on the beach, and the invalids go driving to the Head.”
“The Head? What’s that?” I enquired.
He turned, pointing out of the coffee-room window to where a great, black, frowning promontory jutted out into the sea at the northern arm of the bay. It was shaped like a whale, and there was something in its appearance that was sinister and forbidding. It looked strangely mysterious.
“Hardress Head, sir,” said the waiter. “Parties is very fond of driving up there. Splendid views from the top, sir. They do say as how you can see the Welsh mountains from there. I ain’t never seen them myself, but I’ve seen the Isle of Man.”
There was a solitary fly standing in front of the hotel when I went out, and I got into it and told its driver to take me up to the Head. The road lay along the northern shore of the bay, and at first was flanked by the usual rows of seaside houses and villas. But before we had gone a mile it became solitary enough, and I begun to realise that before Greyscale had sprung into existence, Wearcombe Bay, on that side, at any rate, must have been a veritable wilderness.
Now and then we passed a fisherman’s cottage; then we came to a wide-spreading marsh, at the foot of the promontory, on which there was not even a hut to be seen; the promontory itself, seen at close quarters, looked wilder, gloomier, more sinister than ever. I have, however, a strong liking for the wild, and I began to be fascinated by this vast mass of earth-clad rock, which lay between land and sea like some mighty survival of the long-dead ages, silently watching for its prey.
There was a winding road up the promontory at the end of the houseless marsh, and at its foot my driver dismounted, and began the ascent, walking at the side of his horse. The horse was a poor, nearly worn-out animal; I soon recognised that I could walk thirty miles while it staggered up ten. And so I sprang out of the ramshackle conveyance, told the man I would walk, and drew out some loose silver wherewith to pay him. He looked at me in some surprise.
“Don’t you want me to come up to the top and wait, sir?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” I answered. “I shall walk back. I want a walk.”
He stared at me again, and then looked up at the sky.
“This is a queer part of the world for storms, sir,” he said. “I’m thinking there may be one to-night. And it’ll be dark soon, and the Head’s a wild, queer place. You’d better let me wait.”
Now, the evening was as fair as an evening in the first week of September well could be, and I saw no sign of any storm. And so I dropped some silver into his hand and moved off.
“All right, my man,” I said. “I don’t want you any more. I shall walk back.”
And I strode away up the winding road, and at the next turn saw the decrepit horse picking its slow way down to the marshland and Greyscale. I was glad then to be free of it and its driver, but ——
I was very soon on the summit of the Head, and at once rewarded for my journey. On that summit, the resemblance to a whale was more striking than ever. It was a long, whale-backed expanse of wiry turf, with here and there a patch of purple heather and a cluster of grey, rain-worn rocks; here and there, too, I saw sheep of the mountain sort, thin and shy; in one place was a cairn of stones. But of any sign of human life or habitation there was nothing. And of that I was glad. What I wanted was the wildness, the solitude of it all; and I had it in plenty. All around lay the sea north and south I could make out where lay the little towns along the coast; north-west I saw the range of the Lake mountains; south-east, the long, rounded outlines of the Penine Range. And, in front, over a belt of shining gold, the sun was sinking in the distance in which lay Ireland and the Atlantic.
I remained rambling about the Head for a long time after the sun was set. I wandered along the edges on both sides, and found that they were precipitous, going down by sheer straight falls of cliff to the sea-lapped beach below. But a road, fairly well made, and in good repair, ran straight across the turf and the heather to the extreme point; and after a time I followed it, desirous of seeing all that I could before the daylight went. And when I came to the end of this road I found that the Head was not, after all, without human habitation.
Instead of dropping to the sea precipitously, the western extremity of the great promontory shelved gradually downwards, and in a crescent-shaped cove just beneath the point to which I had come I saw a house of grey stone, standing with grey stone walls upon a plateau of green lawn. It was a square-built house; and when I looked more closely at it I was struck by the fact that its occupants had made no attempt to surround it with garden or shrubbery, or even to plant near it any of those hardy trees which one associates with the coast. It was just a solid, substantial habitation, and it suggested a curious feeling of isolation and solitude. On its lawn there was not even that usual ornament of such places, a flagstaff; nor was there a sign of life about it.
I went a little distance down the face of the point — went down, indeed, until I was within a few yards of the wall of this solitary house. And it was then that, without the slightest warning, the whole face of the evening changed, and that, literally within a moment, I found myself in one of those storms for which Wearcombe Bay is famous. Whence or how it came I do not know. What I do know is that with incredible swiftness the twilight became darkness, the sea assumed the colour of ink, a sudden hurricane sprang up which twisted me round as if I had been a piece of straw, and everything seemed to be filled and maddeningly alive with the screams and screeches of a million demons. And then, just as suddenly, down came the rain with all the force of a tornado in the tropics.
I had nothing with me in the shape of overwear but a light summer coat, which I had carried over my arm, and without hesitation I dashed open the gate of the house, and ran helter-skelter towards the only shelter I could think of. I had come to the conclusion, in looking at it, that the house was empty; for there was no sign of smoke issuing from the chimneys and no glimmer of light in the windows. But I had noticed that over the front door there was a portico, and for this I made and was thankful to reach it. Already the light overcoat which I had hastily slipped on was soaked through.
The storm hurtled and screamed around that portico with a force and fury that was truly hellish. I stood partly protected, at any rate, and looked out upon the sea, which was now lashed and beaten into a rage as fierce as that of the wind above it. I should scarcely had thought that a man could have made himself heard by shouting in that pandemonium, but suddenly I heard a soft, silky voice at my very ear:
“Will you be pleased to walk in and shelter, sir?”
I turned as if I had been shot, and found myself confronting a gigantic, full-blooded negro, clothed in immaculate evening dress.
I was so much astonished, so utterly taken aback, at the sight of this unexpected figure that I seemed to lose all power of speech, and for a moment could only stand stupidly staring at the man. He smiled, showing a set of magnificent teeth, and bent down to me from his great height.
“My mistress says, will you walk in and shelter, sir?” he repeated. “This storm is likely to continue some time, sir.”
Then my wits came back to me. This was evidently the butler.
“Oh, thank you!” I said, stepping within the door which he held open. “It is very kind of your mistress.”
The negro bowed and smiled again, and, closing the outer door, led me across the hall to another, which he opened with another bow.
“Please to be seated, sir,” he said. “If you will allow me, I will dry your overcoat, sir.”
I gave him the coat and entered the room. It was a small, snugly-furnished apartment, evidently a breakfast-parlour, and from the window there was a view of the bay which I had not seen from the Head. But the storm was now at its height, and everything outside was a tempest of blackness. I turned from the window to the cheery fire which burnt in the open grate. It struck me as being strange that within this house, which had looked so cold and desolate from without, there should be warmth and human life, and I wondered who the black man’s mistress was that she should elect to live in such a lonely and deserted spot. And, while I was wondering, I heard the door quietly opened, and I turned from warming my chilled hands to see a lady enter the room, and advance towards me with a stately bow. And as soon as I saw her, I had a curious but quite vague impression that somewhere, a long time ago, I had seen her before.
She was a woman of nearly middle-age, and in her time she had been very beautiful; and she was still very handsome in a regal and commanding fashion. There were streaks of grey in her dark hair, and many lines of bygone passions and emotions on her cheek and brow, but she was a woman to look at and to wonder about, and the flash of her eye was as keen as that of a hawk’s.
She smiled very graciously as she entered the room, but I had an instinctive feeling that she could look lightnings if her mood inclined her, and that she was of an imperious temper. And once more I found myself wondering if I had ever seen her before, and, if so, where.
“I am afraid you are fairly caught in one of our famous storms,” she said pleasantly, as she stopped half-way across the room, and, resting one shapely hand on the table, looked at me with a curiously steady and penetrating glance. “They come on very suddenly.”
“So I perceive,” I answered. “I was warned, but foolishly gave no heed to the warning. It is very kind of you to give me shelter,” I continued. “I ran for your porch, believing the house to be empty.”
She nodded and, turning to the window, drew aside the curtain and looked out on the storm-tossed bay.
“No,” she said, “this house is never empty, though I daresay it looks so from the outside. I suppose you were exploring the Head?”
“I had been walking about it,” I replied. “I am obliged to remain overnight in Greyscale, and as there was nothing to see there I set out for — this.”
“And this will last for some time,” she said. “We who live around the bay know these storms. Some of them are over very quickly; some last for hours. This is one of the lasting sort. They are always worst, and longest, when they come on with such startling suddeness. So,” she continued, turning from the window, “you are a prisoner, for, at any rate, an hour or two; and as I was just about to dine, may I offer you some dinner to while away the time?”
This was said with such ready and genuine hospitality that I could only bow as ready an acceptance.
“You are most kind,” I replied. “I — I really believe that I am hungry.”
She smiled and moved to the door, which she had left open.
“I will send for you in a few minutes,” she said, and sailed out.
Left alone, I again looked around the room. This was certainly an adventure — to be caught in a storm on a lonely and wild headland of the Irish Sea, to find a comfortable house and a hostess of gracious and distinguished manners, and to be asked to dine. But any man who has led the strange life that I have led is always ready for surprises, and I congratulated myself that I was within four walls, warm and dry, instead of huddling under some rock, half-starved to death, or trudging across that storm-swept promontory soaked to the skin.
Within a few minutes the negro appeared and conducted me to another room, wherein was a table laid for two. It was a small, cosy room, furnished with a sort of simple luxury, and there was no light in it but the shaded candles on the dinner-table. I had a general impression of pictures and books and old china as I took my seat opposite my hostess near the cheery hearth; I had a clearer one of spotless linen, shining silver, and delicate glassware. And in that room there was nothing to be heard of the storm that raged without.
There were three things that I remember to this day about that dinner, to which I had been invited so unexpectedly. First, that, though simple, it was exquisitely, perfectly cooked. Second, that it was served swiftly, silently, by the giant negro, who was the deftest hand at his work that I have ever encountered. And third, that my hostess proved herself a most agreeable and fascinating one, a ready and clever conversationalist on all the topics of the day, showing herself thoroughly conversant with the more important social and political questions which were then to the front. But as we were sipping some coffee, which was equal to anything I have ever tasted in the Near East, she gave me a surprise. We were speaking of some event that had recently happened in London, and I asked her if she had witnessed it. She flashed a quick look, accompanied by a strange smile, across the table.
“I have not been in London for ten years,” she said. “Indeed, with the exception of my going about in my yacht in the bay there, and in the Channel, I have never been off this Head for ten years. All my knowledge of the outside world is got from newspapers — or by hearsay.”
I scarcely knew what reply to make to this. I daresay my glance at her smartly-gowned figure showed my surprise. She laughed softly and looked across the room. The negro, who in spite of his enormous bulk, moved about with the lightness of a fairy, came forward with a decanter.
“Still,” she said, “we are not quite out of the world. I can always ask a guest to eat good food and drink good wine. I have been out of things so much, though, that I scarcely know whether gentlemen still drink port after dinner. If they do, let me ask you to drink my health in some that my grandfather laid down in 1842. I have had a bottle decanted in your honour.”
I bowed my acknowledgments; the negro filled my glass. He was passing round the table to his mistress, when she suddenly stopped him.
“I have no port glass,” she said quietly, looking down at her cover.
The man turned to the sideboard, which was hidden in the shadows at the side of the room, and I heard a tinkle of glass. He came back and helped my hostess to wine out of what looked to be the same decanter from which he had served me. I knew, when too late, that in that moment, so cleverly contrived, he had changed the decanters, and that what he gave her, was not what he had given me.
She took her glass by its slender stem, delicately poised it in her slim fingers, and bent to me graciously across the table, the rosy glow from the shaded candles gleaming on the purple of the wine.
“To your health, my guest!” she said.
I entered into her mood.
“To your health, my hostess!” I answered.
“No heel-taps!” said she.
“No heel-taps!” said I.
She raised her glass with a daring smile and drained it. I followed her example.
It was the last thing that I remember except that I have some vague and misty recollection of hearing a woman’s mocking laughter as I slipped away into a sea of black, surging waters that drew me down into their very depths.
I do not know how long it was before I regained consciousness. Slowly, as a man wakes from the more stupefying forms of sleep, I woke and stirred and looked around me; and, although I was only partially conscious, my brain reeled at what I saw, and I closed my eyes, again sick with fear. But within the moment, my will had asserted itself, and I opened them again, and looked steadily at my surroundings.
