Chapter XV: Book IV: XIX (2)

He returned to his own room, where the window was still wide open. As he entered, he mechanically turned on the central light, not noticing that the reading lamp upon his table was not in its place. But he saw that some papers which had been on his desk when he left the room were now on the floor. He supposed the wind which was rising had dislodged them. Stooping to lift them up, he was surprised to see a large mud-stain on the topmost sheet. It looked like a footprint, as though some one had first knocked the papers off the table, and then trodden on them. He turned on a fresh switch. There was another mark on the floor just beyond the table--and another--nearer the door. They were certainly footprints! But who could have entered the room during his absence? And where was the invader? At the same time he perceived that his reading lamp had been overturned and was lying on the floor, broken.

Filled with a vague anxiety, he returned to the door he had just closed. As he laid his hand upon it, a shot rang through the house--a cry--the sound of a fierce voice--a fall.

And the next minute the door he held was violently burst open in his face, he himself was knocked backward over a chair, and a man carrying a gun, whose face was muffled in some dark material, rushed across the room, leapt through the window, and disappeared into the night.

* * * * *

Faversham ran into the gallery. The first thing he saw was the Nattier portrait lying on its face beside a chair overturned. Beyond it, a dark object on the floor. At the same moment, he perceived Dixon standing horror-struck, at the farther end of the gallery, with the handle of the door leading to the servants' quarters still in his grasp. Then the old man too ran.

The two men were brought up by the same obstacle. The body of Edmund Melrose lay between them.

Melrose had fallen on his face. As Faversham and Dixon lifted him, they saw that he was still breathing, though _in extremis_. He had been shot through the breast, and a pool of blood lay beneath him, blotting out the faded blues and yellow greens of a Persian carpet.

At the command of her husband, Mrs. Dixon, who had hurried after him, ran for brandy, crying also for help. Faversham snatched a cushion, put it under the dying man's head, and loosened his clothing. Melrose's eyelids fluttered once or twice, then sank. With a low groan, a gush of blood from the mouth, he passed away while Dixon prayed.

"May the Lord have mercy--mercy!"

The old man rocked to and fro beside the corpse in an anguish. Mrs. Dixon coming with the brandy in her hand was stopped by a gesture from Faversham.

"No use!" He touched Dixon on the shoulder. "Dixon--this is murder! You must go at once for Doctor Undershaw and the police. Take the motor. Mrs. Dixon and I will stay here. But first--tell me--after I spoke to you here--did you go in to Mr. Melrose?"

"I knocked, sir. But he shouted to me--angry like--to go away--till he rang. I went back to t' kitchen, and I had nobbut closed yon door behind me--when I heard t' firin'. I brast it open again--an' saw a man--wi' summat roun' his head--fleein' doon t' gallery. My God!--my God!--"

"The man who did it was in the gallery while you and I were speaking to each other," said Faversham, calmly, as he rose; "and he got in through my window, while I was with Mr. Melrose." He described briefly the passage of the murderer through his own room. "Tell the police to have the main line stations watched without a moment's delay. The man's game would be to get to one or other of them across country. There'll be no marks on him--he fired from a distance--but his boots are muddy. About five foot ten I should think--a weedy kind of fellow. Go and wake Tonson, and be back as quick as you possibly can. And listen!--on your way to the stables call the gardener. Send him for the farm men, and tell them to search the garden, and the woods by the river. They'll find me there. Or stay--one of them can come here, and remain with Mrs. Dixon, while I'm gone. Let them bring lanterns--quick!"

In less than fifteen minutes the motor, with Dixon and the new chauffeur, Tonson, had left the Tower, and was rushing at forty miles an hour along the Pengarth road.

Meanwhile, Faversham and the farm-labourers were searching the garden, the hanging woods, and the river banks. Footprints were found all along the terrace, and it was plain that the murderer had climbed the low enclosing wall. But beyond, and all in the darkness, nothing could be traced.

Faversham returned to the house, and began to examine the gallery. The hiding-place of Melrose's assailant was soon discovered. Behind the Nattier portrait, and the carved and gilt chair which Melrose had himself moved from its place in the morning, there were muddy marks on the floor and the wainscotting, which showed that a man had been crouching there. The picture, a large and imposing canvas--Marie Leczinska, sitting on a blue sofa, in a gala dress of rose-pink velvet with trimming of black fur--had been more than sufficient to conceal him. Then--had he knocked to attract Melrose's attention, having ascertained from Dixon's short colloquy at the library door, after Faversham had left the room, that the master of the Tower was still within?--or had Melrose suddenly come out into the gallery, perhaps to give some order to Dixon?

Faversham thought the latter more probable. As Melrose appeared, the murderer had risen hastily from his hiding-place, upsetting the picture and the chair. Melrose had received a charge of duck shot full in the breast, with fatal effect. The range was so short that the shot had scattered but little. A few pellets, however, could be traced in the wooden frames of the tapestries; and one had broken a majolica dish standing on a cabinet.

A man of the people then--using probably some old muzzle-loader, begged or borrowed? Faversham's thought ran to the young fellow who had denounced Melrose with such fervour at Mainstairs the day of Lydia Penfold's visit to the stricken village. But, good heavens!--there were a score of men on Melrose's estate, with at least as good reason--or better--for shooting, as that man. Take the Brands! But old Brand was gone to his rest, the elder son had sailed for Canada, and the younger seemed to be a harmless, half-witted chap, of no account.

Yet, clearly the motive had been revenge, not burglary. There were plenty of costly trifles on the tables and cabinets of the gallery. Not one of them had been touched.

Faversham moved to and fro in the silence, while Mrs. Dixon sat moaning to herself beside the dead man, whose face she had covered. The lavish electric light in the gallery, which had been Melrose's latest whim, shone upon its splendid contents; on the nymphs and cupids, the wreaths and temples of the Boucher tapestries, on the gleaming surfaces of the china, the dull gold of the _ormolu_. The show represented the desires, the huntings, the bargains of a lifetime; and in its midst lay Melrose, tripped at last, silenced at last, the stain of his life-blood spreading round him.

Faversham looked down upon him, shuddering. Then perceiving that the door into the library stood ajar, he entered the room. There stood the chair on which he had leant, when the chains of his slavery fell from him. There--on the table--was the jewel--the little Venus with fluttering enamel drapery, standing tiptoe within her hoop of diamonds, which he had seen Melrose take up and handle during their dispute. Why was it there? Faversham had no idea.

And there on the writing-desk lay a large sheet of paper with a single line written upon it in Melrose's big and sprawling handwriting. That was new. It had not been there, when Faversham last stood beside the table. The pen was thrown down upon it, and a cigar lay in the ashtray, as though the writer had been disturbed either by a sudden sound, or by the irruption of some thought which had led him into the gallery to call Dixon.

Faversham stooped to look at it:

"I hereby revoke all the provisions of the will executed by me on ..."

No more. The paper was worthless. The will would stand. Faversham stood motionless, the silence booming in his ears.

"A fool would put that in his pocket," he said to himself, contemptuously. Then conscious of a new swarm of ideas assailing him, of new dangers, and a new wariness, he returned to the gallery, pacing it till the police appeared. They came in force, within the hour, accompanied by Undershaw.

* * * * *

The old chiming clock set in the garden-front of Duddon had not long struck ten. Cyril Boden had just gone to bed. Victoria sat with her feet on the fender in Tatham's study still discussing with him Felicia's astonishing performance of the afternoon. She found him eagerly interested in it, to a degree which surprised her; and they passed from it only to go zealously together into various plans for the future of mother and daughter--plans as intelligent as they were generous. The buzz of a motor coming up the drive surprised them. There were no visitors in the house, and none expected. Victoria rose in amazement as Undershaw walked into the room.

"A horrible thing has happened. I felt that you must know before anybody--with those two poor things in your house. Dixon has told me that Miss Melrose saw her father this afternoon. I have come to bring you the sequel."

He told his story. Mother and son turned pale looks upon each other. Within a couple of hours of the moment when he had turned his daughter from his doors! Seldom indeed do the strokes of the gods fall so fitly. There was an awful satisfaction in the grim story to some of the deepest instincts of the soul.

"Some poor devil he has ruined, I suppose!" said Tatham, his grave young face lifted to the tragic height of the event. "Any clue?"

"None--except that, as I have told you, Faversham himself saw the murderer, except his face, and Dixon saw his back. A slight man in corduroys--that's all Dixon can say. Faversham and the Dixons were alone in the house, except for a couple of maids. Perhaps"--he hesitated--"I had better tell you some other facts that Faversham told me--and the Superintendent of Police. They will of course come out at the inquest. He and Melrose had had a violent quarrel immediately before the murder. Melrose threatened to revoke his will, and Faversham left him, understanding that all dispositions in his favour would be cancelled. He came out of the room, spoke to Dixon in the gallery and walked to his own sitting-room. Melrose apparently sat down at once to write a codicil revoking the will. He was disturbed, came out into the gallery, and was shot dead. The few lines he wrote are of course of no validity. The will holds, and Faversham is the heir--to everything. You see"--he paused again--"some awkward suggestions might be made."

"But," cried Tatham, "you say Dixon saw the man? And the muddy footmarks--in the house--and on the terrace!"

* * * * *

"Don't mistake me, for heaven's sake," said Undershaw, quickly. "It is impossible that Faversham should have fired the shot! But in the present state of public opinion you will easily imagine what else may be said. There is a whole tribe of Melrose's hangers-on who hate Faversham like poison; who have been plotting to pull him down, and will be furious to find him after all in secure possession of the estate and the money. I feel tolerably certain they will put up some charge or other."

"What--of procuring the thing?"

Undershaw nodded.

Tatham considered a moment. Then he rang, and when Hurst appeared, all white and disorganized under the stress of the news just communicated to him by Undershaw's chauffeur, he ordered his horse for eight o'clock in the morning. Victoria looked at him puzzled; then it seemed she understood.

But every other thought was soon swallowed up in the remembrance of the widow and daughter.

"Not to-night--not to-night," pleaded Undershaw who had seen Netta Melrose professionally, only that morning. "I dread the mere shock for Mrs. Melrose. Let them have their sleep! I will be over early to-morrow."

XXI

By the first dawn of the new day Tatham was in the saddle. Just as he was starting from the house, there arrived a messenger, and a letter was put into his hand. It was from Undershaw, who, on leaving Duddon the night before, had motored back to the Tower, and taken Faversham in charge. The act bore testimony to the little doctor's buffeted but still surviving regard for this man, whom he had pulled from the jaws of death. He reported in his morning letter that he had passed some of the night in conversation with Faversham, and wished immediately to pass on certain facts learnt from it, first of all to Tatham, and then to any friend of Faversham's they might concern.

He told, accordingly, the full story of the gems, leading up to the quarrel between the two men, as Faversham had told it to him.

"Faversham," he wrote, "left the old man, convinced that all was at an end as to the will and the inheritance. And now he is as much the heir as ever! I find him bewildered; for his _mind_, in that tragic half-hour, had absolutely renounced. What he will do, no one can say. As to the murderer, we have discussed all possible clues--with little light. But the morning will doubtless bring some new facts. That Faversham has not the smallest fraction of responsibility for the murder is clear to any sane man who talks with him. But that there will be a buzz of slanderous tongues as soon as ever the story is public property, I am convinced. So I send you these fresh particulars as quickly as possible--for your guidance."

Tatham thrust the letter into his pocket, and rode away through the December dawn. His mother would soon be in the thick of her own task with the two unconscious ones at Duddon. _His_ duty lay--with Lydia! The "friend" was all alive in him, reaching out to her in a manly and generous emotion.

The winter sunrise was a thing of beauty. It chimed with the intensity of feeling in the young man's breast. The sky was a light saffron over the eastern fells, and the mountains rose into it indistinguishably blue, the light mists wrapped about their feet. Among the mists, plane behind plane, the hedgerow trees, still faintly afire with their last leaf, stood patterned on the azure of the fells. And as he rode on, the first rays of the light mounting a gap in the Helvellyn range struck upon the valleys below. The shadows ran blue along the frosty grass; here and there the withered leaf began to blaze; the streams rejoiced. Under their sycamores and yews, the white-walled farms sent up their morning smoke; the cocks were crowing; and as he mounted the upland on which the cottage stood, from a height in front of him, a tiny church--one of the smallest and loneliest in the fells--sent forth a summoning bell. The sound, with all its weight of association, sank and echoed through the morning stillness; the fells repeated it, a voice of worship toward God, of appeal toward man.

In Tatham, fashioned to the appeal by all the accidents of blood and nurture, the sound made for a deepened spirit and a steadied mood. He pressed on toward the little house and garden that now began to show through the trees.

Lydia had not long come downstairs when she heard the horse at the gate. The cottage breakfast was nominally at half-past eight. But Mrs. Penfold never appeared, and Susy was always professionally late, it being understood that inspiration--when it alights--is a midnight visitant, and must be wooed at suitable hours.

Lydia was generally down to the minute, and read prayers to their two maids. Mrs. Penfold made a great point of family prayers, but rarely or never attended them. Susy did not like to be read to by anybody. Lydia therefore had the little function to herself. She chose her favourite psalms, and prayers from the most various sources. The maids liked it because they loved Lydia; and Lydia, having once begun, would not willingly have given it up.

But the ceremony was over; and she had just opened the casement to see who their visitor might be, when Tatham rode up to the porch.

"May I speak to you for ten minutes?"

His aspect warned her of things unusual. He tied up his horse, and she took him into their little sitting-room, and closed the door.

"You haven't seen a newspaper?"

She assured him their post would not arrive from Keswick for another hour, and stood expectant.

"I wanted to tell you before any one else, because there are things to explain. We're friends--Lydia?"

He approached her eagerly. His colour had leapt; but his eyes reassured.

"Always," she said simply, and she put her hand in his.

Then he told her. He saw her waver, and sink, ghost-like, on a chair. It was clear enough that the news had for her no ordinary significance. His heart knew pain--the reflex of a past anguish; only to be lost at once in the desire to soothe and shield her.

"Mr. Faversham was there?" she asked him, trembling.

"He did not see the shot fired. The murderer rushing from the gallery brushed past him as he was coming out of his room, and escaped."

"There had been a quarrel?"

He gave her in outline the contents of Undershaw's letter.

"He still inherits?" Her eyes, shone as he came to the climax of the story--Faversham's refusal of the gems--Melrose's threat. The trembling of her delicate mouth urged him for more--and yet more--light.

"Everything--land, money, collections--under the will made in August. You see"--he added, sorely against his will, yet compelled, by the need of protecting her from shock--"the opportuneness of the murder. Their relations had been very bad for some time."

"Opportuneness?" She just breathed it. He put out his hand again, and took hers.

"You know--Faversham has enemies?"

She nodded.

"I've been one myself," he said frankly. "I believe you knew it. But this thing's brought me up sharp. One may think as one likes of Faversham's conduct--but you knew--and I know--that he's not the man to pay another man to commit murder!"

"And that's what they'll say?" The colour had rushed back into her cheeks.

"That's what some fool _might_ say, because of the grudge against him. Well, now, we've got to find the murderer!" He rose, speaking in his most cheerful and practical voice, "I'm going on to see what the police have been doing. The inquest will probably begin to-morrow. But I wanted to prevent your being startled by this horrible news. Trust me to let you know--and to help--all I can."

Then for a moment, he seemed to lose his self-possession. He stood before her awkwardly conscious--a moral trespasser--who might have been passing bounds. But it was her turn to be frank. She came and put both her hands on his arm--looking up--drawing her breath with difficulty.

"Harry, I'm going to tell you. I ought to have told you more that night--but how could I? It was only just then I knew--that I cared. A little later Mr. Faversham asked me to marry him, and I refused, because--because of this money. I couldn't take it--I begged him not to. Never mind!" She threw her head back, gulping down tears. "He thought me unreasonable. But--"

"He refused--and left you!" cried Tatham, drinking in the sweetness of her pale beauty, as Orpheus might have watched the vanishing Eurydice.

"He had such great ambitions--as to what he'd do--with this money," she said, lightly brushing her wet eyes, and trying to smile. "It wasn't the mere fortune! Oh, I knew that!"

Tatham was silent. But he gently touched her hand with his own.

"You'll stand by him?--if he needs it?" she asked piteously.

He assured her. Then, suddenly, raising herself on tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. The blood flew into his face, and bending forward--timidly--he laid his lips on her soft brow. There was a pledge in it--and a farewell. She drew herself away.

"The first--and the last," she said, smiling, and sighing. "Now we're comrades. I await your news. Tell me if I can help--throw light? I know the people--the neighbourhood, well. And when you see Mr. Faversham, greet him from me. Tell him his friends here feel with him--and for him. And as to what you say--ah, no!--I'm not going to believe--I can't believe--that any one can have such--such vile thoughts! The truth will soon come out!"

She held herself steadily.

"We must find the-murderer," Tatham repeated, and took up his cap.

* * * * *

Lydia was left alone in the little breakfast-room. Susy could be heard moving about overhead; she would be down directly. Meanwhile the winter sunshine came broadly in; the singing of the tea-kettle, the crackle of the fire made domestic music. But Lydia's soul was far away. It stood beside Faversham, exulting.

"Free!"--she said to herself, passionately--"free!" and then with the hyperbole of love--"I talked and moralized--he _did it_!"

A splendid pride in him possessed her; so that for long she scarcely realized the tragedy of the murder, or the horror of the slanderous suspicion now starting through the dales. But yet, long before the day was over, she was conquered by grief and fear--a very miserable and restless Lydia. No word came from him; and she could not write. These were men's affairs, and women must hold their peace. Yet, in spirit, as the hours passed, she gave herself wholly to the man she loved; she glorified him; she trampled on her own past doubts; she protected him against a world in arms. The plant of love grew fast and furiously--watered by pity--by indignation.

Meanwhile Susy treated her sister very kindly. She specially insisted on ordering dinner, and writing various business letters; though Lydia would have been thankful to do both. And when the evening came on, Mrs. Penfold trembling with excitement and horror, chattered endlessly about the murder, as each visitor to the cottage brought some fresh detail. Lydia seldom answered her. She sat on the floor, with her face against her mother's knee, while the soft, silly voice above her head rambled and rambled on.

* * * * *

Tatham rode back to Pengarth. As he approached one of the lodge gates of Duddon, a man came toward him on a bicycle. Boden, hot and dishevelled, dismounted as he saw Tatham.

"I thought I should just meet you. Lady Tatham has had a telephone message from the Chief Constable, Colonel Marvell. There is a man missing--and a gun. Brand's younger son has not been seen for thirty-six hours. He has been helping Andover's head keeper for part of the year, as a watcher; and this man, Simpson, had let him have an old gun of his--a muzzle-loader--some months ago. That gun can't be found."

Tatham sat thunderstruck, lights breaking on his face.

"Well--there was cause enough."

Boden's eyes shone.

"Cause? It smelled to heaven! Wild justice--if you like! I was in the house yesterday afternoon," he added quietly, "just before the old man died."

"You were?" cried Tatham, amazed. Yet he knew well that whenever Boden came to recruit at Duddon, he spent half of his time among the fell-farms and cottages. His mind was invincibly human, greedy of common life and incident, whether in London or among the dales. He said little of his experiences at Duddon; not a word, for instance, to Tatham or Victoria, the night before, had revealed his own share in the old farmer's death scene; but, casually, often, some story would drop out, some unsuspected facts about their next-door neighbours, their very own people, which would set Victoria and Tatham looking at each other, and wondering.

He turned now to walk beside Tatham's horse. His plain face with its beautiful eyes, and lanky straying hair, spoke of a ruminating mind.

Tatham asked if there was any news from the railway.

"No trace so far, anywhere. All the main line stations have been closely watched. But Marvell is of opinion that if young Brand had anything to do with it he would certainly give the railway a wide berth. He is much more likely to take to the fells. They tell the most extraordinary tales of his knowledge of the mountains--especially in snow and wild weather. They say that shepherds who have lost sheep constantly go to him for help!"

"--You know him?"

"I have talked to him sometimes. A queer sulky fellow with one or two fixed ideas. He certainly hated Melrose. Whether he hated him enough to murder him is another question. When I visited them, the mother told me that Will had rushed out of the house the night before, because he could not endure the sight of his father's sufferings. The jury I suppose will have to know that. Well!--You were going on to Pengarth?"

Tatham assented. Boden paused, leaning on his bicycle.

"Take Threlfall on your way. I think Faversham would like to see you. There are some strange things being said. Preposterous things! The hatred is extraordinary."

The two men eyed each other gravely. Boden added:

"I have been telling your mother that I think I shall go over to Threlfall for a bit, if Faversham will have me."

Tatham wondered again. Faversham, prosperous, had been, it seemed to him, a special target for Boden's scorn, expressed with a fine range of revolutionary epithet.

But calamity of any kind--for this queer saint--was apt to change all the values of things.

They were just separating when Tatham, with sudden compunction, asked for news of Mrs. Melrose, and Felicia.

"I had almost forgotten them!"

"Your mother did not tell me much. They were troubled about Mrs. Melrose, I think, and Undershaw was coming. The poor little girl turned very white--no tears--but she was clinging to your mother."

Tatham's face softened, but he said nothing. The road to Threlfall presented itself, and he turned his horse toward it.

"And Miss Penfold?" said Boden, quietly. "You arrived before the newspapers? Good. I think, before I return, I shall go and have a talk with Miss Penfold."

And mounting his bicycle he rode off. Tatham looking after him, felt uncomfortably certain that Boden knew pretty well all there was to know about Lydia--Faversham--and himself. But he did not resent it.

Tatham found Threlfall a beleaguered place, police at the gates and in the house; the chief constable and the Superintendent of police established in the dining-room, as the only room tolerably free from the all encumbering collections, and interviewing one person after another.

Tatham asked to see the chief constable. He made his way into the gallery, which was guarded by police, for although the body of Melrose had been removed to an upper room, the blood-stain on the Persian carpet, the overturned chair and picture, the mud-marks on the wall remained untouched, awaiting the coroner's jury, which was to meet in the house that evening.

As Tatham approached the room which was now the headquarters of the police, he met coming out of it a couple of men; one small and sinewy, with the air of a disreputable athlete, the other a tall pasty-faced man in a shabby frock coat, with furtive eyes. The first was Nash, Melrose's legal factotum through many years; the other was one of the clerks in the Pengarth office, who was popularly supposed to have made much money out of the Threlfall estate, through a long series of small peculations never discovered by his miserly master. They passed Tatham with downcast eyes and an air of suppressed excitement which did not escape him. He found the chief constable pacing up and down, talking in subdued tones, and with a furrowed brow, to the Superintendent of police.

"Come in, come in," said Marvell heartily, at sight of the young man, who was the chief landowner of the district, and likely within a couple of years to be its lord lieutenant. "We want your help. Everything points to young Brand, and there is much reason to think he is still in the neighbourhood. What assistance can you give us?"

Tatham promised a band of searchers from the estate. The Duddon estate itself included a great deal of mountain ground, some of the loneliest and remotest in the district, where a man who knew the fells might very well take hiding. Marvell brought out a map, and they pored over it.

The superintendent of police departed.

Then Marvell, with a glance at the door to see that it was safely shut, said abruptly:

"You know, Faversham has done some unlucky things!"

Tatham eyed him interrogatively.

"It has come out that he was in the Brands' cottage about a week ago, and that he left money with the family. He says he never saw the younger son, and did not in fact know him by sight. He offered the elder one some money in order to help him with his Canadian start. The lad refused, not being willing, so his mother says--I have seen her myself this morning--to accept anything from Melrose's agent. But she, not knowing where to look for the expenses of her husband's illness, took five pounds from Faversham, and never dared tell either of her sons."

"All perfectly straightforward and natural," said Tatham.

Marvell looked worried.

"Yes. But you see how the thing may be twisted by men like those two--curs!--who have just been here. You saw them? They came, ostensibly, to answer my questions as to whether they could point us to any one with a particular grudge against Mr. Melrose."

"They could have named you a hundred!" interrupted Tatham.

"No doubt. But what their information in the end amounted to"--the chief constable came to stand immediately in front of Tatham, lowering his voice--"was that the only person with a really serious motive for destroying Melrose, was"--he jerked his thumb in the direction of Faversham's sitting-room--"our friend! They claim--both of them--to have been spectators of the growing friction between the two men. Nash says that Melrose had spoken to him once or twice of revoking, or altering his will; and both of them declare that Faversham was quite aware of the possibility. Of course these things were brought out apologetically--you understand!--with a view of 'giving Mr. Faversham the opportunity of meeting the reports in circulation,' and so on--'calming public opinion'--and the rest of it. But I see how they will work it up! Then, of course, that the man got access to the house through Faversham's room--Faversham's window left open, and the light left burning--by his own story--is unfortunate."

"But what absurdity," cried Tatham, indignantly, as he rose. "As if the man to profit by the plot would have left that codicil on the table!"

Marvell shrugged his shoulders.

"That too might be twisted. Why not a supremely clever stroke? Well, of course the thing is absurd--but disagreeable--considering the circumstances. The moral is--find the man! Good-day, Lord Tatham. I understand you will have fifty men out by this evening, assisting the police in their search?"

"At least," said Tatham, and departed.

Outside, after a moment's hesitation, he inquired of the police in charge whether Faversham was in his room. Being told that he was, he asked leave to pass along the gallery. An officer took him in charge, and he stepped, not without a shudder, past the blood-stained spot, where a cruel spirit had paid its debt. The man who led him pointed out the picture, the chair, the marks of the muddy soles on the wainscotting, and along the gallery--reconstructing the murder, in low tones, as though the dead man still lay there. A hideous oppression indeed hung over the house. Melrose's ghost held it.

The police officer knocked at Faversham's door. "Would Mr. Faversham receive Lord Tatham?"

Faversham, risen from his writing-table, looked at his visitor in a dull astonishment.

"I have come to bring you a message," said Tatham advancing, neither man offering to shake hands. "I saw Miss Penfold early this morning--before she got the newspapers. She wished me to bring you her--her sympathy. She was very much shocked." He spoke with a certain boyish embarrassment. But his blue eyes looked very straight at Faversham.

Faversham changed colour a little, and thanked him. But his aspect was that of a man worn out, incapable for the time of the normal responses of feeling. He showed no sense of strangeness, with regard to Tatham's visit, though for weeks they had not been on speaking terms. Absently offering his visitor a chair, he talked a little--disjointedly--of the events of the preceding evening, with frequent pauses for recollection.

Tatham eyed him askance.

"I say! I suppose you had no sleep?"

Faversham smiled.

"Look here--hadn't you better come to us to-night?--get out of this horrible place?" exclaimed Tatham, on a sudden but imperative impulse.

"To Duddon?" Faversham shook his head. "Thank you--impossible." Then he looked up. "Undershaw told you what I told him?"

Tatham assented. There was an awkward pause--broken at last by Faversham.

"How did Miss Melrose get home?"

"Luckily I came across her at the foot of the Duddon hill, and I helped her home. She's all right--though of course it's a ghastly shock for them."

"I never knew she was here--till she had gone," exclaimed Faversham, with sudden animation, "Otherwise--I should have helped her."

He stood erect, his pale look fixed threateningly on Tatham.

"I'm sure you would," said Tatham, heartily. "Well now, I must be off. I have promised Marvell to put as many men as possible to work in with the police. You have no idea at all as to the identity of the man who ran past you?"

"None!" Faversham repeated the word, as though groping in his memory. "None. I never saw Will Brand that I can recollect. But the description of him seems to tally with the man who knocked me over."

"Well, we'll find him," said Tatham briskly. "Any message for Green Cottage?"

"My best thanks. I am very grateful to them."

The words were formal. He sank heavily into his chair, as though wishing to end the interview. Tatham departed.

* * * * *

The inquest opened in the evening. Faversham and the Dixons gave their evidence. So did Undershaw and the police. The jury viewed the body, and leave to bury was granted. Then the inquiry adjourned.

For some ten days afterward, the whole of the Lake district hung upon the search for Brand. From the Scawfell and Buttermere group on its western verge, to the Ullswater mountains on the east; from Skiddaw and Blencathra on the north, southward through all the shoulders and edges, the tarns and ghylls of the Helvellyn range; through the craggy fells of Thirlmere, Watendlath, Easedale; over the high plateaus that run up to the Pikes, and fall in precipice to Stickle Tarn; through the wild clefts and corries of Bowfell, the Crinkles, Wetherlam and the Old Man; over the desolate backs and ridges that stretch from Kirkstone to Kentmere and Long Sleddale, the great man-hunt passed, enlisting ever fresh feet, and fresh eyes in its service. Every shepherd on the high fells became a detective, speeding news, or urging suggestions, by the old freemasonry of their tribe; while every farmhouse in certain dales, within reach of the scene of the murder, sent out its watchers by day and night, eagerly contributing its men and its wits to the chase.

For in this chase there was a hidden motive which found no expression in the local papers; of which men spoke to each other under their breaths, when they spoke at all; but which none the less became in a very short time, by the lightning spread of a few evil reports, through the stubble of popular resentment, the animating passion at the heart of it. The police and Faversham's few friends were searching for the murderer of Melrose; the public in general were soon hunting Faversham's accomplice. The discovery of Will Brand meant, in the one case, the arrest of a poor crazy fellow who had avenged by murder his father's persecution and ruin; in the other case, it meant the unmasking of an educated and smooth-spoken villain, who, finding a vast fortune in danger, had taken ingenious means to secure it. In this black suspicion there spoke the accumulated hatred of years, stored up originally, in the mind of a whole countryside, against a man who had flouted every law of good citizenship, and strained every legal right of property to breaking point; and discharging itself now, with pent-up force, upon the tyrant's tool, conceived as the murderous plotter for his millions. To realize the strength of the popular feeling, as it presently revealed itself, was to look shuddering into things elemental.

It was first made plain on the day of Melrose's funeral. In order to avoid the concourse which might attend a burial in Whitebeck parish church, lying near the main road, and accessible from many sides, it was determined to bury him in the graveyard of the little mountain chapel on the fell above the Penfolds' cottage. The hour was sunrise; and all the preparations had been as secretly made as possible. But when the dark December morning arrived, with sleet showers whitening all the slopes of Helvellyn and the gashed breast of Blencathra, a dense crowd thronged all the exits of the Tower, and lined the steep lanes leading to the chapel. Faversham, Cyril Boden, and a Carlisle solicitor occupied the only carriage which followed the hearse. Tatham and his mother met the doleful procession at the chapel. Lady Tatham, very pale and queenly, walked hand in hand with a slight girl in mourning. As the multitude outside the churchyard caught sight of the pair, a thrill ran through its ranks. Melrose's daughter, and rightful heiress--disinherited, and supplanted--by the black-haired man standing bareheaded behind the coffin. The crowd endured the mockery of the burial service in a sullen silence. Not a head uncovered. Not a voice joined in the responses.

Felicia threw back her veil, and the onlookers pressed to the churchyard railings to see the delicate face, with its strong likeness to her father. She meanwhile saw only Tatham. Her eyes were fixed on him from first to last.

But there were two other ladies in the churchyard. After the hurried ceremony was over, one of them approached Faversham. He took her hand in silence, looking down into the eyes--the soul--of Lydia. With what angelic courage and cheer that look was charged, only its recipient knew.

"Come and see us," she said, softly.

He shook his head, with a look of pain. Then he pressed her hand and they separated. As he appeared at the churchyard gate, about to enter the carriage which was waiting, a grim low groan ran through the throng which filled the lane. There was something in the sound to strike a shiver through the strongest. Faversham grew perhaps a little paler, but as he seated himself in the carriage he examined the scowling faces near him with a quiet indifference, which scarcely altered when Tatham came conspicuously to the carriage-door to bid him farewell.

The days that followed reminded some of the older dalesmen of the stories told by their fathers of the great and famous hunt, a century ago, after the sheep-slaying "dog of Ennerdale," who for five months held a whole district at bay; appearing and disappearing phantom-like among the crags and mists of the high fells, keeping shepherds and farming-folk in perpetual excitement, watched for by night and day, hunted by hounds and by men, yet never to be captured; frightening lovers from their trysts, and the children from school; a presence and a terror prevading men's minds, and suspending the ordinary operations of life. So in some sort was it with the hunt for Will Brand. It was firmly believed that in the course of it he was twice seen; once in the loneliness of Skiddaw Forest, not far from the gamekeeper's hut, the only habitation in that moorland waste; and once in a storm on the slopes of Great Dodd, when a shepherd, "latin" his sheep, had suddenly perceived a wild-looking fellow, with a gun between his knees, watching him from the shelter of a rock. So far from making any effort to capture the man, the shepherd had fled in terror; but both neighbours and police firmly believed that he had seen the murderer. There were also various mysterious thefts of food reported from mountain farms, indications hotly followed up but to no purpose. Would the culprit, starved out, be forced in time to surrender; or would he die of privation and exposure among the high fells, in the snowdrifts, and leave the spring, when it came, to uncover his bones?

Toward the end of the month the snowstorms of its earlier days passed into a chilly and continuous rain; there was still snow on the heights. The steady downpour presently flooded the rivers, and sent the streams racing in torrents down the hills.

Christmas was over. The new year was at hand. One afternoon, Boden, oppressed in spirit, sallied forth from the Tower into the floods and mists of St. John's Vale. He himself had taken no part in the great pursuit. He believed now that the poor hunted creature would find his lonely end among the wintry mountains, and rejoiced to think it might be so. The adjourned inquest was to be resumed the following day, and no doubt some verdict would be returned. It was improbable, in spite of the malice at work, that any attempt would be made--legally--to incriminate Faversham.

It was of Faversham that he was chiefly thinking. When he had first proposed his companionship, the day after the murder, it had been quietly accepted, with a softened look of surprise, and he and Undershaw had since kept watch over a bewildered man, protecting him as far as they could from the hostile world at his gates.

How he would emerge--what he meant to do with Melrose's vast heritage, Boden had no idea. His life seemed to have shrunk into a dumb, trancelike state. He rarely or never left the house; he could not be induced to go either to Duddon or to the Cottage; nor would he receive visitors. He had indeed seen his solicitors, but had said not a word to Boden on the subject. It was rumoured that Nash was already endeavouring to persuade a distant cousin of Melrose and Lady Tatham to dispute the will.

Meanwhile, through Boden, Lydia Penfold had been kept in touch with a man who could not apparently bring himself to reopen their relation. Boden saw her nearly every day; they had become fast friends. Victoria too was as often at the cottage as the state of Netta Melrose allowed, and she and Lydia, born to understand each other, had at last arrived thereat.

But Mrs. Melrose was dying; and her little daughter, a more romantic figure than ever, in the public eye, was to find, it said, a second mother in Lady Tatham.

The rain clouds were swirling through the dale, as Boden reached its middle point, pushing his way against a cold westerly blast. The stream, which in summer chatters so gently to the travellers beside it, was rushing in a brown swift flood, and drowning the low meadows on its western bank. He mounted a stone foot-bridge to look at it, when, of a sudden, the curtain of cloud shrouding Blencathra was torn aside, and its high ridge, razor-sharp, appeared spectrally white, a seat of the storm-god, in a far heaven. The livid lines of just-fallen snow, outlining the cliffs and ravines of the great mountain, stamped its majesty, visionlike, on the senses. Below it, some scattered woods, inky black, bent under the storm, and the crash and darkness of the lower air threw into clear relief the pallid splendour of the mountain-top.

Boden stood enthralled, when a voice said at his elbow:

"Yo're oot on a clashy night, Muster Boden!"

He turned. Beside him stood the fugitive!--grinning weakly. Boden beheld a tottering and ghastly figure. Distress--mortal fatigue--breathed from the haggard emaciation of face and limbs. Round the shoulders was folded a sack, from which the dregs of some red dipping mixture it had once contained had dripped over the youth's chest and legs, his tattered clothes and broken boots, in streams of what, to Boden's startled sense, looked like blood. And under the slouched hat, a pair of sunken eyes looked out, expressing the very uttermost of human despair.

"Brand!--where have you been?"

"Don't touch me, sir! I'll go--don't touch me! There ha' been hunnerds after me--latin me on t' fells. They've not catcht me--an' they'd not ha' catcht me noo--but I'm wore oot. I ha' been followin yo' this half-hour, Muster Boden. I could ha' put yo' i' the river fasst enoof."

A ghastly chuckle in the darkness. Boden considered.

"Well, now--are you going to give yourself up? You see--I can do nothing to force you! But if you take my advice, you'll go quietly with me, to the police--you'll make a clean breast of it."

"Will they hang me, Muster Boden?"

"I don't think so," said Boden slowly. "What made you do it?"

"I'd planned it for months--I've follered owd Melrose many times--I've been close oop to 'im--when he had noa noshun whativver. I might ha' killt him--a doosen times over. He wor a devil--an' I paid him oot! I was creepin' round t' hoose that night--and ov a suddent, there was a door openin', an' a light. It seemed to be God sayin', 'Theer's a way, mon! go in, and do't! So I went in. An' I saw Muster Faversham coom oot--an' Dixon. An' I knew that he wor there--alone--the owd fox!--an' I waited--an' oot he came. I shot 'un straight, Muster Boden! I shot 'un straight!"

"You never told any one what you were going to do, Brand? Nobody helped you?"

"Not a soul! I'm not yo'r blabbin' sort! But now I'm done--I'm clemmed!"

And he tottered against the bridge as he spoke. Baden caught him.

"Can you walk with my help? I have some brandy."

And taking from his pocket the tiny flask that a man with a weak heart is apt to carry, he put it into a shaking hand. Brand drank it greedily.

They stumbled on together, down the narrow road, through the streaming rain. It was a mile to the Whitebeck police station. Brand gave a gasping, incoherent account of his doings during his ten days of hiding--the various barns and outhouses he had sheltered in--the food he had been able to steal--the narrow escapes he had run. And every now and then, the frenzy of his hatred for the murdered man would break in, and he would throw out hints of the various mad schemes he had entertained at different times for the destruction of his enemy.

But presently he ceased to talk. It was evident that his weakness was great; he clung heavily to Boden's arm.

They reached a point where a road branched to the left. A roar of furious water greeted their ears.

"That's t' beck unner Wanthwaite Bridge," said Brand feebly. "Wait a bit, sir."

He sank down on a stone by the roadside. Through the trees on the left the foaming river glimmered in the departing light. Boden bent over him, encouraging him with the promise of shelter and food, murmuring also of God, the help of the sinner. Suddenly the lad leapt up.

"Aye! that'll end it!--an' a good job!"

He began to run up the left-hand road. Boden pursued him, struggled with him, but in vain. Brand threw him off, reached the bridge, mounted the parapet, and from there flung himself headlong into the spate rushing furiously below.

At the same moment a dog-cart driven by two young farmers appeared on the main road of the valley. Boden's shouts reached them, and they came to his aid. But Brand had disappeared. The river swept him down like a withered branch; and it was many hours before the body was recovered, half a mile from the spot where he sank.

XXII

Boden was just coming to the end of his evidence. The adjourned inquest on Melrose, held in the large parlour of the old Whitebeck inn, was densely crowded, and the tension of a charged moment might be felt. Men sat gaping, their eyes wandering from the jury to the witness or the gray-haired coroner; to young Lord Tatham sitting beside the tall dark man who had been Mr. Melrose's agent, and was now the inheritor of his goods; to the alert and clean-shaven face of Undershaw, listening with the concentration of the scientific habit to the voice from the witness-box. And through the strained attention of the room there ran the stimulus of that gruesome new fact--the presence overhead of yet another dead man, dragged only some twenty-four hours earlier from the swollen waters of the river.

The murderer had been found--a comparatively simple proceeding. But, in the finding him, the ulcer of a hideous suspicion, spread by popular madness, and inflamed by popular hatred, had also been probed and cleansed. As Boden's evidence progressed, building up the story of Brand's sleuth-hound pursuit of his victim, and silently verified from point to point by the local knowledge of the audience, the change in the collective mind of this typical gathering of shepherds, farmers, and small tradesmen might have been compared to the sudden coming of soft weather into the iron tension, the black silence, of a great frost. Gales of compunction blew; of self-interest also; and the common judgment veered with them.

After the inevitable verdict had been recorded, a fresh jury was empanelled, and there was a stamping of sturdy Cumbrian feet up the inn stairs to view the pitiful remains of another human being, botched by Nature in the flesh, no less lamentably than Melrose in the spirit. The legal inquiry into Brand's flight and death was short and mostly formal; but the actual evidence--as compared with current gossip--of his luckless mother, now left sonless and husbandless, and as to the relations of the family with Faversham, hastened the melting process in the public mind. It showed a man in bondage indeed to a tyrant; but doing what he could to lighten the hand of the tyrant on others; privately and ineffectively generous; remorseful for the sins of another; and painfully aware of his mixed responsibility.

Yet naturally there were counter currents. Andover, the old Cumbrian squire, whose personal friction with Faversham had been sharpest, left the inn with a much puzzled mind, but not prepared as yet to surrender his main opinion of a young man, who after all had feathered his nest so uncommonly well. "They may say what they d--n please," said the furious and disappointed Nash, as he departed in company with his shabby accomplice, the sallow-faced clerk, "but he's walked off with the dibs, an' I suppose he thinks he'll jolly well keep 'em. The 'cutest young scoundrel I ever came across!" which, considering the range of the speaker's experience, was testimony indeed.

Regret, on the one hand, for a monstrous and exposed surmise; on the other, instinctive resentment of the man's huge, unearned luck under the will that Melrose would have revoked had he lived a few more hours, as contrasted with the plight of Felicia Melrose; between these poles men's minds went wavering. Colonel Barton stood at the door of the inn before Faversham emerged for a few undecided moments, and finally walked away, like Andover, with the irritable reflection that the grounds on which he had originally cut the young man still largely stood; and he was not going to kow-tow to mere money. He would go and have tea with Lady Tatham; she was a sensible woman. Harry's behaviour seemed to him sentimental.

Faversham, Boden, and Harry Tatham left the inn together and were joined by Undershaw outside. They walked silently through the irregular village street where groups stood at the cottage doors to see them pass. As they emerged upon the high road the three others perceived that they were alone. Faversham had disappeared.

"Where is he?" said Tatham, standing amazed and looking back. They had gained the crest of a hill whence, beyond the roofs of Whitebeck in the hollow, a section of the main road could be dimly seen, running west a white streak piercing the wintry dusk. Along the white streak moved something black--the figure of a man. Boden pointed to it.

"Where's he going?" The question fell involuntarily from Undershaw.