Chapter XXXIII: The Mystery Clears

WAS there ever such a scene of confusion?

Noll burst into howls of terror, and the twins speedily followed suit, the three of them scuttling away to their mother’s sofa, under which they bolted like rabbits to their burrow. Dicky and Molly cast themselves upon Bertha, loudly demanding protection from the naughty old man, who had grumbled at their mother until she cried, and then had attacked the nice kind man who had unhitched the horses and milked the cow; and for a few moments, despite the best endeavours of Bertha and Eunice towards peace and quiet, the turmoil was so great that it was impossible for anyone’s voice to pierce the din of screaming and crying which arose from the excited old man and the badly scared children.

But Edgar Bradgate stood perfectly quiet, and it was his calmness which finally soothed the old man into something like self-control again. Then he addressed himself to Grace in a tone of apology, even looking a little ashamed of his outburst.

“I crave your pardon, my dear niece, for making such an unseemly riot in your quiet home, and my excuse must be the extreme provocation that I have received. For two long years I have been tracking this man from the description which I could give of him, but I did not even know his name, and I have often despaired of bringing him to justice or getting my stolen property back again; so when I saw him calmly sitting on the other side of the table and nursing your child as if he were quite at home in the house, I will admit that I permitted my temper to run away with my discretion.”

“But won’t you tell us what it is that he has done, Uncle Joe, and then we shall be better able to understand things?” asked Grace, in a persuasive tone, and casting such a look of kindly encouragement at the accused as rendered the old man almost incoherent from indignation again.

“What he has done! What he has done! Why, it was the most barefaced robbery that I have ever heard of, and why he was not taken at the time with the stones upon him I could never understand; for I raised outcry enough. Indeed, I have often thought that the police must have been in league with him, and so they connived at his escape,” raved Uncle Joe, shaking his prisoner again with a savage air; but Edgar bore it with perfect patience, waiting quietly for explanations.

“What did he steal?” asked Grace again, while, as before, she sent a kindly glance towards the accused.

“Diamonds, magnificent uncut diamonds!” shouted the excited old man, with another fierce shake of his passive prisoner. “I had just taken a case of diamonds from a man, and I had lent him two hundred thousand dollars on them. I stuffed the case into the breast pocket of my overcoat—a brown cloth coat it was, with one top button missing, which a tipsy man had dragged off the day before, pulled it out by the roots, in fact—and I got into the cars, for I was off to Paston to attend a meeting of shareholders of a company which had gone wrong. I stood to lose five hundred thousand dollars over that business, so I was feeling pretty sore all round, or perhaps I might have taken more care of my diamonds. I was late in reaching the meeting, and I went into a dressing-room to leave my coat, which I took off and tossed on to a heap of others, quite forgetting that I had left the case of diamonds there. But I remembered it before I reached the room of the hotel where the meeting was being held, and I was turning back as quickly as I could move, when the door opened and an excited young man dashed out. He rushed past me and hurried into the waiting-room, picked up a coat, and dashed off again by another door; and it was not until he had gone that I saw it was my coat he had taken with him. I think something gave way inside my head at that moment, for I seemed to go quite mad when I rushed after him screaming and shouting at the top of my voice. But I did not catch him, and from that day to this I have only seen him once.”

“When was that?” demanded Grace; but into the face of Bertha there had come the light of a great relief, and, turning a little aside, her hands were busy fumbling at the front of her blouse to reach the little bag which she wore strapped round her neck.

“It was just before harvest in the very next year—indeed, it was that day when I came to borrow some money from Tom, and you told me that he was too poor to lend it to me—I was driving back to Pentland Broads by a cross-trail through the wheat, when a man passed me driving a wagon, smothered in dirt and dust he was, but I knew him again. It was the man who had run away with my coat and the case of diamonds—this man who stands here, and let him deny it if he can!” cried the old man, as his lean fingers took a firmer grip of his prisoner.

“I don’t even want to deny it,” said Edgar Bradgate quietly, and then he looked across at Bertha, saying, with a smile, “The explanation lies with you, Miss Doyne.”

And Bertha was quick to respond. Giving a final tug to the bag at her neck, she pulled it out, and, drawing the case from it, she laid it in the hand of the angry old man, saying quietly: “Can you tell me if those are the stones which you lost? Because, if they are, they have been in my possession ever since the day when you lost them, and Mr. Bradgate has known nothing whatever about them.”

“They are mine! They are mine!” shrieked the old man, and the shock of recovering them so suddenly being quite too much for him, he dropped where he stood in a faint on the floor.

Edgar Bradgate stooped to lift him. “I was afraid so much excitement must have been bad for the poor old fellow,” he said, in a pitying tone, and then he handed back the case of diamonds to Bertha, for they had dropped from the old man’s nerveless hand, “You will have to take care of this case again, Miss Doyne. It seems to be your fate to have those stones in your custody.”

“Take care of them, Grace, they are more your business than mine, now that we know to whom they belong,” said Bertha, tossing the case on to her cousin’s couch, and then she went to help Edgar and Eunice restore the old man to consciousness again.

But that was what their combined efforts could not do. For a long time they worked, doing their utmost, but the frail old body had been quite unfit to bear the strain of such fierce excitement, coming, as it probably did, upon a long fast, and at length Eunice desisted from her task and said to the others:

“We can do no more, and I think that the poor old man is dying. We ought to have the doctor.”

“I will go for him,” said Edgar, without hesitation. “The moon should be thinking of showing pretty soon now, and I shall be able to find my way along the trail all right.”

“But the horse—you said that it was dead beat,” said Bertha.

“Can’t I have your old horse?” he asked. “That, at any rate, is fresh enough by the way it squealed and kicked when I fed it this evening.”

“Oh, I had forgotten Pucker,” Bertha said, with a great relief in her tone. “I will go and hitch up while you get some supper. No, it is of no use to protest, because you have not had one proper meal to-day, and I can feed when you are gone. Then, too, I can harness old Pucker quicker than you could hope to do it; for the old horse has a rather queer temper, and simply loves to show off to strangers.”

Edgar gave way then, since there was so much truth in what Bertha said about being able to hitch up more quickly than he could do it; so he went back to the kitchen, where the neglected supper was spread upon the table, then he coaxed the children out from their hiding-place about the sofa and fed them while he got his own meal. Of course the coffee was cold, but even cold coffee is satisfying to a man who has not had a proper meal for twenty-four hours, and when one is very hungry, anything in the way of food becomes absolutely appetizing.

The children were also very hungry, and so they were the more easily consoled, although, it is sad to relate, they could not hide their elation when they knew that the cross old man was very ill, and Molly voiced the general opinion when she said that she hoped that he would stay so.

“Can I bring you anything, Mrs. Ellis, or do anything for you?” Edgar asked, when he had the children all happily employed at the table.

“Thank you, no. I shall do very well until Bertha or Eunice has time to attend to me,” Grace answered, and then, a thought coming into her mind, she asked quickly, “Will you tell me quite candidly whether you think that I have any reason to keep on hoping that my husband is alive? I know that Bertha would bid me hope, from the very best of motives, just to keep me from giving way to despair; but what do you think?”

What could he say? Previously he had not had the slightest doubt that the whole of the Expedition had shared the same fate, but, to his own surprise, he suddenly found himself doubting. Why should everyone be so ready to believe that they had all perished? Was it likely that a score or more of able-bodied men would tamely sit down for death to claim them when the stores gave out? It was much more likely that they would make an attempt to reach some place where food could be found, and so, although they might have to suffer great hardships, they might yet win through.

“What do you think?” persisted Grace, her wistful eyes scanning his face to see if haply she could glean a little hope from its expression.

He hesitated a moment, then answered frankly, “Five minutes ago I did not think it possible for there to be any more hope that they have any of them survived, but now I am disposed to think that perhaps we may hear of some of them having got through; only, it will take some time for that, you know, and we cannot be sure of anything for weeks and weeks yet to come. Don’t give up hope all the time that there is the barest shred of hope to cling to.”

“Thank you,” she answered softly, and he went out of the house with a pang at his heart, because he had no better comfort to give to her.

“It is so cold to-night, that you will need to wrap up well. Have you no other coat?” asked Bertha, when she led old Pucker up to the door.

“No; you see my entire wardrobe,” he said, with a laugh which was quite free from embarrassment. His poverty was owing to no fault of his own, so there was no need to be ashamed of it; then he asked, “Could you lend me a sack or an old rug to wrap round me? It will never do to let the influenza fiend find me out again, or I shall be a nuisance to somebody as I was before.”

Bertha darted into the house and returned in a moment with a shabby brown coat that had a well-worn black velvet collar, and this she held out for his use.

“Most likely it is your own coat, the one which you left behind when you picked up the poor old man’s by mistake,” she said, with a nervous laugh. “At any rate, it is as much like the one in which I found the diamonds as it is possible for one coat to be like another.”

“Wait a moment, I will just run through the pockets before I put it on, in case there should be anything valuable there,” he said, taking the coat from her and feeling in all the pockets, turning out gloves, handkerchief, and a bulky woollen scarf.

“Oh, there is the old neck-wrap that I gave him that cold day when we were snowed up on the rail!” she cried, picking it up and holding it out for inspection.

“May I borrow that also?” Edgar held out his hand for it, and she gave it to him with a sudden sense of embarrassment not to be accounted for by any laws of reason or logic.

Even the touch of their hands as they met added to her unexplained confusion, and she was glad that it was so dark out on the veranda that he could not possibly see how violently she was blushing about nothing at all.

But was it nothing at all? Something like panic set up in Bertha’s heart as she went back into the house, where Eunice was still busy with the poor old man. It was of no use for her to try and blind herself to what that sudden confusion meant, and her fear was lest someone else should read on her face the very same tidings that her heart was telling her in such unmistakable language just then.

“Oh, I should die of shame if anyone were to guess that I cared for him!” she said to herself, with a little gasping sob, then she plunged into the confusion of things waiting to be done, and losing some of her miserable self-consciousness as she darted to and fro, clearing the table, putting the children to bed, and comforting Grace between whiles.

She dared not trust herself to think how she would manage to meet Edgar Bradgate when he came back with the doctor. She would have to thrust this new knowledge of her own heart far into the background, lest haply it should be seen by the very eyes from which she was most concerned to hide it.

Meanwhile Pucker was tearing along the lonely trail to Pentland Broads, with the wagon swaying and bumping in the rear.

The man who was driving was trying hard not to go to sleep, but he was so tired that wakefulness was almost beyond him. He had hardly dared to close his eyes on the long journey down from Brocken Ridge in the empty freighter, for he had been so afraid that Bertha might want him, and that he should not hear her, and it would not have fitted his ideas of what was right and proper to fail the girl, who had gone through so much to serve him.

He had been looking forward to a night’s rest in the barn, and to be forced to turn out and drive so many miles through the dark, cold night was by no means a pleasant experience. But it had to be done, and so he sat huddled on the wagon seat, dozing fitfully, and comforting himself that the old horse knew the way much better than he knew it himself, when suddenly Pucker stopped dead, almost flinging Edgar from the driving seat, and arousing him from his dozing with a jerk.

“Steady, old man, steady!” he muttered, in that tone which is usually supposed to restore confidence to a horse troubled with nerves. But on Pucker this advice seemed a little thrown away and entirely unnecessary, as the creature was standing as if it had been planted there.

“What is up? Go on, can’t you,” said the driver, wondering if the horse were a jibber, and, if so, whether it would be his unfortunate lot to sit there for hours until it seemed good to Pucker to proceed.

But Pucker paid no heed to the admonition, and a jerk of the reins producing no other effect than to make him toss his head, Edgar decided that he would have to get down and investigate the business at close quarters.

“Steady, there!” he murmured encouragingly, as he unrolled himself from his various rugs and wrappings and then got slowly out of the wagon.

He was so stiff and cramped, that he stumbled and nearly fell, but, recovering himself with an effort, he went to the horse’s head, and by the light of the rising moon saw that a dark object was lying in the soft mud of the trail.

“A man! And if it had not been for the horse, I should have run over him!” he exclaimed aloud; and now there was a thrill of horror in his tone, for he had been far too sleepy to notice whether or not the trail was clear.

Leaving the horse, which had been too wise to trample on that prostrate figure, Edgar stooped over the man to investigate his condition.

“Tipsy? Hardly likely, for if he had been intoxicated when he left Pentland Broads, he would be sober by this time, or at least I think that I should be if I had managed to walk so far. He looks like a dead-beat, poor chap, and what on earth shall I do with him?”

Edgar stood straight up and gazed round in the darkness, as if in search of inspiration.

“Well, I’m going for the doctor, so the best thing I can do is to take the poor chap along too, if I can get him up in the wagon, that is. I must get him into the wagon, for it is certain that I cannot leave him lying out here while I go to get help.”

Stripping off his coat, and then peeling off the jacket which he wore below, Edgar set to work upon his task. And a frightfully hard task it was, too, for the unknown was bigger than he was himself, and it is likely that he never would have succeeded in getting him into the wagon at all, but for the fact that the man was wasted to a mere bag of bones, and so was the easier to haul about.

Once or twice the poor fellow groaned, as if in protest at the rough treatment which he was receiving, so Edgar knew that there was still life left in the man and persevered in his task, determined to get the poor fellow up somehow. Pucker stood like a post. Perhaps the old horse understood that there was life to be saved, and certain it was that Edgar’s task would have been much harder, and perhaps impossible, if the horse had been restive and anxious to get on; for there was not a post, or a stump, or indeed anything to tie an animal to, so that standing still was an act of grace on the part of the horse, and it helped to save a man’s life.

As soon as he had managed to get his unconscious passenger on board, Edgar slipped on his jacket, but took the brown coat to wrap round the unknown. Bertha’s scarf, however, he kept for himself, and the feel of it about his neck seemed to keep his heart warm. It was ugly, ragged, and old, but it had a magic property in it on this cold spring night, when the light of the moon came faintly through dense masses of clouds, which meant rain next day.

Would the man live until Pentland Broads was reached? The question beat itself out to a monotonous, dirge-like tune in the brain of Edgar as he drove along, and the clop, clop, clop of Pucker’s feet was the only sound that broke the stillness.

Night in the forest is rarely entirely quiet; there is sound and movement all the time, faint whisperings, stealthy creakings, and a suggestion of hidden life on every side. But on the open prairie there is none of this; it is a dense, brooding quiet, which may be literally felt, and it lay upon Edgar as a burden that was too heavy to be borne. Pentland Broads at last! The moon came out from behind the clouds to throw a flood of silvery radiance down upon the ugly houses which were grouped about the store, and the horse quickened its pace, as if understanding the need there was of haste in reaching the end of the journey.

One solitary light gleamed amid the cluster of sleeping dwellings, and that was at the house of the doctor, for which Edgar made a bee line, although he nearly upset the wagon, and must have given his unconscious passenger a cruel shaking, for he drove across a piece of ground which was being trenched for building purposes, and never realized that he was off the trail until he was so nearly upset. However, he got through safely, and, as he saved about ten minutes, the short cut had been well worth taking.

To spring down from the wagon and to bang at the doctor’s door was the work of a minute only, then came a brief period of acute anxiety lest the doctor should not be at home.

“Who is there? What do you want?” shouted a voice from the window hastily thrust open, and Edgar found to his great disgust that his own voice was not entirely steady when he answered:

“I want you to come out to Duck Flats to see an old man who seems to be dying, but as I was coming for you I nearly drove over another man, a dead-beat apparently, and I brought him along with me. You will have to look after him first, for he seems in a bad way, I can tell you.”

“I’ll be out in three minutes,” growled the doctor, in no very pleased tone, then he banged the window, and Edgar was left to wait through an interminable three minutes, which seemed to him to be at least half an hour, so impatient was he about the condition of the man in the wagon.

Then the door opened, and the doctor bustled out, as neat and trim of appearance as if he had been sitting up waiting for patients to come, instead of having been in bed sound asleep less than five minutes before.

“Now, then, what is wrong?” he said, bustling round to the end of the wagon, and peering at the figure which lay wrapped in the brown topcoat. “You are right, he does look in need of some attention. We shall have to carry him indoors. My word, but he is a fine lump of a man, though he is only a bag of bones. How did you manage to get him into the wagon, if he was senseless when you picked him up?”

“I dragged him up somehow. I could not have done it if the horse had not stood, as it were, planted in the ground and had taken root there. As it was, I had my work cut out, for the poor fellow is bigger than I am,” panted Edgar, as he and the doctor lifted the man from the wagon and carried him indoors to the light.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed the doctor, in a tone of pure amazement, as he surveyed his new patient by the light of the lamp.

“Is he dead?” asked Edgar, in a tone of deep disappointment, for it seemed too bad to have had to work so hard and then not be able to save the man after all.

“Dead! Good gracious, I hope not!” cried the doctor, beginning to work at the poor fellow in feverish haste. “Why, man, it is Tom Ellis himself, the owner of Duck Flats, and there are women and children there who will love you all your life for what you have done to-night!”