The House of a Thousand Candles - Meredith Nicholson (top 50 books to read txt) 📗

CHAPTER XXIV

A PROWLER OF THE NIGHT

 

Down we plunged into the cellar, through the trap

and to the Door of Bewilderment.

 

“Don’t expect too much,” admonished Larry; “I

can’t promise you a single Spanish coin.”

 

“Perish the ambition! We have blocked Pickering’s

game, and nothing else matters,” I said.

 

We crawled through the hole in the wall and lighted

candles. The room was about seven feet square. At

the farther end was an oblong wooden door, close to the

ceiling, and Larry tugged at the fastening until it came

down, bringing with it a mass of snow and leaves.

 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we are at the edge of the

ravine. Do you see the blue sky? And yonder, if you

will twist your necks a bit, is the boat-house.”

 

“Well, let the scenic effects go and show us where

you found those papers,” I urged.

 

“Speaking of mysteries, that is where I throw up my

hands, lads. It’s quickly told. Here is a table, and here

is a tin despatch box, which lies just where I found it.

It was closed and the key was in the lock. I took out

that packet—it wasn’t even sealed—saw the character

of the contents, and couldn’t resist the temptation to

try the effect of an announcement of its discovery on

your friend Pickering. Now that is nearly all. I found

this piece of paper under the tape with which the envelope

was tied, and I don’t hesitate to say that when

I read it I laughed until I thought I should shake

down the cellar. Read it, John Glenarm!”

 

He handed me a sheet of legal-cap paper on which

was written these words:

 

HE LAUGHS BEST WHO LAUGHS LAST

 

“What do you think is so funny in this?” I demanded.

 

“Who wrote it, do you think?” asked Stoddard.

 

“Who wrote it, do you ask? Why, your grandfather

wrote it! John Marshall Glenarm, the cleverest, grandest

old man that ever lived, wrote it!” declaimed Larry,

his voice booming loudly in the room. “It’s all a great

big game, fixed up to try you and Pickering—but principally

you, you blockhead! Oh, it’s grand, perfectly,

deliciously grand—and to think it should be my good

luck to share in it!”

 

“Humph! I’m glad you’re amused, but it doesn’t

strike me as being so awfully funny. Suppose those

papers had fallen into Pickering’s hands; then where

would the joke have been, I should like to know!”

 

“On you, my lad, to be sure! The old gentleman

wanted you to study architecture; he wanted you to

study his house; he even left a little pointer in an old

book! Oh, it’s too good to be true!”

 

“That’s all clear enough,” observed Stoddard, knocking

upon the despatch box with his knuckles. “But why

do you suppose he dug this hole here with its outlet on

the ravine?”

 

“Oh, it was the way of him!” explained Larry. “He

liked the idea of queer corners and underground passages.

This is a bully hiding-place for man or treasure,

and that outlet into the ravine makes it possible to get

out of the house with nobody the wiser. It’s in keeping

with the rest of his scheme. Be gay, comrades! To-morrow

will likely find us with plenty of business on

our hands. At present we hold the fort, and let us have

a care lest we lose it.”

 

We closed the ravine door, restored the brick as best

we could, and returned to the library. We made a list

of the Pickering notes and spent an hour discussing this

new feature of the situation.

 

“That’s a large amount of money to lend one man,”

said Stoddard.

 

“True; and from that we may argue that Mr. Glenarm

didn’t give Pickering all he had. There’s more

somewhere. If only I didn’t have to run—” and Larry’s

face fell as he remembered his own plight.

 

“I’m a selfish pig, old man! I’ve been thinking only

of my own affairs. But I never relied on you as much

as now!”

 

“Those fellows will sound the alarm against Donovan,

without a doubt, on general principles and to land

a blow on you,” remarked Stoddard thoughtfully.

 

“But you can get away, Larry. We’ll help you off

to-night. I don’t intend to stand between you and liberty.

This extradition business is no joke—if they

ever get you back in Ireland it will be no fun getting

you off. You’d better run for it before Pickering and

his sheriff spring their trap.”

 

“Yes; that’s the wise course. Glenarm and I can

hold the fort here. His is a moral issue, really, and I’m

in for a siege of a thousand years,” said the clergyman

earnestly, “if it’s necessary to beat Pickering. I may

go to jail in the end, too, I suppose.”

 

“I want you both to leave. It’s unfair to mix you

up in this ugly business of mine. Your stake’s bigger

than mine, Larry. And yours, too, Stoddard; why, your

whole future—your professional standing and prospects

would be ruined if we got into a fight here with the authorities.”

 

“Thank you for mentioning my prospects! I’ve

never had them referred to before,” laughed Stoddard.

“No; your grandfather was a friend of the Church and

I can’t desert his memory. I’m a believer in a vigorous

Church militant and I’m enlisted for the whole war.

But Donovan ought to go, if he will allow me to advise

him.”

 

Larry filled his pipe at the fireplace.

 

“Lads,” he said, his hands behind him, rocking gently

as was his way, “let us talk of art and letters—I’m going

to stay. It hasn’t often happened in my life that

the whole setting of the stage has pleased me as much

as this. Lost treasure; secret passages; a gentleman

rogue storming the citadel; a private chaplain on the

premises; a young squire followed by a limelight; sheriff,

school-girls and a Sisterhood distributed through

the landscape—and me, with Scotland Yard looming

duskily in the distance. Glenarm, I’m going to stay.”

 

There was no shaking him, and the spirits of all of

us rose after this new pledge of loyalty. Stoddard

stayed for dinner, and afterward we began again our

eternal quest for the treasure, our hopes high from

Larry’s lucky strike of the afternoon, and with a new

eagerness born of the knowledge that the morrow would

certainly bring us face to face with the real crisis. We

ranged the house from tower to cellar; we overhauled

the tunnel, for, it seemed to me, the hundredth time.

 

It was my watch, and at midnight, after Stoddard and

Larry had reconnoitered the grounds and Bates and I

had made sure of all the interior fastenings, I sent

them off to bed and made myself comfortable with a

pipe in the library.

 

I was glad of the respite, glad to be alone—to consider

my talk with Marian Devereux at St. Agatha’s,

and her return with Pickering. Why could she not always

have been Olivia, roaming the woodland, or the

girl in gray, or that woman, so sweet in her dignity,

who came down the stairs at the Armstrongs’? Her

own attitude toward me was so full of contradictions;

she had appeared to me in so many moods and guises,

that my spirit ranged the whole gamut of feeling as I

thought of her. But it was the recollection of Pickering’s

infamous conduct that colored all my doubts of

her. Pickering had always been in my way, and here,

but for the chance by which Larry had found the notes,

I should have had no weapon to use against him.

 

The wind rose and drove shrilly around the house.

A bit of scaffolding on the outer walls rattled loose

somewhere and crashed down on the terrace. I grew

restless, my mind intent upon the many chances of the

morrow, and running forward to the future. Even if

I won in my strife with Pickering I had yet my way

to make in the world. His notes were probably worthless,

—I did not doubt that. I might use them to procure

his removal as executor, but I did not look forward

with any pleasure to a legal fight over a property that

had brought me only trouble.

 

Something impelled me to go below, and, taking a

lantern, I tramped somberly through the cellar, glanced

at the heating apparatus, and, remembering that the

chapel entrance to the tunnel was unguarded, followed

the corridor to the trap, and opened it. The cold air

blew up sharply and I thrust my head down to listen.

 

A sound at once arrested me. I thought at first it

must be the suction of the air, but Glenarm House was

no place for conjectures, and I put the lantern aside and

jumped down into the tunnel. A gleam of light showed

for an instant, then the darkness and silence were complete.

 

I ran rapidly over the smooth floor, which I had traversed

so often that I knew its every line. My only

weapon was one of Stoddard’s clubs. Near the Door

of Bewilderment I paused and listened. The tunnel

was perfectly quiet. I took a step forward and stumbled

over a brick, fumbled on the wall for the opening

which we had closed carefully that afternoon, and at

the instant I found it a lantern flashed blindingly in

my face and I drew back, crouching involuntarily, and

clenching the club ready to strike.

 

“Good evening, Mr. Glenarm!”

 

Marian Devereux’s voice broke the silence, and Marian

Devereux’s face, with the full light of the lantern

upon it, was bent gravely upon me. Her voice, as I

heard it there—her face, as I saw it there—are the

things that I shall remember last when my hour comes

to go hence from