The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont by Robert Barr (most popular ebook readers .TXT) 📗

to my lonely vigil. There were some notable vintages represented in that dismal cavern.

It was perhaps half-past ten or eleven o'clock when I began my investigations. I had taken the precaution to provide myself with half a dozen so-called electric torches before I left London. These give illumination for twenty or thirty hours steadily, and much longer if the flash is used only now and then. The torch is a thick tube, perhaps a foot and a half long, with a bull's-eye of glass at one end. By pressing a spring the electric rays project like the illumination of an engine's headlight. A release of the spring causes instant darkness. I have found this invention useful in that it concentrates the light on any particular spot desired, leaving all the surroundings in gloom, so that the mind is not distracted, even unconsciously, by the eye beholding more than is necessary at the moment. One pours a white light over any particular substance as water is poured from the nozzle of a hose.

The great house was almost painfully silent. I took one of these torches, and went to the foot of the grand staircase where the wicked butler had met his death. There, as his lordship had said, lay the silver tray, and nearby a silver jug, a pair of spoons, a knife and fork, and scattered all around the fragments of broken plates, cups, and saucers. With an exclamation of surprise at the stupidity of the researchers who had preceded me, I ran up the stair two steps at a time, turned to the right, and along the corridor until I came to the room occupied by the late earl. The coverings of the bed lay turned down just as they were when his lordship sprang to the floor, doubtless, in spite of his deafness, having heard faintly the fatal crash at the foot of the stairs. A great oaken chest stood at the head of the bed, perhaps six inches from the wall. Leaning against this chest at the edge of the bed inclined a small, round table, and the cover of the table had slipped from its sloping surface until it partly concealed the chest lid. I mounted on this carven box of old black oak and directed the rays of electric light into the chasm between it and the wall. Then I laughed aloud, and was somewhat startled to hear another laugh directly behind me. I jumped down on the floor again, and swung round my torch like a searchlight on a battleship at sea. There was no human presence in that chamber except myself. Of course, after my first moment of surprise, I realised that the laugh was but an echo of my own. The old walls of the old house were like sounding-boards. The[157] place resembled an ancient fiddle, still tremulous with the music that had been played on it. It was easy to understand how a superstitious population came to believe in its being haunted; in fact, I found by experiment that if one trod quickly along the uncovered floor of the corridor, and stopped suddenly, one seemed to hear the sound of steps still going on.

I now returned to the stair head, and examined the bare polished boards with most gratifying results. Amazed at having learnt so much in such a short time, I took from my pocket the paper on which the dying nobleman had attempted to write with his half-paralysed hand. The chief constable had given the document to me, and I sat on the stair head, spread it out on the floor and scrutinised it. It was all but meaningless. Apparently two words and the initial letter of a third had been attempted. Now, however grotesque a piece of writing may be, you can sometimes decipher it by holding it at various angles, as those puzzles are solved which remain a mystery when gazed at direct. By partially closing the eyes you frequently catch the intent, as in those pictures where a human figure is concealed among the outlines of trees and leaves. I held the paper at arm's length, and with the electric light gleaming upon it, examined it at all angles, with eyes wide open, and eyes half closed. At last, inclining it away from me, I saw that the words were intended to mean, 'The Secret'. The secret, of course, was what he was trying to impart, but he had apparently got no further than the title of it. Deeply absorbed in my investigation, I was never more startled in my life than to hear in the stillness down the corridor the gasped words, 'Oh, God!'

I swept round my light, and saw leaning against the wall, in an almost fainting condition, Sophia Brooks, her eyes staring like those of a demented person, and her face white as any ghost's could have been. Wrapped round her was a dressing-gown. I sprang to my feet.

'What are you doing there?' I cried.

'Oh, is that you, Monsieur Valmont? Thank God, thank God! I thought I was going insane. I saw a hand, a bodiless hand, holding a white sheet of paper.'

'The hand was far from bodiless, madam, for it belonged to me. But why are you here? It must be near midnight.'

'It is midnight,' answered the woman; 'I came here because I heard my husband call me three times distinctly, "Sophia, Sophia, Sophia!" just like that.'[158]

'Nonsense, madam,' I said, with an asperity I seldom use where the fair sex is concerned; but I began to see that this hysterical creature was going to be in the way during a research that called for coolness and calmness. I was sorry I had invited her to come. 'Nonsense, madam, you have been dreaming.'

'Indeed, Monsieur Valmont, I have not. I have not even been asleep, and I heard the words quite plainly. You must not think I am either mad or superstitious.'

I thought she was both, and next moment she gave further evidence of it, running suddenly forward, and clutching me by the arm.

'Listen! listen!' she whispered. 'You hear nothing?'

'Nonsense!' I cried again, almost roughly for my patience was at an end, and I wished to go on with my inquiry undisturbed.

'Hist, hist!' she whispered; 'listen!' holding up her finger. We both stood like statues, and suddenly I felt that curious creeping of the scalp which shows that even the most civilised among us have not yet eliminated superstitious fear. In the tense silence I heard someone slowly coming up the stair; I heard the halting step of a lame man. In the tension of the moment I had allowed the light to go out; now recovering myself, I pressed the spring, and waved its rays backward and forward down the stairway. The space was entirely empty, yet the hesitating footsteps approached us, up and up. I could almost have sworn on which step they last struck. At this interesting moment Sophia Brooks uttered a piercing shriek and collapsed into my arms, sending the electric torch rattling down the steps, and leaving us in impenetrable darkness. Really, I profess myself to be a gallant man, but there are situations which have a tendency to cause annoyance. I carried the limp creature cautiously down the stairs, fearing the fate of the butler, and at last got her into the dining-room, where I lit a candle, which gave a light less brilliant, perhaps, but more steady than my torch. I dashed some water in her face, and brought her to her senses, then uncorking another bottle of wine, I bade her drink a glassful, which she did.

'What was it?' she whispered.

'Madam, I do not know. Very possibly the club-footed ghost of Rantremly.'

'Do you believe in ghosts, Monsieur Valmont?'

'Last night I did not, but at this hour I believe in only one thing, which is that it is time everyone was asleep.'[159]

She rose to her feet at this, and with a tremulous little laugh apologised for her terror, but I assured her that for the moment there were two panic-stricken persons at the stair head. Taking the candle, and recovering my electric torch, which luckily was uninjured by its roll down the incline the butler had taken, I escorted the lady to the door of her room, and bade her good-night, or rather, good-morning.

The rising sun dissipated a slight veil of mist which hung over the park, and also dissolved, so far as I was concerned, the phantoms which my imagination had conjured up at midnight. It was about half-past ten when the chief constable arrived. I flatter myself I put some life into that unimaginative man before I was done with him.

'What made you think that the butler was mounting the stair when he fell?'

'He was going up with my lord's breakfast,' replied the chief.

'Then did it not occur to you that if such were the case, the silver pitcher would not have been empty, and, besides the broken dishes, there would have been the rolls, butter, toast, or what not, strewn about the floor?'

The chief constable opened his eyes.

'There was no one else for him to bring breakfast to,' he objected.

'That is where you are very much mistaken. Bring me the boots the butler wore.'

'He did not wear boots, sir. He wore a pair of cloth slippers.'

'Do you know where they are?'

'Yes; they are in the boot closet.'

'Very well, bring them out, examine their soles, and sticking in one of them you will find a short sliver of pointed oak.'

The constable, looking slightly more stupefied than ever, brought the slippers, and I heard him ejaculate: 'Well, I'm blowed!' as he approached me. He handed me the slippers soles upward, and there, as I have stated, was the fragment of oak, which I pulled out.

'Now, if you take this piece of oak to the top of the stair, you will see that it fits exactly a slight interstice at the edge of one of the planks. It is as well to keep one's eyes open, constable, when investigating a case like this.'

'Well, I'm blowed!' he said again, as we walked up the stair together.[160]

I showed him that the sliver taken from the slipper fitted exactly the interstice I had indicated.

'Now,' said I to him, 'the butler was not going up the stairs, but was coming down. When he fell headlong he must have made a fearful clatter. Shuffling along with his burden, his slipper was impaled by this sliver, and the butler's hands being full, he could not save himself, but went head foremost down the stair. The startling point, however, is the fact that he was not carrying my lord's breakfast to him, or taking it away from him, but that there is someone else in the castle for whom he was caterer. Who is that person?'

'I'm blessed if I know,' said the constable, 'but I think you are wrong there. He may not have been carrying up the breakfast, but he certainly was taking away the tray, as is shown by the empty dishes, which you have just a moment ago pointed out.'

'No, constable; when his lordship heard the crash, and sprang impulsively from his bed, he upset the little table on which had been placed his own tray; it shot over the oaken chest at the head of the bed, and if you look between it and the wall you will find tray, dishes, and the remnants of a breakfast.'

'Well, I'm blessed!' exclaimed the chief constable once again.

'The main point of all this,' I went on calmly, 'is not the disaster to the butler, nor even the shock to his lordship, but the fact that the tray the serving man carried brought food to a prisoner, who probably for six weeks has been without anything to eat.'

'Then,' said the constable, 'he is a dead man.'

'I find it easier,' said I, 'to believe in a living man than in a dead man's ghost. I think I heard his footsteps at midnight, and they seemed to me the footsteps of a person very nearly exhausted. Therefore, constable, I have awaited your arrival with some impatience. The words his late lordship endeavoured to write on the paper were "The Secret". I am sure that the hieroglyphics with which he ended his effort stood for the letter "R", and if he finished his sentence, it would have stood: "The secret room". Now, constable, it is a matter of legend that a secret room exists in this castle. Do you know where it is?'

'No one knows where the secret room is, or the way to enter it, except the Lords of Rantremly.'

'Well, I can assure you that the Lord of Rantremly who lives in London knows nothing about it. I have been up and about since[161] daylight, taking some rough measurements by stepping off