The Ashiel Mystery - Mrs. Charles Bryce (novels to improve english TXT) 📗

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league together; and, since no Englishman would be likely to wear boots

so excessively pointed at the toes, I did not hesitate to conclude that

they were both members of the Society of the Friends of Man, a conclusion

which became a certainty when I subsequently saw them together. This

discovery rather shook my belief in the guilt of young Ashiel, although I

had an inward conviction that in spite of everything he would turn out to

be the murderer. Still, I was after the Nihilist brotherhood as well, and

I determined if possible to put a spoke in the wheel of that association

when I had finished with the first and most important business.

 

"In the meantime, as I stood in the dark garden, watching the girl

ransack the private papers of her dead host, I felt no fear of her

finding what she was looking for. Lord Ashiel had convinced me that he

would hide his secret affairs more carefully than that; and, as I

expected, the time came when she gave up the search and departed the way

she had come. And that way, to my astonishment, was through the

grandfather's clock I had spent so much time in examining. No sooner had

she gone than I returned to the library, where I soon discovered that the

hidden entrance lay through the one part of the clock I had not

investigated. A trap in the floor could be opened by turning a small

knob, and I found beneath it the top of that flight of stairs which we

now know leads out to the door under the battlements. There were fifteen

steps in the flight, and my first idea was to examine the eleventh one of

them. I was rewarded by the discovery of a concealed drawer, which in its

turn disclosed a single sheet of paper.

 

"On it were written some words that I could not at first understand, but

of which finally, by good luck, and with your help, Lady Ruth, I was able

to decipher the meaning. They referred, in an obscure and veiled fashion,

to the great statue erected by Lord Ashiel in that glen of which his wife

had been so fond; where the beginning of the track used by the cattle

drivers and robbers of old, which is known as the Green Way, leads up

over the hills to the south. Guided by Lady Ruth, I found on the pedestal

of the statue a spring, which has only to be pressed when a door in one

end of the erection swings open, and discloses the hollow chamber in the

middle of the pedestal. At the far end of the cavity was the tin box, of

which the key lay temptingly on the top. I lost no time in springing

towards it, for here I felt sure was all I wanted to find, but as I

inserted the key in the lock the door slammed to behind me and I found

myself shut in the dark interior of the pedestal. Luckily Lady Ruth was

with me, and quickly let me out. I found that the door was controlled by

an elaborate piece of clockwork, which is set in motion by the pressure

upon the floor of the feet of any intruder, causing the door to shut

almost immediately behind him. But for you, Lady Ruth, I should be there

now. But the incident gave me an idea.

 

"I returned to the cottage with the papers, and found two telegrams. One

was from the analyst in Edinburgh to whom I had sent the grains of dust

collected in the gun-room, saying that among other ingredients lime was

very predominant. Now there is no lime in a peaty soil such as this, and

the gardener, to whom I talked of soils and manures, with an air of

wisdom which I hope deceived him, told me that the rose-bed outside the

library had received a strong dressing of it. There was also, said the

report, traces of steel and phosphates, of which there is a combination

known as basic slag, which the gardener had mentioned as being

occasionally used. I considered that it was tolerably certain, therefore,

that young Ashiel's rifle had been the weapon the imprint of whose butt

was still discernible on the bed when I went over it.

 

"The second telegram contained an answer from the colonel of his

regiment, to whom I had written asking if there was anything in the

record of Mark McConachan which would make it appear conceivable that he

was badly in need of money, and likely to go to extreme lengths to obtain

I had told the colonel as much about the case as I then knew, and

pointed out that the life or death of a man whom I had strong reason to

think innocent might depend upon his withholding nothing he might know

which could possibly bear upon the matter. The telegram I received in

reply was short but emphatic. 'Record very bad,' it said, 'am writing,'

This was enough for me. I went over to Crianan, saw the police, and

imparted my conclusions to the local inspector. I then proposed that a

little trap should be laid, into which, if he were not guilty and had no

intention of destroying his uncle's will, there was no reason to imagine

young Lord Ashiel would step. The inspector consented, and I returned,

with himself and two of his men, to Inverashiel. You know how successful

was the ruse I indulged in. I simply went to the young man, and told him

I had discovered the place where his uncle had put his will and other

valuable papers. I explained to him where it was and how the pedestal

could be opened, but I said nothing about its shutting again. Neither, I

am afraid, did I confess that I had already visited the statue and taken

away the documents. I said, on the contrary, that I preferred not to

touch the contents except in the presence of a magistrate, and suggested

he should send a note to General Tenby at Glenkliquart to ask him to come

over and be present when we removed the papers. This he did, and I then

left him after he had promised to join us at the cottage in a couple of

hours. I knew very well where we should find him at the end of those

hours; and, as I expected, he was caught by the clockwork machinery of

the pedestal door." 

CHAPTER XXIII

 

Sir Arthur Byrne took his adopted daughter back to Belgium on the

following day, since, although she would have to return to England to

give evidence against Mark in due course, some time must elapse before

his trial came on, and he judged it best to remove her as far as possible

from a place whose associations must always be painful.

 

Then ensued a series of weary long weeks for Juliet, in which she had no

trouble in convincing herself that David had forgotten her. She heard

nothing from him directly, though indirectly news of him filtered through

in letters they received from Lady Ruth and Gimblet. He had not, it

appeared, taken his cousin's guilt as proved so readily as Mark had

affected to do in his own case, refusing absolutely to hear a word of the

evidence against him, and maintaining that the whole thing was a mistake

as colossal as it was ghastly.

 

Only when he was persuaded unwillingly, but finally, that it was Juliet's

word which he must doubt if he were to continue to believe in Mark's

innocence, did he give in, and sorrowfully acknowledged himself

convinced.

 

All this Lady Ruth wrote to the girl, together with the fact that Sir

David was still in attendance on his mother, now happily recovering from

the nervous shock she had sustained.

 

From Gimblet, and from Messrs. Findlay & Ince, they heard that by the

will which the detective had found all Lord Ashiel's money and estate

were left to the adopted daughter of Sir Arthur Byrne, known hitherto as

Juliet Byrne, with a suggestion that she should provide for his nephews

to the extent she should think fit.

 

The will, though not technically worded, was perfectly good and legal,

and Juliet could have all the money she was likely to want for the

present by accepting the offer of an advance which the lawyers begged to

be allowed to make.

 

Gimblet wrote, further, that the list of names of members of the Nihilist

society entitled the "Friends of Man" which he had discovered at the same

time as the will and, contrary to Lord Ashiel's wishes, sent off by

registered post to Scotland Yard, had been communicated to the heads of

the police in Russia and the other European countries in which many of

those designated were now scattered, with the result that a large number

of arrests had been quietly made, and the society practically wiped out.

The foreign guest of the Crianan Hotel was still at large. The name of

Count Pretovsky was not on the list and nothing could be proved against

him. He had moved on to another hotel farther west, where he was lying

very low and continuing to practise the gentle art of the fisherman. A

member of the Russian secret police was on his way to Scotland, however,

and it was likely that Count Pretovsky would be recognized as one of the

persons on Lord Ashiel's list who were as yet unaccounted for.

 

Gimblet told them, besides, that he had succeeded in finding the widow of

the respectable plumber named Harsden, whom Julia had mentioned as being

her father. Mrs. Harsden corroborated the story, and said that it was

certainly the Countess Romaninov to whom Mrs. Meredith had consigned the

little girl they had given her.

 

Widely distributed advertisements also brought to light the nurses of the

two children; both the nurse who had taken Julia out to Russia and the

woman who had been with Mrs. Meredith when she took over the charge of

the McConachan baby, quickly claiming the reward that was offered for

their discovery. There was no longer any room for doubt that Juliet Byrne

was the same person as Juliana McConachan, or that Julia Romaninov had

begun life as little Judy Harsden.

 

All this scarcely sufficed to rouse Juliet from the apathy into which she

had fallen. To her it seemed incredible to think with what excitement and

delight such news would have filled her a few months earlier.

 

Now, since David plainly no longer cared for her, nothing mattered any

longer. Her depression was put down to the shock she had suffered, and

efforts were made to feed her up and coddle her, which she

ungratefully resented.

 

She had nothing in life to look forward to now, so she told herself,

except the horrible ordeal of the trial which she would be obliged

to attend.

 

It was in the dejection now becoming habitual to her, that she sat idly

one fine October morning in her little sitting-room at the consulate. She

had refused to play tennis with her stepsisters, not because she had

anything else to do, but because nothing was worth doing any more, and

because it was less trouble to sit and gaze mournfully through the open

window at the yellow leaves of the poplar in the garden, as from time to

time one of them fluttered down through the still air.

 

How unspeakably sad it was, she thought to herself, this slow falling of

the leaves, like the gradual but persistent loss of our hopes and

illusions, which eventually make each human dweller in this world of

change feel as bare and forlorn as the leafless winter trees.

 

On a branch a few feet away, a robin perched, and after looking at her

critically for a few moments lifted up its voice in cheerful song.

 

But she took no heed of it, and continued to brood over her sorrows.

 

All men were faithless. With them, it was out of sight, out of mind, and

she would assuredly never, never believe in one again. The best thing

she