The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective - Catherine Louisa Pirkis (read aloud books .TXT) 📗

and I hope that it may be made a profitable one also. Tell me, are you saving up money to get married?”

Lena, on her knees unstrapping the portmanteau, started and looked up.

“How does madame know that?” she asked, Loveday pointed to the cameo ring on her third finger. “I only guessed at such a possibility,” she answered. “Well, now, Lena, I am going to make you an offer. I will give you fifty pounds—fifty, remember, in English gold—if you will procure for me certain information that I require in the prosecution of my work here.”

The sullen look on Lena’s face deepened.

“I am a servant of the house,” she answered, bending lower over the portmanteau; “I do not sell its secrets even for English gold.”

“But it is not the secrets of your master’s house I am wanting to buy—no, nor anybody else’s secrets; I only want you to procure for me certain information that I could easily have procured for myself if I had been a little sooner on the scene. And the information I want relates to no one inside the house, but some one outside of it—Mr. Gordon Cleeve.”

The sullen look on Lena’s face gave place to one of intense, unutterable relief.

“Mr. Gordon Cleeve!” she repeated. “Oh-h, for fifty pounds, I will undertake to bring madame a good deal of information about him; I know some of the servants in Sir Gordon’s house. I know, too, the mother of Mr. Cleeve’s valet who has started with him on his journey round the world.”

“Good. So, then, it is a bargain. Now, Lena, tell me truly, is this Mr. Cleeve a great favourite with you?”

“With me! Ah, the good God forbid, madame! I never liked him; I used to say to Miss René when I brought her his flowers and his notes: ‘Have nothing to do with him, he is cruel—bad at heart.’”

“Ah, yes; I read all that in your face when I mentioned his name. Now what I want you first and foremost to do for me is to find out how this young man spent the last day that he was at Langford. I want you to bring me a report of his doings—as exact a report as possible—on the 18th of this month.”

“I will do my best, madame.”

“Very good. Now, there is something else. Would you be greatly surprised if I told you that the young man did not sail in the Buckingham from Brindisi as is generally supposed?”

“Madame! Inspector Ramsay said he had ascertained beyond a doubt that Mr. Cleeve went on board the Buckingham at Brindisi!”

“Ah, to go on board is one thing; to sail is another! Now, listen, Lena, very carefully to what I am going to say. I am expecting daily to receive some most important information respecting this gentleman’s movements, and I may want some one to set off at a minute’s notice for Paris, perhaps; or, perhaps, Florence or Naples, to verify that information: would you do this for me?—of course, I would supply you with money and full details as to your journey.”

A flush of pleasure passed over Lena’s face.

“Yes, madame,” she answered; “if you could get my master’s permission for me to go.”

“I will undertake to do so.” She pondered a moment, then added a little tentatively, and closely watching Lena’s face as she asked the question, “I suppose Miss Golding resembled her mother in appearance—I do not see any likeness between her portrait and her father.”

Lena’s sullenness and stateliness had vanished together now, and once upon the topic of her nursling she was the warm-hearted, enthusiastic Italian woman once more. She became voluble in her description of her dear Miss René, her beauty, her fascinating ways, which she traced entirely to the Italian blood that flowed in her veins; and anecdote after anecdote she related of the happy time when they lived among the lakes and mountains of her native land.

The room grew dark and darker, while she gossiped apace, and presently the dressing-bell clanged through the house.

“Light the candles now,” said Loveday, rising from her seat beside the fire; “draw down the blinds and shut out that dreary autumn scene, it sets me shivering!”

It might well do so. The black clouds had fulfilled their threat, and rain was now dashing in torrents against the panes. A tall sycamore, immediately outside the window, creaked and groaned dismally in response to the wind that came whistling round the corner of the house, and between the swaying and all but leafless elms Loveday could catch a glimpse of the grey, winding trout stream, swollen now to its limits and threatening to overflow its banks.

Dinner that night was in keeping with the gloom that overhung the house within and without; although the telegram from Paris had seemed to let in a ray of hope, Mr. Golding was evidently afraid to put much trust in it.

“As Mrs. Greenhow says, ‘we have had so many disappointments,’” he said sadly, as he took his place at table. “So many false clues—false scents started. Ramsay has at once put himself in communication with the police at Boulogne and Calais, as well as at Dover and Folkestone. We can only pray that something may come of it!”

“And dear Lord Guilleroy,” chimed in Mrs. Greenhow, in her soft, purring voice, “has started for Paris immediately. The young man has such a vast amount of energy, and thinks he can do the work of the police better than they can do it for themselves.”

“That’s hardly a fair way of putting it, Clare,” interrupted Mr. Golding irritably; “he is working heart and soul with the police, and thinks it advisable that some one representing me should be in Paris, in case an emergency should arise; also he wants himself to question Dulau respecting my daughter’s sudden appearance and disappearance in the Paris streets. Guilleroy,” here he turned to Loveday, “is devotedly attached to my daughter, and—why, Dryad, what’s the matter, old man? down, down! Don’t growl and whine in that miserable fashion.”

He had broken off to address these words to the Newfoundland, who, until that moment, had been comfortably stretched on the hearth-rug before the fire, but who now had suddenly started to his feet with ears erect, and given a prolonged growl, that ended in something akin to a whine.

“It may be a fox trotting past the window,” said Mrs. Greenhow, whipping at the dog with her lace handkerchief. But Dryad was not to be so easily subdued. With his nose to the ground now he was sniffing uneasily at and around the heavy curtains that half draped the long French windows of the room.

“Something has evidently disturbed him. Why not let him out into the garden?” said Loveday. And Mr. Golding, with a “Hey, Dryad, go find!” unfastened the window and let the dog out into the windy darkness.

Dinner was a short meal that night. It was easy to see that it was only by a strong effort of will that Mr. Golding kept his place at table, and made even a pretence of eating.

At the close of the meal Loveday asked for a quiet corner, in which to write some business letters, and was shown into the library by Mr. Golding.

“You’ll find all you require here, I think,” he said, with something of a sigh, as he placed a chair for her at a lady’s davenport. “This was René‘s favourite corner, and here are the last flowers she gathered—dead, all dead, but I will not have them touched!” He broke off abruptly, set down the vase of dead asters which he had taken in his hand, and quitted the room, leaving Loveday to the use of René‘s pen, ink, paper, and blotting-pad.

Loveday soon became absorbed in her business letters. Time flew swiftly, and it was not until a clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour—ten o’clock—that she gave a thought as to what might be the hour for retiring at the Hall.

Something else beside the striking of the clock almost simultaneously caught her ear—the whining and scratching of a dog at one of the windows. These, like those of the dining-room, opened as doors into an outside verandah. They were, however, closely shuttered, and Loveday had to ring for a servant to undo the patent fastener.

So soon as the window was opened Dryad rushed into the room, plastered with mud, and dripping with water from every hair.

“He must have been in the stream,” said the footman, trying to collar the dog and lead him out of the room.

“Stop! one moment!” cried Loveday, for her eye had caught sight of something hanging in shreds between the dog’s teeth. She bent over him, patting and soothing him, and contrived to disentangle those shreds, which a closer examination proved to be a few tattered fragments of dark blue serge.

“Is your letter-writing nearly ended, Miss Brooke?” asked Mr. Golding, at that moment entering the room.

For reply, Loveday held up the shreds of blue serge. His face grew ashen white; he needed no explanation; those shreds and the dripping dog seemed to tell their own tale.

“Great heavens!” he cried, “why did I not follow the dog out! There must be a search at once. Get men, lanterns, ropes, a ladder—the dog, too, will be of use.”

A terrible energy took possession of him. “Find, Dryad, find!” he shouted to the dog, and then, hatless and thin-shoed as he was, he rushed out into the darkness with Dryad at his heels.

In less than five minutes afterwards the whole of the men-servants of the house, with lanterns, ropes, and a ladder long enough to span the stream, had followed him. The wind had fallen, the rain had ceased now, and a watery half-moon was struggling through the thin, flying clouds. Loveday and Mrs. Greenhow, standing beneath the verandah, watched the men disappear in the direction of the trout stream, whither Dryad had led the way. From time to time shouts came to them, through the night stillness, of “This way!” “No, here!” together with Dryad’s sharp bark and the occasional distant flash of a bull’s-eye lantern. It was not until nearly half an hour afterwards that one of the men came running back to the house with a solemn white face and a pitiful tale. He wanted something that would serve for a stretcher, he said in a subdued tone—the two-fold oak screen in the hall would do—and please, into which room was “it” to be brought?—

On the following evening Mr. Dyer received a lengthy dispatch from Miss Brooke, which ran as follows:—

“LANGFORD HALL.

“This is to supplement my telegram of an hour back, telling you of the finding of Miss Golding’s body in the stream that runs through her father’s grounds. Mr. Golding has himself identified the body, and has now utterly collapsed. At the present moment it seems rather doubtful whether he will be in a fit state to give evidence at the inquest, which will be held to-morrow. Miss Golding appears to be dressed as she was when she left home, with this notable exception—the marquise ring has disappeared from the third finger of her left hand, and in its stead she wears a plain gold wedding-ring. Now this is a remarkable circumstance, and strikes a strange keynote to my mind. I am writing hurriedly, and can only give you the most important points in this very singular case. The maid, Lena, a reserved, self-contained woman, gave way to a passion of grief when the young lady’s body was brought in and laid upon her own bed. She insisted on performing all the last sad offices for the dead, however, in spite of her grief, and is now, I am glad to say, calmer and capable of