A Changed Heart Part 37

"It will make you sleep, dear Mrs. Leroy," the girl said, "and you will be as well as ever to-morrow."

"I hope so, Natty.--Is that thunder?"

"Yes; it is going to be a stormy night. Is there anything else I can do for you before I go?"

"Yes; turn down that lamp; I don't like so much light."

A little kerosene lamp burned on the table. Nathalie lowered the light, and turned to go.

"Good-night," she said, "I will come in once or twice through the night to see how you are. You are sure you do not want anything more?"

The sleeping-potion was already taking effect. The old woman drowsily opened her eyes:

"No," she said; "nothing else. You're a good girl, Natty, and it was wrong to do it; but I'll make it all right, Natty; I'll make it all right!"

They were the last words she ever spoke! Nathalie wondered what she meant, as she went into her own room, and lit her lamp.

The storm without was raging fast and furious; the blaze of the lightning filled the room with a lurid blue glare, the dull and ceaseless roll of the thunder was appalling, and the rain lashed the windows in torrents.

"Heaven help any poor wanderer exposed to such a tempest!" Nathalie thought.

If she had only known of him who cowered under the spruce bushes on Redmon road, waiting for it to subside.

Nathalie brushed out her long, shining, showering curls, bathed her face, and said her prayers. The furious and short-lived tempest had raged itself out by that time, and she blew out the lamp and sat down by the window--it was too hot to go to bed. She made a pile of the pillows, and leaned her head against them where she sat; and, with the rushing rain for her lullaby, fell asleep.

What was that? She awoke with a start. She knew she had not slept long, but out of a disturbed dream some noise awoke her--a sharp metallic sound. Her room was weirdly lighted by the faint rays of the wan and spectral moon, and with her heart beating thick and fast she listened.

The old house was full of rats--she could hear them scampering over her head, under her feet, and between the part.i.tions. It was this noise that had awoke her; the trees were writhing and groaning in the heavy wind, and tossing their green arms wildly, as if in some dryad agony--perhaps it was that. She listened, but save these noises all was still. Yes, it was the rats, Nathalie thought, and settling back among the pillows once more, she fell into another light slumber.

No, Nathalie. Neither the wailing wind, nor the surging trees, nor the scurrying rats made the noise you heard. In the corridor outside your room a tall, dark figure, with a black c.r.a.pe mask on its face, is standing. The figure wears a long overcoat and a slouched hat, and it is fitting a skeleton key in the lock of Mrs. Leroy's door; for Nathalie has locked that door. Like some dark and evil spirit of the night, it glides into the chamber; the lamp on the table burns low, and the old woman sleeps heavily. Softly it steals across the room, lays hold of the j.a.panned tin box, tries key after key from a bunch it carries, and at last succeeds. The box is open--the treasure is found.

Fifty--fifty--fifty! they are all fifties--fifty-pound notes on good and sound Speckport banks. The eyes behind the mask glitter--the eager hands are thrusting the huge rolls into the deep pockets of the overcoat. But he drops the last roll and stops in his work aghast, for there is an awful sound from the bed. It is not a scream, it is not a cry; but something more awful than ever came from the throat of woman in all the history of woman's agony. It is like the death-rattle--hoa.r.s.e and horrible. He turns and sees the old woman sitting up in bed, one flickering finger pointing at him, the face convulsed and livid, the lips purple and foaming, the eyes starting. One cry, and all for which he has risked so much will be lost! He is by the bedside like a flash; he has seized one of the pillows, and hurled her back; he has grasped her by the throat with one-powerful hand, while with the other he holds the pillow over her face. Fear and fury distort his own--could you see it behind the mask--and his teeth are set, and his eyeb.a.l.l.s strained.

There is a struggle, a convulsive throe, another awful rattle in the throat, and then he sees the limbs relax, and the palpitating throat grow still. He need fear no cry now; no sound will ever again come from those aged lips; the loss or gain of all the treasures in the wide earth will never disturb her more. He loosens his grasp, removes the pillow, and the lamplight falls on a horrible sight. He turns away with a shudder from that blackened and convulsed visage, from the starting eyes forced out of their sockets, and from the blood which trickles in a slow, dreadful stream between purple lips. He dare not stop to look or think what he has done; he thrusts the last roll into his pocket and flies from the room. He is so furiously impatient now to get away from that horrible thing on the bed, that he forgets caution. He flies down the stairs, scarcely knowing that the noise he makes echoes from cellar to attic of the silent old house. He takes the wrong turning, and swears a furious oath, to find himself at a door instead of the window by which he had entered. He hears a shriek, too; and, mad with terror, tears off his mask and turns down another pa.s.sage. Right at last! this is the window! He leaps through it--he is out in the pale moonlight, tearing through the trees like a madman. He has gained the road--a horse stands tied to a tree, and he leaps on his back, drives his spurs furiously into the beast's side, and is off like the wind. In ten minutes, at this rate, he will be in Speckport, and safe.

The apartment in which Midge sought sleep after the fatigues of the day, was the kitchen, and was on the first floor, directly under Lady Leroy's room. She had quartered Rob Nettleby in the adjoining apartment--a big, draughty place, where the rats held grand carnival all the year round.

Midge, like all honest folks in her station, who have plenty of hard work, and employ their hands more than their heads, was a good sleeper.

But on this stormy August night Midge was destined to realize some of the miseries of wakefulness. She had not dared to go to bed during the first fury of the storm; for Midge was scared beyond everything by lightning and thunder; but after that had subsided, she had ventured to unrobe and retire. But Midge could not sleep. Whether it was the heat, or that the tempest had made her nervous, or why or wherefore, Midge could never afterward tell; but she tossed from side to side, and listened to the didoes of the rats, and the whistling of the wind about the old house, and the ghostly moonlight shimmering down through the fluttering leaves of the trees, and groaned and fidgeted, and felt just as miserable as lying awake when one wants to go asleep, can make any one feel. There were all sorts of strange and weird noises and echoes in the lonely old house; so when Midge fancied she heard one of the back windows softly opened, and something on the stairs, she set it down to the wind and the rats, as Nathalie had done. She heard the clock overhead in Lady Leroy's room--the only timepiece in the house--strike eleven, and thought it had come very soon; for it hardly seemed fifteen minutes since it had struck ten. But she set this down to her fidgetiness, too; for how was she to know that the black shadow in the room above had moved the hands on the dial-plate before quitting? But that other noise! this is no imagination, surely. Midge starts up with a gasping cry of affright. A man's step is on the stairs--a man's hurried tread is in the hall--she hears a smothered oath--hears him turn and rush past her door--hears a leap--and then all is still. The momentary spell that has made Midge speechless is broken. She springs to her feet--yes, springs, for Midge forgets she is short and fat and given to waddling, in her terror, throws on the red flannel undergarment you wot of, and rushes out of her room and up-stairs, shrieking like mad. She cannot conceive what is the matter, or where the danger lies, but she bursts into Nathalie's room first. Nathalie, aroused by the wild screams from a deep sleep, starts up with a bewildered face. Midge sees she is safe, and still uttering the most appalling yells, flies to the next, to Lady Leroy's room, Nathalie after her; and Mr. Rob Nettleby, with an alarmed countenance and in a state of easy undress, making his toilet as he comes, brings up the rear.

"What is it? Is Mrs. Leroy worse?" he asked, staring at the shrieking Midge.

"There's been somebody here--robbing and murdering the house!

Ah--h--h----!"

The shriek with which Midge recoiled was echoed this time by Nathalie.

They had entered the fatal room; the lamp still burned on the table, and its light fell full on the livid and purple face of the dead woman.

Dead! Yes, there could be no doubt. Murdered! Yes, for there stood the open and rifled box which had held the money.

"She's killed, Rob Nettleby! She's murdered!" Midge cried, rushing headlong from the room; "but he can't have got far. I heard him going out. Come!"

She was down the stairs with wonderful speed, followed by the horrified Nettleby. Midge unlocked and flung open the hall-door, and rushed in the same headlong way out. There was a man under the trees, and he was running. With the spring of a tigress Midge was upon him, her hands clutching his collar, and her dreadful yell of "Murder!" piercing the stillness of the night. The grasp of those powerful hands was not to be easily shaken off, and Rob Nettleby laid hold of him on the other side.

Their prisoner made no resistance; he was too utterly taken by surprise to do other than stand and stare at them both.

"You villain! you robber! you murderer!" screamed Midge, giving him a furious shake. "You'll hang for this night's work, if anybody hung yet!

Hold him fast, Rob, while I go and send your brother to Speckport after the p'lice."

The address broke the spell that held their captive quiet. Indignantly endeavoring to shake off the hands that held him, he angrily demanded what they meant.

Rob Nettleby, with a shout of astonishment, released his hold--he had recognized the voice. Midge, too, loosed her grasp, and backed a step or two, and Charley Marsh, stepping from under the shadow of the trees into the moonlight, repeated his question with some asperity.

"Charley!" Midge gasped, more horror-stricken by the recognition than she had been by the murder.

"What the deuce is the matter, Nettleby?" Charley demanded, impatiently.

"What is all this row about?"

"There has been a murder done," said the young man, so confounded by the discovery as to be scarcely able to speak.

"Mrs. Leroy has been murdered!"

Charley recoiled with a white face.

"Murdered! Good heavens! When? By whom?"

"To-night--just now."

He did not answer the last query--he thought it superfluous. To his mind, Charley Marsh was as good as caught in the act.

"And Nathalie! Where is she? Is she safe?"

"She is in Lady Leroy's room."

Charley only waited for the answer, and made a precipitate rush for the house. The other two followed, neither daring to look at the other or speak--followed him up-stairs and into the chamber of the tragedy. All was as it had been. The ghastly and discolored face of the murdered woman was there, even the pillow, horrible to look at. But going partly across a chair as she had fallen, all her golden hair tossed about in loose disorder, and her face white, and fixed, and cold as marble, Nathalie lay near the center of the room. There, by herself, where the dreadful sight had first struck her, she had fainted entirely away.

CHAPTER XVII.

FOUND GUILTY.

Mr. Val Blake sat in his office, in that inner room sacred to his privacy. He sat at that littered table, writing and scissoring, for they went to press that day, and the editor of the Speckport Spouter was over head-and-ears in work. He had just completed an item and was slowly reperusing it. It begins in a startling manner enough:

"Mysterious murder! The night before last a most shocking tragedy occurred at Redmon House, being no less than the robbery and murder of a lady well known in our town, Mrs. Leroy. The deceased owned and occupied the house, together with her ward, Miss Nathalie Marsh, and one female servant. About eleven o'clock on the night of the 15th, this servant was alarmed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and aroused a young man, Robert Nettleby, who chanced to be staying in the house, and they proceeded together to discover the cause. On entering the chamber occupied by Mrs. Leroy, they found her dead; the protruding tongue and eyeb.a.l.l.s, and purple visage, telling plainly her death had been caused by strangulation. A box, containing a large sum of money, eight thousand pounds, we believe, was found broken open and rifled. The a.s.sa.s.sin escaped, and no clue to him has as yet been discovered, but we trust the inquest which is to be held on the premises this morning will throw some light on the subject. It is a most inhuman affair, and, we are sure, no effort will be wanting on the part of the officials concerned to root out the heart of the matter, and punish the barbarous perpetrator as he deserves!"

Mr. Blake read this last neatly-rounded period with a complacent face, and then pulled out his watch.

"Ten o'clock!" he muttered, "and the inquest commences in half an hour.

Busy or not busy, I must be present."