A Search For A Secret Volume Ii Part 12

"That's true, governor," one of the men said; "no man can say that either of us ever did what was not right and straight-forward."

"And now, Mr. Brown," Mr. Billow said, "that I have brought you together, I shall leave you to talk things over. I don't want to know anything about the matter. The fewer that are in these things the better. I shall go out for half an hour to see some friends, and after that you will find me in the bar. Shall I order anything in for you?"

"Yes," Robert Gregory said; "tell them to send in a bottle of brandy, and a kettle with hot water."

Mr. Billow accordingly went out, and the two men instinctively finished the gla.s.ses before them, in order that they might be in readiness for the arrival of the fresh ingredients. While they were waiting for the coming of them, Robert Gregory had time to examine narrowly his a.s.sociates in his enterprise. The younger, although there was not much difference in their ages, was a man of from thirty to thirty-five--a little active man. The lower part of his face was, contrary to usual custom, the better. He had a well-shaped mouth and chin, with a good-natured smile upon his lips; but his eyes were sharp and watchful, with a restless, furtive look about them, and his hair was cut quite short, which gave him an unpleasant jail-bird appearance. He was a man of some education and considerable natural abilities. He was known among his comrades by the soubriquet of The Schoolmaster. The other was a much bigger and more powerful man; a heavy, beetle-browed, high-cheeked ruffian, with a flat nose, and thick, coa.r.s.e lips. He was a much more common and lower scoundrel than The Schoolmaster; but they usually worked together: one was the head and the other the hand. Both were expert house-breakers, and had pa.s.sed a considerable portion of their time in prison. When the bottle of spirits was brought, the kettle placed upon the fire, the gla.s.ses filled, and they were again alone, Robert Gregory began,--

"I suppose you know what I want you for?"

"Thereabout," The Schoolmaster said. "The old one told us all about it.

The long and short of it is, two old women have hid a paper, which you want, and our game is to go in and frighten one of them into telling where it is hid."

"Yes, that is about it," Robert answered.

"You know the house well?"

"I have only been in it once, but it has been so exactly described to me that I could find the right room with my eyes shut. She is a timid old woman, and I think a pistol pointed at her head will get the secret out of her at once."

"I don't know," the schoolmaster said, "some of these old women are uncommon cantankerous and obstinate. Suppose she should not, what then?"

"She must," Gregory said, with a deep oath. "I must have the will; she shall tell where it is."

"You see, master, if she is hurt we shall get hauled up for it, even if you do get the paper."

"She is liable to imprisonment," Robert said, "for hiding it, so she would hardly dare to take steps against us; but if she did, you are safe enough. They may suspect me, they may prove it against me, but I don't care even if I am sent across the sea for it. The property would be my wife's, and she would come out to me, and in a year or two I should get a ticket-of-leave. I have thought it all over, and am ready to risk it, and you are all right enough."

"And the pay is ten pounds each down, and two hundred pounds each if we get it?"

Robert nodded.

"We are ready to do it, then," The Schoolmaster said; "there's my hand on it;" and the two men shook hands with Robert Gregory on the bargain.

"And now let us talk it over. Of course she must be gagged at once, and the pistol tried first. If that does not do--and old women are very obstinate--I should say a piece of whipcord round her arm, with a stick through it, and twisted pretty sharply, would get a secret out of any one that ever lived."

"I don't wish to hurt the old woman if I can help it," Gregory said, moodily; "besides, it would make it so much the worse for me afterwards.

But the will I must have, and if she brings it upon herself by her cursed obstinacy, it is her fault, not mine."

They then went into a number of details on the subject, and arranged everything, and it was settled that they should start on that day week; but that if any delay were necessary, that Robert should call at the same place on the evening before the start. If they heard nothing from him, they were to meet at the railway station at nine o'clock on the morning named. Robert then took leave of them, and returned home with Mr. Billow.

This delay for a week was because Sophy was daily expecting to be confined, and Robert was determined to wait till that was over. However, on the very next day a son was born to Sophy, who, as she received it, thanked G.o.d that now at least she had a comfort who would be always with her, and which nothing but death could take away. She felt that her days would be no longer long and joyless, for she would have a true pleasure--something she could constantly pet and care for.

CHAPTER XI.

THE COUP DE MAIN.

It was two o'clock in the morning; Miss Harmer was at her devotions.

Half her nights were so spent. Not that she felt any more need for prayer than she had formerly done, nor that she had one moment's remorse or compunction concerning the course she had adopted; in that respect she was in her own mind perfectly justified. He whom she had looked up to for so many years for counsel and advice, he who to her represented the Church, had enjoined her to act as she had done, had a.s.sured her that she was so acting for the good of the Church, and that its blessing and her eternal happiness were secured by the deed; and she did not for an instant doubt him. The only moment that she had wavered, the only time she had ever questioned whether she was doing right, was when Polly Ashleigh had so vividly described the chamber, and when it had seemed to her that the secret was in the course of being revealed by dreams. She thought it altogether natural and right that the estate of her Catholic ancestors--the estate which her elder brother had actually devised to the Church, and which had been only diverted from that destination by what she considered an actual interposition of the evil one himself--should go as they had intended. So that she never questioned in her own mind the right or justice of the course she had taken.

Miss Harmer rose at night to pray, simply because she had been taught in the stern discipline of the convent in which she had been brought up and moulded to what she was, that it was right to pa.s.s a part of the night in prayer, and she had never given up the custom. And, indeed, it was not merely from the force of custom that she made her devotions; for she prayed, and prayed earnestly, and with all her strength, prayed for the increase and triumph of the Church, that all nations and people might be brought into its fold, and that G.o.d would show forth His might and power upon its enemies. On this night she was more wakeful than usual, for the wind was blowing strongly round the old walls of Harmer Place, and sounded with a deep roar in its great chimneys. This was always pleasant music to her; for she, like her dead brothers, loved the roar and battle of the elements, and the fierce pa.s.sionate spirit within her seemed to swell and find utterance in the burst of the storm.

Suddenly she paused in the midst of her devotions; for amidst the roar and shriek of the wind she thought she heard the wild cry of a person in distress. She listened awhile; there was no repet.i.tion of the sound, and again she knelt, and tried to continue her prayers; but tried in vain: she could not divest herself of the idea that it was a human cry, and she again rose to her feet. Stories she had heard of burglaries and robbers came across her. She knew that there was a good deal of valuable plate in the house; and then the thought, for the first time, occurred to her, that perhaps it was her sister's voice that she had heard. She did not hesitate an instant now, but went to a table placed against the bed on which lay two pistols: curious articles to be found in a lady's bedroom, and that lady more than seventy years old. But Miss Harmer was prepared for an emergency like this. For the last year Father Eustace had been warning her of the danger of it; not perhaps that he had any idea that a burglary would actually be attempted, but he wished to be resident in the house, and to this, with her characteristic obstinacy when she had once made up her mind to anything, she refused to a.s.sent.

The Harmers' chaplains she said never had been resident; there was a house in the village belonging to them, which they had built specially for their chaplains to reside in, and which they had so inhabited for more than a hundred years, and she did not see why there should be any change now. Father Eustace had urged that the sisters slept in a part of the building far removed from the domestics, and that if the house were entered by burglars they might not be heard even if they screamed ever so loud.

"I am not likely to scream, although I am an old woman," Miss Harmer had answered grimly; and the only result of Father Eustace's warning had been, that Miss Harmer had ordered a brace of her brother's pistols to be cleaned and loaded, and placed on the table at her bedside; and it was the duty of the gardener to discharge and reload these pistols every other morning, so that they might be in perfect order if required.

Miss Harmer's pistols were rather a joke among the servants; and yet they all agreed that if the time ever did come when she would be called upon to use them, the stern old woman would not hesitate or flinch for a moment in so doing.

So with a pistol in one hand, and a candle in the other, Miss Harmer went out of her door and along the short corridor which led to her sister's bedroom--a strange gaunt figure, in a long white dress covering her head--in fact a nun's attire, which she put on when she prayed at night, and from underneath which the stiff white frills of her cap bristled out strangely. She walked deliberately along, for she believed that she was only deceiving herself, and that the cry which she had thought she heard was only a wilder gust of wind among the trees. When she reached her sister's door, she paused and listened. Then she started back, for within she could hear low murmured words in men's voices, and then a strange stifled cry: she hesitated but for one moment, to deliberate whether she should go back to fetch the other pistol--then that strange cry came up again, and she threw open the door and entered.

She was prepared for something, but for nothing so terrible as met her eyes. The room was lighted by the two candles which still burned in a little oratory at one end of the room before a figure of the Virgin; a chair lay overturned near it, and it was evident that Angela Harmer had, like her sister, been engaged at her devotions when her a.s.sailants had entered the room, and when she had given that one loud cry which had at last brought her sister to her a.s.sistance. But all this Cecilia Harmer did not notice then, her eyes were fixed on the group in the middle of the room.

There, in a chair, her sister was sitting, a man, standing behind it, held her there; another was leaning over her, doing something--what her sister could not see; a third stood near her, seemingly giving directions; all had black masks over their faces.

Angela Harmer was a pitiful sight: her white nun's dress was all torn and disarranged; her cap was gone; her thin grey hair hung down her shoulders; her head and figure were dripping wet--she having fainted from pain and terror, and having been evidently recovered by pouring the contents of the water-jug over her, for the empty jug lay on the ground at her feet. Her face was deadly pale with a ghastly expression of terror and suffering, made even more horrible to see, by a red handkerchief which one of the ruffians had stuffed into her mouth as a gag.

It was a dreadful sight, and Miss Harmer gave a loud cry when she saw it. She rushed forward to her sister's aid, discharging as she did so, almost without knowing it, her pistol at the man nearest to her. As she fired, there was a volley of deep oaths and fierce exclamations; the one who was holding Angela Harmer, with a jerk sent the chair in which she was sitting backwards, bringing her head with fearful force against the floor. There was a rush to the door; one of the robbers struck Cecilia Harmer a violent blow on the head with the b.u.t.t end of a heavy pistol which he held in his hand, stretching her insensible on the ground; and then the three men rushed downstairs, and through the hall window, by which they had entered; across the grounds--but more slowly now, for one was lagging behind--and out into the road.

There in the lane a horse and light cart were standing, the horse tied up to a gate. Two of them jumped at once into the cart. "Jump up, mate!"

the shorter of the two said, and with the exception of fierce oaths of disappointment, it was the first word which had been spoken since Cecilia Harmer had entered the room. "Jump up, mate! we have no time to lose."

"I can't," the man said; "that she-devil has done for me."

"You don't say that," the other said, getting out of the cart again. "I thought she had touched you by the way you walked, but I fancied it was a mere scratch. Where is it?"

"Through the body," the man said, speaking with difficulty now, for it was only by the exercise of almost superhuman determination that he had succeeded in keeping up with the others.

"Well, you are a good plucked 'un, mate," the man said, admiringly.

"Here, Bill, lend me a hand to get him into the cart."

The other man got down, and the two lifted their almost insensible companion into the cart, laid him as tenderly as they could in the straw at the bottom, and then, jumping in themselves, drove off down the hill as fast as the horse could gallop. This speed they kept up until they were close to Canterbury; and then they slackened it, and drove quietly through the town, not to excite the suspicions of such policemen as they pa.s.sed in the streets. When clear of the town, they again put the horse to his fullest speed. Once, after going three or four miles, they drew up, where a little stream ran under the road. Here one of them fetched some water, and sprinkled it on the face of the wounded man, who was now insensible. They then poured some spirits, from a flask one of them carried, between his lips, and he presently opened his eyes and looked round.

"Cheer up, mate; you will do yet," one said, in a tone of rough kindness.

The wounded man shook his head.

"Yes, yes, you will soon be all right again, and we shan't drive so fast now we are quite safe. There, let's have a look at your wound."

They found that, as he had said, he was. .h.i.t in the body. The wound had almost ceased bleeding now, and there was nothing to be done for it.

With an ominous shake of the head, they remounted the cart, and drove gently on.

"This is a bad job, Bill."

"A ---- bad job," the other said, with an oath; "about as bad as I ever had a hand in. Who would have thought that old cat would have held out against that? I know I could not have done it."

"No, nor I either. I would have split on my own mother before I could have stood that. I am afraid it is all up with him," and he motioned towards the man at the bottom of the cart.

The other nodded.