Castle Craneycrow Part 32

"Why didn't you spring the lock when you came down? This is a pretty pa.s.s, I must say," she said, her voice still shaky, her logic abnormal.

"I like that! Were you any better off before I came than you are now? How were you going to get out, may I ask?" he demanded, coolly seating himself on the top step. She stood leaning against the wooden door, the diplomatic lantern between them.

"I was going out by another way," she said, shortly, but a shudder gave the lie to the declaration.

"Do you know where that hidden pa.s.sage leads to?" he asked, looking up into her face. She was brushing cobwebs from her dress.

"To a cave near the old church," she replied, triumphantly.

"Blissful ignorance!" he laughed. "It doesn't lead anywhere as it now exists. You see, there was a cave-in a few decades ago--"

"Is that the one that caved in?" she cried, in dismay.

"So Saxondale tells me."

"And--and how did the--the--how did that awful thing get in there?"

she asked, a new awe coming over her.

"Well, that's hard to tell. Bob says the door has never been opened, to his knowledge. n.o.body knows the secret combination, or whatever you call it. The chances are that the poor fellow whose bones we saw got locked in there and couldn't get out. So he died. That's what might have happened to you, you know."

"Oh, you brute! How can you suggest such a thing?" she cried, and she longed to sit close beside him, even though he was her most detested enemy.

"Oh, I would have saved you from that fate, never fear."

"But you could not have known that I was inside the pa.s.sage."

"Do you suppose I came down here on a pleasure trip?"

"You--you don't mean that you knew I was here?"

"Certainly; it is why I came to this blessed spot. It is my duty to see that no harm comes to you, Dorothy."

"I prefer to be called Miss Garrison," coldly.

"If you had been merely Miss Garrison to me, you'd be off on a bridal tour with Ravorelli at this moment, instead of enjoying a rather unusual tete-a-tete with me. Seriously, Dorothy, you will be wise if you submit to the inevitable until fate brings a change of its own accord. You are brave and determined, I know, and I love you more than ever for this daring attempt to get out of Craneycrow, but you don't know what it might have brought you to. Good heavens, no one knows what dangers lie in those awful pa.s.sages. They have not been used in a hundred years. Think of what you were risking. Don't, for your own sake, try anything so uncertain again. I knew you were down here, but no one else knows. How you opened that secret door, I do not know, but we both know what happened to one other poor wretch who solved the mystery."

"I didn't solve it, really I didn't. I don't know how it happened.

It just opened, that's all, and then I--oh, it was terrible!" She covered her eyes with her hands and he leaped to his feet.

"Don't think about it, Dorothy. It was enough to frighten you to death. Gad, I should have gone mad had I been in your place." He put his arm about her shoulder, and for a moment she offered no resistance. Then she remembered who and what he was and imperiously lifted angry eyes to his.

"The skeleton may have been a gentleman in his day, Mr. Quentin.

Even now, as I think of him in horror, he could not be as detestable as you. Open this door, sir!" she said, her voice quivering with indignation.

"I wish I could--Dorothy, you don't believe that I have the power to open this door and am blackguard enough to keep you here? My G.o.d, what do you think I am?" he cried, drawing away from her.

"Open this door!" she commanded, resolutely. He looked long and earnestly into her unflinching eyes, and his heart chilled as if ice had clogged the blood.

"I cannot open it," he said at last. With not another word he sat down again at her feet, and, for what seemed like an age, neither spoke. The lantern sputtered warningly, but they did not know the light of its life was ebbing away. They breathed and thought, and that was all. At length the chill air began to tell, and he plainly heard the chatter of her teeth, the rustling of her dress as her body shivered. He arose, stiff and cold, drew off his coat and threw it about her shoulders. She resisted at first, but he was master.

Later his waistcoat was wrapped about her throat and the warm lantern was placed at her feet, but she never gave him one look of grat.i.tude.

At intervals he pounded on the door until finally there came the joyous, rasping sound of a key in the lock, and then excited exclamations filled the ears of the two prisoners.

XXVI. "THE KING OF EVIL-DOERS"

"Turk has been in Brussels," said Quentin to her on the day following her underground adventure. She was walking in the courtyard, and her brain was busy with a new interest. Again had the lonely priest pa.s.sed along the road far below, and she had made him understand that he was wanted at the castle gates. When he turned off the road and began slowly to climb the steep, she was almost suffocated with nervous excitement. Her experience of the day before had left her unstrung and on the verge of collapse, and she was beginning to enjoy a strange resignation.

She was beginning to feel that there were terrors worse than those of the kindly prison, and that escape might be tenfold more unpleasant than confinement. Then she saw the priest, and her half-hearted attempt to attract his attention to her plight, resulted so differently from what she had expected that her nerves were again leaping with the old desire to outwit her captors. He was coming to the castle, but how was she to acquaint him with the true state of affairs? She would not be permitted to see him, much less to talk with him; of that she was sure. Not knowing what else to do, she went into the courtyard and loitered near the big gates, trying to appear at ease. She prayed for but a few moments' time in which to cry out to him that she was a prisoner and the woman for whom 100,000 francs were offered in Brussels.

But now comes Quentin upon the scene. His voice was hoa.r.s.e, and it was plain that he had taken a heavy cold in the damp cellar. She deliberately turned her back upon him, not so much in disdain as to hide the telltale confusion in her face. All hope of conversing with the priest was lost if Quentin remained near by.

"I sent him to Brussels, Dorothy, and he has learned something that will be of vital interest to you," Philip went on, idly leaning against the gate as if fate itself had sent him there to frustrate her designs.

"Don't talk to me now, Philip. You must give me time. In an hour, when I have gotten over this dreadful headache, I will listen to you. But now, for heaven's sake, leave me to myself," she said, rapidly, resorting to deception.

"I'm sorry I have disturbed you. In an hour, then, or at any time you may feel like listening. It concerns Prince Ugo."

"Is he--what has happened to him?" she demanded, turning to him with alarm in her eyes.

"It is not what has happened to him, but to one who was his intimate. The woman who warned me to beware of his treachery has been murdered in Brussels. Shall I come to you here in an hour?"

"Yes," she said, slowly, the consciousness of a new dread showing itself in her voice. It was not until he reentered the house that she became fully possessed of a desire to learn more of this startling news. Her mind went back to the strange young woman who came to her with the story of the prince's duplicity, and her blood grew cold with the thought that brutal death had come to her so soon after that visit. She recalled the woman's voice, her unquestioned refinement, her dignity of bearing and the positiveness with which she declared that Ugo would kill her if he knew the nature of her visit to his promised wife. And now she was dead--murdered! By whom?

That question burst upon her with the force of a heavy blow. Who killed her?

A pounding on the heavy gate brought her sharply to the project of the moment. She walked as calmly as her nerves would admit to the gate and called in French:

"Who is there?"

"Father Paul," came a subdued voice from the outside. "Am I wrong in believing that I was called here by some one in the castle? Kindly admit me. I am fatigued and athirst."

"I cannot open the gate, good Father, You must aid me to escape from this place," she cried, eagerly, her breast thumping like a hammer.

There was no interruption, and she could have shrieked with triumph when, five minutes later, the priest bade her be of good cheer and to have confidence in him. He would come for her on the next night but one, and she should be freed. From her window in the castle she saw the holy man descend the steep with celerity not born of fatigue. When he reached the road below he turned and waved his hand to her and then made his way swiftly into the forest.

After it was all over and relief was promised, her excitement subsided and in its place began to grow a dull contemplation of what her rescue would mean to the people who were holding her captive. It meant exposure, arrest, imprisonment and perhaps death. The appeal she had succeeded in getting to the ears of the pa.s.sing priest would soon be public property, and another day might see the jubilant minions of the law in front of Castle Craneycrow demanding her release and the surrender of the culprits. There was not the joy in her heart that she had expected; instead there was a sickening fancy that she had done something mean and treacherous. When she rejoined the unsuspecting party downstairs soon afterward, a mighty weakness a.s.sailed her, and it was she, instead of they who had boldly stolen her from her home, that felt the pangs of guilt. She went into the courtyard where Savage and Lady Jane were playing handball, while the Saxondales looked on, happily unconscious of a traitor in their midst. For an instant, pale and remorseful, she leaned against the door-post, struggling to suppress the tears of pity and contrition.

Before she had fully recovered her strength Lady Jane was drawing her into the contest with d.i.c.key. And so she played cravenly with those whose merry hearts she was to crush, listening to the plaudits of the two smiling onlookers. It was too late to save them, for a priest of G.o.d had gone out into the world to herald their guilt and to deal a blow that would shatter everything.

Quentin came down a little later, and she was conscious that he watched the game with eyes in which pleasure and trouble fought for supremacy. Tired at last of the violent exercise, the trio threw themselves upon the bench in the shade of the wall, and, with glowing faces and thumping b.r.e.a.s.t.s, two of them laughed over the antics they had cut. Dorothy's lawless lover stood afar off, lonely and with the resignation of the despised. Presently he drew near and asked if he might join them in the shade.

"What a dreadful cold you have taken, Phil," cried Lady Saxondale, anxiously.

"Commonest sort of a cold, I a.s.sure you. Damp cellars don't agree with me," he said.

"I did not want your coat, but you would give it to me," said Dorothy, as if called upon to defend herself for some crime.