The Ashiel mystery Part 19

Placing his heel against the bottom of the black-and-gold case, he walked forward for eleven paces, which brought him right into the bow of the window. Here he bent down, and, with the torch in one hand, and a small magnifying lens that he was never without in the other, searched the floor eagerly for some join in the boards, which should denote the edge of a trap-door or an opening of some sort.

He could find none.

Again and again he tried, till at last he had examined the whole flooring of the embrasure of the window.

No other part of the room was wide enough to allow him to take eleven steps, and he reluctantly came to the conclusion that he must be on the wrong tack.

There seemed no more to do but to wait till eleven should strike, in the faint hope that something would happen then; and Gimblet sat down in one of the large arm-chairs and prepared for an hour's lonely vigil. He put his lamp in his pocket and sat in the dark, for he had an uneasy feeling that Mark might return from the cottage and catch him pursuing his investigations in a way which might not appeal to the average householder. True, it seemed unlikely that anyone would come so late to that side of the castle; but one never knew, and the thought of being caught at his housebreaking added to the irritation produced by the failure of his search.

"The clock-eleven-steppes." What had Lord Ashiel been trying to say? Why in the world had he put off writing till so late? These and like questions Gimblet asked himself fretfully, as he waited, curled in a deep arm-chair among the black shapes of furniture which loomed around him, indefinite and almost invisible, even to eyes accustomed to the darkness, as his now were.

Suddenly he raised his head and listened, holding his breath in strained attention. He had caught the sound of distant footsteps.

In an instant he was up and had leapt to the window, where his fingers fumbled with the safety-pin that held the curtains together. No tell-tale mark of his presence must be left.

But where should he hide? The sounds were becoming more distinct every second; no escape seemed possible. There was no help for it, and he was bound to be discovered; he must put as good a face on it as he could contrive. The person approaching might, after all, not come into the library, but go back again along the pa.s.sage. It might only be some one coming to see that the door to the garden was properly bolted.

These thoughts flashed through the detective's mind so quickly as to be practically simultaneous, and then almost at the same moment he realized that the footsteps did not come from the pa.s.sage at all, but from under the room he was waiting in. In a flash he had grasped the full significance of this unexpected fact, and was tiptoeing across to the door.

The handle turned noiselessly in his fingers, thanks to the precaution he had taken of oiling it, and he slipped outside.

In the dark and empty pa.s.sage he took to his heels and ran swiftly back to the drawing-room, nor paused till he was outside on the lawn once more. There he hung for an instant in the wind; bearings must be taken, the nearest way to the enclosed garden decided on, any dangerous reefs that lay on the way steered clear of. Then he was off again on the new tack. This led him round to the back of the holly hedge, and the arched opening by the gardeners' tool-shed.

He turned in under it and sped silently over the turf, till he found himself outside the door to the old tower. From the library window a narrow shaft of light was issuing out on to the flower-bed.

Gimblet took off his coat and threw it on to the bed. He put a foot upon one sleeve, and, stooping down, spread the other out in front of him as far as it would go. Then he stepped upon that one and twisted the coat round under him to repeat the process. In this way he arrived under the window without leaving any imprint of his boots upon the soft earth. Once there he raised himself cautiously and peered into the room.

By the writing-table, and so close to him that he could almost have touched her if they had not been separated by the gla.s.s, stood a young woman.

She held a little electric lantern, much like his own, in her left hand, while with the other she turned over the leaves of a bundle of papers. An open drawer in the writing-table betrayed whence they had been taken; and she was so entirely engrossed in what she was about that the detective felt little fear of being noticed by her, concealed as he was in the outer darkness.

He saw that she was short and slight, with a beautiful little head set gracefully upon her upright slender figure. Her expression was proud and self-contained, but the large dark eyes that glowed beneath long black lashes were in themselves striking evidence of a pa.s.sionate nature sternly repressed, and an eloquent contradiction to the firm, tightly compressed lips. Here, thought Gimblet, was a nature which might pursue its object with cold and calculating tenacity, and then at the last moment let the prize slip through its fingers at some sudden call upon the emotions.

For the time being her thoughts were evidently fixed upon her present purpose, to the exclusion of all considerations such as might have been expected to obtrude themselves upon the mind of a young girl engaged in a nocturnal raid. The dark solitude, the lateness of the hour, the surrept.i.tious manner of her entry into the room, all these, which might well have occasioned some degree of nervousness in the coolest of housebreakers, appeared to produce, in her, nothing of the sort. As calmly as if she were sitting by her own bedside, she examined the doc.u.ments in Lord Ashiel's bureau, sorting and folding the contents of one drawer after another as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world to go over other people's private papers in the dead of night.

And what was she looking for?

Gimblet felt no doubt on that subject. This could surely be no other than Julia, the adopted daughter of Countess Romaninov, whom Lord Ashiel had for so long supposed to be his daughter. In some way or other she must have discovered the problematic relationship, and now she was hunting for proof of her birth, or perhaps for the will which should deprive her of her inheritance. It was even possible that the dead peer had been mistaken, and that Julia was indeed his daughter and not unaware of the fact. But what was she doing here, and where did she come from? Surely Juliet had told him that all the guests had left the castle.

Gimblet had never seen her before; but, as he watched her slow deliberate movements and quick intelligent eyes, he had an odd feeling that they were already acquainted. She reminded him of some one; how, he couldn't say. Perhaps it was the features, perhaps merely the expression, but if they had never previously met, at least he must have seen some one she resembled. Rack his brains as he might, he could not remember who it was. He put the thought aside. Sooner or later the recollection would come to him.

The night was a warm one, and Gimblet felt no need for his coat, though he was a little uneasy lest his white shirt should show up against the dark background if she should chance to look out. Behind him the trees in the wood stirred noisily and untiringly in the wind, and from time to time an owl cried out of the gloom; but no sound from within the castle reached his ears throughout the long hour during which he stood watching while deftly and methodically the young lady in the library went about her business. He wondered if this girl, who stealthily, in the night, by the gleam of a pocket lantern, was engaged in such questionable employment, were unwarrantably ransacking the belongings of her former host, or believed herself to be exercising a daughter's right in going over the papers of a dead parent.

The time came when the last paper was examined, the last drawer quietly pushed back into its place; then, with every sign of disappointment, she slowly rose, and taking up her torch made the tour of the room as if debating whether she had not left some corner unexplored. But the library was scantily furnished, apart from the books that lined the walls, and though she drew more than one volume from its place, and thrust a hand into the back of the shelf, it was with a dispirited air. Soon, with a glance at her watch, she abandoned the search, and slowly and hesitatingly moved in the direction of the door and laid her fingers upon the handle.

She did not turn it, however, but stood irresolute, her eyes on the floor. After a moment of indecision, the detective saw her mouth compress firmly, and with a quick movement of the head, as if she were shaking herself free from some persistent and troublesome thought, she turned and walked deliberately towards the alcove at the end of the room.

"Now," thought Gimblet, "we shall see where the secret door is concealed."

Judge of his surprise and excitement, when the girl stopped before the tall case of the lacquered clock and, opening it, stepped inside and drew the door to behind her. For five minutes, with nose pressed to the pane of the window, the detective waited, expecting her to reappear; then an idea struck him, and he clapped his hand against his leg in his exasperation at not having guessed before.

He turned immediately, and using the same precautions as before made good his retreat, and returned by way of the drawing-room window to the library.

All was silent there, and the empty room displayed no sign of its nocturnal visitors. Gimblet did not hesitate. He went straight to the clock and pulled open the door. The black interior was as empty and bare as when he had previously examined it, but he betrayed neither astonishment nor doubt as to his next action.

Stooping down he ran his hand over the painted wooden flooring. As he expected, his fingers encountered a small k.n.o.b in one of the corners, and he had no sooner pressed it when the whole bottom of the case fell suddenly away beneath his touch. As he stretched down the hand that held the electric torch, the light fell upon an open trap-door and the topmost step of a narrow flight of stairs, which descended into the thickness of the wall.

Gimblet stepped into the case, and lowered himself quickly through the hole at the bottom.

The stairs proved to be but a short flight, ending in a low pa.s.sage, which wound away through the wall of the ancient building. The detective felt little doubt that it led to another concealed opening in some distant part of the castle. But he had other things to think of for the moment.

"The clock-eleven-steps." The meaning of Lord Ashiel's dying words was, he thought, plain enough now.

Running up the stairs again, he descended more slowly, counting the treads as he went.

There were fifteen.

Gimblet bent down and held his torch so that the light fell bright upon the eleventh step.

It presented identically the same appearance as the rest, the rough-hewn stone dipping slightly in the middle as if many feet had trodden it in the course of the centuries which had elapsed since it was first placed there, but in every respect the worn surface resembled those of the steps above and below it, as far as Gimblet could see.

He tapped it, and it gave forth the same sound as its neighbours. Then he lowered the torch and ran its beams along the front of the step; high up, under the overhanging edge of the tread above it, it seemed as if there were a flaw or crack in the stone. He knocked upon it, and it gave back a different sound to the stone around it.

Clearly it was wood, not stone, though so cleverly painted to imitate its surroundings that it was a thousand to one against anyone ever noticing it; and yes, there was a little circular depression in the middle of it. Gimblet's thumb pressed heavily against the place, and immediately there was a click, and a long narrow drawer flew out.

In it lay a single sheet of paper, and Gimblet's fingers shook with excitement as he drew it forth.

A moment's pause while he perused the writing upon it, and then the exultation on his face dwindled away. He could perceive no meaning in these apparently random sentences.

"Remember that where there's a way there's a will. Face curiosity and take the bull by the horn."

Was this the cipher, of which he had never received the key? The papers he had hoped to find must be hidden elsewhere. No doubt in some place whose whereabouts was indicated, if he could only understand it, by the incomprehensible message he held.

He stared at it for some minutes in an endeavour to find the translation; then, reflecting that this was neither the time nor place for deciphering cryptograms, he placed it carefully in an inner pocket, and after a hasty exploration of the pa.s.sage beyond which did not reveal anything interesting except from an archaeological point of view, he thoughtfully mounted to the room above.

Closing the trap-door, and making sure that everything in the library was left as he had found it, Gimblet made his exit from the castle in the same manner as he had entered it, and groped his silent way home through the darkness.

A convenient creeper made it easy to climb on to the porch of Lady Ruth's house, now wrapped in peaceful slumber; and so in at his own window once more. The noise of the wind, which had now freshened to the strength of half a gale, drowned any sound of his return, and he lost no time in getting to bed and to sleep. The puzzle must keep till to-morrow. It was one of Gimblet's rules to take proper rest when it was at all possible, for he knew that his work suffered if he came to it physically exhausted.

CHAPTER XIV

Gimblet was up early next morning, refreshed by a sound and dreamless sleep.

For two hours before breakfast he wrestled with the cryptic message on the sheet of paper, trying first one way and then another of solving the riddle it presented, but still finding no solution. He was silent and preoccupied during the morning meal, replying to inquiries as to his headache, alternately, with obvious inattention and exaggerated grat.i.tude. Neither of the ladies spoke much, however, and his absent-mindedness pa.s.sed almost unnoticed.

Lord Ashiel was to be buried that day. Before they left the dining-room sombre figures could be seen striding along the high road towards Inverashiel: inhabitants of the scattered villages, and people from the neighbouring estates, hurrying to show their respect to the dead peer for the last time.