The Ashiel mystery Part 23

Gimblet plunged once more into the shop, and fastened upon some pencils with a zeal not very convincing after his disappointing vacillation over the brooch. The gaunt woman cheered up, however, when he bought the first seventeen she offered him, and, the stock being exhausted, finished by purchasing a piece of india-rubber, a stylographic pen, and a penny paper of pins, which she pressed upon him as particularly suited to his needs and charged him fourpence for.

By the time he issued forth into the open air, his pockets full of packages, the stranger had pa.s.sed the shop and was turning the corner of the next house. To him, now, Gimblet devoted his powers of shadowing.

There was no great difficulty about it. The man walked straight before him, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and as he strode along the wet roads Gimblet noted with satisfaction the long, narrow, pointed footprints that were deeply impressed in the muddy places. He had no doubt they were the same as those he had noticed on the beach on the day of his arrival at Inverashiel.

The stranger turned into the Crianan Hotel, which stands on the lake front, fifty yards from the landing-place of the loch steamers. Gimblet pa.s.sed the door without pausing and went down to the loch, where he mingled with the boatmen and loafers who congregated by the waterside.

He kept, however, a strict eye on the door of the hotel, and after a quarter of an hour saw the object of his attentions emerge with fishing-rod and basket, and cross the road directly towards him. Gimblet had not been able to see his face before, but now he had a good look as he pa.s.sed close beside him.

He was a tall, fair man, evidently a foreigner, but with nothing very striking about his appearance. A pointed yellow beard hid the lower part of his face, and, for the rest, his nose was short, his eyes blue and close together, and his forehead high and narrow. He looked closely at Gimblet as he went by, and for a moment the eyes of the two men met, both equally inscrutable and unflinching; then the stranger glanced aside and strode on to where a small boat lay moored. The detective turned his back while the fair man got in and pushed off into the loch.

"Gentleman going fishing?" he remarked to a man who lounged hard by upon the causeway.

"He's axtra fond o' the feeshin'," was the reply, "for a' that he's a foreign shentleman."

Waiting till the boat had become a distant speck on the face of the waters, Gimblet made his way into the inn and entered into conversation with the landlord, on the pretext of engaging rooms for a friend. The landlord was sorry, but the house was full.

"If ye wanted them in a fortnicht's time," he said, "ye could hae the hale hotel; but tae the end o' the holidays we're foll up. Folks tak' their rooms a month in advance; they come here for the fishin' on the loch, and because my hoose is the maist comfortable in the Hielands."

"Indeed, I can well believe that," Gimblet a.s.sured him. "I suppose you get a lot of tourists pa.s.sing through, though, Americans, for instance?"

"We hardly ever hae a room tae tak' them in. No, I seldom hae an American bidin' here; they maistly gang doon the loch," said the innkeeper.

"I thought," said Gimblet, "that was a foreign-looking man whom I saw a little while ago, coming out of the hotel."

"We hae ae gintleman bidin' here wha belongs tae foreign pairts," the landlord admitted. "A Polish gintleman, he is, Count Pretovsky, a vary nice gintleman. I couldna just cae him a tourist. He's vary keen on the fishin' and was up here for it last year as well. He has his ain boat and is aye on the water trailin' aefter the salmon."

"A great many sporting foreigners come to our island nowadays," Gimblet remarked. "Does he get many fish?"

"Oh, it's a grand place for salmon," said the inn-keeper with obvious pride. "And there's troots tac. And pike, mair's the peety," he added.

"Dear me," said Gimblet, "just what my friend wants. I'm sorry you can't take him in. I must tell him to write in good time next year if he wants a room."

As he parted from the landlord upon the doorstep of the Crianan Hotel, the Rob Roy-the second of the two loch steamers-was edging away from the pier, under a cloud of black smoke from her funnel The rain had stopped; the pa.s.sengers were scattered on the deck, and in the bows of the vessel the detective caught sight of Julia Romaninov's tweed-clad form. She was leaning against the rail, and gazing at a distant part of the loch where a black speck, which might represent a rowing boat, could faintly be discerned. She had come back, then, from her moorland walk. It was as Gimblet had expected; and, though he chafed at the delay, he regretted less than he would have otherwise that he could not catch the Rob Roy.

The Inverashiel would be due on her homeward trip in a couple of hours' time, and meanwhile he had other business that must be attended to.

He went first to the post office, where he registered and posted to Scotland Yard a packet he had brought with him. Then, after asking his way of the sociable landlord of the hotel, he proceeded to the police station, a single-storied stone building standing at the end of a side street.

Here he made himself known to the inspector, and imparted information which made that personage open his eyes considerably wider than was his custom.

"If you will bring one of your men, and come with me yourself," said Gimblet, at the conclusion of the interview, "I think I shall be able to convince you that a mistake has been made. In the meantime there will be no harm done by a watch being kept on the foreign gentleman who is at this moment trolling for salmon on the loch."

The inspector agreed; and when the Inverashiel started, an hour later, on her voyage down the loch, she carried the two policemen on her deck, as well as the most notorious detective she was ever likely to have the privilege of conveying.

It was nearly three o'clock when they landed on the Inverashiel pier.

The weather, which for the last few hours had looked like clearing, had now turned definitely to rain; clouds had descended on the hills, and the trees in the valleys stooped and dripped in the saturated, mist-laden air. Gimblet conducted the men to the cottage, where Lady Ruth anxiously awaited them.

"If you don't mind their staying here," he suggested to her, "while I go up to the castle and consult Lord Ashiel about a magistrate, it will be most convenient, on account of the distance."

"By all means," said Lady Ruth. "I feel safer with them. I expect you will find Miss Byrne up there. She has not come in to lunch, and I think she probably met Mark and went to lunch at the castle. She ought to know better than to go to lunch alone with a young man, and I am just wondering if she has changed her mind and accepted him after all. Girls are kittle cattle, but I've got quite fond of that one, and I hope she's not forgotten poor David so soon. I really am feeling anxious about her."

"I daresay she has only walked farther than she intended," said Gimblet, "or perhaps she came to a burn or some place she couldn't get over, and has had to go round a mile or two. Depend on it, that's what's happened. But I promise you that if she is at the castle I will bring her back when I return."

CHAPTER XVII

Behind the shrubberies, which lay at the back of the holly hedge that surrounded the little enclosed garden outside the library, beyond the. end of the battlements, and reached by a disused footpath, a great tree stood upon the edge of the steep hillside and thrust its sweeping branches over the void.

Its trunk was grey and moss-grown; moss carpeted the ground between its protruding roots, but the bracken and heather held back, and left a half-circle beneath it, untenanted by their kind. It would seem that all vegetation fears to venture beneath the shade of the beech; and for the most part it stands solitary, shunned by other growing things except moss, which creeps undaunted where its more vigorous brothers lack the courage to establish themselves.

Here came Juliet that morning.

A week ago, David Southern had shown her the path to the tree. It had been a favourite haunt of his when he was a boy, he told her. It was a private chamber to which he resorted on the rare occasions when he was disposed to solitude; when something had gone wrong with his world he had been used to retire there with his dog, or, more seldom, a book. There he had been accustomed to lie, his back supported by the tree, and hold forth to the dog upon the troubles and difficulties of life and the general crookedness of things; or, if a book were his companion, he would gaze out, between the pages, at distant Crianan clinging faintly to the knees of Ben Ghusy, and watch the swift change of pa.s.sing cloud and hanging curtain of mist upon the faces of the hills and loch.

It had been a place all his own; secret from every one, even from Mark, his companion during all those holidays that he had spent at Inverashiel. Somehow, David told Juliet-and it was a confidence he had seldom before imparted to anyone-he had never quite managed to hit it off with Mark. He couldn't say why, exactly. No doubt it was his own fault; but there was no accounting for one's likes and dislikes.

And with quick regret at having betrayed his carefully suppressed feelings in regard to his cousin, David had laughed apologetically, and spoken of other things.

Here, then, just as the steamer Rob Roy was drawing close to the wooden landing-stage at the edge of the loch, with Julia Romaninov still standing in the bows; here, because she had once been to this place with him, because without her he had so often sat upon these mossy roots, came Juliet to dream of her love.

Like him, she seated herself against the tree trunk at the giddy brink of the precipitous rock; like him, her eyes rested on the smooth waters below her, or on the far-away misty distance where Crianan slumbered; but, unlike him, her eyes, as they looked, were filled with tears. Where was he now? Oh, David, poor unjustly treated David! In what narrow cell, lighted only by a high, iron-barred window-for so the scene shaped itself in her mind-with uncovered floor of stone, bare walls and a bench to lie on, was the man she loved wearing away his days under the burden of so frightful an accusation?

For the thousandth time Juliet's blood boiled within her at the thought, and she grew hot with anger and indignant scorn. That anyone should have dared to suspect him! Why were such fools, such wicked, evil-working imbeciles as the police allowed to exist for one moment upon the face of the globe? But no doubt they had some hidden motive in arresting him, for it was quite incredible that they really imagined he had committed this appalling crime. She could not understand their motive, to be sure, but without doubt there must have been some reason which was not clear to her.

Oh, David, David! Was he thinking of her, as she was thinking of him? Did he know, by instinct, that she would be doing all that could be done to bring about his release? But was she? Again her mind was filled with the disquieting question, was there nothing that might be done, that she was leaving undone? Had she forgotten something, neglected something? She was sure Gimblet did not believe David to be guilty, but was he certain of being able to prove his innocence? He did not seem to have discovered much at present.

Suddenly, in the midst of her distress, she smiled to herself.

At least Miss Tarver had shown herself in her true colours, and was no more to be considered. Juliet felt that she could almost forgive her for her readiness to believe the worst. It was dreadful, yes, and shameful that anyone else should think for a moment that David could be capable of such a deed, but in Miss Tarver, perhaps, the thought had not been inexcusable. On the whole, it was so nice of her to break the engagement that she might be forgiven the ridiculous reason she had advanced for doing it. Of course, Juliet a.s.sured herself, it was a mere pretext, because no one could possibly believe it. And in this manner she continued to reiterate her conviction that the suspicions entertained of her lover were all a.s.sumed for some darkly obscure purpose.

So the morning wore away. A shower or two pa.s.sed down the valley, but under the thick tent of the beech leaves she scarcely felt it. She was, besides, dressed for bad weather; and the grey and mournful face of the day was in harmony with her mood.

There was something comforting in this high perch. She seemed more aloof from the troubles and despair of the last few days than she had imagined possible. There was a calm, a remoteness, about the grey mountains, disappearing and reappearing from behind their screen of cloud but unchanged and unmoved by what went on around and among them, that was in some way rea.s.suring.

The burn that ran at the bottom of the hill on which she sat, hurrying down to the loch in such turbulent foaming haste, she was able to compare, with a sad smile, to herself. The loch, she thought, was wide and impa.s.sive as justice, which did not allow itself to be influenced by the emotions. The burn would get down just the same without so much turmoil and fuss; and she would see David's name cleared, equally surely, if she waited calmly on events, instead of burning her heart out in hopeless impatience and anxiety.

As she gazed, with some such thoughts as these, down to the stream that splashed on its way below her, her attention was caught by a movement in the bushes half-way down the steep slope at the top of which she was sitting.

The day was windless and no leaf moved on any tree. There must be some animal among the shrubs that covered the embankment, some large animal, since its movements caused so much commotion; for, as she watched, first one bush and then another stirred and bent and was shaken as if by something thrusting its way through the dense growth.

What could it be? A sheep, perhaps; there were many of them on the hillsides. This must be one that had strayed far from the rest. And yet would a sheep make so much stir? Juliet drew back a little behind the trunk of the beech-tree. Could it be a deer? She could not hear any sound of the creature's advance, for the air was full of the clamour of the burn, but she could trace the direction of its progress by shaking leaves and swinging boughs. It seemed to be gradually mounting the slope.

Suddenly a head emerged from the waving ma.s.s of a rhododendron, and with astonishment Juliet saw that it was that of Julia Romaninov.

Her first impulse was to lean forward and call her, but as she did so the cry died unheard upon her lips. For the manner of Julia's advance struck her as very odd. The girl was bending nearly double, and moving with a caution that seemed very strange and unnecessary. What was the matter? Was she stalking something? Crouching as she was in the bushes, she would not be seen by anyone on the path below. Did she not want to be seen? It looked more and more like it. But why in the world should Julia creep along as if she feared to be observed? Where was she going, and why?