The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 31

It was getting on toward sunset, and just then they heard the loud baying of the bloodhound. Shelton started.

"It is the horrible hound that is chained up in a kennel in the garden,"

exclaimed f.a.n.n.y. "He has missed his dinner and is hungry, I suppose."

"I will put a bullet in his brain before I go away from here," said Shelton, curtly.

"Now, Mrs. Colville," he continued, "I must leave you a little while. I will go and report these dead bodies to the coroner, and I must secure some easy vehicle to transport your poor aching body away from here to a comfortable place. Do you think you can wait patiently? I shall be absent but a few hours at farthest."

"Oh, yes, I can wait. But you will be sure to come back again?" she said, anxiously.

He smiled at her pathetic tone.

"Yes, I will certainly return," he answered, confidently. "And I will take you to the house of a good woman who will feed you and nurse you back to health again. I have one favor to ask you," said he, pausing.

"You have only to name it," said she, "if it lies in my power to grant it."

"It is this. When I bring the officers here and they question you, will you withhold the story you have told me--even your name? It will be very easy to do so. Your emaciated condition and feebleness will easily excuse you from giving any evidence at present."

"I will do as you wish me, sir," she answered, in some surprise.

"I do not mean you any harm, dear madam," he explained. "Far from it. My reason is this. If this story gets into the papers (as it certainly must if you relate it to the coroner), it will put those two villains on their guard, and though we could arrest them on your evidence, they might never reveal the place where they have hidden their unhappy victim. But if they are still suffered to go at large, free and unsuspecting, I can track them to their lair and rescue her. So I only ask you to postpone your evidence until such time as I have delivered Lily Lawrence and put these wretches inside of a prison."

"Your reasoning is very clear," answered f.a.n.n.y. "I will do just as you have told me, sir."

"Thanks; I will leave you my wine and biscuits for refreshment," said he, smiling, and putting them by her side. "Keep up your spirits, Mrs.

Colville. I will soon return and remove you to a safe and comfortable home."

He hurried away, fastening the door carefully after him, and went out in the garden in search of the howling, hungry brute. He found him tearing madly at his chain in his rage to get away and seek for food. It made abortive attempts to reach Mr. Shelton when he came in sight, but the detective coolly drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired a bullet into the brain of the dangerous creature, who instantly fell dead. He then walked away, mounted his horse and galloped rapidly towards the city.

At Mrs. Mason's gate he stopped and dismounted. The kind woman opened the door and beamed on him smilingly as she invited him to enter. He did so and soon made known the object of his visit.

"My curiosity about the old house we spoke about when I first saw you,"

said he, "induced me to visit it this afternoon. I did so, and to my horror I found the old people lying dead in the house. While exploring it I discovered a poor, imprisoned woman in a weak and starving condition. She needs to be removed to a safe and quiet place where she may be carefully tended, for she has enemies who would not scruple to kill her if they discovered her whereabouts. Mrs. Mason, you are a kind and motherly woman, and your home is quiet and secluded. Will you receive that poor soul here and take care of her? I will pay you generously for the trouble."

Mrs. Mason promised to do all he asked, her kind eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with sympathetic tears, and he resumed his journey to the city, reported the case to the coroner, and secured a comfortable carriage for the use of f.a.n.n.y Colville.

After the inquest the grateful creature was removed to the tiny cottage of Mrs. Mason.

The next day the generous detective took care to furnish wines and jellies and every needful luxury for building up an exhausted frame, and himself conveyed them to the new home of the invalid.

CHAPTER XXVII.

My readers are wondering, perhaps, as to the fate of our beautiful and unfortunate heroine.

Let us go back a little in our story and take up the thread of her adventures.

It was the night previous to the day on which the two Leverets came to their death at the hands of Mrs. Vance. Up to that night Lily Lawrence had remained under the guardianship of the wicked old pair.

It was nearly nine o'clock when Lily sat before the fire in her room, her small hands resting on the arms of the chair, her eyes fixed sadly on the glowing coals in the grate. Old Haidee had brought her supper in and departed. She was alone for the night.

The young girl was simply habited in a neat, dark woolen dress. Cuffs and collar she had none, for Haidee, in providing her a winter dress, had had no thought or care for those delicate feminine accessories of the toilet. The thick, dark fabric fastened about her white throat and wrists rendered her extreme pallor and delicacy doubly striking. The earthly tabernacle seemed growing white and transparent enough for the bruised and wounded young soul to glimmer through.

She was thinking of Lancelot Darling--her betrothed husband--and now and then hot tears welled from her eyes and rolled down upon her pale cheeks. She wondered if he still remained faithful to her memory, or if, indeed, the wily widow had won him from her, as Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville had so confidently a.s.serted.

"It is false," she said to herself, through her fast falling tears.

"Lance loved me too truly to forget me so soon. What if I did see him bending over that wicked woman, turning the leaves of her music as he was wont to do for me? She had beguiled him to her side by the fascinating arts which a true woman would disdain. It was to win him that she tried to murder me. But though I never see my lover again I will not believe he could love her after having loved me, even though she might try to poison my memory with her false tale of suicide. No, no; I will believe in the loyalty of my lover until my latest breath."

She was sitting near the side of the fireplace, and on the other side of the wall old Peter and Haidee, who had retired to their room for the night, were sitting over their fire and talking earnestly together. She could hear the sound of their voices quite distinctly, for on her side of the room there was a large cracked place in the wall from which the plaster had fallen out, leaving a thin aperture through which voices were distinctly audible. Lily had never felt any desire before to hear the conversation of the old couple, but at this moment a sudden curiosity seized upon her as she heard the sound of her own name distinctly repeated.

Rising noiselessly from her chair she knelt upon the floor, and, placing her ear against the broken place in the wall, listened intently.

Their words and even the tone of their voices were plainly audible to her trained and acute hearing.

Words were being spoken by that wicked old pair that seemed to chill the blood in her veins to an icy current as she knelt there listening to the awful doom she had no power to avert.

"Yes," said the woman's voice, sharply, "I hate the girl so that I could strangle her with my own hands! Ever since the day she knocked me down and escaped from me, I have hated her with the hate of h.e.l.l!"

"Aye, aye," said old Peter; "then why delay the deed we have long been determined upon. I am in favor of getting it done and over with."

"If I were not afraid of the vengeance of Pratt and Colville," said she, hesitating. "It's a terrible risk to run."

"Ten thousand dollars is worth running a considerable risk for,"

answered the old miser. "Now, here is the way we are placed, Haidee: Harold Colville will give us a few paltry hundreds for keeping the girl here, but her father will pay ten thousand dollars to the person who delivers her dead body, and no questions asked. How can you hesitate which to choose?"

"My G.o.d!" thought the wretched girl, with a wildly beating heart, "they are planning to murder me."

"I would not hesitate a moment--you know that, Peter--only that I see the difficulties in the way more plainly than you do," said the cautious Haidee.

"Difficulties--now that is the way with women, the silly geese," snorted Peter in angry contempt. "They always make mountains of mole-hills! What difficulties can you see, I wonder."

"How could we account to Pratt and Colville for her disappearance?"

answered she.

"Easily enough; I have told you that twenty times before, old dunder-head! Say that she has escaped from us again."

"They would not believe it when they know that we both guard the door--they would not believe such a tale in the face of our united strength," returned she, rather shortly.

"Say that I was ill--say that I was drunk--or that I fell down in a fit before the door, and while you were a.s.sisting me she rushed past and escaped. Say anything you please to account for it--only tell them that she has given us the slip. They cannot help but believe it, knowing that she has made two desperate attempts before."

"That is true," she admitted; "still, when they find the body has been returned to the banker, and the ransom paid, what will they think then?"

"They will think that some designing person has palmed off a spurious body on them at first, and before they learn better we can be off and away to another city, Haidee. It all seems so plain and easy to me I wonder why you hang back so."

"My G.o.d! this is horrible," breathed poor Lily to herself, but a dreadful fascination held her immovable to her post.