The Haunting of Low Fennel Part 10

"Undeniably. But I don't remember to have seen you rest from the moment that we left London! I exclude your brief hours of slumber--during which, by the way, you toss about and mutter in a manner far from reposeful."

"No wonder. My nerves are anything but settled yet, I grant you."

Indeed, we had pa.s.sed through a long and trying ordeal, the particulars whereof have no bearing upon the present matter, and in renting this tiny and remote cottage we had sought complete seclusion and forgetfulness of those evil activities of man which had so long engaged our attention. How ill we had chosen will now appear.

I had turned again to the open window, when my meditations were interrupted by a sound that seemed to come from somewhere away behind the cottage. Cigarette in hand, I leaned upon the sill, listening, then turned and glanced toward the littered table. East, his eyes steely bright in the lamplight, was watching me.

"You heard it?" I said.

"Clearly. A woman's shriek!"

"Listen!"

Tense, expectant, we sat listening for some time, until I began to suspect that we had been deceived by the note of some unfamiliar denizen of the moors. Then, faintly, chokingly, the sound was repeated, seemingly from much nearer.

"Come on!" snapped East.

Hatless, we both hurried around to the rear of the cottage. As we came out upon the slope, a figure appeared on the brow of a mound some two hundred yards away and stood for a moment silhouetted against the moonlit sky. It was that of a woman. She raised her arms at sight of us--and staggered forward.

Just in the nick of time we reached her, for her strength was almost spent. East caught her in his arms.

"Good G.o.d!" he said, "it is Miss Baird!"

What could it mean? The girl, who was near to swooning and inarticulate with fatigue and emotion, was the daughter of Sir Jeffrey Baird, our neighbour, whose house, The Warrens, was visible from where we stood.

East half led, half carried her down the slope to the cottage; and there I gave her professional attention, whilst, with horror-bright eyes and parted lips, she fought for mastery of herself. She was a rather pretty girl, but highly emotional, and her pathetically weak mouth was doubtless a maternal heritage, for her father, Sir Jeffrey, had the mouth and jaw of the old fighter that he was.

At last she achieved speech.

"My father!" she whispered brokenly; "oh, my poor father!"

"What!" I began----

"At Black Gap!..."

"Black Gap!" I said; for the place was close upon half a mile away.

"Have you come so far?"

"He is lying there! My poor father--dead!"

"What!" cried East, springing up--"Sir Jeffrey--dead? Not drowned?"

"No, no! he is lying on the path this side of the Gap! I ... almost stumbled over ... him. He has been ... murdered! Oh, G.o.d help me!..."

East and I stared at one another, speechless with the sudden horror of it. Sir Jeffrey murdered!

Suddenly the distracted girl turned to my friend, clutching frenziedly at his arm.

"Oh, Mr. East!" she cried, "what had my poor father done to merit such an end? What monster has struck him down? You will find him, will you not? I thank G.o.d that you are here--for although I know you as 'Mr.

East,' my father confided the truth to me, and I am aware that you are really a Secret Service agent, and I even know some of the wonderful things you have done in the past...."

"Very indiscreet!" muttered East, and his jaws snapped together viciously. But--"My dear Miss Baird," he added immediately, in the kindly way that was his own, "rely upon me. Myself and my fellow-worker, the doctor here, had sought to escape from the darker things of life, but it was willed otherwise. I esteemed Sir Jeffrey very highly"--his voice shook--"very highly indeed. I, too, thank G.o.d that I am here."

II

Five minutes later, East and I set out across the moor, leaving Miss Baird at the cottage. By reason of the lonely situation, and the fact that the nearest house, The Warrens, was fully a mile and a half away, no other arrangement was possible, since delay could not be entertained.

East had managed to glean some few important facts. Sir Jeffrey, whose museum at The Warrens was justly celebrated, had been to London that day to attend an auction at Sotheby's. His Greek secretary, Mr. Damopolon, and his daughter had accompanied him. Returning by train to Stanby, the nearest station, Miss Baird had called upon friends in the village (Mr.

Damopolon had remained in London on business), and Sir Jeffrey had set out in the dusk to walk the two miles to The Warrens; for the car was undergoing repairs.

Pursuing the same path later in the evening, the girl had come upon the body of her father in the dramatically dreadful manner already related.

He had no enemies, she declared, or none known to her. She did not believe that her father was carrying a large sum of money, nor--although she had scarcely trusted herself to look at him--did she believe that robbery had been the motive of the crime.

Sir Jeffrey had been carrying a large parcel containing one of his purchases, and I remembered, as we silently pursued our way to the scene of the murder, how East's keen eyes had seemed to dance with excitement when Miss Baird, in reply to a question, had told us what this parcel contained. It was a large figure, in blue porcelain, of a sacred ape, and was of Burmese or Chinese origin; she was uncertain which.

Her father had apparently attached great importance to this strange purchase, and had elected to bear it home in person rather than to trust it to railway transport.

"Did you notice if this parcel was there," East had inquired eagerly, "when you discovered him?"

Miss Baird had shaken her head in reply.

And now we were come to Black Gap, a weird feature in a weird landscape.

This was a great hole in the moor, having high clay banks upon one side descending sheer to the tarn, and upon the other being flanked by low, marshy ground about a small coppice. The road from Stanby to The Warrens pa.s.sed close by the coppice on the south-east.

Regarding this place opinions differed. By some it was supposed to be a natural formation, but it was locally believed to mark the site of an abandoned mine, possibly Roman. Its depth was unknown, and the legend of the coach which lay at the bottom, and which could be seen under certain favourable conditions, has found a place in all the guide-books to that picturesque and wild district.

Whatever its origin, Black Gap was a weird and gloomy spot as one approached and saw through the trees the gleam of the moonlight on its mystic waters. And here, pa.s.sing a slight southerly bend in the track--for it was no more--we came upon Sir Jeffrey.

He lay huddled in a grotesque and unnatural att.i.tude. His right hand was tightly clenched, whilst with his left he clutched a tuft of rank gra.s.s.

Strangely enough, his soft hat was still upon his head. His tweed suit, soft collar and, tie all bore evidence of the fierce struggle which the old baronet had put up for his life. A quant.i.ty of torn brown paper lay scattered near the body.

I dropped on my knees and made a rapid examination, East directing the ray of a pocket-lamp upon the poor victim.

"Well?" rapped my friend.

"He was struck over the head by some heavy weapon," I said slowly, "and perhaps partly stunned. His hat protected him to a degree, and he tackled his a.s.sailant. Death was actually due, I should say, to strangulation. His throat is very much bruised."

East made no reply. Glancing up from my gruesome task, I observed that he was looking at a faint track, which, commencing amid the confused marks surrounding the body, led in the direction of the coppice. East's steely eyes were widely opened.

"In heaven's name, what have we here!" he said.

A kindred amazement to that which held East claimed me, as I studied more closely the mysterious tracks.

The spot where Sir Jeffrey had fallen was soft ground, whereon the lightest footstep must have left a clear impression. Indeed, around the rec.u.mbent figure the ground showed a ma.s.s of indistinguishable marks.

But proceeding thence, as I have said, in the direction of the neighbouring coppice, was this faint trail.

"It looks," I said, in a voice hushed with something very like awe, "it looks like the track of ... _a child_!"