Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Well, now, I will ask you a last question, Sir Karl. Do you think Smith’s residence at Foxwood is in any way connected with the Maze?”

  “Connected with the Maze!” echoed Sir Karl, his face never betraying the uneasiness that his beating and terrified heart was beginning to feel all too keenly. “That is, connected with its tenants.”

  “In what way would it be possible?”

  “Look here. Philip Smith presents himself at Foxwood Court about six months ago, soliciting the agency of your estates from Mrs. Andinnian — as there is little doubt he did so present himself to her, and solicit. Now it was a very singular thing for him to do, considering that his previous life (as I happen to know) had in no way whatever qualified him for the situation.

  He knew no more of land or the duties of a land-agent than does this inkstand on my table. Why did he attempt to take such a place?”

  “For the want of something else to do, probably,” replied Karl. “He told me himself the other day, that his cousin’s fall ruined him also, by causing him to be turned from his situation. As to the duties he has to perform for me, a child might be at home in them in a week.”

  “Granted. Let us go on. Mr. Smith’s installation at your place as agent was closely followed by the occupancy of the Maze, Mrs. Grey and her servants arriving as its tenants. Was it not so, Sir Karl?”

  “I — think it was,” assented Karl, appearing to be recalling the past to his memory, and feeling himself in a bath of horror as he saw that the all-powerful man before him, powerful to know, to rule, and to act, was quite at home behind the scenes.

  “Well, I cannot help thinking that the one may have been connected with the other; that Smith’s appearance at your place, and the immediately-following occupancy of the Maze, may have been, so to say, connecting links in the same chain,” continued the superintendent. “A doubt of it was floating in my mind before I had the honour of seeing you, Sir Karl: but I failed to detect any adequate cause; there was none on the surface. You have now supplied that, by telling me who Smith is — Salter’s relative.”

  “Indeed I cannot understand you,” said Karl, turning nevertheless from hot to cold.

  “The Maze is a place — what with its surrounding labyrinth of trees and its secret passages and outlets — unusually favourable for concealment. A proscribed man might hide himself there for years and years, and never be discovered unless suspicion were accidentally drawn on him. I think the chances are that Salter is there; and that his cousin, Smith, is keeping guard over him for his protection, while ostensibly fulfilling only the duties of your agency. They may have discovered in some way the desirable properties of the Maze and laid their plans to come to it accordingly.” It was so faithful a picture of what Smith was really doing at Foxwood — though the one he was watching over was a very different man from Salter — that Karl Andinnian almost thought some treacherous necromancy must have been at work. All he could do was, to speak forcibly against the view, and to declare that there could not be any foundation for it.

  “That is only your opinion against mine, Sir Karl,” observed the superintendent courteously. “You may rely upon it, I think, that the fact of Salter’s being there would be kept from you, of all people.”

  “Do you forget the slur you would cast on Mrs. Grey?”

  “As to that, Salter may be some relative of hers. Even her husband — even her brother. I remember it was said, at the time his case fell, that he had one sister. In either case, of course Mrs. Grey — the name she goes under — would not allow the fact of his concealment there to transpire to you.”

  How could Karl meet this? Sitting there, in his perplexity and pain, he could not see a step before him.

  “You have forgotten that Tatton has searched the Maze from roof to basement, Mr. Superintendent.”

  “Not at all. It tells nothing. There are no doubt other hidden places that he did not penetrate to in that first search. At best, it was but a superficial one.”

  That “first” search. Was all security slipping from Karl’s feet, inch by inch?

  “Believe me, you are wrong,” he said; “your notion is an utterly mistaken one. I assure you on my word of honour, as truly and solemnly as I shall ever testify to any fact in this world, that Salter is not within the Maze, that he never has been. Mind you, sir, I know this. I go over occasionally to see poor Mrs. Grey in her loneliness, and am in a position to speak positively.”

  An unmistakable smile sat on the officers face now. “Ay,” he said, “I have heard of your occasional nocturnal visits to her, Sir Karl. The young lady is said to be very attractive.”

  At the first moment, Sir Karl did not detect the covert meaning. It came to him with a rush of indignation. The superintendent had rarely seen so haughty a face.

  “No offence, Sir Karl. ’Twas but a joke.”

  “A joke I do not like, sir. I am a married man.”

  “Est-ce que cela empêche” — the other was beginning: for the conclusion he had drawn, on the score of Sir Karl’s evening visits, was a very decided one; but Karl put a peremptory stop to the subject. He deemed the superintendent most offensively familiar and unwarrantably foolish; and he resented in his angry heart the implied aspersion on his brother’s wife, the true Lady Andinnian, than whom a more modest and innocent-natured woman did not exist. And it never entered into the brain of Karl Andinnian to suspect that the same objectionable joke might have been taken up by people nearer home, even by his own wife.

  The interview came to an end. Karl went away, uncertain whether he had made sufficient impression, or not, to ensure the Maze against intrusion for the future. The superintendent did not say anything decisive, one way or the other, except that the matter must be left for his consideration. It might all have been well yet, all been well, but for this new complication, this suspicion rather, touching Smith and Salter jointly! He, Karl, had given the greatest rise to this, he and no other, by stating that day that the men were cousins. He asked himself whether Heaven could be angry with him, for whatever step he took for good only seemed to lead to mischief and make affairs worse. One assurance he did carry away with him: that the young lady at the Maze might rest content: her peace personally should not be molested. But that was not saying that the house should not be.

  After Sir Karl’s departure, the superintendent’s bell rang and Tatton was recalled. A long conversation ensued. Matters known were weighed; matters suspected were looked at: and Mr. Tatton was finally bidden back to Foxwood.

  Karl had gone direct from Scotland Yard to take the train. A fast one, which speedily conveyed him home. He walked from the station, and was entering his own gates when Hewitt — who seemed to have been gossiping at the lodge with the gardener’s wife, but who had probably been lingering about in the hope of meeting his master — accosted him; and they went up the walk together.

  “I am afraid something is amiss at the Maze, sir,” began the man, looking cautiously around and speaking in a low tone.

  “Something amiss at the Maze!” echoed Karl, seized with a terror that he did not attempt to conceal.

  “Not that, sir; not the worst, thank Heaven! Sir Adam has been taken ill.”

  “Hush, Hewitt. No names. Ill in what way? How do you know it?”

  “I had been to carry a note for my lady to old Miss Patchett, Sir Karl. Coming back, Ann Hopley overtook me; she was walking from the station at a fine rate. Her master had been taken most alarmingly ill, she said; and at any risk a doctor must be had to him. They did not dare to call in Mr. Moore, lest he might talk to the neighbours, and she had been to the station then to telegraph for a stranger.”

  “Telegraph where?”

  “To Basham, sir. For Dr. Cavendish.”

  Karl drew a deep breath. It seemed to be perplexity on perplexity: and he saw at once how much danger this step must involve.

  “What is the matter with him, Hewitt? Do you know?”

  “It was one of those dreadful fainting-fits, sir. But
they could not get him out of it, and for some time thought he was really dead. Mrs. Grey was nearly beside herself, Ann said, and insisted on having a doctor. He is better now, sir,” added Hewitt, “and I think there’s no need for you to go over unless you particularly wish. I went strolling about the road, thinking I might hear or see something more, and when Ann Hopley came to the gate to answer a ring, she told me he was quite himself again but still in bed. It was the pain made him faint.”

  “I cannot think what the pain is,” murmured Karl. “Has the doctor been?”

  “I don’t think he has yet, Sir Karl.”

  Karl lifted his hat to rub his aching brow. He saw his wife sitting under one of the trees, and went forward to join her. The wan, weary look on her face, growing more wan, more weary, day by day, struck on him particularly in the waning light of the afternoon.

  “Do you do well to sit here, Lucy?” he asked, as he flung himself beside her, in utter weariness.

  “Why should I not sit here?”’

  “I fancy the dew must be already rising.”

  “It will not hurt me. And if it did — what would it matter?”

  The half reproaching, half indifferent accent in which it was uttered, served to try him. He knew what the words implied — that existence had, through him, become a burden to her. His nerves were strung already to their utmost tension; the trouble at his heart was pressing him sore.

  “Don’t you, by your reproaches, make matters worse for me, Lucy, to-day. God knows that I have well-nigh more than I can bear.”

  The strangely-painful tone, so full of unmistakable anguish, aroused her kindly nature. She turned to him with a sigh.

  “I wish I could make things better for both of us, Karl.”

  “At least, you need not make them worse. What with one thing and another—”

  “Well?” she said, her voice softened, as he paused.

  “Nothing lies around me, Lucy, but perplexity and dread and pain. Look where I will, abroad or at home, there’s not as much as a single ray of light to cheer my spirit, or the faintest reflection of it. You cannot wonder that I am sometimes tempted to wish I could leave the world behind me.”

  “Have you had a pleasant day in town?” she asked, after a little while.

  “No, I have had an unsatisfactory and trying day in all ways. And I have come home to find more to try me: more dissatisfaction here, more dread abroad. ‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.’ Some of us are destined to realise the truth in ourselves all too surely.”

  He looked at his watch, got up, and walked indoors without another word. Lucy gazed after him with yearning eyes; eyes that seemed to have some of the perplexity he spoke of in their depths. There were moments when she failed to understand her husband’s moods. This was one.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  Ill-omened Chances.

  KARL ANDINNIAN was tempted bitterly to ask of his own heart whether he could have fallen under the displeasure of Heaven, so persistently did every fresh movement of his, intended for good, turn into an increased bank of danger. Poor Sir Adam had more need to question it than he; for nothing but ill-omened chances seemed to pursue him.

  It is quite probable that when Ann Hopley and her flurried mistress decided to telegraph for Dr. Cavendish of Basham, they had thought, and hoped, that the doctor would come back by train, pass quietly on foot into the Maze, so pass out again, and the public be none the wiser. Dr. Cavendish, however, who was out when the telegram arrived, drove over later in his gig; and the gig, with the groom in it, paced before the Maze gate while the doctor was inside, engaged with his patient Just then there occurred one of those unhappy chances. Mr. Moore, the surgeon, happened to walk by with his daughter, Jemima, and saw the gig — which he knew well — waiting about It took him by surprise, as he had not heard that anyone was ill in the vicinity. The groom touched his hat, and Mr. Moore went up to him.

  “Waiting for your master, James? Who is he with? Who is ill?”

  “It’s somebody down yonder, sir,” replied the man, pointing back over his shoulder to indicate the Maze; but which action was not intelligible to the surgeon.

  “Down where? At the Court?”

  “No, sir. At the Maze.”

  “At the Maze! Why, who can be ill there?” cried Mr. Moore.

  “I don’t know, sir. Master had a telegram, telling him to come.”

  At that moment Dr. Cavendish was seen to leave the gate and come towards his gig. Mr. Moore walked quickly forward to meet him, and the gig turned.

  “I suppose you have been called to Mrs. Grey, doctor,” observed the surgeon, as he shook hands. “Has she had a relapse? I wonder she did not send for me. I have but just given up attending her.”

  “Mrs. Grey?” returned the Doctor. “Oh, no. It is a gentleman I have been called to see.”

  “What gentleman?” asked the surgeon in surprise. “There’s no gentleman at the Maze.”

  “One is there now. I don’t know who it is. Some friend or relative of the lady’s, probably. Ah, Miss Jemima! blooming as ever, I perceive,” he broke off, as the young lady came slowly up. “Could you not give some of us pale, over-worked people a receipt for those roses on your cheeks?”

  “What is it that’s the matter with him?” interposed the surgeon, leaving his daughter to burst into her giggle.

  Dr. Cavendish put his arm within his friend’s, led him beyond the hearing of Miss Jemima, and said a few words in a low tone.

  “Why, the case must be a grave one!” exclaimed Mr. Moore aloud.

  “I think so. I don’t like the symptoms at all From some cause or other, too, it seems he has not had advice till now, which makes it all the more dangerous.”

  “By the way, doctor, as you are here, I wish you would spare five minutes to see a poor woman with me,” said Mr. Moore, passing from the other subject. “It won’t hinder you much longer than that.”

  “All right, Moore. Who is it?”

  “It’s the widow of that poor fellow who died from sun-stroke in the summer, Whittle. The woman has been ailing ever since, and very grave disease has now set in. I don’t believe I shall save her; only yesterday it crossed my mind to wish you could see her. She lives just down below there; in one of the cottages beyond Foxwood Court.”

  They got into the gig, the physician taking the reins, and telling his groom to follow on foot Miss Jemima was left to make her own way home. She was rather a pretty girl, with a high colour, and a quantity of light brown curls, and her manners were straightforward and decisive. When the follies and vanities of youth should have been chased away by sound experience, allowing her naturally good sense to come to the surface, she would, in all probability, be as strong-minded as her Aunt Diana, whom she already resembled in many ways.

  The autumn evening was drawing on: twilight had set in. Miss Jemima stood a moment, deliberating which road she should take; whether follow the gig, and go home round by the Court, or the other way. Of the two, the latter was the nearer, and the least lonely; and she might — yes, she might — encounter Mr. Cattacomb on his way to or from St. Jerome’s. Clearly it was the one to choose. Turning briskly round when the decision was made, she nearly ran against Mr. Strange. That gentleman had just got back from London, sent down again by the authorities at Scotland Yard, and was on his way from the station. The Maze had become an object of so much interest to him as to induce him to choose the long way round that would cause him to pass its gates, rather than take the direct road to the village. And here was another of those unfortunate accidents apparently springing out of chance; for the detective had seen the gig waiting, and halted in a bend of the hedge to watch the colloquy of the doctors.

  “Good gracious, is it you, Mr. Strange?” cried the young lady, beginning to giggle again. “Why, Mother Jinks declared this afternoon you had gone out for the day!”

  “Did she? Well, when I stroll out I never know when I may get back: the country is more tempting in autumn than at any other s
eason. That was a doctor’s gig, was it not, Miss Jemima?”

  “Dr. Cavendish’s of Basham,” replied Miss Jemima, who enjoyed the honour of a tolerable intimacy with Mrs. Jinks’s lodger — as did most of the other young ladies frequenting the parson’s rooms.

  “He must have come over to see some one. I wonder who is ill?”

  “Papa wondered, too, when he first saw the gig. It is somebody at the Maze.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “Well, they seemed to talk as if it were a gentleman. I did not much notice.”

  “A gentleman?”

  “I think so. I am sure they said ‘he’ and ‘him.’ Perhaps Mrs. Grey’s husband has arrived. Whoever it is he must be very ill, for I -heard papa say the case must be ‘grave,’ and the doctor called it ‘dangerous.’ They have gone on together now to see poor Hannah Whittle.”

  Not since he had had the affair in hand had the detective’s ears been regaled with so palatable a dish. That Philip Salter had been taken ill with some malady or another sufficiently serious to necessitate the summoning of a doctor, he fully believed. Miss Jemima resumed.

  “I must say, considering that papa is the medical attendant there, Mrs. Grey might have had the good manners to consult him first.”

  “It may be the old gardener that’s ill,” observed the detective slowly, who had been turning his thoughts about.

  “So it may,” acquiesced Miss Jemima. “He’s but a poor, creaky old thing by all accounts. But no — they would hardly go to the expense of telegraphing for a physician for him with papa at hand.”

  “Oh, they telegraphed, did they!”

  “So the groom said.”

  “The girl is right,” thought the detective. “They’d not telegraph for Hopley. It is Salter. And they have called in a stranger from a distance in preference to Mr. Moore close by. The latter might have talked to the neighbourhood. You have done me a wonderful service, young lady, if you did but know it.”

  Mr. Strange did not offer to attend her home, but suffered her to depart alone.