“And you tell me that he fell on his face. Did you turn him over?”
“No.” I saw his drift now. I was sitting erect. My brain began to work again. “No,” I admitted; “I did not.”
“Then how — —” asked the Dutchman roughly— “how do you know that he was dead, young sir? Tell me that.”
When I explained, “Bah!” he cried. “There is nothing in that! You jumped to a conclusion. I thought a Spaniard’s head was harder to break. As for the blood coming from his mouth, perhaps he bit his tongue, or did any one of a hundred things — except die, Master Francis. That you may be sure is just what he did not do.”
“You think so?” I said gratefully. I began to look about me, yet still with a tremor in my limbs, and an inclination to start at shadows.
“Think?” he rejoined, with a heartiness which brought conviction home tome; “I am sure of it. You may depend upon it that Master Clarence, or the man you take for Master Clarence — who no doubt was the other soldier seen with the scoundrel this morning — found him hurt late in the evening. Then, seeing him in that state, he put him in the porch for shelter, either because he could not get him to Arnheim at once, or because he did not wish to give the alarm before he had made his arrangements for netting your party.”
“That is possible!” I allowed, with a sigh of relief. “But what of Master Clarence?”
“Well,” the old man said; “let us get home first. We will talk of him afterward.”
I felt he had more in his mind than appeared, and I obeyed; growing ashamed now of my panic, and looking forward with no very pleasant feelings to hearing the story narrated. But when we reached the house, and found Master Bertie and the Duchess in the parlor waiting for us — they rose startled at sight of my face — he bade me leave that out, but tell the rest of the story.
I complied, describing how I had seen Dymphna meet Clarence, and what I had observed to pass between them. The astonishment of my hearers may be imagined. “The point is very simple,” said our host coolly, when I had, in the face of many exclamations and some incredulity, completed the tale; “it is just this! The woman certainly was not Dymphna. In the first place, she would not be out at night. In the second place, what could she know of your Clarence, an Englishman and a stranger? In the third place, I will warrant she has been in her room all the evening. Then if Master Francis was mistaken in the woman, may he not have been mistaken in the man? That is the point.”
“No,” I said boldly. “I only saw her back. I saw his face.”
“Certainly, that is something,” Master Lindstrom admitted reluctantly.
“But how many times had you seen him before?” put in my lady very pertinently. “Only once.”
In answer to that I could do no more than give further assurance of my certainty on the point. “It was the man I saw in the boat at Greenwich,” I declared positively. “Why should I imagine it?”
“All the same, I trust you have,” she rejoined. “For, if it was indeed that arch scoundrel, we are undone.”
“Imagination plays us queer tricks sometimes,” Master Lindstrom said, with a smile of much meaning. “But come, lad, I will ask Dymphna, though I think it useless to do so. For whether you are right or wrong as to your friend, I will answer for it you are wrong as to my daughter.”
He was rising to go from them for the purpose, when Mistress Anne opened the door and came in. She looked somewhat startled at finding us all in conclave. “I thought I heard your voices,” she explained timidly, standing between us and the door. “I could not sleep.”
She looked indeed as if that were so. Her eyes were very bright, and there was a bright spot of crimson in each cheek. “What is it?” she went on abruptly, looking hard at me and shutting her lips tightly. There was so much to explain that no one had taken it in hand to begin.
“It is just this,” the Duchess said, opening her mouth with a snap. “Have you been with Dymphna all the time?”
“Yes, of course,” was the prompt answer.
“What is she doing?”
“Doing?” Mistress Anne repeated in surprise. “She is asleep.”
“Has she been out since nightfall?” the Duchess continued. “Out of her room? Or out of the house?”
“Out? Certainly not. Before she fell asleep she was in no state to go out, as you know, though I hope she will be all right when she awakes. Who says she has been out?” Anne added sharply. She looked at me with a challenge in her eyes, as much as to say, “Is it you?”
“I am satisfied,” I said, “that I was mistaken as to Mistress Dymphna. But I am just as sure as before that I saw Clarence.”
“Clarence?” Mistress Anne repeated, starting violently, and the color for an instant fleeing from her cheeks. She sat down on the nearest seat.
“You need not be afraid, Anne,” my lady said smiling. She had a wonderfully high courage herself. “I think Master Francis was mistaken, though he is so certain about it.”
“But where — where did he see him?” the girl asked. She still trembled.
Once more I had to tell the tale; Mistress Anne, as was natural, listening to it with the liveliest emotions. And this time so much of the ghost story had to be introduced — for she pressed me closely as to where I had left Clarence, and why I had let him go — that my assurances got less credence than ever.
“I think I see how it is,” she said, with a saucy scorn that hurt me not a little. “Master Carey’s nerves are in much the same state to-night as Dymphna’s. He thought he saw a ghost, and he did not. He thought he saw Dymphna, and he did not. And he thought he saw Master Clarence, and he did not.”
“Not so fast, child!” cried the Duchess sharply, seeing me wince. “Your tongue runs too freely. No one has had better proofs of Master Carey’s courage — for which I will answer myself — than we have!”
“Then he should not say things about Dymphna!” the young lady retorted, her foot tapping the floor, and the red spots back in her cheeks. “Such rubbish I never heard!”
CHAPTER XI.
A FOUL BLOW.
They none of them believed me, it seemed; and smarting under Mistress Anne’s ridicule, hurt by even the Duchess’s kindly incredulity, what could I do? Only assert what I had asserted already, that it was undoubtedly Clarence, and that before twenty-four hours elapsed they would have proof of my words.
At mention of this possibility Master Bertie looked up. He had left the main part in the discussion to others, but now he intervened. “One moment!” he said. “Take it that the lad is right, Master Lindstrom. Is there any precaution we can adopt, any back door, so to speak, we can keep open, in case of an attempt to arrest us being made? What would be the line of our retreat to Wesel?”
“The river,” replied the Dutchman promptly.
“And the boats are all at the landing-stage?”
“They are, and for that reason they are useless in an emergency,” our host answered thoughtfully. “Knowing the place, any one sent to surprise and arrest us would secure them first, and the bridge. Then they would have us in a trap. It might be well to take a boat round, and moor it in the little creek in the farther orchard,” he added, rising. “It is a good idea, at any rate. I will go and do it.”
He went out, leaving us four — the Duchess, her husband, Anne, and myself — sitting round the lamp.
“If Master Carey is so certain that it was Clarence,” my lady began, “I think he ought to — —”
“Yes, Kate?” her husband said. She had paused and seemed to be listening.
“Ought to open that letter he has!” she continued impetuously. “I have no doubt it is a letter to Clarence. Now the rogue has come on the scene again, the lad’s scruples ought not to stand in the way. They are all nonsense. The letter may throw some light on the Bishop’s schemes and Clarence’s presence here; and it should be read. That is what I think.”
“What do you say, Carey?” her husband asked, as I kept silence. “Is not that reasonable?”
Sitting with my elbows on the table, I twisted and untwisted the fingers of my clasped hands, gazing at them the while as though inspiration might come of them. What was I to do? I knew that the three pairs of eyes were upon me, and the knowledge distracted me, and prevented me really thinking, though I seemed to be thinking so hard. “Well,” I burst out at last, “the circumstances are certainly altered. I see no reason why I should not — —”
Crash!
I stopped, uttering an exclamation, and we all sprang to our feet. “Oh, what a pity!” the Duchess cried, clasping her hands. “You clumsy, clumsy girl! What have you done?”
Mistress Anne’s sleeve as she turned had swept from the table a Florentine jug, one of Master Lindstrom’s greatest treasures, and it lay in a dozen fragments on the floor. We stood and looked at it, the Duchess in anger, Master Bertie and I in comic dismay. The girl’s lip trembled, and she turned quite white as she contemplated the ruin she had caused.
“Well, you have done it now!” the Duchess said pitilessly. What woman could ever overlook clumsiness in another woman! “It only remains to pick up the pieces, miss. If a man had done it — but there, pick up the pieces. You will have to make your tale good to Master Lindstrom afterward.”
I went down on my knees and helped Anne, the annoyance her incredulity had caused me forgotten. She was so shaken that I heard the bits of ware in her hand clatter together. When we had picked up all, even to the smallest piece, I rose, and the Duchess returned to the former subject. “You will open this letter, then?” she said; “I see you will. Then the sooner the better. Have you got it about you?”
“No, it is in my bedroom,” I answered. “I hid it away there, and I must fetch it. But do you think,” I continued, pausing as I opened the door for Mistress Anne to go out with her double handful of fragments, “it is absolutely necessary to read it, my lady?”
“Most certainly,” she answered, gravely nodding with each syllable, “I think so. I will be responsible.” And Master Bertie nodded also.
“So be it,” I said reluctantly. And I was about to leave the room to fetch the letter — my bedroom being in a different part of the house, only connected with the main building by a covered passage — when our host returned. He told us that he had removed a boat, and I stayed a while to hear if he had anything more to report, and then, finding he had not, went out to go to my room, shutting the door behind me.
The passage I have mentioned, which was merely formed of rough planks, was very dark. At the nearer end was the foot of the staircase leading to the upper rooms. Farther along was a door in the side opening into the garden. Going straight out of the lighted room, I had almost to grope my way, feeling the walls with my hands. When I had about reached the middle I paused. It struck me that the door into the garden must be open, for I felt a cold draught of air strike my brow, and saw, or fancied I saw, a slice of night sky and the branch of a tree waving against it. I took a step forward, slightly shivering in the night air as I did so, and had stretched out my hand with the intention of closing the door, when a dark form rose suddenly close to me, I saw a knife gleam in the starlight, and the next moment I reeled back into the darknesss of the passage, a sharp pain in my breast.
I knew at once what had happened to me, and leaned a moment against the planking with a sick, faint feeling, saying to myself, “I have it this time!” The attack had been so sudden and unexpected, I had been taken so completely off my guard, that I had made no attempt either to strike or to clutch my assailant, and I suppose only the darkness of the passage saved me from another blow. But was one needed? The hand which I had raised instinctively to shield my throat was wet with the warm blood trickling fast down my breast. I staggered back to the door of the parlor, groped blindly for the latch, seemed to be an age finding it, found it at last, and walked in.
The Duchess sprang up at sight of me. “What,” she cried, backing from me, “what has happened?”
“I have been stabbed,” I said, and I sat down.
It amused me afterward to recall what they all did. The Dutchman stared, my lady screamed loudly, Master Bertie whipped out his sword; he could make up his mind quickly enough at times.
“I think he has gone,” I said faintly.
The words brought the Duchess to her knees by my chair. She tore open my doublet, through which the blood was oozing fast. I made no doubt that I was a dead man, for I had never been wounded in this way before, and the blood scared me. I remember my prevailing idea was a kind of stunned pity for myself. Perhaps later — I hope so — I should have come to think of Petronilla and my uncle and other people. But before this stage was readied, the Duchess reassured me. “Courage, lad!” she cried heartily. “It is all right, Dick. The villain struck him on the breastbone an inch too low, and has just ripped up a scrap of skin. It has blooded him for the spring, that is all. A bit of plaster — —”
“And a drink of strong waters,” suggested the Dutchman soberly — his thoughts were always to the point when they came.
“Yes, that too,” quoth my lady, “and he will be all right.”
I thought so myself when I had emptied the cup they offered me. I had been a good deal shaken by the events of the day. The sight of blood had further upset me. I really think it possible I might have died of this slight hurt and my imagination, if I had been left to myself. But the Duchess’s assurance and the draught of schnapps, which seemed to send new blood through my veins, made me feel ashamed of myself. If the Duchess would have let me, I would at once have gone to search the premises; as it was, she made me sit still while she ran to and fro for hot water and plaster, and the men searched the lower rooms and secured the door afresh.
“And so you could see nothing of him?” our host asked, when he and Master Bertie returned, weapons in hand. “Nothing of his figure or face?”
“Nothing, save that he was short,” I answered; “shorter than I am, at any rate, and I fancy a good deal.”
“A good deal shorter than you are?” my lady said uneasily; “that is no clew. In this country nine people out of ten are that. Clarence, now, is not.”
“No,” I said; “he is about the same height. It was not Clarence.”
“Then who could it be?” she muttered, rising, and then with a quick shudder sitting down again. “Heaven help us, we seem to be in the midst of foes! What could be the motive? And why should the villain have selected you? Why pick you out?”
Thereupon a strange thing happened. Three pairs of English eyes met, and signaled a common message eye to eye. No word passed, but the message was “Van Tree!” When we had glanced at one another we looked all of us at our host — looked somewhat guiltily. He was deep in thought, his eyes on the stove; but he seemed to feel our gaze upon him, and he looked up abruptly. “Master Van Tree — —” he said, and stopped.
“You know him well?” the Duchess said, appealing to him softly. We felt a kind of sorrow for him, and some delicacy, too, about accusing one of his countrymen of a thing so cowardly. “Do you think it is possible,” she continued with an effort— “possible that he can have done this, Master Lindstrom?”
“I have known him from a boy,” the merchant said, looking up, a hand on either knee, and speaking with a simplicity almost majestic, “and never knew him do a mean thing, madam. I know no more than that.” And he looked round on us.
“That is a good deal; still, he went off in a fit of jealousy when Master Carey brought Dymphna home. We must remember that.”
“Yes, I would he knew the rights of that matter,” said the Dutchman heartily.
“And he has been hanging about the place all day,” my lady persisted.
“Yes,” Master Lindstrom rejoined patiently; “yet I do not think he did this.”
“Then who did?” she said, somewhat nettled.
That was the question. I had my opinion, as I saw Master Bertie and the Duchess had. I did not doubt it was Van Tree. Yet a thought struck me. “It might be well,” I suggested,
“that some one should ask Mistress Anne whether the door was open when she left the room. She passed out just in front of me.”
“But she does not go by the door,” my lady objected.
“No, she would turn at once and go upstairs,” I agreed. “But she could see the door from the foot of the stairs — if she looked that way, I mean.”
The Duchess assented, and went out of the room to put the question. We three, left together, sat staring at the dull flame of the lamp, and were for the most part silent, Master Bertie only remarking that it was after midnight. The suspicion he and I entertained of Van Tree’s guilt seemed to raise a barrier between us and our host. My wound, slight as it was, smarted and burned, and my head ached. After midnight, was it? What a day it had been!
When the Duchess came back, as she did in a few minutes, both Anne and Dymphna came with her. The girls had risen hastily, and were shivering with cold and alarm. Their eyes were bright, their manner was excited. They were full of sympathy and horror and wonder, as was natural; of nervous fear for themselves, too. But my lady cut short their exclamations. “Anne says she did not notice the door,” she said.
“No,” the girl answered, trembling visibly as she spoke. “I went up straight to bed. But who could it be? Did you see nothing of him as he struck you? Not a feature? Not an outline?”
“No,” I murmured.
“Did he not say a word?” she continued, with strange insistence. “Was he tall or short?” Her dark eyes dwelling on mine seemed to probe my thoughts, as though they challenged me to keep anything back from her. “Was it the man you hurt this morning?” she suggested.
“No,” I answered reluctantly. “This man was short.”
“Short, was he? Was it Master Van Tree, then?”
We, who felt also certain that it was Van Tree, started, nevertheless, at hearing the charge put into words before Dymphna. I wondered, and I think the others did, too, at Mistress Anne’s harshness. Even my lady, so blunt and outspoken by nature, had shrunk from trying to question the Dutch girl about her lover. We looked at Dymphna, wondering how she would take it.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 55
