Bertram Mitford

“ And Mervyn was left alone with the dead, in solitary, haunted Heath Hover—yet not quite alone, for the police constable was left too; and perhaps he was not sorry for the man’s companionship. For the snow whirled down in masses for the best part of the night, blocking the road in huge drifts, and the wind howled dirgefully round the gables of the house, where lay the living and the man who had come there to meet his strange, mysterious death. ”

“ Mervyn said to himself. “I’ll have another drink anyhow. Then I’ll turn in.”
He reached for the whisky bottle, and filled up. Yet he was conscious of a feeling as though a chill were running down him from head to foot, notwithstanding that the fire was glowing with a heat that was almost fierce; and with the hissing squirt of the syphon into the tumbler there mingled a sound as though something or somebody were shuffling or groping behind that heavily locked door. He took a long pull at his tumbler, almost emptying it. Then he looked again at the broad iron loop handle. ”

“ Mervyn felt desperate. He tried not to pale as he gazed at the speaker. But his hand did not move from behind him. In that fierce, hard, set countenance, in the very words of the oath uttered, he knew there would be no going back from that sentence. He might shoot the chief dead, but no power on earth would turn the whirlwind rush of his followers. And they would be as good as their leader’s word, as to that he entertained no doubt whatever. Melian—writhing in a death of fiery torment—the bare idea was as a pictured glimpse into hell itself. ”

“ The long triangle of the pond narrowing away between its overhanging woods, shone in the moonlight a gleaming sheet of ice, whose silver surface the drive of sleet was already whitening, and the firs in the dark woods which flowed down the banks were scintillating with hoarfrost. Now again, from far up that long gleaming triangle, came the raucous, agonised appeal for aid, this time quite distinctly audible.
“Some one’s got stuck there in the ice,” said Mervyn to himself. “But what the devil is he doing there at this time of night? Some poacher I suppose. Well, poaching isn’t a capital crime.” ”

“ All Nature was joyous and at peace this bracing, invigorating winter morning, and within the room down yonder the dead man lay.
Mervyn turned to regain the house. The little black kitten, its bushy tail erect, came bounding up the path stairway to meet him, but he did not take it up, as it rubbed against his legs, purring a greeting.
Halfway down the earth stairway a large stone lay, partly embedded in the soil. Mervyn bent down as though to tie up his bootlace. When he rose again that stone was the custodian of something. It was the tombstone of the strange small disk he had held in his hand. ”

“ To anybody less sceptical—less unaffectedly and wholesouledly sceptical—there was that in the conviction which would have set up a blood-chilling, hair-raising effect. The utter loneliness of the place, the midnight sounds, the moaning of the doleful winter wind, the crackings and creakings of the ghostly old house, the dreadful legends that centred round that very vault, of which the movement of this very door handle was a preliminary incident—would have been sufficient to have driven out such into the pitiless winter night rather than remain sitting there—on the watch. ”

“ He knew the two speakers as near kinsmen of Allah-din Khan, and that as such that they were not talking at random. He himself was to die that night, that was settled. That was nothing. “It was written.” But how to save Melian from the unutterable ghastliness of the fate mapped out for her? That was everything. No amount of fatalism would come to his aid there. In the hot swelter of noontide—for with all the keen chill of the nights on these high lands, the sun at noonday threw off from the rocks and arid ground in waves of glowing heat—his brain seemed to bubble. ”

“ For what she held in her hand was a tiny facsimile of the strange, star-shaped disc, which she had picked up on the sluice path at Heath Hover that lovely cloudless June morning, and the sight of which, in her grasp, had struck her uncle with such a terror of trepidation.
And he knew that she was possessed of that which upon production would entail upon her two alternatives—restoration, to liberty or death—the latter, swift, painless, unconscious. ”

“ The fresh open air—yes, that was life—the pure sweet breath of wood and water, the joyous song of birds. Afar down the long pond, came another joyous sound, that of rippling laughter. It came from the boat, wafted over the water—wondrous sound conductor—and although nearly half a mile away he could distinguish Melian’s clear note from that of her friend. Lightheartedness, silvery lightheadedness, running side by side, parallel with tragedy! A strange world! Then he dived into a close woodland path which led down at a steep angle below the house. ”

“ Then, too, when they got out upon open heathland, though the time of its crimsoning had not yet come—and a wide sweep of rolling valley, and dark belts of firwoods contrasting with the brighter, richer green of oak, she would point him out this or that old church tower in the distance, and expatiate upon the archaeological treasures contained within the same, and her wide eyes would go bright with love of her subject, and her cheeks glow with the soft sun-kiss and the bracing upland air—even her words would trip each other up in her anxiety to get out a description. ”

“ Varne Coates began to feel really interested. He had an immense respect for the acumen of his younger relative, and for the almost superhuman judgment and skill wherewith the latter had probed some of the most delicate and baffling mysteries whose enlightenment had ever startled the world—no less than for the intrepidity and dash which had secured his individual safety in perilous crises involved in such. Be it remembered that he knew nothing of the connexion of Mervyn with any such mystery as the one in question, yet now for the first time he began to scent something of the kind. ”

“ The gossamer branches of the leafless trees shone in the sunlight, picked out in myriad frosted, scintillating patterns of indescribable delicacy against the cloudless blue of the winter sky, and, in between, the dark foliage of firs. Now and then a slide of snow from these, dislodged by the focussed rays of the midday sun, thudded to the ground, with a ghostly break upon the silence of the woodland. But the air—crisp, invigorating—Melian’s cheeks were aglow with it, and the blue eyes, thus framed, shone forth in all the animation begotten of the scene and surroundings. ”

“ At that moment John Seward Mervyn realised that if ever he had been in a tight place in his life he was in one now, and if he did not, when too late, curse his own foolhardiness for bringing him into it, why it was only because he had not time.
The whole band rode down like a whirlwind upon the camp. The bearer and khitmutghar, and the cook, Punjabi natives, scared out of their lives, had crept into one of the tents and crouched trembling. The Levy sowars alone showed fight, and pointed their rifles, but it was plain they would have welcomed any chance offered to surrender. ”

“ Mervyn realised that his nerves were somewhat athrill as he placed his first step on the path stairway. And yet—and yet—at his age, and with his experience, why should they be? It was ridiculous.
There was the stone. One wrench, and what he wanted would be in his hand. He looked around, not quickly nor directly, but in a casual manner; taking fully a minute over the process. But as he turned to the stone again a kind of influence seemed to spring from it, almost assuming the tones of a voice. “You cannot. You dare not,” it seemed to say. ”

“ There was no wind either, not enough stirring in the air to enable those experienced men to form the slightest idea of the lay of their course, by that not always reliable method of feeling on which side of their face the wind stirred. Mervyn had more than begun to feel gloomy—and looked it. Helston Varne was feeling nearly as gloomy, and did not show it. But Melian, looking from one to the other, felt—well, confident. Where Helston Varne was taking a hand there was no room for failure, had become part of her creed, as we have said. ”

“ It was likely enough that in attempting single-handed to get the stranger out he would share the stranger’s fate.
The ice cracked and bent as he pushed out the ladder along its surface; and cautiously, and lying flat in order to distribute his weight, made his way along it. Then it broke, with a glass-like splintering, and jets of water spurted through. Then the moon was again obscured, and a wild drive of sleet whirled down. ”

“ The two pairs of bright eyes, the dark and the blue, brimming with mischief—eke curiosity—fixed upon his face, served to brace Mervyn. He was himself again, or very nearly. And then to him came the thought as to how he should account for his agitation. It had been so palpably real that he was at his wits’ end to think how he should explain it away; and it must be explained away. Women were gifted with such singularly clear-sighted instinct—and, worse still, perhaps—with such a fund of curiosity. A forestalment of this promptly came out.
“But—what is the thing, Uncle Seward?” went on Melian. ”

“ Here was a roomy and comfortable couch, and a blazing fire. A couple of pillows and a blanket was all he needed. And Mervyn perforce had to acquiesce. The latter smiled queerly to himself at his own thoughts while doing so. If the mysterious one were a burglar—only he did not look like it—why the most professional of burglars would hardly burgle a man who had just pulled him out of the jaws of death, and—more potent argument still perhaps to the hardened cynic—here was nothing worth burgling. ”

“ He remembered old Judy could be funny at times in her dry, cautious old rustic way. John Seward Mervyn felt the times had indeed changed for him. He felt years and years younger, under the bright spell of this youthful influence in the gloomy and shunned old house.
“Well dear!” he cried gaily, coming into the room. “You don’t look much of the ‘flu’ patient slowly convalescing. What sort of an ungodly early time did you get up?”
“Oh Uncle Seward, I’ve had such fun. I’ve been out all up the pond, and this little poogie had a romp all over the ice. ”

“ His mind reverted to Heath Hover, and his mind’s eye seemed to form a picture—of the lonely, self-contained man—dry, gruff in manner and biting in conversation—that of course before the arrival of Melian, for he was judge enough to deduce that Mervyn had sloughed a great deal of those characteristics since that sunny presence had been there to irradiate the solitary and secluded habitation, and to melt the sour hardness of an atrophied life. ”

“ Helston Varne looked at Melian, so too, did Mervyn.
“I should think Miss Seward could keep the saddle,” said the former. “She’s lighter than we are, and it’s infernally laborious going for a lady on foot and hampered with skirts.”
“Of course she can,” came the answer, gustily. “Lord, I’d like to get Mr Allah-din Khan over the sights of this rifle. I’d drill his parchment hide for him. Ya Mahomed! I would.”
And then, as if in answer to the invocation, something happened. The gloomy, Dantesque valley bellowed to the echoes of a resounding roar, the reverberations of two jezail shots behind. ”

“ And among his countless victims was Melian Mervyn Seward.
And she could not afford to be ill; for is not illness a luxury for the rich?
But through it all her friend tended her with wholehearted and loyal camaraderie. Of course she suggested a doctor.
“A doctor? Heavens, Violet! I can’t afford such luxuries,” Melian burst forth fiercely. “The only thing I can afford is to die—and the sooner the better.” ”

“ The routine of prayer and prostration—which Melian had at first found so picturesque, even admirable, but now had wearied of—was over, and the men were scattered about in twos or threes, looking after the horses and other things. Two of them were chatting together in a drowsy undertone, and Mervyn, unnoticed by them, was just within earshot, and the substance of what they were saying was this. He himself must die, his time had come. ”

“ Beneath, the stones and boulders of the now dry watercourse, and behind, the craggy entrance to the great tangi. No vegetation either, save coarse dry grass, no sign of life, unless a cloud of kites, wheeling in circles high overhead, against the blue. And, facing each other, unseen, two units of humanity lay there, each bent on relieving the human race of one. Then Varne Coates coughed. ”

“ Interim—“Flu.” The Carstairs abode was a large, dull, ugly villa in a large, dull, ugly suburb—one of those depressing suburbs that is neither town nor country but has the disadvantages of both and the advantages of neither. But it was cheerfulness itself compared with the locality through which Melian’s cab was now slowly jogging. The squalor of the greasy streets; the dank, thick atmosphere; the hoarse, scarcely human yells and the incessant rumble and clatter attendant on that sort of locality are too well known to need any describing. ”

“ For the life of him the watcher could not repress a start, a thrill of the nerves. But the sound, the movement, did not come from the corner whereon his tense gaze was fixed. There was a little black kitten curled up asleep in an armchair opposite the one in which he was seated—a tiny ball of woolly fluff, which during its short life had been the regular companion of his lonely evenings, and of which he was almost humanly fond. ”

“ Helston Varne, lying on his charpoy in his sleeping tent, felt very far removed indeed from going to sleep. To begin with, his relative’s information with regard to Mervyn had given him abundant food for thought. It had pieced together a great deal that had been wanting, and it had also carried him back largely to Heath Hover and that which Heath Hover contained. Strong-headed as strong framed, this man in the very zenith of his prime, had found out his weak spot—and, why should he not—so he now told himself? Nothing—nobody—within the ordinary had ever touched him. ”

“ The light waggonette, which, with the cart, constituted the sole wheel motive power at Heath Hover, swung easily over the hardened snow; but once under way, Mervyn felt himself beset with misgivings. What on earth had he been thinking about—or rather not been thinking about—to bring an open conveyance to meet a girl who was just recovering from an attack of “flu” and a fairly hard one at that? In the cloudless sunniness of the day this was a side of things he had entirely overlooked. Well, he would leave his own conveyance at Clancehurst and charter a closed fly. ”

“ Mervyn had judged it time to go in. And as he walked back over the fateful stone again he found himself wondering whether the keeper’s presence there was really accidental after all. Was Nashby privily employing the whole countryside—or such of it as was trustworthy—to keep watch on him—tireless watch by night as well as by day? Further, had Pierce actually seen him stop and bend over the stone? That would finish things. Mervyn’s head and forehead were not quite dry as he noiselessly re-entered his front door, and that in spite of the now chilly atmosphere of the night. ”

“ Hussein Khan, the hard, lifelong mountaineer, who was guiding, shook a gloomy head as he looked upward and around. None knew better than he what it might portend. None knew better than he that the most practised mountaineer might become helpless as a child when plunged in thick mist. And this mist, though not yet thick, showed every tendency to become so. Added to which a slight drizzle began to fall, and none knew better than Hussein Khan the perilous effect, on their none too safe paths, of slimy moisture. And they direly needed all the start they could obtain. ”