Tod looked at her, plying the knitting-needles so quickly, and looked at me, and there was a silence. I wondered what was keeping him from speaking. He suddenly bent his head forward.
“Have you heard any talk of these noises, Mrs. Radcliffe? People say they are to be heard almost any night.”
“I’ve not heard no talk, but I have heard the noise,” she answered, whisking out a needle and beginning another of the three-cornered rows. “One evening about a month ago I was a-coming home up the lane, and I hears a curious kind o’ prolonged cry. It startled me at the moment, for, thinks I, it must be in this house; and I hastens in. No. Eunice said she had heard no cries: as how should she, when there was nobody but herself indoors? So I goes out again, and listens,” added Mrs. Radcliffe, lifting her eyes from the stocking and fixing them on Tod, “and then I finds out what it really was—the night-birds.”
“The night-birds?” he echoed.
“’Twas the night-birds, Mr. Joseph,” she repeated, with an emphatic nod. “They had congregated in these thick trees, and was crying like so many human beings. I have heard the same thing many a time in Wiltshire when I was a girl. I used to go there to stay with aunt and uncle.”
“Well, I never heard anything like it before,” returned Tod. “It’s just as though some unquiet spirit was in the air.”
“Mayhap it sounds so afore you know what it is. Let me give you young gentlemen a drop o’ my home-made cowslip wine.”
She had taken the decanter of wine and some glasses off the sideboard with her long arms, before we could say Yes or No. We are famous for cowslip wine down there, but this was extra good. Tod took another glass of it, and got up to go.
“Don’t be frighted if you hear the noise again, now that you know what it is,” she said, quite in a motherly way. “For my part I wish some o’ the birds was shot. They don’t do no good to nobody.”
“As there is not any house about here, except this, the thought naturally arises that the noise may be inside it—until you know to the contrary,” remarked Tod.
“I wish it was inside it—we’d soon stop it by wringing all their necks,” cried she. “You can listen,” she added, suddenly going into the hall and flinging wide every door that opened from it and led to the different passages and rooms. “Go to any part of the house you like, and hearken for yourselves, young gentlemen.”
Tod laughed at the suggestion. The passages were all still and cold, and there was nothing to hear. Taking up the candle, she lighted us to the front-door. Outside stood the woman-servant Eunice, a basket on her arm, and just about to ring, Mrs. Radcliffe inquired if she had heard any noise.
“Only the shrieking birds up there,” she answered readily. “They be in full cry to-night.”
“They’ve been startling these gentlemen finely.”
“There bain’t nothing to be startled at,” said the woman, roughly, turning a look of contempt upon us. “If I was the master I’d shoot as many as I could get at; and if that didn’t get rid of ’em, I’d cut the trees down.”
“They make a queerer noise than any birds I ever heard before,” said Tod, standing his ground to say it.
“They does,” assented the woman. “That queer, that some folks believes it’s the shrieks o’ the skeleton on the gibbet.”
Pleasant! When I and Tod had to pass within a few yards of its corner. The posts of the old gibbet were there still, but the skeleton had mouldered away long ago. A bit of chain, some few inches long, adhered to its fastening in the post still, and rattled away on windy nights.
“What donkeys we were, Johnny, not to know birds’ cries when we heard them!” exclaimed Tod, as we tumbled over the gate and went flying across the field. “Hark! Listen! There it is again!”
There it was. The same despairing sort of wail, faintly rising and dying on the air. Tod stood in hushed silence.
“Johnny, I believe that’s a human cry!—I could almost fancy,” he went on, “that it is speaking words. No bird, that ever I met with, native or foreign, could make the like.”
It died away. But still occurred the obvious question, What was it, and where did it come from? With nothing but the empty air above and around us, that was difficult to answer.
“It’s not in the trees—I vow it,” said Tod; “it’s not inside the Torr; it can’t rise up from under the ground. I say, Johnny, is it a case of ghost?”
The wailing arose again as he spoke, as if to reprove him for his levity. I’d rather have met a ghost; ay, and a real ghost; than have carried away that sound to haunt me.
We tore home as fast as our heels could take us, and told of the night’s adventure. After the pater had blown us up for being late, he treated us to a dose of ridicule. Human cries, indeed? Ghosts and witches? I might be excused, he said, being a muff; but Joe must be just going back to his childhood. That settled Tod. Of all disagreeable things he most hated to be ridiculed.
“It must have been the old birds in those trees, after all, Johnny,” said he, as we went up to bed. “I think the moon makes people fanciful.”
And after a sound night’s rest we woke up to the bright sunshine, and thought no more of the cries.
That morning, being close to Pitchley’s Farm, we called in to see Mrs. Frank Radcliffe. But she was not to be seen. Her brother, David Skate, just come in to his mid-day dinner, came forward to meet us in his fustian suit. Annet had been hardly able to keep about for some time, he said, but this was the first day she had regularly broken down so as to be in bed.
“It has brought on a touch of fever,” said he, pressing the bread-and-cheese and cider upon us, which he had ordered in.
“What has?” asked Tod.
“This perpetual torment that she keeps her mind in. But she can’t help it, poor thing, so it’s not fair to blame her,” added David Skate. “It grows worse instead of better, and I don’t see what the end of it is to be. I’ve thought for some time she might go and break up to-day.”
“Why to-day?”
“Because it is the anniversary of her husband’s death, Master Johnny. He died twelve months ago to-day.”
Back went my memory to the morning we heard of it. When the pater was scolding Dwarf Giles in the yard, and Tod stood laughing at the young ducks taking to the water, and Stephen Radcliffe loomed into sight, grim and surly, to disclose to us the tidings that the post had brought in—his brother Frank’s death.
“Has she still that curious fancy in her, David?—that he did not come by his death fairly.”
“She has it in her, and she can’t get it out of her,” returned David. “Why, Master Johnny, it’s nothing but that that’s killing her. Ay, and that’s not too strong a word, sir, for I do believe she’ll die of it, unless something can be done to satisfy her mind, and give her rest,” he added earnestly. “She thinks there was foul play used in some way, and that Stephen Radcliffe was at the bottom of it.”
We had never heard a word about the fancy since that night when Annet first spoke of it at the stile, and supposed she had forgotten it long ago. The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley had often noticed how ill she looked, but they put it down to grief for Francis and to her anxiety about the farm.
“No, she has said no more since then,” observed David. “She took up an idea that the Squire ascribed it to a wandering brain; and so has held her peace since.”
“Is her brain wandering, do you think?” asked Tod.
“Well, I don’t know,” returned David, absently making little cuts at the edge of the cheese with the knife. “In all other respects she is as sane as sane can be; there’s not a woman of sounder sense, as to daily matters, anywhere. But this odd fancy has got hold of her mind; and it’s just driving her crazy. She says that her husband appears to her in her dreams, and calls upon her to help and release him.”
“Release him from what? From his grave in Finchley Cemetery?”
“From what indeed!” echoed David Skate. “That’s what I ask her. But she persists that, sleeping or waking, his spirit is always hovering near her, crying out to her to avenge him. She declares that it is no fancy. Of course it is, though.”
“I never met with such a case,” said Tod, forgetting the good cider in his astonishment. “Frank Radcliffe died up at Dr. Dale’s in London. Stephen could not have had anything to do with his death: he was down here at the time.”
“Well, Annet has the notion firmly fixed in her mind that he had, and there’s no turning her,” said David. “There will be no turning her this side the grave, unless we can free her from it. Any way, the fancy has come to such a pitch now, and is telling upon her so seriously, that something must be done. If it were not that just the busiest time has set in; the hay cut, and the wheat a’most ready to cut, I’d take her to London to Dr. Dale’s. Perhaps if she heard the account of Frank’s death from his own lips, and that it was a natural death, it might help her a bit.”
We went home full of this. The Squire was in a fine way when he heard it, and brimming over with pity for Annet. He had grown to like her; and he had always looked on Francis as in some degree belonging to him.
“Look here,” said he, in his impulsive good nature, “it will never do to let this go on: we shall have her in a mad-house too. That’s not a bad notion of David Skate’s; and if he can’t leave to take her up to London just now, I’ll take her.”
“She could not go,” said Tod. “She is in bed with low fever.”
“Then I’ll go up by myself,” stamped the Squire in his zeal. “And get Dr. Dale to write out all the particulars, and hurry down again with them to her as fast as the train will bring me. Poor thing! her disease must be a sort of mania.”
“Now, Johnny, mind you don’t make a mistake in the omnibus. Use your eyes; they are younger than mine.”
We were standing at Charing Cross in the hot afternoon sun, looking out for an omnibus that would take us westward. The Squire had lost no time in starting for London, and we had reached it an hour before. He let me come up with him, as Tod had gone to Whitney Hall.
“Here it is, sir. ‘Kensington,—Hammersmith,—Richmond.’ This is the right one.”
The omnibus stopped, and in we got; for the Squire said the sun was too fierce for the outside; and by-and-by, when the houses became fewer, and the trees and fields more frequent, we were set down near Dr. Dale’s. A large house, standing amidst a huge grass-plat, shut in by iron gates.
“I want to see Dr. Dale,” said the pater, bustling in as soon as the door was opened, without waiting to be asked.
The servant looked at him and then at me; as if he thought the one or the other of us was a lunatic about to be left there. “This way, sir,” said he to the Squire and put us into a small square room that had a blue and drab carpet, and a stand of plants before the window. A little man, with deep-set dark eyes, and the hair all gone from the top of his head, soon made his appearance—Dr. Dale.
The Squire plunged into explanations in his usual confusing fashion, mixing up many things together. Dr. Dale knitted his brow, trying to make sense of it.
“I’m sure I should be happy to oblige you in any way,” said he—and he seemed to be a very pleasant man. “But I do not quite understand what it is you ask of me.”
“Such a dreadful thing, you know, if she has to be put in a mad-house too!” went on the pater. “A pretty, anxious, hard-working little woman she is, as ever you saw, Dr. Dale! We think the account in your handwriting might ease her. I hope you won’t mind the trouble.”
“The account of what?” asked the doctor.
“Only this,” explained the Squire, laying hold, in his zeal, of the doctor’s button-hole. “Just dot down the particulars of Francis Radcliffe’s death. His death here, you know. I suppose you were an eye-witness to it.”
“But, my good sir, I—pardon me—I must repeat that I do not understand. Francis Radcliffe did not die here. He went away a twelvemonth ago, cured.”
“Goodness bless me!” cried the Squire, staggering back to a chair when he had fully taken in the sense of the words, and staring about him like a real maniac. “It cannot be. I must have come to the wrong place.”
“This is Dale House, and I am Dr. Dale. Mr. Francis Radcliffe was under my charge for some months: I can’t tell exactly how many without referring to my books; seven or eight, I think; and he then left, cured, or nearly so.”
“Johnny, hand me my handkerchief; it’s in my hat. I can’t make top or tail of this.”
“I did not advise his removal,” continued Dr. Dale, who, I do believe, thought the Squire was bad enough for a patient. “He was very nearly, if not quite well, but another month here would have established his recovery on a sure basis. However, his brother insisted on removing him, and I had no power to prevent it.”
“What brother?” cried the Squire, rubbing his head helplessly.
“Mr. Radcliffe, of Sandstone Torr.”
“Johnny, I think we must all be dreaming. Radcliffe of the Torr got a letter from you one morning, doctor—in June, I think; yes, I remember the hay-making was about—saying Francis had died; here in this house, with you: and bidding him come up to see you about it.”
“I never wrote any such letter. Francis Radcliffe did not die here.”
“Well, it was written for you by one of your people. Not die! Why, you held a coroner’s inquest on him! You buried him in Finchley Cemetery.”
“Nothing of the sort, Mr. Todhetley. Francis Radcliffe was taken from this house, by his brother, last June, alive and well.”
“Well I never!—this beats everything. Was he not worn away to a skeleton before he went?—had he not heart disease?—did he not die of effusion on the brain?” ran on the Squire, in a maze of bewilderment.
“He was thin certainly: patients in asylums generally are; but he could not be called a skeleton; I never knew that he had heart disease. As to dying, he most assuredly did not die here.”
“I do think I must be lost,” cried the Squire. “I can’t find any way out of this. Can you let me see Mr. Pitt, your head assistant, doctor? Perhaps he can throw some light on it. It was Pitt who wrote the letter to Mr. Radcliffe.”
“You should see him with pleasure if he were still with me,” replied the doctor. “But he has left.”
“And Frank did not die here!” commented the Squire. “What can be the meaning of it?”
The meaning was evidently not to be found there. Dr. Dale said he could tell us no more than he had told, if he talked till night—that Francis Radcliffe was taken out by his brother. Stephen paid all charges at the time, and they went away together.
“And of course, Johnny, he is to be believed,” quoth the pater, turning himself round and round on the grass-plot, as we were going away, like a teetotum. “Dale would not deceive us: he could have no object in doing that. What in the world does it all mean?—and where is Francis? Ste Radcliffe can’t have shipped him off to Canada with the wheelbarrows!”
How the Squire whirled straight off to the train, finding one on the point of starting, and got down home again, there’s no space to tell of. It was between eight and nine, as the station clock told him, but he was in too much excitement to let the matter rest.
“Come along, Johnny. I’ll have it out with Stephen before I sleep.”
And they had it out in that same gloomy parlour at the Torr, where Tod and I had been a night or two before; frightfully gloomy to-night, for the dusk was drawing on, and hardly a bit of light came in. The Squire and Stephen, sitting opposite each other, could not see the outline of one another’s faces. Ste brazened it out.
“You’re making a hullabaloo for nothing,” said he, doggedly. “No, it’s true he didn’t die at the mad-house; he died within a week of coming out of it. Why didn’t I tell the truth about it? Why, because I knew I should get a heap o’ blame thrown back at me for taking him out—and I wished I hadn’t took him out; but ’twas no good wishing then. How was I to know that the very self-same hour he’d got his liberty, he would begin drinking again?—and drink himself into a furious fever, and die of it? Could I bring him to life again, do you suppose?”
“What was the meaning of that letter you brought to me, purporting to come from Dr. Dale? Answer that, Stephen Radcliffe.”
“I didn’t bring you a letter from Dr. Dale. ’Twas from Pitt; Dr. Dale’s head man. You read it yourself. When I found that Frank was getting unmanageable at the lodgings, I sent to Pitt, asking if he’d be good enough to come and see to him—I knew no other doctor up there; and Pitt was the best I could have, as he understood his case. Pitt came and took the charge; and I left Frank under him. I couldn’t afford to stay up there, with my grass waiting to be cut, and all the fine weather wasting itself away. Pitt stayed with him; and he died in Pitt’s arms; and it was Pitt that wrote the letter to tell me of it. You should ha’ gone up with me, Squire,” added Stephen, with a kind of sneer, “and then you’d have seen where he was for yourself, and known as much as I did.”
“It was an infamous deceit to put upon me, Stephen Radcliffe.”
“It did no harm. The deceit only lay in letting you think he died in the mad-house instead of out of it. If I’d not thought he was well enough to come out, I shouldn’t have moved him. ’Twas his fault,” sullenly added Stephen. “He prayed me to take him away from the place; not to go away without him.”
“And where was it that he did die?”
“At my lodgings.”
“What lodgings?”
“The lodgings I stayed at while I was shipping off the things to Tom. I took Frank there, intending to bring him down home with me when I came, and surprise you all. Before I could come he was drinking, and as mad again as a March hare. Pitt had to strap him down to his bed.”
“Are you sure you did not ship him off to Tom also, while you were shipping the things?” demanded the Squire. “I believe you are crafty enough for it, Stephen Radcliffe—and unbrotherly enough.”
“If I’d shipped him off, he could have shipped himself back again, I take it,” returned Stephen, coolly.
“Where are these lodgings that he died at?”
“In London.”
“Whereabouts in London? I didn’t suppose they were in New York.”
“’Twas near Cow Cross.”
“Cow Cross! Where in the name of wonder is Cow Cross?”
“Up towards Smithfield. Islington way.”
“You give me the address, Stephen Radcliffe. I insist upon knowing it. Johnny, you can see—take it down. If I don’t verify this matter to my satisfaction, Mr. Radcliffe, I’ll have you up publicly to answer for it.”
Stephen took an old pocket-book out of his coat, went to the window to catch what little light came in, and ran his finger down the leaves.
“Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district,” read he. “That was all the address I ever knew it by.”
“Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district,” repeated the pater. “Take it down, Johnny—here’s the back of an old letter. And now, Mr. Radcliffe, will you go with me to London?”
“No. I’ll be hanged if I do.”
“I mean to come to the bottom of this, I can tell you. You shan’t play these tricks on honest people with impunity.”
“Why, what do you suspect?” roared Stephen. “Do you think I murdered him?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you did,” retorted the pater. “Find out a man in one lie, and you may suspect him of others. What was the name of the people, at these lodgings?”
Stephen Radcliffe, sitting down again, put his hands on his knees, apparently considering; but I saw him take an outward glance at the Squire from under his grey eyebrows—very grey and bushy they were now. He could see that for once in his life the pater was resolute.
“Her name was Mapping,” he said. “A widow. Mrs. Mapping.”
“Put that down, Johnny. ‘Mrs. Mapping, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district.’ And now, Mr. Radcliffe, where is Pitt to be found? He has left Dale House.”
“In the moon, for aught I can tell,” was the insolent answer. “I paid him for his attendance when we came back from the funeral—and precious high his charges were!—and I know nothing of him since.”
We said good-night to Stephen Radcliffe with as much civility as could be called up under the circumstances, and went home in the fly. The next day we steamed up to London again to make inquiries at Gibraltar Terrace. It was not that the Squire exactly doubted Stephen’s word, or for a moment thought that he had dealt unfairly by Frank: nothing of that sort: but he was in a state of explosion at the deceit Stephen Radcliffe had practised on him; and needed to throw the anger off. Don’t we all know how unbearable inaction is in such a frame of mind?
Well. Up one street, down another, went we, in what Stephen had called the Islington district, but no Gibraltar Terrace could we see or hear of. The terrace might have been in Gibraltar itself, for all the sign there was of it.
“I’ll go down to-morrow, and issue a warrant against Ste Radcliffe,” cried the Squire, when we got in, tired and heated, to the Castle and Falcon—at which inn, being convenient to the search, he had put up. “I will, Johnny, as I’m a living man. It is infamous to send us up here on a wild-goose chase, to a place that has no name, and no existence. I don’t like the aspect of things at all; and he shall be made to explain them.”
“But I suppose we have not looked in all parts of Islington,” I said. “It seems a large place. And—don’t you think, sir—that it might be as well to ascertain where Pitt is? I dare say Dr. Dale knows.”
“Perhaps it, would, Johnny.”
“Pitt would be able to testify to the truth of what Stephen Radcliffe says. We might hear it all from him.”
“And need not bother further about this confounded Gibraltar Terrace. The thought did not strike me before, Johnny. We’ll go up to Dale’s the first thing after breakfast.”
The Squire chartered a cab: he was in too much of a fever to look out for an omnibus: and by ten o’clock Dr. Dale’s was reached. The doctor was not at home, but we saw some one that the servant called Mr. Lichfield.
“Pitt?” said Mr. Lichfield—who was a tall, strong young man in a tweed suit of clothes, and had black hair parted down the middle—“Oh, he was my predecessor here. He has left.”
“Where’s he gone?” asked the Squire.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. Dr. Dale does not know; for I have once or twice heard him wonder what had become of Pitt. Pitt grew rather irregular in his habits, I fancy, and the doctor discharged him.”
“How long ago?”
“About a year, I think. I have not the least idea where Pitt is now: would be happy to tell you if I knew.”
So, there we were again—baffled. The Squire went back in the cab to the Castle and Falcon, rubbing his face furiously, and giving things in general a few hard words.
Up to Islington again, and searching up and down the streets and roads. A bright thought took the pater. He got a policeman to show him to the district sorting-house, went in, and inquired whether such a place as Gibraltar Terrace existed, or whether it did not.
Yes. There was one. But it was not in Islington; only on the borders of it.
Away we went, after getting the right direction, and found it. A terrace of poor houses, in a quiet side-street. In nearly every other window hung a card with “Lodgings” on it, or “Apartments.” Children played in the road: two men with a truck were crying mackerel.
“I say, Johnny, these houses all look alike. What is the number we want?”
“Stephen Radcliffe did not give any number.”
“Bless my heart! We shall have to knock at every one of them.”
And so he did. Every individual door he knocked at, one after the other, asking if Mrs. Mapping lived there. At the very last house of all we found her. A girl, whose clothes were dilapidated enough to have come down from Noah’s Ark, got up from her knees, on which she was cleaning the door-flag, and told us to go into the parlour while she called Mrs. Mapping. It was a tidy threadbare room, not much bigger than a closet, with “Lodgings” wafered to the middle pane of the window.
Mrs. Mapping came in: a middle-aged, washed-out lady, with pink cheeks, who looked as if she didn’t have enough to eat. She thought we had come after the lodgings, and stood curtsying, and rubbing her hands down her black-silk apron—which was in slits. Apparently a “genteel” person who had seen better days. The Squire opened the ball, and her face took a puzzled look as she listened.
“Radcliffe?—Radcliffe?” No, she did not recollect any lodger of the name. But then, nine times out of ten, she did not know the names of her lodgers. She didn’t want to know them. Why should she? If the gentlemen’s names came out incidental, well and good; if not, she never presumed to inquire after them. She had not been obliged to let lodgings always.
“But this gentleman died here—died, ma’am,” interrupted the Squire, pretty nearly beside himself with impatience. “It’s about twelve months ago.”
“Oh, that gentleman,” she said. “Yes, he did die here, poor young man. The doctor—yes, his name was Pitt, sir—he couldn’t save him. Drink, that was the cause, I’m afeard.”
The Squire groaned—wishing all drink was at the bottom of the Thames. “And he was buried in Finchley Cemetery, ma’am, we hear?”
“Finchley? Well, now yes, I believe it was Finchley, sir,” replied Mrs. Mapping, considering—and I could see the woman was speaking the truth according to her recollection. “The burial fees are low at Finchley, sir.”
“Then he did die here, ma’am—Mr. Francis Radcliffe?”
“Sure enough he did, sir. And a sad thing it was, one young like him. But whether his name was Radcliffe, or not, I couldn’t take upon myself to say. I don’t remember to have heard his name.”
“Couldn’t you have read it on the coffin-plate?” asked the Squire, explosively. “One might have thought if you heard it in no other way, you’d see it there.”
“Well, sir, I was ill myself at the time, and in a good deal of trouble beside, and didn’t get upstairs much out of my kitchen below. Like enough it was Radcliffe: I can’t remember.”
“His brother brought him—and lodged here with him—did he not?”
“Like enough, sir,” she repeated. “There was two or three of ’em out and in often, I remember. Mr. Pitt, and others. I was that ill, myself, that some days I never got out of bed at all. I know it was a fine shock to me when my sister came down and said the young man was dead. She was seeing to things a bit for me during my illness. His rantings had been pitiful.”
“Could I see your sister, ma’am?” asked the Squire.
“She’s gone to Manchester, sir. Her husband has a place there now.”
“Don’t you recollect the elder Mr. Radcliffe?” pursued the Squire. “The young man’s brother? He was staying up in London two or three times about some shipping.”
“I should if I saw him, sir, no doubt. Last year I had rare good luck with my rooms, never hardly had ’em empty. The young man who died had the first-floor apartments. Well, yes, I do remember now that some gentleman was here two or three times from the country. A farmer, I think he was. A middle-aged man, sir, so to say; fifty, or thereabouts; with grey hair.”
“That’s him,” interrupted the Squire, forgetting his grammar in his haste. “Should know the description of him anywhere, shouldn’t we, Johnny? Was he here at the time of the young man’s death, ma’am?”
“No, sir. I remember as much as that. He had gone back to the country.”
Mrs. Mapping stood, smoothing down the apron, waiting to hear what we wanted next, and perhaps not comprehending the drift of the visit yet.
“Where’s that Mr. Pitt to be found?”
“Law, sir! as if I knew!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never set eyes on him since that time. He didn’t live here, sir; only used to come in and out to see to the sick young man. I never heard where he did live.”
There was nothing more to wait for. The Squire slipped half-a-crown into the woman’s hand as we went out, and she curtsied again and thanked him—in spite of the better days. Another question occurred to him.
“I suppose the young man had everything done for him that could be? Care?—and nourishment?—and necessary attendance?”
“Surely, sir. Why not? Mr. Pitt took care of that, I suppose.”
“Ay. Well, it was a grievous end. Good-morning, ma’am.”
“Good-day to you, gentlemen.”
The Squire went looming up the street in the dumps; his hands in his pockets, his steps slow.
“I suppose, Johnny, if one tried to get at Pitt in this vast London city, it would be like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay.”
“We have no clue to him, sir.”
“No. And I don’t know that it would answer any purpose if we did get at him. He could only confirm what we’ve heard. Well, this is fine news to take back to poor Annet Radcliffe!”
“I should think she had better not be told, sir.”
“She must know it some time.”
The Squire sent for David Skate when we got home, and told him what we knew; and the two marched to the Torr in the blazing June sun, and held an interview with Stephen Radcliffe. Ste was sullen and reserved, and (for him) haughty. It was a mistake, of course, as things turned out, his having taken Frank from the asylum, he admitted that, admitted he was sorry for it, but he had done it for the best. Frank got drinking again, and it was too much for him; he died after a few days of delirium, and Pitt couldn’t save him. That was the long and the short of the history; and the Squire and Skate might make the best and the worst of it.
The Squire and Skate were two of the simplest of men; honest-minded themselves, and unsuspicious of other people. They quitted the Torr for the blazing meadows, on their road home again.
“I shall not say anything about this to Annet,” observed David Skate. “In her present frame of mind it would not do. The fever seems better, and she is up, and about her work again. Later perhaps we may tell her of it.”
“I wish we could have found Pitt,” said the Squire.
“Yes, it would be satisfactory to hear what he has to say,” replied David. “Some of these days, when work is slack, I’ll take a run up to London and try and search him out. Though I suppose he could not tell us much more than the landlady has told.”
“There it is,” cried the Squire. “Even Johnny Ludlow, with his crotchets about people and his likes and dislikes, says he’s sure Mrs. Mapping might be trusted; that she was relating facts.”
So matters subsided, and the weeks and our holidays went on together. Stephen Radcliffe, by this act of deceit, added another crooked feather to his cap of ills in the estimation of the neighbourhood; though that would not be likely to trouble him. Meeting Mr. Brandon one day in the road, just out of Church Dykely, Stephen chanced to say that he wished to goodness it was in his power to sell the Torr, so that he might be off to Canada to his son: that was the land to make money at, by all accounts.
“You and your son might cut off the entail, now poor Francis is gone,” said old Brandon, thinking what a good riddance it would be if Stephen went.
“I don’t know who’d buy it—at my price,” growled Stephen. “I mean to get shut o’ them birds, though,” he added, as an afterthought. “They’re not entailed. They’ve never cried and shrieked as they do this summer. I’d as soon have an army of squalling cats around the place.”
“The noise is becoming a subject of common talk,” said old Brandon.
Ste Radcliffe bit his lips and turned his face another way, and emitted sundry daggers from his looks. “Let folks concern themselves with their own business,” said he. “The birds is nothing to them.”
Four weeks had gone by, and the moon was nearly at the full again. Its light streamed on the hedges, and flickered amidst the waving trees, and lay on the fields like pale silver. It was Sunday evening, and we had run out for a stroll before supper, Tod and I.
On coming out of church, Duffham had chanced to get talking of the cries. He had heard them the previous night. They gave him the shivers, he said, they were so like human cries. This put it into our heads to go again ourselves, which we had not done since that first time. How curiously events are brought about!
Leaping the last stile, the Torr was right before us at the opposite side of the large field, the tops of its chimneys and its towering sugar-loaf tower showing out white in the moonlight. The wind was high, blowing in gusts from the south-west.
“I say, Johnny, it’s just the night for witches. Whirr! how it sweeps along! They’ll ride swimmingly on their broomsticks.”
“The wind must have got up suddenly,” I answered. “There was none to-day. It was too hot for it. Talking of witches and broomsticks, Tod, have you read——”
He put his arm out to stop my words and steps, halting himself. We had been rushing on like six, had traversed half the field.
“What’s that, Johnny?” he asked in a whisper. “There”—pointing onwards at right angles. “Something’s lying there.”
Something undoubtedly was—lying on the grass. Was it an animal?—or a man? It did not look much like either. We stood motionless, trying to make the shape out.
“Tod! It is a woman.”
“Gently, lad! Don’t be in a hurry. We’ll soon see.”
The figure raised itself as we approached, and stood confronting us. The last pull of wind that went brushing by might have brushed me down, in my surprise. It was Mrs. Francis Radcliffe.
She drew her grey cloak closer round her and put her hand upon Tod’s arm. He went back half a step: I’m not sure but he thought it might be her ghost.
“Do not think me quite out of my mind,” she said—and her voice and manner were both collected. “I have come here every evening for nearly a week past to listen to the cries. They have never been so plain as they are to-night. I suppose the wind helps them.”
“But—you—were lying on the grass, Mrs. Francis,” said Tod; not knowing yet what to make of it all.
“I had put my ear on the ground, wondering whether I might not hear it plainer,” she replied. “Listen!”
The cry again! The same painful wailing sound that we heard that other night, making one think of I know not what woe and despair. When it had died away, she spoke further, her voice very low.
“People are talking so much about the cries that I strolled on here some evenings ago to hear them for myself. In my mind’s tumult I can hardly rest quiet, once my day’s work is done: what does it matter which way I stroll?—all ways are the same to me. Some people said the sounds came from the birds, some said from witches, some from the ghost of the man on the gibbet: but the very first night I came here I found out what they were really like—my husband’s cries.”
“What!” cried Tod.
“And I believe from my very soul that it is his spirit that cries!” she went on, her voice taking as much excitement as any voice, only half raised, can take. “His spirit is unable to rest. It is here, hovering about the Torr. Hush! there it comes again.”
It was anything but agreeable, I can assure you, to stand in that big white moonlit plain, listening to those mysterious cries and to these ghostly suggestions. Tod was listening with all his ears.
“They are the very cries he used to make in his illness at the farm,” said Mrs. Radcliffe. “I can’t forget them. I should know them anywhere. The same sound of voice, the same wail of anguish: I could almost fancy that I hear the words. Listen.”
It did seem like it. One might have fancied that his name was repeated with a cry for help. “Help! Frank Radcliffe! Help!” But at such a moment as this, when the nerves are strung up to concert pitch, imagination plays us all sorts of impossible tricks.
“I’ll be shot if it’s not like Frank Radcliffe’s voice!” exclaimed Tod, breaking the silence. “And calling out, too.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Francis. “I shall not be able to bear this long: I shall have to speak of it to the world. When I say that you have recognized his voice also, they will be less likely to mock at me as a lunatic. David did, when I told him. At least, I could make no impression on him.”
Tod was lying down with his ear to the ground. But he soon got up, saying he could not hear so well.
“Did Stephen kill him, do you think?” she asked, in a dread whisper, drawing closer to us. “Why, else, should his poor unquiet spirit haunt the region of the Torr?”
“It is the first time I ever heard of spirits calling out in a human voice,” said Tod. “The popular belief is, that they mostly appear in dumb show.”
He quitted us, as he spoke, and went about the field with slow steps, halting often to look and listen. The trees around the Torr in particular seemed to attract his attention, by the length of time he stared up at them. Or, perhaps, it might be at the tops of the chimneys: or perhaps at the tapering tower. We waited in nearly the same spot, shivering and listening. But the sounds never came so distinctly again: I think the wind had spent itself.
“It is a dreadful weight to have to carry about with me,” said poor Annet Radcliffe as we walked homewards. “And oh! what will be the ending? Will it be heard always?”
I had never seen Tod so thoughtful as he was that night. At supper he put down his knife and fork perpetually to fall into a brown study; and I am sure he never knew a word of the reading afterwards.
It was some time in the night, and I was fast asleep and dreaming of daws and magpies, when something shook my shoulder and awoke me. There stood Tod, his nightshirt white as snow in the moonlight.
“Johnny,” said he, “I have been trying to get daylight out of that mystery, and I think I’ve done it.”
“What mystery? What’s the matter?”
“The mystery of the cries. They don’t come from Francis Radcliffe’s ghost, but from Francis himself. His ghost! When that poor soft creature was talking of the ghost, I should have split with laughter but for her distress.”
“From Francis himself! What on earth do you mean?”
“Stephen has got him shut up in that tower.”
“Alive?”
“Alive! Go along, Johnny! You don’t suppose he’d keep him there if he were dead. Those cries we heard to-night were human cries; words; and that was a human voice uttering them, as my ears and senses told me; and my brain has been in a muddle ever since, all sleep gone clean out of it. Just now, turning and twisting possibilities about, the solution of the mystery came over me like a flash of lightning. Ste has got Frank shut up in the Torr.”
He, standing there upright by the bed, and I, digging my elbow into the counterpane and resting my cheek on my hand, gazed at one another, the perplexity of our faces showing out strongly in the moonlight.
IV.
Mr. Duffham the surgeon stood making up pills and powders in his surgery at Church Dykely, the mahogany counter before him, the shelves filled with glass bottles of coloured liquids behind him. Weighing out grains of this and that in the small scales that rested beside the large ones, both sets at the end of the counter, was he, and measuring out drops with a critical eye. The day promised to be piping-hot, and his summer house-coat, of slate-coloured twill, was thrown back on his shoulders. Spare and wiry little man though he was, he felt the heat. He was rather wondering that no patients had come in yet, for people knew that this was the time to catch him, before he started on his rounds, and he generally had an influx on Monday morning.
Visitor the first. The surgery-door, standing close to the open front one, was tapped at, and a tall, bony woman entered, dressed in a big straw bonnet with primrose ribbons, a blue cotton gown and cotton shawl. Eunice Gibbon, Mrs. Stephen Radcliffe’s sister.
“Good-morning, Mr. Duffham,” she said, lodging her basket on the counter. “I’m frightfully out o’ sorts, sir, and think I shan’t be right till I’ve took a bottle or two o’ physic.”
“Sit down,” said the doctor, coming in front of the counter, preparatory to inquiring into the symptoms.
She sat down in one of the two chairs: and Duffham, after sundry questions, told her that her liver was out of order. She answered that she could have told him that, for nothing but “liver” was ever the matter with her. He went behind the counter again to make up a bottle of some delectable stuff good for the complaint, and Eunice sat waiting for it, when the surgery-door was pushed open with a whirl and a bang, and Tod and I burst in. To see Eunice Gibbon there, took us aback. It seemed a very curious coincidence, considering what we had come about.
“Well, young gentlemen,” quoth Duffham, looking rather surprised, and detecting our slight discomfiture, “does either of you want my services?”
“Yes,” said Tod, boldly; “Johnny does: he has a headache. We’ll wait, Mr. Duffham.”
Leaning on the counter, we watched the progress of the making-up in silence, Duffham exchanging a few words with Eunice Gibbon at intervals. Suddenly he opened upon a subject that caused Tod to give me a private dig with his elbow.
“And how were the cries last night?” asked Duffham. “Did you hear much of them?”
“There was no cries last night,” answered Eunice—which brought me another dig from Tod. “But wasn’t the wind high! It went shrieking round the Torr like so many mad cats. Two spoonfuls twice a-day, did you say, sir?”
“Three times a-day. I am putting the directions on the bottle. You will soon feel better.”
“I’ve been subject to these bilious turns all my life,” she said, speaking to me and Tod. “But I don’t know when I’ve had as bad a one as this. Thank ye, sir.”
Taking the bottle of physic, she put it into her basket, said good-morning, and went away. Duffham came to the front, and Tod jumped on the counter and sat there facing us, his long legs dangling. I had taken one of the chairs.
“Mr. Duffham, what do you think we have come about?” began Tod, dropping his voice to a mysterious key. “Don’t you go and faint away when you hear it.”
“Faint away!” retorted old Duffham.
“I’ll be shot if it would not send some people into a faint! That Gibbon woman has just said that no cries were to be heard last night.”
“Well?”
“Well, there were cries; plenty of them. And awful cries they were. I, and Johnny, and Mrs. Frank Radcliffe—yes, she was with us—stood in that precious field listening to them till our blood ran cold. You heard them, you know, on Saturday night.”
“Well?” repeated Duffham, staring at Tod.
“Look here. We have found it out—and have come over to tell you—and to ask you what can be done,” went on Tod earnestly, jumping off the counter and putting his back against the door to make sure of no interruption. “The cries come from Frank Radcliffe. He is not dead.”
“What?” shouted Duffham, who had turned to face Tod and stood in the middle of the oil-cloth, wondering whether Tod was demented.
“Frank is no more dead than I am. I’d lay my life upon it. Stephen Radcliffe has got him shut up in the tower; and the piteous cries are his—crying for release.”
“Bless my heart and mind!” exclaimed Duffham, backing right against the big scales. “Frank Radcliffe alive and shut up in the tower! But there’s no way to the tower. He could not be got into it.”
“I don’t care. I know he is there. That huzzy, now gone out, does well to say no cries were abroad last night; her business is to throw people off the scent. But I tell you, Duffham, the cries never were so loud or so piteous, and I heard what they said as distinctly as you can hear me speak now. ‘Help! Frank Radcliffe! Help!’ they said. And I swear the voice was Frank’s own.”
“If ever I heard the like of this!” ejaculated Duffham. “It is really not—not to be credited.”
“The sound of the cries comes out on the air through the openings in the tower,” ran on Tod, in excitement. “Oh, he is there, poor fellow, safe enough. And to think what long months he has been kept there, Stephen’s prisoner! Twelve. Twelve, as I’m alive. Now, look you here, Duffham! you are staring like an unbeliever.”
“It’s not altogether that—that I don’t believe,” said Duffham, whose wide-open eyes were staring considerably. “I am thinking what is to be done about it—how to set the question at rest.”
Tod left the door unguarded and flung himself into the other chair. He went over the whole narrative quietly: how Mrs. Frank Radcliffe—who had been listening to the cries for a week past—had first put him into a puzzle, how he had then heard the words and the voice, and how the true explanation came flashing into his mind later. With every sentence, Duffham grew more convinced, and at last he believed it as much as we did.
“And now how is he to be got out?” concluded Tod.
Holding a council together, we decided that the first step must be to get a magistrate’s order to search the Torr. That involved the disclosure of the facts to the magistrate—whosoever he might be. Mr. Brandon was pitched upon: Duffham proposed the Squire at first; but, as Tod pointed out, the Squire would be sure to go to work in some hot and headlong manner, and perhaps ruin all. Let Stephen Radcliffe get only half an inkling of what was up, and he might contrive to convey Frank to the ends of the earth.
All three of us started at once, Duffham leaving his patients for that one morning to doctor themselves, and found Mr. Brandon at breakfast. He had been distracted with face-ache all night, he said, which caused him to rise late. The snow-white table-cloth was set off with flowers and plate, but the fare was not luxurious. The silver jug held plenty of new milk, the silver tea-pot a modicum of the weakest of tea, the silver rack the driest of dry toast. A boiled egg and the butter-dish remained untouched. One of the windows was thrown up wide to the summer air, and to the scent from the clustering flower-beds and the hum of the bees dipping over them to sip their sweets.
Breaking off little bits of toast, and eating them slowly, Mr. Brandon listened to the tale. He did not take it in. That was check the first. And he would not grant a warrant to search the Torr. That was check the second.
“Stephen Radcliffe is bad enough in the way of being sullen and miserly,” said he. “But as to daring such a thing as this, I don’t think he would. Pass his brother off to the world for dead, and put him into his house and keep him there in concealment! No. No one of common sense would believe it.”
Tod set on again, giving our experience of the past night, earnestly protesting that he had recognized Frank’s voice, and heard the words it said—“Help! Frank Radcliffe!” He added that Annet Radcliffe, Frank’s widow—or wife, whichever it might turn out to be—had been listening to the cries for days past and knew them for her husband’s: only she, poor daft woman, took them to come from his ghost. Mr. Brandon sipped his tea and listened. Duffham followed on: saying that when he heard the cries on Saturday night, in passing the Torr on his way from the Court, he could then almost have staked his existence upon their being human cries, proceeding from some human being in distress, but for the apparent impossibility of such a thing. And I could see that an impression was at length made on Mr. Brandon.
“If Stephen Radcliffe has done so infamous an act, he must be more cruel, more daring than man ever was yet,” remarked he, in answer. “But I must be more satisfied of it before I sign the warrant you ask for.”
Well, there we sat, hammering at him. That is, they did. Being my guardian, I did not presume to put in a word edgeways, so far as pressing him to act went. In all that he thought right, and in spite of his quiet manner and his squeaky voice, old Brandon was a firm man, not to be turned by argument.
“But won’t you grant this warrant, sir?” appealed Tod for the tenth time.
“I have told you, no,” he replied. “I will not at the present stage of the affair. In any case, I should not grant it without consulting your father——”
“He is so hot-headed,” burst in Tod. “He’d be as likely as not to go off knocking at the Torr door without his hat, demanding Frank Radcliffe.”
“Mr. Todhetley was Frank Radcliffe’s trustee, and he is your father, young man; I do not stir a step in this matter without consulting him,” returned old Brandon, coolly persistent.
Well, there was nothing for it now but to go back home and consult the pater. It seemed like a regular damper—and we were hot and tired besides. Tod in his enthusiasm had pictured us storming the Torr at mid-day, armed with the necessary authority, and getting out Frank at once.
Mr. Brandon ordered his waggonette—a conveyance he did not like, and scarcely ever used himself, leaving it to the servants for their errands—and we all drove back to Dyke Manor, himself included. To describe the astonishment of the pater when the disclosure was made to him would take a strong pen. He rubbed his face, and blustered, and stared around, and then told Tod he was a fool.
“I know I am in some things,” said Tod, as equably as old Brandon could have put it; “but I’m not in this. If Frank Radcliffe is not alive in that tower of Stephen’s, and calling out nightly for his release, you may set me down as a fool to the end of my days, Father.”
“Goodness bless us all!” cried the poor bewildered Squire. “Do you believe this, Brandon?”
Mr. Brandon did not say whether he believed it or not. Both of them shook their heads about granting a warrant: upon which, Tod passionately asked whether Francis Radcliffe was to be left in the tower to die. It was finally decided that we should go in a body that night to the field again, so as to give the two doubters the benefit of hearing anything there might be to hear. And Mr. Brandon stayed with us for the day, telling his coachman to come back at night with the small pony-gig to take him home.
The moon was just as bright as on the previous night, and we started on our expedition stealthily. Tod and I went first; Duffham came strolling next; and the Squire and Mr. Brandon afterwards. Should Stephen Radcliffe or any of his people catch sight of the whole of us moving together, he might suspect there was something in the wind.
Annet did not make her appearance, which was a great relief. For we could talk without restraint; and it would never have done to let her know what we suspected: and so raise wild hopes within her that might not be fulfilled. We knew later that her mother was at Pitchley’s Farm that evening, and it kept Annet at home.
Was Heaven interfering in Frank’s behalf? It does interfere for the oppressed, you know; ay, more often than we heedless and ungrateful mortals think for. Never had the cries been so plain as they were this night, though there was no wind to waft them downwards, for the air was perfectly still: and the words were distinctly heard. “Help! Help! Frank Radcliffe.”
“Mercy upon us!” exclaimed the Squire, under his breath. “The voice does sound like Frank’s.”
Mr. Brandon was standing with his hand to his ear. Duffham leaned on his gold-headed cane, his face lifted upwards.
Tod stood by in dudgeon; he was angry with them for not having believed him at first.
“I think we may grant a search-warrant, Squire,” said Mr. Brandon.
“And send old Jones the constable, to execute it,” assented the Squire.
Tod flung back his head. “Old Jones! Much use he’d be! Why, father, Eunice Gibbon alone could settle old Jones with his shaky legs. She’d pitch him out at the first window.”
“Jones can take help, Joe.”
******
It was the breakfast hour at the Torr, eight o’clock. The meal was being taken in the kitchen. Less semblance of gentility than even in the former days was kept up; all usages of comfort and refinement had departed with old Mr. Radcliffe and Selina. Stephen was swallowing his eggs and rashers of bacon quickly. Tuesday is Alcester market-day, and he was going in to attend it, expecting to sell some of his newly-gathered crop of hay. Mrs. Stephen sat opposite him, eating bacon also; and Eunice Gibbon stood at the dresser, mixing some meal for the fattening of fowls. Miserly though Stephen was by nature, he liked a good table, and took care to have it.
“Could you bring some starch home, master?” asked Eunice, turning her head round to speak.
“Why can’t you get your starch here?” retorted Stephen.
“Well, it’s a farthing less a pound at Alcester than it is at Church Dykely,” said Eunice. “They’ve rose it here.”
Farthings were farthings in Stephen’s eyes, and he supposed he might as well bring the starch. “How much is wanted of it?” he growled.
“We’d better have a pound,” interposed Becca. “Half pounds don’t get the benefit of the farthing: you can’t split a farthing in two. Shall you be home early?” she continued to her husband.
“Don’t know. Not afore afternoon.”
“Because we shall want some of the starch to-day. There’s none to go on with, is there, Eunice?”
“Yes, there’s a bit. I can make it do.”
“You’ll have to wait till you get it,” remarked Stephen as he pushed his plate away and rose from table. “And mind you don’t forget to give the pigs their dinner.”
“What’ll be wanted up there to-day?” inquired Becca, pointing towards some invisible place over-head, possibly intending to indicate the tower.
“Nothing but dinner,” said Stephen. “What should there be? I shall be back afore tea-time.”
He went out at the back-door as he spoke, gave a keen look or two around his yard and premises generally, to see that all was right, and presently trotted away on horseback. A few minutes later, Jim, the only regular man kept, was seen to cross the yard towards the lane with the horse and cart.
“Where be you off to, Jim?” demanded Becca, stalking to the door and speaking at the top of her voice.
“Master ordered me to go after that load o’ manure,” called back Jim, standing upright in the cart and arresting the horse for a moment.
“What, this morning?”
“It’s what he telled me.”
“Well, don’t go and make a day’s work of it,” commanded Mrs. Stephen. “There’s a sight o’ things a-waiting to be done.”
“I can’t be back afore two, hasten as I ’ool,” returned Jim, giving the horse his head and clattering off.
“I wonder what the master sent him to-day for, when he’s away himself?” cried Becca to her sister, returning to the table in the kitchen.
“Well, he got a message last night to say that if he didn’t send for it away to-day it wouldn’t be kept for him,” said Eunice. “It’s a precious long way to have to go for a load o’ manure!”
“But then we get it for the fetching; there’s naught to pay,” returned Becca.
She had begun to wash up the breakfast-things, and when that was done she put the kitchen to rights. Eunice seemed to be at all sorts of jobs, indoors and out, and went stalking about in pattens. The furnace had been lighted in the brewhouse, for Eunice had a day’s washing before her. Becca went up to make the beds, and brought down sundry armfuls of clothes for the wash. About ten o’clock she appeared in the brewhouse with her bonnet and shawl on. Eunice was standing at the tub in her pattens, rubbing away at the steaming soap-suds.
“Why, where be you going?” she exclaimed in evident surprise.
“I’m a-going over to Dick’s to fetch Beccy,” replied Mrs. Stephen. “It’s a long while since she was here. Ste don’t care to see children about the place. The child shall stop to dinner with us and can go home by herself in the afternoon. What’s the matter now, Eunice Gibbon? Don’t it please ye?”
“Oh, it pleases me well enough,” returned Eunice, who was looking anything but pleased, and splashing both hands desperately about in the water, over one of Stephen’s coloured cotton handkerchiefs. “The child can come, and welcome, for me. ’Tain’t that.”
“It’s some’at else then,” remarked Becca.
“Well, I’d wanted to get a bit o’ talk with ye,” said Eunice. “That’s what it is. The master’s safe off, and it was a good opportunity for it.”
“What about?”
Eunice Gibbon took her hands out of the soap-suds and rested them on the sides of the tub, while she answered—coming to the point at once.
“I’ve been a-thinking that I can’t stop on here, Becca. I bain’t at ease. Many a night lately I have laid awake over it. If anything comes out about—you know what—we might all of us get into trouble.”
“No fear,” said Becca.
“Well, I says there is fear. Folks have talked long enough; but it strikes me they won’t be satisfied with talking much longer: they’ll be searching out. Only yesterday morning when I was waiting at Duffham’s while he mixed up the stuff, he must begin upon it. ‘Did ye hear the cries last night?’ says he—or something o’ that. ‘No,’ says I in answer; ‘there was none to hear, only the wind.’ Them two young gents from the Manor was there, cocking up their ears at the words. I see ’em.”
Rebecca Radcliffe remained silent. Truth to tell, she and Stephen were getting afraid of the cries themselves. That is, of what the cries might result in.
“He ought to be got away,” resumed Eunice.
“But there’s no means o’ getting him away.”
“Well, I can’t feel comfortable, Becca; not safe, you know. So don’t you and the master be put out if I walks myself off one o’ these here first fine days. When I come here, I didn’t bargain for nothing o’ this sort.”
“There’s no danger of ill turning up,” flashed Becca, braving out the matter with scorn. “The cries is took to come from the birds: who is to pick up any other notion, d’ye suppose? I’ll tell ye what it is, Eunice: that jaundiced liver of yours is tormenting you. You’ll be afeared next of your own shadda.”
“Perhaps it is,” acknowledged Eunice, dropping the argument and resuming her rubbing. “I know that precious physic of old Duffham’s is upsetting me. It’s the nausiousest stuff I ever took.”
Mrs. Stephen stalked out of the kitchen and betook herself across the fields, towards her brother’s. Richard Gibbon had succeeded to his late father’s post of gamekeeper to the Chavasses. The gamekeeper’s lodge was more than a mile away; and Mrs. Stephen strode off, out of sight, unconscious of what was in store for the Torr.
Eunice went on with her washing, deep in thought. She had fully made up her mind to quit the Torr; but she meant to break the fact by degrees to its master and mistress. Drying her hands for the temporary purpose of stirring-up and putting more slack on the furnace fire, she was interrupted by a gentle ring at the front-door bell.
“Why, who on earth’s that?” she exclaimed aloud. “Oh, it must be Lizzy,” with a flash of recollection: “she sent word she should be over to-day or to-morrow. How early she have got here!”
Free of all suspicion, glancing at no ill, Eunice went through the passages and opened the front-door. Quite a small crowd of people stood there, and one or two of them pushed in immediately. Mr. Duffham, Tod, I, the Squire, old Jones, and old Jones’s man, who was young, and active on his legs. The Squire would come, and we were unable to hinder him.
“In the Queen’s name!” cried old Jones—who always used that formula on state occasions. And Eunice Gibbon screamed long and loud.
To oppose our entrance was not to be thought of. We had entered and could not be thrust back again. Eunice took to her heels up the passage, and confronted us at the parlour-door with a pair of tongs. Duffham and Tod disarmed her. She then flew to the kitchen, sat down, and went into hysterics. Old Jones read out the authority for the search, but she only screamed the louder.
They left her to get out of the screaming at her leisure, and went up, seeking the entrance to the tower. It was found without much difficulty: Tod was the one to see it first. A small door (only discovered by Stephen Radcliffe since his father’s death, as we heard later) led from a dark and unused lumber-room to the narrow stairs of the tower. In its uppermost compartment, a little, round den, sat Frank Radcliffe, chained to the wall.
Not at once could we take in the features of the scene; for, all the light came in through the one long narrow opening, a framed loophole without glass, that was set in the deep round wall of the tower. A mattress was spread on the floor, with a pillow and blankets; one chair stood close to a box that served for a table, on which he no doubt eat his meals, for there were plates and food on it; another box, its lid open, was in a corner, and on the other chair sat Frank. That was every earthly article the place contained. It was through that opening—you could not call it a window—that Frank’s cries for help had gone forth to the air. There he sat, the chain round his waist, turning his amazed eyes upon us.
And raving mad, you ask? No. He was all skin and bone, and his fair hair hung down like that of a wild man of the woods, but he was as sane as you or I. He rose up, the chain clanking, and then we saw that it was long enough to admit of his moving about to any part of the den.
“Oh, God bless you, Frank!—we have come to release you,” burst forth the Squire, impetuously seizing both his hands. “God help you, my poor lad!” And Frank, what with surprise and the not being over stout, burst into joyous tears.
The ingenious scheme of taking possession of Frank, and representing him as dead, that he might enjoy all the money, had occurred to Stephen Radcliffe when he found Frank was recovering under Dr. Dale’s treatment. During the visits Stephen paid to London at that time, he and Pitt, Dr. Dale’s head man, became very intimate: and when Pitt was discharged from Dr. Dale’s they grew more so. Stephen Radcliffe would not perhaps have done any harm to Frank in the shape of poison or a dagger, being no more of a killer and slayer of men than were his neighbours; but to keep him concealed in the Torr, so as to reap the benefit himself of all the money, he looked upon as a very venial crime indeed—quite justifiable, so to say. Especially, if he could escape being found out. And this fine scheme he perfected and put in practice, and successfully carried through.
How much of it he confided to Pitt, or how much he did not, will never be known. Certain it was, that Pitt wrote the letter announcing Frank’s death; though we could not find out that he had helped it in any other way. But a very curious coincidence attended the affair; one that aided Stephen’s plans materially; and but for its happening I do not see that they could have succeeded when inquiries were made. In the London house where Stephen lodged (Gibraltar Terrace, that I and the Squire had a two days’ hunt to find) there came to live a young man, who was taken ill close upon his entrance with a malady arising from his habits of drinking. Pitt, coming often to Gibraltar Terrace then with Stephen Radcliffe, took to attend on the young man out of good nature, doing for him all that could be done. It was this young man who died, and was buried in Finchley Cemetery; and of whose death the landlady with the faded face and black silk apron spoke to the Squire, thereby establishing in our minds the misapprehension that it was Francis Radcliffe. Stephen did not take Frank to the lodgings at all; he brought him straight down to the Torr when he was released from Dr. Dale’s, taking care to get out at a remote country station in the dusk of evening, where his own gig, conveyed thither by Becca, was in waiting. He laid his plans well, that crafty Stephen! And, once he had got Frank securely into that upper den, he might just have kept him there for life, but for that blessed outlet in the wall, and no one been any the wiser.