The Terror. Martin Edwards

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       CHAPTER IX

      HALLICK, after an extensive search of the grounds which produced no other clue than an expended cartridge case, went up to town, leaving Sergeant Dobie in charge.

      Mary never distinctly remembered how that dreadful day dragged to its end. The presence of the Scotland Yard man in the house gave her a little confidence, though it seemed to irritate her father. Happily, the detective kept himself unobtrusively in the background.

      The two people who seemed unaffected by the drama of the morning were Mr Fane and the new clerical boarder. He was a loquacious man, primed with all kinds of uninteresting anecdotes; but Mrs Elvery found him a fascinating relief.

      Ferdie Fane puzzled Mary. There was so much about him that she liked, and, but for this horrid tippling practice of his she might have liked him more—how much more she did not dare admit to herself. He alone remained completely unperturbed by that shot which had nearly ended her life and his.

      In the afternoon she had a little talk with him and found him singularly coherent.

      ‘Shooting at me? Good Lord, no!’ He scoffed. ‘It must have been a Nonconformist—we High Church parsons have all sorts of enemies.’

      ‘Have you?’ she asked quietly, and there was an odd look in his eyes when he answered:

      ‘Maybe. There are quite a number of people who want to get even with me for my past misdeeds.’

      ‘Mrs Elvery said they were going to send Bradley down.’

      ‘Bradley!’ he said contemptuously. ‘That back number at Scotland Yard!’ And then, as though he could read her thoughts, he asked quickly: ‘Did that interesting old lady say anything else?’

      They were walking through the long avenue of elms that stretched down to the main gates of the park. Two days ago she would have fled from him, but now she found a strange comfort in his society. She could not understand herself; found it equally difficult to recover a sense of her old aversion.

      ‘Mrs Elvery’s a criminologist.’ She smiled whimsically, though she never felt less like smiling in her life. ‘She keeps press cuttings of all the horrors of the past years, and she says she’s sure that that poor man Connor was connected with a big gold robbery during the war. She said there was a man named O’Shea in it—’

      ‘O’Shea?’ said Fane quickly, and she saw his face change. ‘What the devil is she talking about O’Shea for? She had better be careful—I beg your pardon.’ He was all smiles again.

      ‘Have you heard of him?’

      ‘The merest rumour,’ he said almost gaily. ‘Tell me what Mrs Elvery said.’

      ‘She said that a lot of gold disappeared and was buried somewhere, and she’s got a theory that it was buried in Monkshall or in the grounds; that Connor was looking for it, and that he got Cotton, the butler, to let him in—that’s how he came to be in the house. I heard her telling Mr Partridge the story. She doesn’t like me well enough to tell me.’ They paced in silence for a while.

      ‘Do you like him—Partridge, I mean?’ asked Ferdie.

      She thought he was very nice.

      ‘That means he bores you.’ He chuckled softly to himself. And then: ‘Why don’t you go up to town?’

      She stopped dead and stared at him.

      ‘Leave Monkshall? Why?’

      He looked at her steadily.

      ‘I don’t think Monkshall is very healthy; in fact, it’s a little dangerous.’

      ‘To me?’ she said incredulously, and he nodded.

      ‘To you, in spite of the fact that there are people living at Monkshall who adore you, who would probably give their own lives to save you from hurt.’

      ‘You mean my father?’ She tried to pass off what might easily develop into an embarrassing conversation.

      ‘I mean two people—for example, Mr Goodman.’

      At first she was inclined to be angry and then she laughed.

      ‘How absurd! Mr Goodman is old enough to be my father.’

      ‘And young enough to love you,’ said Fane quietly. ‘That middle-aged gentleman is genuinely fond of you, Miss Redmayne. There is one who is not so middle-aged who is equally fond of you—’

      ‘In sober moments?’ she challenged.

      And then Mary thought it expedient to remember an engagement she had in the house. He did not attempt to stop her. They walked back towards Monkshall a little more quickly.

      Inspector Hallick went back to London a very puzzled man, though he was not as hopelessly baffled as his immediate subordinates thought. He was satisfied in his mind that behind the mystery of Monkshall was the more definite mystery of O’Shea.

      When he reached his office he rang for his clerk, and when the officer appeared:

      ‘Get me the record of the O’Shea gold robbery, will you?’ he said. ‘And data of any kind we have about O’Shea.’

      It was not the first time he had made the last request and the response had been more or less valueless, but the Record Department of Scotland Yard had a trick of securing new evidence from day to day from unexpected sources. The sordid life histories that were compiled in that business-like room touched life at many points; the political branch that dealt with foreign anarchists had once exposed the biggest plot of modern times through a chance remark made by an old woman arrested for begging.

      When the clerk had gone Hallick opened his notebook and jotted down the meagre facts he had compiled. Undoubtedly the shot had been fired from the ruins which, he discovered, were those of an old chapel in the grounds, now covered with ivy and almost hidden by sturdy chestnut trees. How the assassin had made his escape was a mystery. He did not preclude the possibility that some of these wizened slabs of stone hidden under thickets of elderberry and hawthorn trees might conceal the entrance to an underground passage.

      He offered that solution to one of the inspectors who strolled in to gossip. It was the famous Inspector Elk, saturnine and sceptical.

      ‘Underground passages!’ scoffed Elk. ‘Why, that’s the last resource, or resort—I am not certain which—of the СКАЧАТЬ