The Heath Hover Mystery

Chapter Eighteen

Shock – All Round

The master of Heath Hover had just drawn up the blind of his bedroom window, and was gazing out upon a morning of unrivalled and cloudless beauty, for the year had grown apace, and now the tender green of the spring leafage gladdened the eye in every direction. Through the open window floated the scents of spring – late spring – likewise its sounds, the hum of winged insects, the cry of coots from up yonder on the pond, the carolling of innumerable thrushes and the ever welcome call of the cuckoo. It was a morning on which, all things being even, it was good to be alive.

Came also to his ears another sound, sweeter than even the sweet sounds of spring – the sound of girl voices, the high, clear notes of Melian’s voice rising above that of Violet Clinock, who had arrived the evening before on a few days’ visit. Nearer and nearer drew the voices, and then their owners came in sight, and began leisurely to descend the path leading from the sluice. A delightful picture they made, in their youth and freshness – thought the onlooker, whom as yet they had not seen.

They had paused about halfway down, and Melian was descanting volubly on some favourite subject – and then the said onlooker’s face went white and clammy, and he thought he could hardly keep his footing, for something bright and shining had caught his glance, and it was in Melian’s hand.

The whole outlook seemed to sway and rock before Mervyn’s eyes. Was it real or was he dreaming? This dreadful thing, this hateful thing, held carelessly in the long white fingers! Why, he would about as soon have found her caressing a hooded snake. What should he do, what should he say – and would she unhesitatingly obey him? In the horror of the moment even the power of speech seemed to fail him. But some sort of an exclamation must have escaped him, for now they looked up.

“Drop – that – thing – instantly,” he managed to jerk out, and his voice seemed far away and raucous. “Obey me – without – question, Melian.”

If ever two startled girls stood staring, it was these two in the middle of the sluice path. The ghastliness of the face up there at the window, the fearful, unnatural voice. That her uncle had suddenly gone mad was the solution which first presented itself to Melian’s perplexed mind. But she obeyed. An immense sigh of relief escaped the onlooker.

“Don’t move,” he said, “until I come down.”

His hands trembled so that he could hardly tie the tasselled cord which girded his dressing gown, and he almost stumbled down the stairs in his haste to arrive. Even in that flash of time, he was thinking – What if they should take advantage of his momentary disappearance from sight to pick up that thing again? But he must pull himself together, and even as he emerged he felt partially relieved to notice that they were standing just as he had seen them last, but staring at him in round-eyed amazement.

“Why, Uncle Seward, whatever is it? You look as if you had seen all the ghosts in the world.”

“Here, child, show me your hands – quick!”

Still marvelling, she extended them. He seized them in his, and subjected them to a long, close scrutiny, first with the palms upward, then all over. The colour returned to his ghastly face as he emitted a long deep sigh of relief.

“Yours now, Miss Clinock.”

Violet extended hers, feeling in secret rather frightened. What strange mystery was this which had been effective so violently to upset her ordinarily so equable and self-contained host – this was not her first visit to Heath Hover. She could not but notice, while the same process was repeated, that it seemed to be slightly less prolonged in her case than in that of Melian.

“What does it mean, Mr Mervyn?” she asked.

“Any one would think that that rum little shining thing would bite,” said Melian, mischievously.

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.

He looked at her for a moment, wondering what answer to make.

“Perhaps I was upset about nothing,” he said, regaining his equability with an effort. “The fact is it brought back to my mind a very curious and uncanny experience – not in this country, but I’ve been among strange scenes and people in other parts of the world, you know. There’s a great deal in association of ideas, and there are strange happenings all the world over, as you two children may – or may not – find out by the time you get to my time of life. Where did you find – that – by the way? – No – leave it where it is.”

This last quickly, as Melian stooped over the thing as though to pick it up again.

“Why, just where the path begins to come down from the road,” she answered, wondering.

“On your way back?”

The question came out abrupt, staccato. Some of the first agitation seemed to show itself again. And then, with the affirmative answer, both girls noticed that he looked greatly relieved.

“Well, I suppose you’re both ready for breakfast,” he went on in quite a normal tone. “I’m not, but you’re not obliged to wait for me. That would be too great a tax on your ravening young appetites, wouldn’t it? Eh, Miss Clinock?”

Violet, thus appealed to, laughingly disclaimed impatience on that head, but Melian thoroughly and emphatically disagreed with her.

“Well, you’d better go and hurry old Judy up,” said Mervyn. “I shall have to go and get dressed first.”

But he did not re-enter the house with them, nor, indeed, did he hurry to re-enter it at all. Both girls were rather silent and wondering, and in the minds of both was the same thought, though neither cared to voice it to the other, and the thought was a disquieting one; perhaps to Melian the more disquieting of the two. For to her clearer insight, and with the knowledge of her uncle’s character, which she had had some months of opportunity to gain, his explanation of the incident did not somehow carry conviction. There was more, far more beneath it than a mere matter of evolved recollection; of that she felt fully convinced. He was not the stamp of man who would be upset by such, and the practical side had come out in the very real fear – the agony of fear almost – which he had manifested over the discovery of that harmless looking star-shaped trinket. Trinket? Well, that for want of a better word. The thing, after all, might have been a trade mark of sorts which had come detached from a biscuit box or a tin of specially boomed blacking. No. There was more in this than met the eye.

Then she remembered that her uncle had spent his life in strange, out of the way parts of the world, mostly among strange people. What if there was nothing accidental about this shining pointed thing being left just where he could find it. What if it were some sort of a sign, some sort of a manifesto? What if some danger were overhanging him? And by a curious back twist in her mind the thought of Helston Varne came back to her. A tower of strength seemed that thought – and then came that which seemed to cut under its foundations.

They were both halfway through breakfast by then, when Mervyn entered – clothed and ready for the day before him. All trace of agitation seemed to have disappeared. He was even in unusual good spirits.

“By the way,” he said, in the course of conversation, which he had somewhat cleverly led up to, “I suppose you two children are old enough to know how not to talk. For instance – your find this morning. I particularly wish no word to be said about it to anybody – anybody. Not only round here, but anywhere. Perhaps some day – though I don’t absolutely promise that – I may give you an explanation; but only on condition nothing is said about it now.”

Both pairs of eyes sparked up. But Melian’s dropped. She could not take Helston Varne into confidence now.

“Why, Mr Mervyn,” answered Violet, readily, “of course we shan’t say anything about it.”

“You’ll greatly oblige me if you don’t,” he said, somewhat earnestly. “The fact is that there are quite enough ‘old wives’ fables’ hanging about this place. We don’t want to pile on to them. By the by, there’s another thing, which is perhaps a harder thing to ask. Don’t talk it over with each other – in short, don’t dwell upon it. Forget it.”

“Aren’t you rather asking us impossibilities, dear?” said Melian. “Two mere women! And our curiosity screwed up to boiling over point.”

“Why, it smacks of a magazine yarn,” declared Violet. “Never mind, Mr Mervyn, I’ll promise to remember your wishes.”

Both fancied he looked relieved, though not entirely at ease.

“That’s perfectly all right, then,” he returned. “Anybody who was such a friend to this little one when she was in straits as you were, is safe on a promise, I’ll swear.”

“Steady on, Mr Mervyn, and spare my blushes,” protested the girl, looking pleased all the same. “I did no more for Melian than she’d have done for me, and we people who have to work have to stick by each other when a pinch comes.”

“And very much to the good that is,” said Mervyn. “Knocks a lot of the essentially feminine nonsense out of women and develops the good.”

“Well said, Mr Mervyn. That’s capital, isn’t it, Melian?”

“Not bad,” was the reply, with a dash of affectionate impudence underlying it.

“Not only that, but it was owing to you entirely that I became aware – almost of the existence, I was going to say – of this child here,” he went on. “That counts on the credit side of obligation.”

“Oh, go it, Uncle Seward. Butter seems to be getting cheap,” said Melian, equably. “We are getting more than we can do with, Violet. Eh – what?”

“Now what would you children like to do with yourselves this morning?” asked Mervyn, when the laugh had subsided.

“We were going to show Violet how to catch some fish. Old Joe has been digging out worms, and he’s coming with us to bait. You know, Violet, the part I can’t stick about this bait fishing is the worm part of it, so I take Joe to do that, and look the other way while he does it. There are some good perch in Plane Pond, but the big ones will hardly ever bite. The smaller ones you can get plenty of, but the pounders won’t come to the scratch, like the ‘oldest oyster’ in the Walrus and the Carpenter.”

“All right, then,” said her uncle. “You two will be quite happy on your own, and I’ve got some letters to write. I haven’t often, which is one of the compensating advantages of being a lonely man. So shout up Joe when you want him.”

He saw them start off presently; bright, happy, laughing. He did not go with them as far as the boat house, which nestled in the thick, wooded bank of the great pond near the further end of the same. John Seward Mervyn had a good deal on his mind that radiant cloudless morning of late spring, while all the woods were ringing with birdsong, and the sweet, young, clear voices of his niece and guest died fainter and fainter away among the solemn tree boles.

Two cyclists skimmed along the sluice-road, taking the next steep acclivity with all the rush they could get out of their headlong free wheel down the steeper, and somewhat dangerously winding, hill before. They looked to the right at the pond, and to the left at Heath Hover. One seemed half inclined to stop and dismount to take in the picturesque effect of it, but did not. Then a waggon loaded up with floury millsacks rumbled by, and then another cyclist, a motor one this time, and the spitting throb of his abominable engine and the reek of petrol seemed to hang on the glorious, radiant, spring air like a corroding cloud, long after their producer was out of sight. But there seemed an unusual amount of traffic on that not much used road to-day, thought Mervyn – and then he fell to wondering what if the shine of that mysterious disc deposited at the top of the sluice path, had caught the eye of any of these? Well, that was not his affair, he thought, grimly, but – something more might have been heard of it. And the thought brought back something of that awful heart-numbed blood-freezing moment, when he had descried Melian coming down the path, holding that symbol in her bare hand.

How had it got there – there where she had found it? It? Yes, but – had it? To set this doubt at rest – not much “rest” about it, he told himself with a mirthless ironical laugh – he had been glad to see the last of these bright young presences for an hour or two. Old Judy he could hear now clattering about with pots and pans and firestoking implements in the kitchen. He was entirely alone – at last.

He went upstairs. The landings, uneven and cranky with age, gave and creaked beneath his tread. The long narrow passage which led to the disused part of the house was darkened with dust and cobwebs on the neglected casements, and as he went along, he was drawing on that same old pair of gloves. He passed several doors, then turned the handle of one. It opened into a mouldy room, partly stacked with ancient and worm-eaten furniture. He moved aside an old sideboard, which seemed to manifest an inclination to fall to pieces in the process. Between it and the wall something gleamed at him, something white and shining. He bent down as though to touch it, then changed his mind.

“Good! That’s there,” he said to himself. “Now for the other, if it is there?”

He went out again and shut the door, removing the gloves as he threaded the passage; and putting them in his pocket, he went to the front door and out. 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.

Soon he stopped, listening – looked around without seeming to do either. A runnel of water trickled down a stony course, partly under the stones; in hot weather it was dry. He moved aside two stones, casually as though thinking of something else. In the solemn silence of the gnarled oak-wood he could see nobody, but it did not follow that nobody could see him.

But —something could —something did. The round, white, eye-like disc, with its five star points, stared up at him – stared with baleful – almost human, or rather demoniacal glance, from its damp bed, where he himself had placed it months before. It should have been red with rust – yet it was not. This too struck him, and he began to feel himself hopelessly enmeshed. That other, its counterpart, who had placed it there? He had been cherishing a faint and utterly unreasonable thought that in a moment of aberration, he himself might have removed it from the original hiding place to which he had consigned it during Helston Varne’s temporary imprisonment. But no. There was the other, in the disused part of his house. He had just put it there, and he had just left it there. He could not get away from that.

The beauties of the glorious woodland were around him as he retraced his steps, the networking of the sunlight through the tree-tops, the cool, moist fragrance of underfoot moss, the tap-tap of a woodpecker coming in chastened echo through the columns of tree trunks, then the gurgling trill of a thrush. Everywhere peace, the sweet English woodland peace of a cloudless late spring or early summer day. Yet John Seward Mervyn went up that woodland path wearing a grey, ashen face, and carrying something very like utter despair in his heart.

As he arrived at the house, the two girls were coming down the path. A clear, laughing hail of welcome greeted him.

“We’ve been in luck, dear,” cried Melian, taking a fishing basket from old Joe, who was walking behind. “Look at this.”

She displayed eight or nine perch – two quite big ones.

“Violet caught those,” she went on. “I’ve never caught any as big. I don’t believe there are any bigger ones in Plane Pond; eh, Joe.”

“They be middlin’ fish, Miss Melun – they be middlin’ fish, sure-ly,” answered the old rustic.

“Why, I’m sure the big ’un must be over a pound,” rattled on the girl joyously. “And didn’t Violet just prick her fingers over his spines.”

Here again Mervyn conjured up another picture as he contemplated the great spiny dorsal fin and black stripes of a really finely conditioned perch. She had pricked her fingers with something very harmless that time, he thought, grimly.

“We have had such a jolly time, Mr Mervyn,” said Violet, animatedly. “I’ve enjoyed it no end.”

He felt that she was looking curiously at him. Her delighted tone seemed to tail off suddenly.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” he said, throwing off his mood and striving to join in theirs.

“Over a pound. I’m certain it is,” went on Melian, who was still wrapped up in contemplation of the “take”. “Come along and let’s weigh him.”

And the two, aglow with life and spirits, headed for the kitchen and the weighing scales.

“Contrast – again?” thought Mervyn, as he followed.

So did another person, who, unseen, had witnessed the whole of the morning’s doings from their very commencement.

Chapter Nineteen

Interim – Quiet

Even as Violet had said, to put such a superhuman strain upon the curiosity of two mere women seemed scarcely fair, and perhaps the hardest strain of all was Mervyn’s injunction not to talk about the matter between themselves even; however, they followed it out with a tolerable show of loyalty; in fact, as great a one as could be expected of their sex.

On Melian, of course, the strain fell the hardest. She was quick to recognise that the finding of that strange object had affected her uncle far more than he would allow to appear. Not only that, but as day followed upon day, there was no lessening of the effect. Then, too, what had he done with the thing when they had gone inside leaving him alone. Buried it – thrown it into the pond, or what? She, too, began to feel as though living under the spell of a fear. Perhaps it had been an error of judgment on her uncle’s part, to enjoin so strict a silence upon them, she more than once thought – and the worst of this was that it precluded her from consulting Helston Varne.

She had been impressed by the promise that he had exacted from her that she would so consult him in the event of finding herself in any difficulty; in fact, under just such a contingency as had occurred; but she was debarred by her subsequent promise. There were other mysterious happenings she had considered the expediency of laying before him; more even than when we last saw her on the point of doing so; for she had since gained more than an inkling as to his real line in life and the discovery increased her interest in him well nigh to the pitch of vividness.

There was another matter as to which she had gained more than an inkling, and that, the ill-repute which was said to surround Heath Hover. She remembered how on her first arrival she had suggested that it looked like a haunted house, and the way in which her uncle had scoffed at the idea and turned away the question, struck her in subsequent lights as a trifle overdoing the part. One circumstance, however, seemed more suspicious still.

She was chatting with old Joe one day, and enjoining upon him the necessity of fixing a board over a pane of glass she had broken in her bedroom window, until it could be properly mended.

“I don’t want any more bats coming in and flicking me in the face, Joe,” she appended, “like that night just after I got here.”

The old man dropped the handles of the barrow which he was just about to trundle, and stared at her queerly.

“What time might that ha’ been, Missie?” he said.

“Why, a few days after I came.”

“That warn’t no flittermaouse,” he said. “Yew won’t see none o’ they for – come weeks and weeks. They be all asleep they be.”

“But it might have been a stray one.”

The old rustic grinned pityingly and shook his head.

“That warn’t no flittermaouse,” he repeated.

Melian’s eyes opened wider.

“What was it, then?” she said.

But the old rustic seemed suddenly to become alive to the fact that he had said too much; in short, had been betrayed into overstepping his employer’s explicitly imposed injunctions.

“What war it? Narthen. You’d been dreamin’, Missie, for sure. That’s what it war.” And old Joe had picked up the wheelbarrow handles and trundled off then and there with an energy which bade fair to put a stop to any further questioning.

But his statement had rendered Melian decidedly uncomfortable. If her acquaintance with natural history was defective, she had had ample opportunity of discovering that that of her uncle was not; in fact, eminently the reverse, and that he of all people should have been so hard put to it as to invent a bat flying about on a mid-winter night, showed something loose somewhere. Should she tax him with it under the form of chaff? But she decided not to. He might not like it, and again, he would almost certainly be angry with old Joe. On the other hand it looked as if he himself were not so sceptical as he made out.

She had also become aware that nobody had been able to inhabit Heath Hover for a long time past until her uncle had come; that is to say, do more than give it a very brief trial, perhaps one of fewer weeks than he had given it months. Well, as to that, he seemed quite comfortable there, and since her arrived, happy. She was letting her imagination run riot too much, she told herself – and certainly, she had never seen anything since her arrival. Strange sounds might be produced by any cause, and as for “influences” – well, imagination might be a factor again.

Helston Varne had not been near them since that visit when they had met unexpectedly on the dusking road, and as a matter of hard fact Melian felt just a little sore with him for not having been. He had sent her a few lines – short, straight, and to the point – reminding her of his willingness to assist her at any time or at any moment, reminding her also of her promise not to be behindhand in claiming such aid. This note she had carefully kept. But he had not been near them again, and she had found herself very much wishing that he would come. There was something so refreshingly out of the ordinary about his personality – about his conversation – and then, too, the high intellectual talent which must go to make him such a success in the line of life he had adopted; the suggestion of mystery blended with power was just the element to appeal strongly to a girl of her character and temperament. The fact is, that during the intervening time – getting on for three months as it was – Melian had been thinking a great deal about Helston Varne.

Everything was favourable to introspection of the sort. The life she led, amid free, open, congenial surroundings, into the charm of which she had entered from the very first, and which had grown upon her more and more with every change of the advancing season – and yet the personality of the man seemed subtly to pervade it all. There were spots they had visited – a casual stroll along a woodland path, or a breezy, uphill climb to this or that point whence rolling views of some of the loveliest rural expanse in England swept away on either hand; and she could remember all that was said, and exactly where it was said, during their exchange of ideas, which were, for the most part, thoroughly in sympathy. And then, too, in her moments of shadowy fears in the mysterious ill-omened old house – small wonder that taking all things together she should have thought a good deal about Helston Varne during that intervening time.