The Heath Hover Mystery

Chapter Twenty Three

Camp – and a Conversation

The camp was pitched in open ground, and had the drawback of that – for there were no shading trees or sheltering heights, as to which Varne Coates remarked that it didn’t matter a curse about shading trees if only that any moment a swarm of locusts might happen along and feed off all the “shade” within half an hour or so, leaving them as bare as Hyde Park in January; while as for the sheltering heights, well they had just seen what those could “shelter” – and it was better to be out of range of such.

The point on which the camp was pitched could certainly boast no charm of picturesqueness. It stared out upon open plains destitute of foliage, and rendered here and there even more ugly by low humps of hill, whose mud coloured domes were relieved here and there by white streaks of gypsum. Bounding it on both sides, but at some little distance, rose craggy mountain ridges, good stalking ground for markhôr and gadh, and, from another side of the operation, the same, as we have seen, for the Gularzai sniper. But the big living tent was roomy, and as replete with such travelling comfort as only comfort-loving India somehow, seemed ever able to run to: and the sleeping tents, too, were not wanting in that much to be appreciated advantage. These, and the tents of the various servants, the khansamah tent, and those of the Levy sowars who formed the escort, made up quite a respectable sized nomad village.

“Wonder if Ford’ll turn up to-morrow,” remarked Coates, as they sat smoking their after-dinner cheroots under the stars in front of the big tent. Ford was the Conservator of Forests for the district of Mazaran – incidentally there were no “forests” worthy of the name in the said district, but Ford was Forest Officer nevertheless, and drew his pay as such all the same.

“Ford? Oh, yes, of course,” answered Helston, shooting out a big trail of smoke and pulling himself out of a big meditation in which he had been wrapped. “Yes. He’ll do. He’s all right.”

“Yes. And on this infernal frontier it’s not a bad thing to have another hard man around who can shoot straight. These soors don’t love us any too well – as you’ve seen to-day.”

It might be asked under the circumstances why the devil two men should be such fools as to go putting their heads into the lion’s mouth, by camping around here and there right in the heart of a wild country peopled by hostile and fanatical barbarians, just for the sake of shooting a few wild goats. But – there you are. They were Englishmen, and this, we suppose, is an all sufficing answer.

“What a rum thing it is, Helston,” went on Coates, jumping to another subject, “that you should have run into my old pal Seward Mervyn. I’ve often thought about it, do you know?”

“Yes, but the world’s very small. Yet, I’m not sure that England, that little bit of an island on the map, isn’t the largest section of it – as far as running into people goes.”

“Why it must be some years since I saw him. He must be ageing.”

“I should say not. He struck me as a remarkably wiry and energetic sort of man.”

“Energetic? Yes. He was too much that,” said the other. “He was always wanting to know everything. In point of fact, strictly between ourselves – he got to know too much.”

“Did he? In what direction?”

The tone was even, languid; the tone, in short, of a man who is enjoying his after-dinner smoke in the open air after a day of hard healthful exercise. But in reality the speaker suddenly found himself all athrill.

“Oh, he wanted to find out everything about the people – and there are about fifty different sorts and phases of people on the Northern border alone. Not content with getting behind their different character and manners and customs – and this is between ourselves, mind,” and the speaker instinctively lowered his voice – “he got himself mixed up in their secret societies.”

“The deuce he did!”

“Yes. Said he wanted to know the whole thing thoroughly, and everything about it, and that was the only way of getting to do so. But he ended by biting off rather more than he could chew.”

“How?”

“How? Well now you’re getting rather beyond me, old chap. I can only tell you that he retired suddenly, but not a day too soon. The climate of India became no longer healthy for him, you understand.”

There was no misunderstanding the significance of the speaker’s tone. Helston Varne was becoming more and more vividly interested.

“So? Did he turn the knowledge he’d gained to official account then?” he said. “Go back on them, for instance?”

“There again I can’t tell you anything definite. But some of us – very few of us – know that he didn’t retire a day too soon.”

“H’m,” and Helston Varne selected another cheroot from the box and lighted it slowly and deliberately. “But I thought these secret societies were far reaching, indeed world-wide reaching. Would he be much safer – or any safer at all – anywhere he went?”

“That too, is more than I can say. But you saw something of him at home. Did he seem all right there? You say he’s buried in some out of the way country place. Well, did it strike you he might be – what shall we say – sort of in hiding?”

“N-no. I can’t say it did, exactly. He told me he’d lost a lot of dibs over some damn silly invention he’d thought to make a pot over, and was glad to live in a shack which he got for nothing because it was supposed to be haunted.”

Outwardly cool, the speaker was conscious of a stirring awakening. He began to see light – vivid light, but he was not going to give things away. His kinsman clearly had never heard of the Heath Hover mystery, and now to him, Helston Varne, the Heath Hover mystery began to take on an interest which had been dropping of late to expiring point.

It is strange how a long sought solution will suddenly come as in a flash. The Heath Hover mystery had so far baffled this man to whom the unravelling of mysteries was as the breath of life, baffled him because there had been absolutely nothing to go upon. Once he had thought there was, and that was the day he had been an unwilling prisoner in the Heath Hover cellar. But that had evaded him, and since then he had owned himself puzzled. And now just a few casual conversational remarks let fall by his kinsman, here, away on the Indian frontier, seemed to let a whole flood of light in upon it. At that moment indeed he was very nearly piecing together the whole puzzle. His said kinsman’s voice broke the absorption of his thoughts.

“Hand the cheroot box across, Helston – Thanks – By the way you were saying, if I remember right, that Mervyn had got a niece stopping with him. What’s she like?”

“Lovely.”

The other whistled.

“Fact. I don’t often wax superlative, Coates, but nothing short of superlative will define her appearance.”

“Oh-h!” said Coates, significantly. But Helston took absolutely no notice.

“And the strange part is that she doesn’t even know it,” he went on, “which constitutes not the least part of the charm.”

“Doesn’t she? That’s rather a tall story to swallow, Helston.”

“I agree. But it happens to be true.”

“What’s her name?”

“Seward. She’s his sister’s child. But she might just as well be his own as far as their relationship goes. In fact there are precious few to whom their own children are as much.”

“Yes, I remember. Mervyn used to talk of that affair. He always objected to his brother-in-law, said he was a cross between a waster and a jackass, but mostly jackass. He objected too, on the ground of near relationship, for I believe they were first or second cousins.”

“Well I can tell you, Miss Seward forms a very complete exception to the generally received opinion on that subject. She’s all there, and no mistake.”

His kinsman was relighting his cheroot, which was burning badly, and in the flare of the vesta Helston could see the significant grin which was wreathing his lined, bronzed features; understood its burden too. But he said nothing – except:

“What sort of man was Mervyn when he was over here, Coates?”

“Sort? Oh he was a man of – bouts, for want of a definition. He had his equable bouts, and his gloomy bouts, his peppery bouts and his gusty bouts, and sometimes downright nasty and cynical bouts. They didn’t overlap either, but were as hard and fast apart by rule and line as the watertight compartments of a ship. Still, all round, he was all right. I could stick him better than most people, and we were very ‘pal-ly’ he and I. He was a fine sportsman too.”

“Didn’t he ever marry?”

“Now you ask, he did make – that mistake. But it didn’t last long – not more than a year or two. Bad egg you know. Did a bunk – I forget whether it was a Police wallah or a civilian. They didn’t get far though, for they were both lost in the Tara, when she foundered with nearly all on board going home, you’ll remember. Mervyn was rather relieved, as it saved him the bother and expense and scandal of taking proceedings. But he didn’t repeat the mistake. Well, now – that’s Mervyn.”

“Yes. That’s Mervyn,” repeated Helston. “It seems to form a whole epitome of him.”

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

“What do you think will be the end of Mervyn?” he went on, after a pause. The other started.

“The end of – Eh – what? The end of Mervyn? Good Lord! I hadn’t given it a thought. But why? What on earth should have put that into your head, Helston?”

“Perhaps it’s been in my head for some time – almost from the moment I first saw the man. He’s remarkably outside the ordinary, and I’m always genuinely interested in such.”

“Quite sure you’re not ‘genuinely interested’ in some one else, old chap?” said Coates, slily.

“I’m quite sure that I am – and that very much so,” came the perfectly unperturbed reply. “But to come back to Mervyn, you haven’t answered my question.”

“Well, how the blazes can I? I’ve never given it a thought I tell you.”

“Well, I have. Do you think for instance, he’ll ever come out here again?”

“Not if he’s wise,” came the decided answer.

“I should say he was that – from what I saw of him. Still I have an idea – and a strong one – that he will come out here again.”

“Did he talk about doing so, then?”

“Never. But, don’t be surprised if ever he does.”

“I’ll try not. But – look here, old Sherlock Holmes. What are you getting at? Eh?”

“Nothing wonderful. Only I’m interested in – Mervyn.”

The other stared – then began to put two and two together. His kinsman had been “superlative” on the subject of the girl – not effusively so, but quietly, and therefore all the more forcibly so, and being superlative on the subject of anybody spelt a great deal as coming from Helston Varne. Could it be that Mervyn was in opposition and he would gladly see Mervyn removed? Yet that hardly seemed to hang, for he gathered that the two men were on the friendliest of terms.

“If he comes out here again,” he now answered, “I’m afraid the end of him won’t be far off. It may not be lingering, but it’ll be sudden.”

“That’d be a pity. Yet – do you know. I have it somewhere down, Coates – somewhere down – that it mightn’t be the worst thing for him – for Mervyn – to come out here again. I can’t tell you where I have it, but it’s there.”

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

“Well I give it up, old chap,” he answered with a laugh. “Give it up clean. You’ve always got something mysterious up your sleeve, but I suppose it’ll all come out in God’s good time – and yours. Though if Mervyn did come out I’d be jolly glad to see him, and have a cheery old bukh together again – and a little shikar. Kwai-hai!”

The bearer padded up in answer to the resounding call, and salaamed.

“Peg lao, Bolaki Ram,” said his master, and in obedience a bottle and a syphon and two tall tumblers were set out on the camp table before them.

Helston Varne, lying on his charpoy in his sleeping tent, felt very far removed indeed from going to sleep. To begin with, his relative’s information with regard to Mervyn had given him abundant food for thought. It had pieced together a great deal that had been wanting, and it had also carried him back largely to Heath Hover and that which Heath Hover contained. Strong-headed as strong framed, this man in the very zenith of his prime, had found out his weak spot – and, why should he not – so he now told himself? Nothing – nobody – within the ordinary had ever touched him. Now he had found something – somebody – outside the ordinary – clean outside the ordinary. He recalled vividly that last meeting at the head of Plane Pond, under the sprouting green leafage of early spring in the Plane woods. He had decided it should not be the last, and when Helston Varne decided anything, it was strange if that contingency should fail to befall. He remembered vividly those trustful blue eyes, so clear and straight, and withal appealing in their glance. And now he was effecting the substance of their appeal, for he had not come to this wild and turbulent end of the earth, either by accident or for his own amusement – and then a short, wholly mirthful laugh escaped him as he remembered how he had gone down to help Nashby over the unravelling of the Heath Hover mystery. Heavens, how that worthy rural police inspector would have stared could he have so much as guessed at what that real unravelling would lead up to! But the situation was changed now, for in such unravelling Nashby was clean counted out. He, the unraveller, was wholly in the interest of the other side.

Far out over the plain a wolf howled, and was answered by another. Something in the sound brought back that of the owls hooting in the Plane woods, and “Broceliande,” and the contrast to the present surroundings came out sharply defined. Why their adventures of that very day seemed to make the other remote and commonplace – though there was one element about it which reflected the very reverse of commonplace. Even his well regulated system seemed to stir uneasily at the thought, and stretched upon his charpoy here at midnight in one of the wildest tracts of wilderness in the world, Helston Varne felt as if sleep would never visit him again.

The wolves howled, this time nearer. He could hear the half alarmed snort of one or two of the picketted horses, and a restless camel indulge in its characteristic, swearing snarl. He got up and mixed himself another peg, lit a fresh cheroot, then lay down again, staring at the tent roof and thinking – thinking back.

Chapter Twenty Four

A Startler for Helston Varne

High up amid the soaring pinnacles of the craggy world Helston Varne and his shikari were worming their way in stealthy silence, now round a corner where every hand and foothold had to be carefully tested before trusted, now along a rock ledge whose crannies alone supplied both – or again along a steep slope of scaly slag, hardly less slippery than ice. But on either or any of these delectable samples of terra firma a single slip would carry the same result – an abrupt descent of hundreds of feet, with not an unbroken bone on arrival at the bottom. It required an iron nerve, and the perfection of muscular, and generally physical, condition. Furthermore, having regard to the object of its undertaking, it must be accomplished in the most perfect silence. And all this for the sake of shooting a wild goat – or at any rate making a sporting attempt at the achievement of that feat! For this particular point was one of the best places for markhôr in the whole range.

Like master like man. The shikari, Hussein Khan, was a hard mountaineer, all muscle and keenness. He was a Pathan of the Kakhar tribe and had an immense respect for his master, primarily because the latter was his equal in both these attributes, and also for another reason which may or may not appear.

The time was the middle of the forenoon. They should have arrived at this point earlier, but the climb had proved more difficult and dangerous than either had anticipated, and both were sufficiently experienced to know that it was one that no amount of keenness would enable them to rush. But for hours they had clambered thus, and now, mere specks against the brown, craggy mountain side, they paused for a blow; for you cannot take a steady aim when winded after real hard exertion. Incidentally to one of them the pause was due to another motive, for Hussein Khan was a true believer, and was not this the hour of prayer? So cramped on the ledge, with barely enough space for the prescribed prostrations, the follower of the Prophet, his face turned in the direction of the Holy City – as to which he was able to judge by the hang of the sun, and that with marvellous accuracy – having put off his shoes and spread his chudda– went to work at the same, as entirely absorbed from the world as though kneeling on the even flooring of some cool, dim mosque. The “infidel” meanwhile, took the opportunity of a bite from a sandwich and a pull at his flask.

But the creed of Islam is a very work-a-day one, so the shikari’s devotions did not take long, a few minutes at the outside. He rose again, rested in body and satisfied in conscience, and the pair resumed their way. A very short bout of additional clambering, and they looked out from among a jumble of pinnacles and crags upon the world beyond and beneath.

Beyond, a grand crescent of rock terrace and crag, akin to that on which they lay. On the one hand a great peak, towering skyward, a roll of dark juniper forest in waves around its base, then a marvellous formation of dome-like rock surface all interseamed with dark fissures, like the crevasses on a glacier, and beneath, nearer still, a valley bottom, through which a mountain torrent coursed. But between this and themselves, sloping down from the foot of the ragged cliff immediately below where they lay, was an open, grassy strip. Helston brought the rifle to his shoulder.

Too late. Four markhôr were bounding and scampering away, as though for dear life. They had been browsing on this open slope, just where the stalkers had expected to find them.

“Don’t shoot, Hazûr,” whispered the shikari. “It would only panic them, and lose us our chance of getting round them, for I think they will not go very far.”

Helston recognised the force of this advice, and forebore to risk a long, flying shot. Yet the result of hours of toil was vanishing from sight at the rate of many miles per hour.

“It is written,” he answered. “Yet, I think, Hussein Khan, the ram that led those three was the father of all markhôr in these mountains, for never did I see a larger one, nor even so large a one. Assuredly the eye of Shaitan is upon our luck to-day.”

“Who may say, Hazûr? Yonder, perhaps, he is.”

The man’s face broadened in a whimsical smile, displaying magnificent white teeth. Helston followed his glance. A splendid eagle, black as jet, was soaring in majestic circles over the valley. It alone, set in the surroundings, formed a sight that it was almost worth their toil and trouble to obtain, he thought.

“Shaitan or not, Hussein Khan,” he answered, “that is not enough to frighten four full grown markhôr, especially with such a leader as that ram, for he is the king of all markhôr I have ever seen. And now – what?”

But the other made no reply. He gave a peremptory sign for silence, the while he himself was listening intently. Instinctively Helston followed his example, and crouched lower still upon the slab of rock whereto he had wormed himself, to obtain, as he thought, a most effective shot. But his nerves tingled and his blood fired up. The shikari, with his fine sense of hearing, had detected the sound of other markhôr approaching. That was it. He would get his chance after all.

His faculties of hearing stretched to their utmost tension he listened. Most men would have been conscious of a tingling of the nerves, but the nerves of Helston Varne were as hard and as well in hand as those of the Pathan shikari himself. Yet he would soon have reason to congratulate himself that they were so.

Now the rattle of a dislodged stone came to his hearing, then a sound of hoof-strokes, but to that practised sense of hearing it conveyed no presage of the approach of mountain game. With the recollection of the sniping episode fresh in his memory, he appreciated his attendant’s emphatic injunction for silence, for caution. In this wild and shaggy land, the hand of everybody was against the intruder, the infidel. And as he gazed, the turbaned heads of a band of horsemen came into view above the rocks below.

They were advancing up the valley. They were as yet too distant for detail. Helston made a move to get out his powerful binocular. But Hussein Khan laid a warning hand upon his arm.

“Leave that, Hazûr,” he breathed. “Those who go yonder have eyes – like those of the eagle we sighted just now. One glint of the sun upon the glasses, and – ”