The Secret of Wyvern Towers

Front matter

W.C NOVELS BY T. W. SPEIGHT. Post 8vo. Illustrated boards, 2_. each. THE MYSTERIES OF HERON DYKE. BY DEVIOUS WAYS. HOODWINKED; and THE SANDYCROFT MYSTERY THE GOLDEN HOOP. BACK TO LIFE. THE LOUDWATER TRAGEDY. BURGO'S ROMANCE. QUITTANCE IN FULL. A HUSBAND FROM THE SEA. Post 8vo. cloth limp, is. bd. each. A BARREN TITLE. WIFE OR NO WIFE? Crown Svo. cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each. A SECRET OF THE SEA. THE GREY MONK. THE MASTER OF TRENANCE. A MINION OF THE MOON. THE SECRET OF WYVERN TOWERS. London: CHATTO & WINDUS, in St. Martin's Lane, PRINTED CY SrOTTISTOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE BY T. W. SPEIGHT TS_. AUTHOR OF 'THE MYSTERIES OF HFRON DYKE' 'THE GREY MONK' ETC. LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS CONTENTS BOOK THE FIRST. CHAP. PAGE I. In Barras Wood i II. Very Strange Tidings 9 III. After the Telling of the News ... 17 IV.

Preliminaries 24 V. Sir John Conducts the Inquiry .... 34 VI. A Backward Glance 47 VII. In the Left Wing 54 BOOK THE SECOND. I. At Combe Fenton 66 II. A Recreant Lover 7S III. The Reading of the Letter .... 89 IV. After Four Years 97 V. An Amazing Confession 104 VI. At the Palatine Hotel 11S VII. Guy's Choice 126 VIII. "The Faithful Samuel" 135 IX. An Unwelcome Arrival 146 X. Negotiations BOOK THE THIRD. CHAP. PAGE I. After Many Days 168 II. Domesticities 178 III. An Old Friend 188 IV. An Arrival and a Recognition . . . . 195 V. The Beginning of the End 207 VI. Waiting for the Verdict ..... 219 VII. In the Last Resort 233 VIII. One Step Nearer 244 IX. On the Brink 252 X. Over the Brink ....... 262 XI. With All Speed 269 XII. The Secret of Wyvern Towers .... 282 XIII. Poor Anna ! . . BOOK THE FIRST.

Chapter I. In Barr As Wood

ON a certain sunny May morning, about forty years ago, there came slouching into a lovely glade of Barras Wood a man so frowsy, ragged, and unwashed, that anyone at all acquainted with the genus would have classi fied him without a moment's hesitation. The name he was known by was Sheeny Bob. He was an incorrigible tramp and vagabond, one of that ancient confraternity of lazy scamps, ever on the move, who hate work as they hate poison, and who will beg, lie, steal, or do anything short of manslaughter, rather than earn an honest day's wage, even when the chance of doing so is offered them. But it was the sort of life Sheeny Bob had been brought up to, and he neither knew nor hankered after any other. He was taking a short cut through the wood to a village B on the other side of it which he was desirous of reaching.

He was quite aware that in so doing he was trespassing, the wood being the private property of Mr. Drelincourt, of Wyvern Towers, but that was a fact which merely lent a zest to his morning stroll it otherwise would have lacked ; for Sheeny was one of those men who delight in setting at defiance the minor laws of their country whenever there is a prospect of their being able to do so with impunity. As soon as he had emerged from the trees into the glade, he came to a stand, and taking off his ragged cap, he proceeded to scratch his head while staring about him. " Now, if this ain't as nobby a breakfast parlour as any genelman out for a 'oliday need expect to come acrost in a day's walk, I dunno where he would look for one," he muttered half aloud. "With the dicky-birds a singin' round me, and the sun a-shinin' through the leaves, and a carpet under my feet, ah ! far softer than any Turkey carpet as was ever made, I needn't envy any dook in his pallis."

There was a felled tree on one side of the glade, to which he now made his way, and having seated himself upon it, he produced a parcel tied up in white paper from one of his capacious pockets. " Now, blessin's on that white-chokered old bloke wot I met outside the railway station. ' Here, my man,' sez he, ' if you like to 'ave these 'ere sangwidges, you're welcome to 'em ; and here's a little trac',' sez he, ' which I 'ope you will read and profit by.' The trac' I gave to a blind cove as I came along, but the sangwidges I kep'." By this time he had cut the string of the parcel and opened the paper. " 'am and beef and tongue — oh, criminy ! But— but IN BARRAS WOOD 3 where's the mustard? Blowed if it ain't too bad to 'ave one's breakfast spoilt in this way ! If I wasn't so darned hungry, I'd Somebody comin' !

" With a quick, dexterous movement he crammed the parcel of sandwiches back into his pocket. "I 'ope my appetite won't get mouldy with waitin'," he growled with a shrug. The man who now came limping into the glade, with the help of a stick cut by himself from some sapling, might have been first cousin to Sheeny Bob, so far as grime, raggedness, and an unmistakable air of vagabondage were concerned. But whereas our first friend was a sturdy, broad-shouldered rogue, with a twinkle in his eye which betokened humour as well as cunning, the new-comer was a wizened, undersized, half-starved looking fellow, rat-faced, and having furtive red-rimmed eyes, the shallow depths of which were lighted up with a dull malignant gleam, as if he had long ago quarrelled with the world and returned its scorn with an unquenchable hate.

"S'elp me if it ain't my old pal, Slimpy Jake !" ex claimed Sheeny, with a slap of his leg as the other came forward. " Hullo, Sheeny, is that you ? The sight o' you's good for sore eyes." " The same to you, Jake, and many of 'em. What mout you hev been a-doin' of since I seed you last ? " " Oh, the old lay ; but it's about stumped. I shall chuck it afore long and try a fresh barney." "Met with a haccident?" queried Sheeny, indicating the other's leg. " Or is it a little fakement calkilated to touch the hearts of our keyind Christian friends ? " " It ain't a haccident, and it ain't a fakement. Gimme a bit o' baccy and I'll tell you all about it." B Slimpy, having seated himself by the side of his friend, produced a short black clay pipe, and Sheeny, after rum maging in several pockets, managed to find enough tobacco to fill it.

Then the other struck a match on his trousers and slowly inhaled the few first delicious whiffs before he spoke again. Sheeny respected his friend's silence. Pro bably that pipe of tobacco would be the latter's only breakfast. It was the last thought in the mind of either that they were being spied upon. But on the opposite side of the glade, a little to the left of them, where a growth of under wood blocked the view between the trees, a hand had grasped and pulled aside some of the smaller branches, and through the opening thus made a pair of keen eyes were bent on our two rogues. "You know that big 'ouse in the 'ollow, about a mile and a quarter from here — suthin-or-other Towers they call it ? " began Slimpy presently. His friend nodded assent. " Well, I went up there on the cadge yesterday afternoon, and was just tippin' a chant to one o' the slaveys, when up comes the lady o' the 'ouse, with a narsty-lookin' marstiff at her 'eels. ' Now, my man, what's your bizness here ? ' says she, speakin' as 'aughty as a dutchess.

With that, I begins to tip her one o' my snivellin' yarns, but she cuts me short in a jiffy. ' I don't believe a word as you're a sayin' of,' says she. ' You're tellin' me nothink but a pack o' lies, and the sooner you takes your lazy, loungin' carkiss off these premises the better .' Naterally, that riles me, so I gives her a bit o' cheek in return. ' Oh — ho ! that's your game, is it?' says she. 'I never puts up with any imperance from the likes o' you.' And with that she makes a sign to the blamed dawg, and afore I knows what has 'appened, IN BARRAS WOOD 5 it has pinned me by the soft part o' my leg. Well, I yells out blue murder, you may take your davy, while my lady stands there a fannin' of herself — for the afternoon was 'ot— and a larfin' fit to split. But, s'elp me, Sheeny, I'll pison that there brute afore I'm a week older !

" He drew viciously at his pipe, and exhaled a cloud of acrid smoke, as if thereby to emphasise his determination. But at this moment the underwood was parted, and the man who had been watching them stepped into the opening. The two rascals sprang to their feet, as if an apparition had confronted them. " I should advise you to do nothing of the kind, my friend," remarked the stranger, in bland accents, " unless you are desirous of finding yourself inside the four walls of a gaol. That dog belongs to me." " I axes yer pardin', sir," began Slimpy Jake, with his best professional whine, " but its oncommon hard when a pore man, wot's bin out o' work for six months and has a missis and four blessed babbies starvin' at 'ome, has a savage dawg set at 'im, just because he begs for a few broken vittals.

How do I know, sir, as I'll not die of hydrorphorbia all along o' that there bite ? " " Enough of that ; it's thrown away upon me. There's a crown for you " — throwing him a coin — " and now begone. But if any harm comes to that dog, it will be worse for you.' "Thank your honour, kindly, and if " " Not a word ! Away with the pair of you ! " Mr. Drelincourt, for he it was, stood watching the two tramps till their slouching forms were lost to view among the interlacing foliage of the trees. He was a man who stood a little over six feet in height. He was long in the leg and thin in the flank j indeed, so lean and wiry was he from top to toe, that he might have been training for an athlete. Nor had the elongated oval of his face any superfluous flesh about it. His nose was spare and long, with a tendency towards the aquiline.

The clear olive of his complexion he probably owed to his mother, who was of Spanish extraction. His black silky hair had a careless wave in it, and was evidently untrained to follow any fashion in particular. His thin moustache, with its up-curled tips, was the cause of his often being taken by strangers for a foreigner; for the rest, he was clean shaven. His rather prominent and definitely-arched eyebrows lent distinction to a face which Velasquez or Vandyck would have delighted to immortalise on canvas. But his eyes were the most striking feature of a striking personality. They were black, and of an extraordinarily piercing quality, with a sort of veiled, sombre glow in them at times, as it might be the glow thrown out from between the bars of some hidden furnace, the fire in which was eating its heart away in the flame of its own burning unrest.

And yet, withal, they were questioning eyes, which seemed to be for ever asking the meaning of things, as though to them life and the universe were one huge riddle — perhaps one huge mistake — with, at times, a half-humorous, half cynical twinkle in them, when his lips would curve into a smile which had far less of merriment in it than of a dim and shadowy sadness. It was not easy to judge his age, but one might put it down as being somewhere between eight-and-twenty and fouror five-and-thirty. This morning he was dressed in a velveteen shooting-jacket, with cord breeches and leggings, and was wearing a low-crowned felt hat. " Faugh ! how the presence of those rapscallions seems IN BARRAS WOOD 7 to have contaminated the place," he said aloud, as he turned and began to pace the glade slowly.

After a turn or two he spoke again. " How like Kate to set Nero at that poor devil ! She delights in cruelty for cruelty's sake, and never seems happier than when she is inflicting pain. What a strangely perverted nature is hers ! Never were there two more harmless, commonplace folk than her father and mother. Her nature must have come to her from some forgotten ancestor, after skipping three or four generations." Again he took a turn or two in silence. " What has brought me here on this one morning of all the mornings of the year? Ah, what? Am I wrong in terming it a force — a magnetic attraction — I was powerless to resist ? This is her birthday. Where is she ? Does an English sunshine on her this morning, or that of some far-off land ? Vain questions, and idle as vain." He took a couple of turns from end to end of the glade with compressed lips and bent brows.

Then his thoughts again took articulate form. " This is the spot — the forest temple — the grove sacred to the memory of that hour — where, only three short years ago, Madeline told me that she loved me ! Only three little years ago, and yet I seem to have lived through a cycle since then. Yes, here our lips met in love's first kiss, and here we vowed that nothing on earth should divide us. Poor fools that we were ! We did not dream of treachery : we hardly knew there was such a word." He came to a halt by a sturdy young oak at the upper end of the opening. " It was in the bark of this tree that I cut her initials and my own. Here they are still to convince me I am not dreaming of something which never happened. Time's obliterating fingers have dealt tenderly with them, as though the old greybeard knew they were a lover's handi work, and remembered a far-off eon when he was young himself."

At this moment the clock of a distant church began to strike the hour. Drelincourt stood listening till the last stroke had died into silence. " Nine of them," he said. " It is time to think of going back to the Cot. At what hour did I leave it ? There's the mystery. It must have been near midnight before I fell asleep, dog tired. The rest is an absolute blank till I Ah ! Someone is calling me by name. It sounds like Rodd's voice. What has brought him in search of me ? What can he want with me at this hour ? " Taking a silver whistle from his pocket, he put it to his lips and blew. Its keen, shrilly scream cut the silence like a knife. Two minutes later a man came brushing roughly through the underwood. At the edge of the glade he paused for a moment, while he took off his hat and mopped his brow. Drelincourt stood motionless, his eyes turned upon him. Under his breath he said : " He has the look of one charged with a message of doom."

Chapter II. Very Strance Tidings

The new-comer, Roden Marsh by name (familiarly abbreviated to " Rodd "), was Felix Drelincourt's foster brother. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a pronounced stoop of the shoulders which detracted considerably from his height. He had a long, thin face, a high-ridged, pro minent nose, thoughtful, deep-set eyes, and a profusion of straw-coloured hair parted down the middle. His clothes, generally more or less worn and threadbare — not from necessity, but because he was both indifferent to appear ances and parsimoniously inclined — hung loosely on his lean and bony frame. By strangers he was often taken for the village schoolmaster. As he advanced into the glade, anyone familiar with his customary phlegmatic and unemotional manner would have seen at once that he was the bearer of no ordinary tidings.

"Thank heaven I have found you!" were his first words, and there could be no doubt of the sincerity with which they were spoken. " It is a small mercy to be thankful for," replied the other, with the ghost of a smile. "A terrible discovery has been made at the Towers." " Those are strong words, my dear Rodd, but they fail to convey any definite idea to my mind. They may mean much, or they may mean very little." " Mrs. Drelincourt has been murdered in her sleep." " Murdered ! " He staggered back a pace or two, and then, putting forth his right hand, he caught hold of an oak sapling and gripped it hard. For a few seconds his body rocked like that of a man whose brain has been stunned and dizzied by some great shock. " That is indeed a terrible discovery to have made," he went on, after a pause.

" Kate dead ! . . . It seems in credible ; altogether beyond belief." " For all that, it is true." " But what possible motive could anyone have for the committal of such a crime ? " Roden's thin lips tightened. Evidently the question was one which he either would not or could not answer. " When and by whom was the discovery made ?" asked Mr. Drelincourt, after a brief pause. " It was made by Lucille, nearly a couple of hours ago. She went as usual to take her mistress an early cup of chocolate, and — and found her dead in bed." " Go on. Tell me all the particulars known to you." " Mrs. Drelincourt had been stabbed to the heart, most probably while she was asleep." " So ! Has the weapon with which the deed was com mitted been found ? " " It had not when I left the Towers." Drelincourt seated himself on the fallen trunk, and resting his elbows on his knees, he bent his eyes on the ground.

"As soon as the crime became known," resumed the other, " I sent off a groom on horseback to fetch Dr. Carew. On the way he met Mr. Ormsby and told him the news, and was ordered by him to at once communicate with the police." " A very proper thing to do." " Mr. Ormsby, accompanied by another gentleman, a stranger, had just reached the Towers before I left it." " To come in search of me ? " " Exactly. It has taken me nearly an hour to find you. I hurried, first of all, to the Cot, but you were not there. Margery Trant had not heard you leave the house, and was unable to tell me in which direction you had gone. I set out to look for you, and it must have been instinct which directed my steps to this place." He paused. A throstle in the wood piped a few notes and then ceased. " Go on," said Drelincourt, without looking up.

" You have something more to tell me." " As I bent over Mrs. Drelincourt's dead body, I found this close by her pillow." As he finished speaking, he drew from one of his pockets a white handkerchief bordered wilh a thin line of black, and having shaken it out, held it up to the light. On it were three or four crimson stains. " It is yours. Here are your initials in one corner," he said. He had a softly modulated voice, but just now there was no more emotion either in it or his manner than if he had been dis cussing the state of the weather. Drelincourt started to his feet, his face blanched to the lips. A moment or two he stared at the handkerchief as though it had for him a horrible fascination. Then the eyes of the two men met in a silence which seemed charged with hidden meaning. " A dumb witness, but enough to hang a man," said Drelincourt at length, as he turned away with a shudder.

Marsh did not reply, but, after a keen glance round, as if to make sure there was no lurking onlooker, he let the handkerchief drop to the ground, and then, kneeling on one knee, he set it alight with a match from his fuzee box. Drelincourt, his back supported by a tree, stood looking on in silence till the flame had burnt itself out, and nothing was left save a little fine ash, which a wandering breeze presently caught up and frolicked off with into the depths of the wood. " This also I found," resumed Roden. " It was lying open on the writing-table in your dressing-room at the Towers for anybody to see. It is in your writing, and is dated to-day." As he spoke, he produced a letter from his breast pocket and handed it to Drelincourt, who took it mechani cally and like a half-dazed man. It was without an envelope, and was simply folded in two.

Opening it, he read it in silence and with growing amazement. "An unfinished letter to my friend, Professor Ridsdale. And you say that you found it in my dressing-room at the Towers ? " " I do." " It refers to certain chemical experiments in which my friend and I are interested. It is the very letter, almost word for word, which I made up my mind to write to him the first thing after breakfast this morning. And yet I slept last night at the Cot, while you found this an hour or more ago at the Towers ! " Again the eyes of the two met in pregnant silence. " Rodd, you must have guessed the truth ? " " I have, Felix." "Yes, no other explanation is possible. Yet it seems monstrous — unbelievable. And by my hand ! — Oh ! " He ended with a groan, turned his face aside, and was silent. For once this man, usually so proudly self-centred, so stoically self-repressed, was moved to the depths of his soul as never in his life before.

Crossing to him, Roden Marsh grasped one of his hands in both his own. " Felix, between you and me not a word more is needed — I comprehend. You have suffered. Your life has been made a burden almost too bitter to be borne. I have seen and known it for long. I have suffered with your sufferings; my heart has bled for you times without number. I can speak now ; hitherto I have had to look on and be dumb." "Yes, you have seen something — perchance much — but you know no more than your eyes have shown you, whatever you may have guessed. Of the details of her treachery — hers, Rodd — which was black as hell, you know nothing. Sit you there and listen. The tale shall be told, now and here, from beginning to end." Roden seated himself on the fallen trunk, while Drelincourt, pacing slowly back and forth, half a dozen yards this way and as many that, began his narrative.

" You will not have forgotten that about three years ago Colonel Fenwicke and his niece were staying with the Ormsbys at Denham Lodge, where I was an occasional visitor. I had met Madeline Fenwicke abroad in the course of the previous summer, and had fallen in love with her ; but at that time I was comparatively a poor man, and marriage was not to be thought of. In the interim my father had died, and I had succeeded to the entail. There was no longer any reason why I should keep silent. It was in this very glade, Rodd — here — here — that I met my darling and told her my secret ! It was here her lips touched mine in love's first kiss. O heaven ! to think of al! that has happened between then and now ! " He took a turn or two in silence. Roden sat with crossed legs, nursing an elbow with one hand, his chin supported in the hollowed palm of the other.

" Madeline and Kate Ormsby had been schoolfellows, and the former had no secrets from her friend. The day following our interview I was called away to London by the illness of my aunt, Mrs. Gascoigne. At Denham Lodge there is a terrace with a stone balustrade, from which a flight of steps leads to the lower garden. As Madeline and Kate were leaning over this balustrade after dark a few evenings later, listening to a nightingale, two people came along the lower walk, a man and a woman, judging from their voices. Said the man, as they drew near : 'The way Mr. Drelincourt has behaved to the girl is common talk in the village. Of course he can't marry her — she's too far beneath him for that — and now they say she's fit to break her heart because he refuses to have anything more to do with her.' ' Perhaps he's grown tired of her and found somebody more to his liking.

That's often the way with you men,' answered the woman. ' Oh, come ! we're not all as bad as that,' said the man with a laugh, after which they passed out of earshot. "An hour later Madeline wrote me that all was at an end between us. The letter, which should have reached me next morning, was kept back by Kate, and did not come to hand till three days later. Within four hours of receiving it I was at Denham Lodge, only to find that Madeline and her uncle had left there the day before. " My aunt lingered on from week to week. I was her last living relative, and she would not hear of my leaving for longer than a few hours at a time. All I could do was to write a note to Madeline, begging for an explanation, and enclose it under cover to the colonel at his club. A week later my note was returned to me from Paris, together with a few lines from the colonel, stating that thenceforward all communication with me must cease, both on his part and that of his niece.

What I had been guilty of which deserved such a sentence I was wholly at a loss to conceive. " A month later my aunt died. As soon as I was at liberty, I set out for the Continent, but nowhere could I come across a trace of those I was in search of. You know what followed a little later : how I was accidentally wounded while out shooting ; how I was carried to Denham Lodge, and there nursed back to convalescence by Kate Ormsby." " Some part of what you have now told me I knew or guessed already," said Roden ; " but not the whole of it." "You did not know how one day Kate read to me a passage from a letter professedly written by her correspon dent, Lady Linthorpe, in which it was stated that Madeline Fenwicke had been married a fortnight before at Rome. Within six weeks of that day Kate Ormsby had become my wife."

Seating himself on the tree by the side of Marsh, he began to manufacture a cigarette. By this time, to all out ward seeming, he was thoroughly himself again. The shock of the news brought him by his foster-brother had stunned and in a measure unmanned him for a little while, but his nature was too self-poised, and his nerves too thoroughly under control, to allow of his equanimity being seriously disturbed for any length of time, That which had happened, however much it was to be deplored, belonged to the past, and not all the powers of heaven and earth com bined could alter or undo it. The only thing left him was to face the consequences, and that he was prepared to do. " It was not a fact, then, that Miss Fenwicke was married ? " queried Roden, after a pause. " The statement was false from beginning to end.

No such letter was ever written by Lady Linthorpe ; but not till about a month ago did that fact come to my knowledge, and not till then was I in a position to fathom the depths of my wife's treachery. It was she who arranged the con versation overheard by Madeline that evening on the terrace, the actors in it being the son of her father's bailiff and the governess to her two younger sisters. It was a damnable plot, but it succeeded." He proceeded to light his cigarette, which done, he resumed his slow pacing to and fro. " It was indeed a black business," said Roden. " Did you tell Mrs. Drelincourt of your discovery ? " " I did not fail to do so." "And she ?" " Laughed at me with that cold-blooded laugh of hers which used to go through me like a knife. In those days, she said, she was such a simpleton as to fancy herself in love with me, and, in any case, she had vowed to herself that Miss Fenwicke should never be my wife. . . .