The Dark House at Highgate

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10695, 16 August 1912, Page 2

The Dark House at Highgate

OUP SERIAL.)

BY DERWENT MIALL,

CHAPTER XlX.—(Continued.) "You have little cause to laugh. Do you know that these men whom you are thwarting will stop short at nothing to obtain what they want — that they have already, men of refinement and education they are, turned housebreakers in an attempt to steal that cabinet? Aha! that surpises you!" • For I dare say my face gave some indication of surprise at her last admission, and I laughed, at her scornfully. ".I am not surprised." said 1, "at any villany these men may do; but I am a little surprised that you should put me in 'possession of a fact that Doctor Rimington was at some pains , to deny. He will hardly thank you, . T think, for telling the truth so plain- j ly." i "Oh, T don't fear to tell you the j truth," replied Madame Claude care- . lessly. "Now, what have you to say?" What could be the meaning of her candour —what except that she intended I should never go out into the living world again? A shuffling ef feet in the passage, told me that the i door was guarded, or I would have made my attempt! at escape there and then. I felt that we were nearing a climax, and that I must make my fight for liberty soon, or never. While we stood glaring -at each other Rimington came in quite suddenly and unexpectedly; but I did not hurl myself upon that bulky scoundrel, for it was the very essence of my plan that I should take him by surprise. Taken by surprise he certainly was, but it was at the sight of Madame Claude. "You here, madame?" lie gasped. She laughed, a short, bitter laugh. "Why not, Doctor Rimington? 'May?- I not add my persuasions to yours? I thought J might succeed where you have failed." The doctor bowed, and said, with an assumption, of gallantry, "Ho must be' a very unsusceptible man ' who could resist your pleading, .Ma- ! dame Claude." "Bah!" retorted madame rudely; and I thought I detected in that monosyllable the fact that she held him in contempt. "Nevertheless, he is asobstinate as ever. You are an abstinate fool, sir," she added, turning upon mo with sudden venom. "We shall see wlto looks the more foolish when the police break in hero," I angrily replied; and I strode across the room, and, lounging carelessly on the sofa, refused to utter another word. '.'lt's a very small thing we ask of you, Mr Rycroft," urged Rimington, ; in conciliatory tones. I made no ' reply. "Ah, you see." sneered madame. "He refuses to speak to a common housebreaker." "I don't understand you, madame." i Rimington stood and scanned her I face anxiously, almost stupidly. | "Oh, my good man, he knows all about that Pol ton affair. I told him of it myself," said madame impati- . ently. "and he is longing to go out i and tell the police everything." And she swept from the. room with the--frace of a tragedy queen, j _ The effect of her words upon Rimington was instantaneous an<| remarkable. The whole huge bulk of the man seemed to shrink, and his face looked gray and ghastly as he stared after her. I would have attacked him, but for the fact that the crooked fellow sidled instantly 'into the; room, and drew him gently out of it. The purport of madame's visit was clear to me—she had come to seal my fate. Rimington had been putting off the. evil day—had been urging, no doubt, that my life might ho spared; that ' they*-' might make terms with me. But 'Madame Claude had put an end t-r '""<■ hones. I could not, with safety to himself and Cluny, be allowed to go out into the world with the certain knowledge that they had broken into Mr Betsworth's house on the night of his tragic death, and so I was never to go forth free from that dark house—never to see Anne Kettering again. Was this the doom that cruel Fate had shaped for me? CHAPTER NX.

WAKING NIGHTMARE. I was now on the brink of an adventure that invested actual, waking lifo, for the time being, with all the vague terror and apprehension that sometimes makes frightful tjie shadowy world of dreams. Daylight had gone; the familiar objects of the room —the shabby sofa and chairs, the hideous, damp wall paper, and the pictiire of Joshua commanding the sun to stand still —had all vanished from sight, and no sound reached' me from the outer world except the dismal tolling of a distant bell. In the hot night I shivered. (Madame Claude's ruthless wiekednesss seemed a vastly more terrible thing to me now than it had appeared when we stood and wrangled face to face. It was the element of mystery in tho whole business that invested ifc with special horror. That the small collector's cabinet which I had bought at the. sale of a dead man's effects should have such an evil influence upon my fortunes seemed to suggest, to my

A thor of "Lady Rosalie's Leg aey," "Bellamy's Warning," "The Stranee Case if Yincent Hume,"' "In the Web. " Etc Etc.

disordered fancy, that the thing was uncanny, that black magic had endowed it with some supernatural power of .a, peculiarly dangerous clwracter. In saner moments I felt it to ho maddening that I might have opened it, and found out what ifc conj tamed, if ] had had enough curiosity jto do so, as soon as it cam 0 into my | possession. The fact that Rimington had been so eager to buv it ought to have warned me that it was not empty ; perhaps it would . S o have warned me had not my mind been so exclusively occupied at the time with thoughts of Anne—of Anno, whom I was never to see again. As that thought came to me T was possessed by a frenzied desire to make my escape in the darkness. Had I 'done all, I asked myself, that J j might have done, in the way of atj tempting to regain my liberty? Did j I not owe it to Anne that I should yaever relax my efforts to make my way out of this prison into which I had stupidly blundered? . In a spirit of forlorn hope, I groped my way to the door. I would kick it to pieces; I would shout till Cecile Claude —who, I felt sure, was no plotter—heard me; would be passive no longer, not for an instant. I felt myself'capable of feats of strength hitherto undreamed of. And then, all in an. instant, the frenzy left me, and. I stood in- the darkness, weak and trembling, almost choked by the .beating of my heart. For I .had caught at the handle of the door, and the door came open! They had forgotten to lock it. Could it be true? Could it be possible that the carelessness of my jailers had left open for me a way of easy escape? I steadied myself against the doorframe till my breathing calmed down to its normal regularity; then, with sight an-cl hearing Strained to the utmost, and with my .hands before me, I stepped out into the dark, stone passage. On my right, as I paused, all was black. On my left a streak of li showed beneath a door. I made toward the light, and was almost instantly brought to .a istandstill by the door. I felt for the handle; there was none; but the sense of touch informed me that the door was covered with cloth or baize. It was, then, probably a swing door, placed in the passage to shut out the. -sounds and odours of the kitchen from the floor above.

I pushed, and my assumption proved to he correct. The door swung ajar, and I put my head cautiously through.the gap. In front of mo the stone passage continued for a few vards, to the foot of a staircase. The latter was lighted by a gas jet, which flared noisily in the silence of the sleeping .house. After a moment I passed through the door, making sure that it closed silently. Then I crept to the foot of the staircase, and saw that there was another door at. the top of" it. 1 . If I passed that door, where should I ,be? hi the entrance hall ' probablv; and if the household had'retired for the night I could take down chain and bars, and—or, the jov of the that thought!—dash out 'into the road., ard turn the tables utterly nnoh my emonies. I climbed the stairs barefoot, but even so tliev creaked abominably, as stairs will in old houses. Under the flavin" gaslight I halted, at the head of the fair's. Bitter disappointment awated me here. The door, a ponderous affair of stout oak, was locked fast; Isaw at a glance that nothing short of a battering-ram ™» kl beat it down. So, though my prison was enlarged, T was still a prisoner. But I wns bv no means hopeless yet. Probably I was free of the whole basement of the hous,?. with its many doors and windows. It would ho odd if I could not make my way-through one ot them. T , , After a breathing space I descended the stairs, and crept back along the passage. I left the light with strange reluctance, but it had to he done.'"' I misifed open the baize-cover-ed .door, and it swung upon me and upon inkv darkness. And now I. had to rely upon my hands. Mv eves might have been closed, for'all the help they gave me. I passed the open door of the room T had escaped from, and went on, feeling all down the passage for othev doors. There were several, but they were all locked, and there were no keys in the locks. I came to the end of the passage at last, and to a small, barred window, which was overgrown outside by laurels. I shall hate the scent of laurels as long as I live. (To be Continued.)