The Mystery of the Ravenspurs. Fred M. White
meant as if she had put her thoughts into words. She had been terribly upset over Vera, and now that the danger was past, a heavy reaction set in.
“Why should we sit here like this?” Geoffrey exclaimed. “Vera and Marion, I’ll play you two a game at billiards. Come along.”
Marion smilingly declined. She touched the back of Ravenspur’s wasted hand.
“I am going to stay here just for a few minutes and take care of grandfather,” she said; “then I will go to bed. Give Vera twenty in a hundred, and I will bet you a pair of gloves that she beats you easily.”
The young people went off together, and in the excitement of the game other things were forgotten. Vera played well and Geoffrey had all his work cut out to beat her. Finally she ran out with a succession of brilliant flukes.
“Well, of all the luck!” Geoffrey cried. “Let’s play another game, but after that exhibition of yours I must have a cigarette. Wait a moment.”
The cigarettes were not in their accustomed place. Geoffrey ran up the stairs to his bedroom. He passed along the dark corridor on his return. In the gallery all was dark and still, save for something that sounded like two figures in muffling velvet robes dancing together. It seemed to Geoffrey that he could actually hear them breathing after their exertions.
With a quickening of his heart he stopped to listen. Surely somebody buried under many thick folds of cloth was calling for assistance.
“Who is there?” Geoffrey called. “Where are you?”
“Just under the Lely portrait,” came a stifled response. “If you don’t—”
The voice ceased. In that instant Geoffrey had recognised it as Aunt Gordon’s voice.
Heedless of danger to himself, he raced down the corridor, his thin evening shoes making little or no noise on the polished floor. Nor had Geoffrey lived here all these years for nothing. He could have found the spot indicated blindfolded.
He could see nothing, but he could hear the struggle going on; then he caught the flash of something that looked like a blue diamond. It must have been attached to a hand, but no hand was to be seen. Geoffrey caught at nothingness and grasped something warm and palpitating. He had the mysterious assailant in his grip; perhaps he held the whole mystery here. He heard footsteps pattering along the corridor as Mrs. Gordon ran for assistance. He called out to her and she answered him.
She was safe. There was no doubt about that. No longer was there any need for caution on Geoffrey’s part. His fingers closed on a thin, scraggy throat from which the flesh seemed to hang like strips of dried leather. At the same time the throat was cold and clammy and slippery, as if with some horrible slime. It was almost impossible to keep a grip on it. Moreover, the mysterious visitor, if slight, was possessed of marvellous agility and vitality.
But Geoffrey fought on with the tenacity of one who plays for a great end. He closed in again and bore the foe backwards. He had him at last if he could only hold on till assistance came, the dread secret might be unfolded.
Then the figure took something from his pocket; the air was filled with a pungent, sickly, sweet odor, and Geoffrey felt his strength going from him. He was powerless to move a limb. One of those greasy hands gripped his throat.
In a vague, intangible way Geoffrey knew that that overpowering, blinding odor was the same stuff that had come so near to ending the head of the family. If he breathed it much longer, his own end was come.
He made one other futile struggle and heard approaching footsteps; he caught the gleaming circle of a knife blade swiftly uplifted, and his antagonist gave a whimper of pain as a frightened animal might do. The grip relaxed and Geoffrey staggered to the floor.
“That was a narrow escape,” a hoarse voice said.
“Uncle Ralph!” Geoffrey panted. “How did you get here? And where has the fellow gone?”
“I was close at hand,” Ralph said coolly. “A minute or two sooner and I might have saved Gordon’s wife, instead of your doing it. See! is there blood on this knife?”
He handed a box of matches to Geoffrey. The long, carved Malay blade was dripping with crimson. But there were no signs of it on the floor.
“Let us follow, him,” Geoffrey cried eagerly. “He can’t be far away!”
But Ralph did not move. His face was expressionless once more. He did not appear to be in the least interested or excited.
“It is useless,” he said, in his dull, mechanical tones. “For in this matter you are as blind as I am. There are things beyond your comprehension. I am going down to see what is happening below.”
He began to feel his way to the staircase, Geoffrey following.
“Are we never going to do anything?” the younger man exclaimed passionately.
“Yes, yes. Patience, lad! The day of reckoning is coming as sure as I stand before you. But to follow your late antagonist is futile. You might as well try to beat the wind that carries away your hat on a stormy day.”
Mrs. Gordon sat in the dining-hall, pale, ashen, and trembling from head to foot. It seemed as if an ague had fallen upon her. Every now and then a short, hysterical laugh escaped her lips, more horrible and more impressive than any outbreak of fear or passion.
And yet there was nothing to be done, nothing to be said; they could only look at her with moist eyes and a yearning sympathy that was beyond all words.
“It will pass,” Mrs. Gordon said faintly. “We all have our trials; and mine are worse than the rest. Gordon, take me to bed.”
She passed up the stairs leaning on the arm of her husband. Time was when these things demanded vivid explanations. They were too significant now. Ralph crept fumblingly over the floor till he stood by Marion’s side. He touched her hand; he seemed to know where to find it. The hand was wet. Ralph touched her cheek.
“You are crying,” he said, gently for him.
“Yes,” Marion admitted, softly. “Oh, if I could only do anything to help! If you only knew how my heart goes out to these poor people!”
“And yet it may be your turn next, Marion. But I hope not—I hope not. We could not lose the only sunshine in the house!”
Marion choked down a sob. When she turned to Ralph again, he was far off, feeling his way along the room—feeling, feeling always for the clue to the secret.
XII - GEOFFREY IS PUT TO THE TEST
The house was quiet at last. When these mysterious things had first happened, fear and alarm had driven sleep from every eye, and many was the long night the whole family had spent, huddled round the fire till grey morn chased their fears away.
But as the inhabitants of a beleaguered city learn to sleep through a heavy bombardment, so had the Ravenspurs come to meet these horrors with grim tenacity. They were all upstairs now behind locked doors, with a hope that they might meet again on the morrow. Only Geoffrey was up waiting for his uncle Ralph.
He came at length so noiselessly that Geoffrey was startled, and motioned to him that he should follow him without a word.
They crept like ghosts along the corridor until they reached a room with double doors at the end of the picture gallery. Generations ago this room had been built for a Ravenspur who had developed dangerous homicidal mania, and in this room he had lived virtually a prisoner for many years.
After they had closed the two doors, a heavy curtain was drawn over the inner one, and Ralph fumbled his way to the table and lighted a candle.
“Now we can talk,” he said quietly, “but not loud. Understand that the matter is to be a profound secret between