C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
in the afternoon by which they can get away now. They'd have to go by the night boat, if it was France. Somehow or other–though everything seems against us, and we are only two, where there ought to be a dozen going in as many ways at once–we'll circumvent that devil yet."
"You have plenty of confidence in yourself," said Cunningham. "Perhaps you don't know Carson Wildred as well as I do."
I did not answer, though the words rang ominously in my ears. I was very busy with my own thoughts.
As soon as we could find out where Wildred had taken Karine (even within my own mind I would not call her his wife), we must lodge such information with the police that he could be arrested at once, either on English or foreign soil, as the case might be. A man accused of murder, as he would be, could, fortunately, be apprehended anywhere.
At Haslemere station they could only inform us that the party of which we were in search had had tickets for London, and had left about three-quarters of an hour before our arrival.
Even if we could have told our story with sufficient succinctness to have Wildred met at Waterloo by the police, there would have been no time to do so. We must simply follow as we could. Luckily there was a slow train due in a few moments, otherwise I think we (I at least) must have gone mad with the strain of waiting.
At Waterloo we heard of them. A porter had taken their luggage and put it on a cab. The gentleman and lady had driven away in a private carriage. What direction had been given to the coachman or the cabman he had not happened to hear.
I now proposed that Cunningham should proceed immediately to Scotland Yard, while I busied myself elsewhere. He was the one who could tell of the plot by which he had personated Farnham in America, by Wildred's desire, and in the hope of obtaining a substantial bribe. The authorities were already in possession of such separate information as I could give, and now that they would learn from Cunningham how Farnham had never gone to America at all, a very different and more lurid light would be shed upon the past.
Meanwhile I would drive to Charing Cross, and might yet be in time to intercept the couple if they were intending to depart for France.
At Charing Cross they had not appeared, and hastening to a telegraph office, I sent messages containing Wildred's description and Karine's to every one of the principal railway stations in London. Replies were paid, and were to be received for me at the Charing Cross Hotel. Having done so much, I drove to the piers from which the Holland boats sailed; then, having discovered nothing, back to Charing Cross again. The train which would catch the night boat at Dover was just about going out, but Wildred and Karine were not visible.
When the last moment had come and gone I betook myself to the hotel, where my telegrams were to await me. I also looked for Cunningham, who was to have met me there, after Scotland Yard, and decided upon forthcoming arrangements. Despatches were awaiting me from the head porters of various stations–Victoria, Euston, Paddington, and so on–but no Cunningham had as yet appeared.
I opened the message from Paddington last; the others had no news for me, but it seemed that at Paddington a lady and gentleman, apparently answering the description given, had taken tickets for Maidenhead. All the blood in my body seemed to mount to my head. Unless there had been a mistake in the identity, Wildred must have carried Karine off to the House by the Lock!
It was horrible to me that she should be there. The thought of the house, and what I believed had happened to Harvey Farnham under its roof, was abhorrent. Why had he chosen to take his young bride, on the day of their marriage, to that gloomy and accursed spot? A strange thrill of apprehension, vague, yet none the less dreadful, shook my nerves.
I consulted the latest A.B.C. time-table, which lay in the reading-room of the hotel. In exactly an hour another train would leave Paddington for Maidenhead and Marlow (the nearest stations to Purley Lock), and after that there would not be another until ten o'clock.
I should not have much more than time to catch the former, if I intended to go by it–and I did intend to go. Exactly what I was to do, how I was to get Karine away from her husband, I did not dare stop to think, but somehow I would do it. So great was my dread of Wildred as a criminal, and my respect for him as a schemer, that I even feared dimly for Karine's safety with him. It was madness to entertain such a doubt, I assured myself, for great heiress as she was, Karine was lovely enough and sweet enough to inspire genuine love even in so cold-hearted a villain as Wildred.
He might tire of her in the end, but for the present her life, at least, would be safe with him. So I repeated mentally, over and over again; but still I was pricked with a boding fear for more than her peace of mind. Why had he taken her to that grim, hateful house by the river?
Chapter XXIX.
At the House by the Lock
I would have wished to wait for Cunningham, both because I wanted him with me, and because I was anxious to hear what he had done at Scotland Yard. However, he did not come, so I wired him to the latter place, left a short note for him also at the hotel, to be kept till called for, and started off in a cab (when I dared delay no longer) at breakneck pace for Paddington station.
I just caught the train I wanted, changed at Maidenhead, and arrived at Marlow by half-past eight o'clock. This time I had neither leisure nor inclination to walk, as upon my first visit to the place on Christmas Day, but took a fly, and offered the man an extra fare if he would make haste.
A little short of the House by the Lock I stopped him. A certain instinct seemed to bid me not be too ostentatious in the manner of announcing my arrival. I got out, and by the light of a round, red moon rising over black trees in the east I glanced at my watch. It was five-and-twenty past nine. The whole day, since my arrival at Southampton in the morning, had gone in searching for Karine, and it might be that I was as far from success now as I had been in the beginning.
A hundred yards away a small yellow light shone steadily through the moon-tinged darkness. I thought it came from the House by the Lock, though the one poor ray made but scant cheer of illumination for a bride's homecoming.
"Wait here for me," I said to the driver. "I may come within half an hour, I may be much longer; but, at all events, wait. Here is a sovereign for you, and you shall have as much again when I return."
The tone of his voice told me that he was suspicious, as well as curious, regarding the mysterious intentions of his fare; but I was sure that he would not fail me. Two pounds were not to be so easily picked up every evening.
I walked on rapidly. As I approached the House by the Lock I lost sight of the yellow gleam which for some time had guided me, but the moon glinted bleakly on the staring panes of dark, upper windows.
Desolate as the place had appeared at the hour of sunset, it had had an air of hospitable welcome at that time compared to that which it wore now. Never, it seemed to me, had I seen a habitation so grim, so silently suggestive of haunting, evil things. The face of the moon, as it rose, lost the ruddy hue which had coloured it nearer the horizon, and its paling disc was swept by black and ragged storm clouds. The wind moaned through the trees like the wail of a lost soul, and there was a stealthy, monotonous lapping of the dark waters so close at hand.
Other sound there was none, and, though I had seen the small ray from a distance, now–so far as I could ascertain–not a window in the whole gloomy pile was lighted.
I went up the path, knocked, and rang the bell, which sent back jangling echoes, such as belong in one's fancy to an uninhabited house. From a distant kennel a dog began to bay. Otherwise I was not answered, and as I rang and thundered on the knocker again, the animal's voice at length subsided into a protesting whine.
I ought by this time to have been sure that Wildred and Karine were not in the house, but, on the contrary, I was by no means certain of that fact. Mentally I argued that, if the master was absent, a caretaker or servant would certainly have been left, and unless a stone-deaf person had been