Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes
there was a quick step behind him, a strong hand was laid on his shoulder.
“What are you doing here, my man?”
Superintendent Stokes wrenched himself free.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Arthur!” he said as he recognized his assailant.
“Oh, is it you, Stokes? Why are you prowling about here at this time of night? I am sure I don’t know what people may be taking you for if they see you. Anyhow, you may be quite sure that they will be pretty well scared. Have you heard the latest reports—that Mary Marston haunts the shrubbery and grounds? My sister and Miss Hilda”—Arthur brought out the Christian name with some hesitation; it was distinctly awkward, he often found, to have to speak of some one without a surname—“both declare they saw her the other night. I don’t believe I could get either of them in the shrubbery after midnight for a king’s ransom.”
The superintendent nodded, still surveying the lighted windows of the house before him.
“Ay, I have heard of the ghost, Sir Arthur! I reckon there is not many in Lockford that haven’t, as far as that goes. About the young ladies, I think you are mistaken, Sir Arthur. I am pretty well sure I saw one of them not many minutes ago.”
“What, here alone in the dark!” Sir Arthur exclaimed incredulously. “You are out this time, Stokes; I am sure my sister would not venture—”
Superintendent Stokes paused a moment before speaking and scraped up the dry leaves into a little heap at his feet.
“I didn’t say it was Miss Hargreave,” he said in a deliberate tone at last, “and I didn’t say she was alone.”
There was a pause. Sir Arthur’s face was very stern.
“What do you mean, Stokes?”
The superintendent took off his cap and held up his face to the cool, damp air with a sigh of relief.
“I saw somebody out here a quarter of an hour ago, Sir Arthur, somebody talking to a young man; I am pretty sure that it was the strange young lady. I wondered at the time what she was doing out here.”
“A quarter of an hour ago!” Arthur exclaimed wrathfully. “Why, a quarter of an hour ago I was sitting with the ladies myself before I came out for a smoke, so I know that it is a mistake!”
“A quarter of an hour, more or less, I take it to be, Sir Arthur, though I did not look at my watch,” the superintendent returned stolidly. “But if she was with you it could not have been the young lady—wearing a dark dress she was, and I thought I caught the gleam of her yellow hair.”
“Miss Hilda has a long clinging white thing on to-night.”
“Seems as it couldn’t be her, then,” concluded the superintendent. “Must have been one of the maids out with her young man, I suppose. It was this business of the ghost that brought me up here, Sir Arthur. To my mind it wants looking into.”
“The business of the ghost brought you up!” echoed Sir Arthur in amazement. “Why, Stokes, you can’t mean that you put any faith in such rubbish?”
Superintendent Stokes permitted himself a short laugh.
“I can’t say as I do—not as ghosts, Sir Arthur, but they have a value of their own in a case like this disappearance of Nurse Marston.”
“I believe Nurse Marston is hiding somewhere, and coming out at night to frighten people,” Sir Arthur cried wrathfully. “Let me catch her, that is all, and I will—”
Stokes so far forgot his dignity as to emit a low whistle.
“What on earth has put that in your head, Sir Arthur? Mary Marston is not in hiding at Lockford—not alive,” he said significantly. “You can take my word for that.”
Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I am not inclined to accept the ghost theory.”
“I never believed in a ghost yet, and I don’t think that I am going to start now,” said the superintendent placidly.
“Bless you, man! What do you think then? If it was neither Mary Marston in the flesh nor in the spirit, what was it?”
“Was there anything at all, Sir Arthur?” The superintendent’s tone was oddly eager, or so the young baronet fancied.
“Oh, as to that, I do not fancy there can be any question!” he said decidedly. “My sister is not a likely person to imagine anything of the kind, and she saw her distinctly.”
“Umph! Well, it is a strange case, and I don’t know what to make of it,” said Stokes. “I should be glad to clear it up, if only for Mrs. Marston’s sake; the old woman is fretting herself to death for her daughter.”
“I have sometimes thought that she may have been persuaded into taking some long journey and lost her memory in the same sort of way as Miss Hilda has,” Sir Arthur went on meditatively.
Dark though it was, Stokes gave a quick glance towards him.
“Perhaps she may, Sir Arthur,” he assented placidly. “But about this ghost; I should like to watch for it a bit longer, if you have no objection. I have a fancy that, if I could see it, it might clear things up for me a bit.”
“Well, watch as long as you like,” Sir Arthur agreed as he walked away. “I shall be glad to hear the result if you meet with any. Good night.”
“Good night, Sir Arthur!”
Left alone, Superintendent Stokes judiciously stepped behind a clump of trees.
“I don’t suppose I could be seen—it is too dark,” he remarked inwardly. “Still, one never knows.”
He had been standing there for some little time when he caught a whiff of tobacco and heard footsteps on the path. They stopped short of his hiding-place, and as the Superintendent peered forth cautiously he heard a woman say:
“No, I wouldn’t come a step farther, not if it was ever so, Jim. I daren’t. I should be frightened I might see her again.”
“More silly you!” The superintendent fancied the voice was not very brave. “We’ll stay here then. Now, Minnie, I want you to promise me that as soon as this jollification is over you will be ready for me.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jim! I can’t promise!”
The superintendent, looking a little farther, fancied that the girl was crying. He had his own private disappointment too, for it seemed to him that the man before him was the one whom, but a few minutes before, he had seen talking to the girl he had taken for Hilda.
“I suppose it must have been this one all the time,” he soliloquized. “Yet I made sure it was the other. Well, well! A bit of a hint won’t do Sir Arthur any harm, anyway.”
He paid a little attention to the pair on the path; very soon he had gathered that the man was pleading for a speedy marriage, which the girl was tearfully refusing, but all this was not particularly interesting to Stokes, with his mind full of a different subject. He had allowed his fancy to travel along an obscure path, and was knitting his brows over a difficult problem he had encountered, when a sentence spoken by the girl roused him effectually from his absorption.
“I can’t do it, Jim,” Minnie was saying in a voice broken by sobs. “I can’t bring myself to it, not until we know what became of her—Nurse Marston.”
“Haven’t I told you times without number that that has got nothing to do with us where Nurse Marston went?” was the man’s reply, impatiently spoken. “You have got to let that alone and make up your mind, Minnie.”
“Ah, it is all very well, but I can’t get it out of my head that if it hadn’t been for me she might have been alive and well now.”
A rough exclamation broke from the man.
“Be