The Bittermeads Mystery. E. R. Punshon
believe it if you don't want to,” grumbled the other. “Only what do you want asking questions for if you thinks folks tells lies when they answers them?”
“I didn't mean that, of course not,” exclaimed Dunn hurriedly, by no means anxious to offend the other. “I'm very sorry, I only meant it was impossible it should be the same Mr. John Clive I knew once, though I think he came from about here somewhere. A little, middle-aged man, I mean, quite bald and wears glasses?”
“Oh, that ain't this 'un,” answered the other, his good humour quite restored. “This is a young man and tremendous big. I ain't so small myself, but he tops me by a head and shoulders and so he does most hereabouts. Strong, too, with it, there ain't so many would care to stand up against him, I can tell you. Why, they do say he caught two poachers in the wood there last month and brought 'em out one under each arm like a pair of squealing babes.”
“Did he, though?” said Dunn. “Take some doing, that, and I daresay the rest of the gang will try to get even with him for it.”
“Well, they do say as there's been threats,” the other agreed. “But what I says is as Mr. John can look after hisself all right. There was a tale as a man had been dodging after him at night, but all he said when they told him, was as if he caught any one after him he would thrash them within an inch of their lives.”
“Serve them right, too,” exclaimed Dunn warmly.
Evidently this explained, in part at least, what had recently happened. Mr. Clive, finding himself being followed, had supposed it was one of his poaching enemies and had at once attempted to carry out his threat he had made.
Dunn told himself, at any rate, the error would have the result of turning all suspicion away from him, and yet he still seemed very disturbed and ill at ease.
“Has Mr. Clive been here long?” he asked.
“It must be four or five years since his father bought the place,” answered his new acquaintance. “Then, when the old man was killed a year ago, Mr. John inherited everything.”
“Old Mr. Clive was killed, was he?” asked Dunn, and his voice sounded very strange in the darkness. “How was that?”
“Accident to his motor-car,” the other replied. “I don't hold with them things myself—give me a good horse, I say. People didn't like the old man much, and some say Mr. John's too fond of taking the high hand. But don't cross him and he won't cross you, that's his motto and there's worse.”
Dunn agreed and asked one or two more questions about the details of the accident to old Mr. Clive, in which he seemed very interested.
But he did not get much more information about that concerning which his new friend evidently knew very little. However, he gave Dunn a few more facts concerning Mr. John Clive, as that he was unmarried, was said to be very wealthy, and had the reputation of being something of a ladies' man.
A little further on they parted, and Dunn took a side road which he calculated should lead him back to Bittermeads.
“It may be pure coincidence,” he mused as he walked slowly in a very troubled and doubtful mood. “But if so, it's a very queer one, and if it isn't, it seems to me Mr. John Clive might as well put his head in a lion's jaws as pay visits at Bittermeads. But of course he can't have the least suspicion of the truth—if it is the truth. If I hadn't lost my temper like a fool when he whacked out at me like that I might have been able to warn him, or find out something useful perhaps. And his father killed recently in an accident—is that a coincidence, too, I wonder?”
He passed his hand across his forehead on which a light sweat stood, though he was not a man easily affected, for he had seen and endured many things.
His mind was very full of strange and troubled thoughts as at last he came back to Bittermeads, where, leaning with his elbows on the garden gate, he stood for a long time, watching the dark and silent house and thinking of that scene of which he had been a spectator when John Clive and the girl had stood together on the veranda in the light of the gas from the hall and had bidden each other good night.
“It seems,” he mused, “as though the last that was seen of poor Charley must have been just like that. It was just such a dark night as this when Simpson saw him. He was standing on that veranda when Simpson recognized him by the light of the gas behind, and a girl was bidding him good night—a very pretty girl, too, Simpson said.”
Silent and immobile he stood there a long time, not so much now as one who watched, but rather as if deep in thought, for his head was bent and supported on his hands and his eyes were fixed on the ground.
“As for this John Clive,” he muttered presently, rousing himself. “I suppose that must be a coincidence, but it's queer, and queer the father should have died—like that.”
He broke off, shuddering slightly, as though at thoughts too awful to be endured, and pushing open the gate, he walked slowly up the gravel path towards the house, round which he began to walk, going very slowly and cautiously and often pausing as if he wished to make as close examination of the place as the darkness would permit.
More by habit than because he thought there was any need of it, he moved always with that extreme and wonderful dexterity of quietness he could assume at will, and as he turned the corner of the building and came behind it, his quick ear, trained by many an emergency to pick out the least unusual sound, caught a faint, continued scratching noise, so faint and low it might well have passed unnoticed.
All at once he understood and realized that some one quite close at hand was stealthily cutting out the glass from one of the panes of a ground-floor window.
CHAPTER IV. A WOMAN WEEPS
Cautiously he glided nearer, moving as noiselessly as any shadow, seeming indeed but one shadow the more in the heavy surrounding darkness.
The persistent scratching noise continued, and Dunn was now so close he could have put out his hand and touched the shoulder of the man who was causing it and who still, intent and busy, had not the least idea of the other's proximity.
A faint smile touched Dunn's lips. The situation seemed not to be without a grim humour, for if one-half of what he suspected were true, one might as sensibly and safely attempt to break into the condemned cell at Pentonville Gaol as into this quiet house.
But then, was it perhaps possible that this fellow, working away so unconcernedly, within arm's-length of him, was in reality one of them, seeking to obtain admittance in this way for some reason of his own, some private treachery, it might be, or some dispute? To Dunn that did not seem likely. More probably the fellow was merely an ordinary burglar—some local practitioner of the housebreaking art, perhaps—whose ill-fortune it was to have hit upon this house to rob without his having the least idea of the nature of the place he was trying to enter.
“He might prove a useful recruit for them, though,” Dunn thought, and a sudden idea flashed into his mind, vivid and startling.
For one moment he thought intently, weighing in his mind this idea that had come to him so suddenly. He was not blind to the risks it involved, but his eager temperament always inclined him to the most direct and often to the most dangerous course. His mind was made up, his plan of action decided.
The scratching of the burglar's tool upon the glass ceased. Already he had smeared treacle over the square of glass he intended to remove and had covered it with paper so as to be able to take it out easily and in one piece without the risk of falling fragments betraying him.
Through the gap thus made he thrust his arm and made sure there were no alarms fitted and no obstacles in the way of his easy entrance.
Cautiously he unfastened the window and cautiously and silently lifted the sash,