The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story Page 21

  CHAPTER XXI

  Juliet dug her nails into the cracks of the stone floor with all theenergy of despair, but in a moment her feet were over the edge of the pitand she was falling. Her fingers gripped the edge with a fierce tenacity,and for some minutes she hung there, minutes that seemed longer than allthe rest of her life put together.

  And so she hung, her knees drawn up in a frantic effort to pull herselfout of the depths, till her muscles refused any longer to contract, andshe felt herself gradually straightening out and growing, it seemed,heavier and heavier, till she knew that in one more second her fingerswould slip from their hold, and all would be over.

  But as she dropped into a straight position, and wearily abandoned herefforts to raise herself, one of her feet suddenly touched some firmsubstance beneath it. Something narrow it was, for the other foot asyet still hung in space, but some blessed solid thing on which it waspossible to stand. As, with a feeling of thankfulness and relief suchas she had never before experienced, she allowed her weight to rest onit and found that it did not give, she felt a sharp blow on theknuckles of her left hand, which made her withdraw it quickly and leanagainst the wall to steady herself. Mark was throwing stones at herfingers to make her leave go sooner. Another missed her narrowly, andshot over her head.

  She drew down her right hand, and still leaning against the wall feltabout with her other foot for a support.

  She soon found it, a little farther back it seemed than the firstfoothold; but more experimental investigation showed that it was reallypart of the same object. There appeared, indeed, to be several of themabout, all near to the wall, so that it was plain that poor Julia, as sheshot over the brink, had fallen outside, and beyond them. What the barswere that she seemed to be standing on, Juliet could not at firstimagine, and it was not till Mark, growing tired of waiting for a splashthat never came, reached the conclusion that his ears had deceived him,and took himself and Julia's lantern off to other spheres of usefulness,that she perceived that a faint light penetrated into the upper part ofthe pit. When her eyes had become accustomed to it, she was able to makeout that she was perched upon a portion of the roots of a tree, which hadgrown in through holes in the wall.

  Three great roots there were, curling into and across the shaft of thepit and disappearing down into the darkness below, where Juliet did notdare to look.

  She managed, with great caution, to stoop down and catch hold of thehighest of the roots, and so to settle herself in a fairly comfortableposition, sitting on the middle root of the three, with her feet on thelowest, and her back against the top one.

  "They might have been made on purpose," she told herself, her naturallyhigh spirits and brave young optimism coming nobly to her rescue again.

  And she set herself to try and enlarge one of the holes in the wall; butshe could not make much perceptible difference there. What it had takencenturies, and the growth of a great tree to effect, could not be muchimproved on in an hour by one young girl, however strong the necessitythat urged her.

  By the time she had exhausted her efforts and must needs lean back andrest awhile, the biggest hole was just wide enough to put her handthrough, and she saw no prospect of enlarging it further.

  Through it she could see a corner of the loch and the grey foot of BenGhusy, but that was all. It showed, however, on which side of the towershe was, and she remembered the great beech that clung to the precipicebelow the place where the foundations of the castle sprang from the rock.At least she had always imagined it was below the foundations, but nowshe knew better.

  She thrust her hand out and waved it, but did not dare leave it there.The terror Mark had instilled in her was too recent and too real. If sheput out her hand, he would see it, and perhaps shoot it off; or at leastknow that he had failed to kill her as yet. Better he should think herdead, like poor Julia. But was Julia really dead?

  She leant over and called down into the darkness:

  "Julia! Julia!"

  But no answer came, although she waited, holding her breath, and calledagain and again.

  Then she had fallen into the water? She must be drowned even if the falldid not kill her. Poor, misguided Julia. Better dead, after all, thoughtJuliet, with eyes full of tears, than alive, and at the mercy of thatterrible man. What disillusionments must have come to her sooner orlater; final disillusionings that could not be explained away. Howhorrible to find that the man you loved was like that. Nothing else inthe world could be so appalling. Yes, Julia was better dead. As Julietthought of the dreadful manner in which death had come to the unfortunategirl, she forgot her faults, forgot her strange views upon thejustifiability of taking human life, forgot even that she had approved ofLord Ashiel's assassination and contemplated bringing about his deathherself, and remembered only the frightful nature of her punishment.

  And while she sat there, clinging precariously to the twisted roots ofthe beech tree, Juliet's tears streamed down into the watery grave.

  Hours passed, and darkness fell upon the world without. In the patch ofloch that was visible to her, she could see a star mirrored; it cheeredher somehow. What there was comforting about it she could not have said,but in some way it seemed to be an emblem of her hopes. She wedgedherself tightly between the roots, laid her head down upon the uppermostof them, and, such is the adaptability of youth and health, slept on herdangerous perch like a bird upon a bough.

  With the day she awoke, stiff and hungry. How long would it be before shewas found? She felt braver under this new stimulus of hunger and moreready to risk detection by Mark. After all, he could hardly get at herhere, and someone else might see her if she signalled. She took off hershoes and stockings and pushed them through the hole in the wall, thenher handkerchief, and finally the white blouse she wore was taken off andthrust out between the stones. She kept her hold upon one of the sleeves,and wedged it down between the wall and the beech root, so that theblouse might hang out on the face of the rock like a flag and catch theattention of some passer-by. From time to time, too, she squeezed herhand through the gap and fluttered her fingers backward and forward. Sheknew that the path by the burn ran below, and it was used constantly bythe ghillies and by the household. Only of course so early in the morningthere was not likely to be anyone about. And she remembered with asinking heart that people seldom look up as they walk.

  Yet in the course of the day some one would surely see it. She sternlyrefused to allow herself to expect an immediate rescue. She would not,she told herself, begin to get really anxious about it till evening. Itwould be long to wait, of course. She looked at the little watch whichSir Arthur had given her on her last birthday. It was six o'clock. Shemust be patient.

  But in spite of all her forced cheerfulness the time passed terriblyslowly. She found an old letter in her pocket, and a pencil, with whichshe scrawled painstaking directions for her rescue. She would push itthrough the hole, she thought, if she heard any sound of voices above theclamour of the burn. After that there remained nothing more to do, andthe hours seemed to creep along more and more slowly, till each secondseemed like a minute and each minute an hour. She tried to divert herselfby repeating poetry, and doing imaginary sums; and it was about eleveno'clock, when she was in the middle of the dates of the Kings of England,that she heard Gimblet's voice hailing her in a shout from below.

  It was not till after her rescue, not till after she was given safelyover to the affectionate ministrations of Lady Ruth, that Juliet gaveway under the strain to which she had been subjected, and broke downaltogether.

  Up till that moment, the urgency of her own danger had prevented her fromfeeling as acutely as she would have in other circumstances the terriblefate of the Russian girl; but, as soon as she herself was safe, the fullhorror of it settled upon her mind till thought became an agony. She wasshaken by alternate fits of shuddering and weeping, until Lady Ruth, whohad a scathing contempt for doctors, was on the point of sending for one.

  The arrival of Sir Arthur, an hour or so after her release,
did much tocalm her. He had started post haste from Belgium as soon as he heard ofthe tragedy, which was not till three days after it had occurred, and hadspent the long journey in incessant self-reproach that he had everallowed Juliet to go alone among these murderous strangers. The sight ofhis familiar face was full of comfort to the distracted girl; and theknowledge that Mark was arrested and powerless to harm her, with thegladsome news that David was free again, combined to soothe her nervesand restore her self-control.

  The fear of one cousin began to give place insensibly to the dread lestthe other should find her red-eyed and woe-begone; and soon theimportance of looking her best when David should return occupied her mindalmost to the exclusion of the terrors she had experienced. Thus does theemotion of love monopolize the attention of those it possesses, so thatindividuals may fall thick around him and the surface of the earth beconvulsed with the strife of nations, and still your lover will walkalmost unconscious among such catastrophes, except in so much as theyaffect himself or the object of his affections.

  But not yet was Juliet to see David. His mother's health had brokendown under the distress and worry of the accusation brought againsthim, and it was to her side that he hurried as soon as he was releasedfrom prison.

  While Lady Ruth carried Juliet off at once to the cottage, there to becomforted, fed, made much of and put to bed, Gimblet and the men who hadassisted him in the work of rescue stayed behind in the walls of thetower, to rig up, with ropes and buckets, an apparatus by which todescend to that lowest depth of the _oubliette_ where poor Julia's bodymust be lying.

  They had little hope of finding her alive; nor did they do so. She wasfloating, face downwards, in the water at the bottom of the pit.

  In a grim, wrathful silence the men raised the poor lifeless body,and with some difficulty brought it back to the light of day. Whenthe gruesome business was done, Gimblet returned to the cottage,tired out with his night's work; for, like all the men on the place,he had been scouring the moors since the previous evening, whenMark's derisive words had first sent them, hot foot, to assurethemselves of Juliet's whereabouts. As he reached the cottage, thedaily post bag was being handed in, and among his letters was onefrom the colonel of Mark's regiment:

  "MY DEAR SIR," it ran, "I have sent you a wire in answer to your letterreceived to-day, since in view of what you say I see that it is necessaryto disclose what I hoped, for the sake of the regiment, to continue tokeep secret. But if, as you tell me, the innocence and even the life ofSir David Southern is involved, and you have such good reason toconsider McConachan the man guilty of his uncle's death, it becomes myduty to put aside my private feelings and to confess to you that I amunable to look upon Mark McConachan as entirely above suspicion. When hewas a subaltern in the regiment I have the honour to command, he was asource of grave worry and trouble to me.

  "From the day he joined I had misgivings, and, though his good looks,lively spirits, and recklessness with money made him popular with othersof his age, I soon discovered that his moral sense was practicallynonexistent, and considered him a very undesirable addition to our ranks.Still, I hoped he might improve, and for a year or two nothing occurredto force me to take serious notice of his behaviour. Unknown to me,however, he took to gambling very heavily, and must have lost a greatdeal more than he could afford, for he appears to have got deep in theclutches of moneylenders long before I heard anything about it. Sodesperate did his financial affairs become, that shortly before he leftthe regiment he was actually driven to forging the name of a brotherofficer, a rich young man, with whom he was on very friendly terms. Thelarge amount for which the cheque was drawn drew the attention of thebankers to it, and in spite of the extreme skill with which, I am told,the signature had been counterfeited, the forgery was detected, and thematter was brought before me.

  "The victim of the fraud was as anxious as myself to avoid a publicscandal, and it was arranged that nothing should be done for a year, togive time to McConachan to refund the money; if, however, he failed to doso within that time, there would be nothing for it but to make the matterpublic. These terms were agreed on and McConachan was told to send in hispapers at once.

  "The year allowed is now drawing to a close, and the money has not beenforthcoming, so that there is no doubt that Mark McConachan's need ofobtaining a large amount is extremely pressing. My knowledge of hischaracter obliges me to add that I consider him one of the few men I everknew whom I could imagine going to almost any length to provide himselfwith what he so urgently requires.

  "Please consider this letter confidential unless you obtain actual proofof his guilt.--I am, sir, yours faithfully,

  "T. G. URSFORD,

  "Colonel commanding 31st Lancers."

  Gimblet put the letter away with the other items of evidence of Mark'sguilt: the telegram from the analyst in Edinburgh, the measurements ofthe footprints on the rose-bed, and of those other marks near the hedgeby which he had at first been mystified. It was another thread in thethin cord that, like the silken line Ariadne gave to Theseus, had led himto come successfully out of the bewildering labyrinth into which theinvestigation of the crime had beguiled him.