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“‘Look at this, and tell me if you have ever seen anything
like it before.''' –(PAGE 90.)
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BY
HEADON HILL
\
*
Author of
“THE DUKE Decides”
“Millions of Mischief.”
“THE Epsom Mystery.”
R. F. FEN NO & COMPANY
18 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET, NEW YORK
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*
CHAP.
II
III
IV
VI
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
CONTENTS
. PAGE
JASPER Lomax To THE REscue . .
THE House IN THE WooD . . . .
AN EASY ConquEST . . . . . .
ENTER THE BARON . . . . . .
Love's YouNG DREAM . . . . .
THE CRY FROM THE WESTRY . . .
THE BARON Bolts THE Door . . .
“THE ODour of SANCTITY " . . .
AMong THE ToMBs . . . . . .
CHARLIE HEXT BEGINs Work . . .
THE GATHERING Storm . . . . .
THE AGATE BUTTON . . . . . .
THE CHAPLAIN of Wormwood Scruises
s
17
24
29
37
43
49
57
65
73
88
95


CONTENTS
º
CHAP.
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
"A LITTLE BLANK" . . .
THE YEllow Motor-CAR .
A Secret FACTORY . . .
THE SEcond AGATE BUTToN
IN THE Sick Room . . .
THE STORM BREAKs . . .
IN THE BLUE DRAwing-Room
A TAP AT THE Door . . .
THE ALARM GUN . . . .
THE ScREAM IN THE East WING
A MIDNIGHT Conclave . .
THE OLD House IN LAMBETH .
THE MAN witH No LEGS .
BEHIND THE IRoN Door -
THE Door OPENs . . . .
THE Door is SHUT . .
A Council of WAR . . .
THE BARON TRIES A BLUFF
THE FAITH of CHARLIE Hext .
PAGE
IO4
113
I2O
I43
15o
I59
169
18O
188
196
205
2II
22O
228
238
246
255


CONTENTS
chap
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
JASPER Loses THE KEY .
THE BARON's FINEsse .
THE CHAPLAIN's News
John HEXT . . . .
A STERN CHASE . . .
“THE DEvil LAUGHs "
PAGE
265
273
28o
289
307





CHAPTER I
JASPER LoMAx to THE RESCUE
HE stout, genial-looking, elderly man in the
dock took a step forward and clutched the
rail as his name, John Hext, flew at him from the
mouth of the judge across the crowded court of
the Old Bailey, like bullets from a Maxim gun.
“John Hext 1” snapped the bewigged func-
tionary. “You have been found guilty, after
a most patient trial, ably conducted on both sides,
of manufacturing base coin. The verdict is one
in which I entirely concur. If there had been
any doubt in the matter, the previous convictions
for the same offence proved against you would
have removed it. I should not be doing my duty
to society if I passed upon you a sentence of less
than fourteen years penal servitude.”
The convict's eyes, there was no trace of his
vicious calling in the frank kindliness of them,
roamed round the packed court and found what
they sought close by. A slightly-built, clear-
skinned youth of seventeen or so had elbowed a
way through the spectators and was holding up a
hand for him to shake. John Hext leaned over
the edge of the dock and gripped it firmly.
9


IO UNMASKED AT LAST
“Goodbye, Charlie,” he whispered hoarsely.
“'Tis a bit of luck, come to think of it. Might
have been twenty, on top of my old record. Be as
good as you can.”
“But am I to go on as before, Dad, for all that
time, till you come out again P’’ the lad faltered,
the tears rolling down his smooth cheeks.
John Hext puckered his brows to consider, but
a touch from the warder at his elbow told him that
consideration was not for him. “Yes, better so,
Charlie dear,” he answered. “It will be safer to
go on as before, with me not able to look after you,
and I shall sleep easier o’ nights up in Portland or
Dartmoor. Do the best you can for mother.”
And, with a final squeeze of the slender hand
extended to him, he turned to descend from the
dock into the region of lost souls below.
The boy, choking down a sob, edged his lithe
frame through the crowd, and so along the gloomy
corridors out into the street. Not looking to the
right or left, he passed down Ludgate Hill and Fleet
Street, finally turning into Drury Lane, where he
was swallowed up in a vast building labelled
“Boger's Rents.” High up in the block of model
dwellings he paused at a door and listened intently.
From within there presently came the faint clink of
glass, but, swiftly as he entered, there was no sign
of bottle or tumbler in the sordid room—only a
strong smell of gin from a slatternly woman stand-
ing suspiciously near a cupboard which she was
in the act of closing.
“What did he get 2 ” the occupant of the room
demanded eagerly. “Don’t stand there staring
at me, you unnatural young limb, keeping a loving


JASPER LOMAX TO THE RESCUE II
'eart on tenter-hooks. What did they give your
poor Dad, I say?” -
Both the waves of sound and the spirituous fumes
increased in intensity as the blear-eyed, unwhole-
some-looking creature worked herself up into a
pitch of excitement. The youth was evidently
used to her ways, for he showed no resentment.
On the contrary, to the existing sadness on the
fresh young face there was added an expression
of pity, if not of love.
“You must bear up, mother; it's fourteen years.
But I have promised Dad to look after you,” he
replied in his soft, melodious tones.
“And that can only be done in one way,” Mrs.
Hext rejoined, regarding her offspring with a horrible
leer. “There must be an end of this nonsense
about—you know what. There's the Music 'Alls,
and a hundred ways of earning better money than
you can get by sticking to Dad's ridiculous notion.
Fantastic rot, I called it all along.”
“All the same, mother, I am going to stick to
it,” said the boy firmly. “I specially asked him,
after he was sentenced, and he expressed the wish
that—that it should go on as before. It isn't what
I should have preferred for so long a time—the
best years of my life, as it were. But I can't and
won't go back on Dad. Never fear but what I'll
find a way to keep the wolf from the door.”
The woman scowled, and made an involuntary
motion towards the cupboard. “I’m that upset
about my poor John, I must 'ave just one drop of
comfort—the first to-day,” she protested as the ner-
vous grip of her child fell on her wrist.
“Try and make it easier for me, mother dear,”


I2 UNMASKED AT LAST
Charlie pleaded, leading her to a battered chair
by the ill-kept hearth. “It’ll take me all my time
to find grub, without having to earn that filthy
stuff. It does you harm, or goodness knows you
should have all you want. Dear Dad isn't a saint,
but you know what he thinks of it.”
It was as a lighted torch to tow, that gentle men-
tion of the misguided man who, whatever his faults,
had been a tender-hearted bread-winner. The
wife of the convict burst into a torrent of abuse
against her husband who, by getting “copped,”
as she called it, had curtailed her resources. She
railed, too, against the judge who had sentenced him,
and above all against the present obstacle between
her and the black bottle lurking in the cupboard.
Mrs. Hext's shiftless trouble was that, no good at
anything, she was hopelessly dependent on other
earning powers than her own. Hence only a fero-
cious tirade against those who had curtailed the
needs of her everlasting thirst, instead of open defi-
ance. There were only a few drops of gin left in
the cupboard, and she knew that upon the fragile
lad gazing at her so wistfully hung all her hopes of
replenishing her store.
Suddenly, in the middle of the foul-mouthed
stream, the door opened, and there stood before the
startled pair a vision of splendid manhood, six feet
two in his stockings, and clad in shining velveteens
that suggested the free, fresh air of the country.
Leather leggings and stout hobnailed boots com-
pleted a picture probably never seen before in
“Boger's Rents.” And he who wore this rustic
garb so naturally was of a type that smacked rather
of wide acres and forest glades than of the purlieus
* -


JASPER LOMAX TO THE RESCUE 13
of Drury Lane. Brawn and muscle in the powerful
limbs and massive chest ; a bold, free glance in the
dark, liquid eyes, which, with the ruddy hue of
the well-tanned complexion, gave a hint of gipsy
blood.
“I don't wonder—I really don’t wonder—that
you should be annoyed, Mrs. Hext,” said the tall
man as he closed the door and held out his hand
to the angry woman, “I was in court myself, and
a more scandalously vindictive sentence I never
heard. Poor old Jack Fourteen years, all by
his little lone self.”
The stranger's hand was held out to the mother,
but his restless gaze was mostly for the bright-eyed
boy, who was watching him with equal interest.
Mrs. Hext staggered to her feet, striving for recol-
lection.
“Jem—Slippery Jem, ain't it 2 ” she wheezed,
smiling foolishly. -
The visitor raised his hand and made a wry face.
“Hush, so far as that name is concerned, if you
please,” he answered. “I don’t say that you are
wrong; in fact in friendly company like this I will
admit that I have heard the name before—in connec-
tion with a chap who was in that Lambeth business
with your husband five years ago. But I stand
before you now as Jasper Lomax, and I follow the
honourable calling of a game-keeper.”
“Workin’ for a wage 2" ejaculated Mrs. Hext,
with a sniff of contempt.
“Aye, for a good wage and a good master,”
replied Lomax with a queer laugh. “Do you know
why I went to see old Jack tried to-day ?” he broke
off sharply. “No 2 Well, I will tell you. I


I4 UNMASKED AT LAST
remembered that he had a bright little nipper who
should have grown into a likely lad by now, a lad
who would be left pebble-beached, with the old
'un put away. Jack Hext's breed is good enough
for me, so having need of a smart youngster to
help in—in my vocation, I took care to be on hand,
and followed Master Charlie home.”
“That's good of you, Jem—I should say Mr.
Lomax,” Mrs. Hext whimpered. “We was just
wondering when you came in how we was to live.
What might be the salary, now 2 ”
Jasper Lomax smiled darkly. “Payment will
be largely by results,” he answered. “At first I
will guarantee that he will be in a position to send
you two pounds a week. Is it good enough, sonny ?”
he added, turning to the boy, who had been studying
the swarthy visage of his would-be benefactor.
Charlie could not recollect having seen him before,
and he was striving to penetrate a demeanour that
instinct told him was something of a mask to the
real man within. In this he failº utterly, and so,
though not favourably impressed on the whole,
he closed with the offer. It would solve the ques-
tion of ways and means for his mother and himself
for the present, and—well, if he liked he could always
change his employment.
So, at least, he assured himself.
“Yes, I shall be glad to be your assistant, Mr.
Lomax,” he replied. “When do you want me to
come 2 ”
“At once, if not sooner, my young shaver,”
laughed Lomax, well pleased. “That is to say
you have just three minutes to sling your things
together if we are to catch our train. We have a


JASPER LOMAX TO THE RESCUE 15
matter of fifty miles to travel into the coun
try.”
The boy darted into an inner room, and the
moment he was gone Mrs. Hext came and laid a
tremulous hand on Jasper Lomax's velveteen sleeve.
“You’re play-actin', ain't you, in them clothes 2 ”
she wheezed, peering into the man's face. “I’m
country-bred, and I know they don’t pay under-
keepers two pound a week—nor yet half that. The
job's on the cross, ain’t it 2 ”
Lomax regarded her with unfeigned surprise.
“Well, what do you think 2 ” he said, glancing at
the door through which Charlie had disappeared.
“You never expected Slippery Jem to have turned
plaster saint except for business purposes, did you,
Mrs. Hext 2 The kid won’t mind, will he 2 °
“No-o,” the woman replied a little doubtfully.
“I reckon, though, that his father wouldn’t be
best pleased if he came to hear of it. Jack was
wonderful set on Charlie being brought up respec-
table—gave a lot of thought to it, did pºre old Jack.
But Charlie §: at anything in reason, I'll
engage. It’s in the blood, you see.”
“And you can trust me to bring it out, Mrs.
Hext,” Lomax returned in an earnest whisper.
“Your Charlie is going to school with about the
sharpest crowd of crooks this side the herring-pond,
and once with us there’ll be no turning back. We
fix things different to that. Nor will your little
souvenir of the dear boy stick at two pounds a week if
he gives us satisfaction. By the way, here is a
trifle on account of ultimate profits—not, you under-
stand, to be deducted from your first remittance.”
The woman greedily grasped the sovereign which


I6 UNMASKED AT LAST
he put down, but Lomax raised a warning finger
when she would have burst into profuse and maudlin
gratitude. For at that moment Charlie emerged
from the inner room, carrying a small hand-bag,
and ready for the journey which was to take him
a short fifty miles as we mortals measure distance,
but oh how infinitely further in reality I


**
CHAPTER II
THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD
ASPER LOMAX and his young companion left
the train at Basingstoke, where a dog-cart in
charge of a smart groom was waiting for them.
There ensued a long drive over apparently inter-
minable country lanes, with here and there the
mansion of some rural magnate and now and
again a straggling hamlet to be passed, before
their destination was reached. And then it wasn’t
really their destination, but only a gate at the
road-side, leading into a darkly frowning wood.
In the train, and during the drive, Lomax had
spoken but little, but, the groom having driven off
along the highway, he waxed more communica-
tive.
“You’re new to country life, I reckon 2 ” he
said, as he opened the gate and struck into a
bridle-path that traversed the wood. Outside the
twilight had begun to gather, but here under the
trees it was almost dark.
“I have been to Richmond Park,” Charlie re-
plied diffidently.
Jasper Lomax laughed, and he did not trouble
now to make his laugh ingratiating as he had in
17 B


I8 UNMASKED AT LAST
London. There was a cynical ring in it, which
in conjunction with the vast solitude and the
silence, somehow jarred on the boy.
“You will find this rather different to subur-
ban greenery,” Lomax went on after a pause.
“This wood–Hartslock Wood, it is called—is
four miles across, and the keeper's cottage where
I live is in the very centre of it, with the nearest
house three miles away. How's that for lone-
some 2 ”
“I don't mind,” Charlie replied, but all the
same there was a quiver in his voice. The wilder-
ness held no charms for him, save of being able to
keep himself and remit money to his mother. He
could not resist asking whether they would be quite
alone together at the cottage.
“No one else will live there, but of course
other people will come there sometimes — other
servants of the governor, and occasionally the
governor himself. I wonder if the governor will
take a fancy to you, Sonny,” Lomax added with
another of his queer laughs.
And he went on to sing the praises of his so-
called “governor,” who by his showing was the
kindest of men and the most liberal of employers.
He was a Frenchman, by name the Baron de
Guerin, and had recently come to reside at Long-
clere Castle, the mansion to which the woods and
estates were joined. There was only ºne thing
in the world that would put the Baron out of
temper, and that was if any unauthorized persons
trespassed on his property. It would be part of
Charlie's duty to keep watch that no one not in the
Baron's service came near the cottage. Other


THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 19
assistants had been engaged to patrol the further
recesses of the wood.
“Only part of my duty 2 ” Charlie inquired.
“I shall have other things to do then 2 ” He
thought it just a little strange that he, a town-
bred youth, should have been selected for such work
in those sylvan retreats. He supposed that it was
because the reformed Jasper Lomax had a kindly
regard for the unreformed John Hext.
“Yes, there will be other things for you to do.
They will be explained to-morrow,” was Jasper's
reply, proffered so curtly that Charlie forebore to
question him further.
The long tramp under the interlacing boughs
brought them at last to a clearing, in the middle of
which loomed the gables and walls of an ancient
cottage. The fierce barking of dogs greeted them,
but died away at a peculiar whistle from Lomax.
Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked a massive
oak door and ushered his new assistant into a pas-
sage, from which he strode into a sitting-room on
the right.
A match flared up, a candle was lit, and Charlie's
blinking eyes ranged round a cosy apartment that
might have been taken bodily from the stage of
a theatre, where it had figured as “a parlour in a
gamekeeper's cottage.” The guns over the fire-
place, the fox-brush on the wall and the stuffed
pheasants in glass cases were all typically realistic.
But Charlie, not being to the manner born, did not
perceive the studied arrangement of things for effect,
and their extreme newness. Indeed a much more
experienced critic might have failed to discern the
staginess of Mr. Jasper Lomax's sitting-room, put-


2O UNMASKED AT LAST
ting it down to the fact that he was newly appointed
and that there had not been time to breed a homely
untidiness.
“We'll have supper now,” said Lomax. “Then
I’ll show you where to sleep.”
They cooked the meal between them in a black-
ceiled, stone-flagged kitchen on the other side of
the passage, and while they ate it Lomax turned
the conversation to Charlie's boyhood, skilfully
questioning him as to his relations with his father.
It transpired that the boy had never actively
assisted the convict, though he had been quite aware
of their source of income and had once or twice been
sent with a message to the cellar in Bermondsey
where Hext had his factory for base coins.
“Old John didn't intend you to take to the busi-
ness then 2 ” said Lomax thoughtfully, picking a
rabbit bone with his teeth. “He reckoned your
conscience too thin-skinned for faking dollars and
yellow-boys, eh?”
The boy flushed—he blushed readily, did Charlie
Hext. “My conscience was all right,” he affirmed
rather sullenly. “What was good enough for Dad .
would have been good enough for me, but he never
allowed me to touch the things.”
“You would have been in it with him if he had
allowed you ?”
“Rather, there's nothing I wouldn't have done
for him.”
Jasper gave a sigh of relief, as though pleased with
a filial affection strong enough to swamp morality.
Once or twice he opened his mouth, as though to
impart further confidences, but muttering—“Better
" not, till we have gauged him closer,” he restrained
*


THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 2I
himself and presently showed his new assistant to
an attic bedroom under the thatch.
In the morning Charlie was awakened early by the
singing of birds in the wood outside, and, dressing
himself, went down to explore his new surroundings.
In the daylight the impression of intense solitude was
increased, from the impossibility of seeing anything
but a multitude of tree-trunks on everyside. Ranged
in rows on the grass of the clearing were many
coops, in each of which sat a solitary hen.
He was enjoying the dewy fragrance and regarding
the unwonted scene with almost childish interest,
when Lomax came out of the house. He seemed
to be in good humour. Indeed he had unbent
considerably, since Charlie's conscience had been
investigated and found wanting.
“You think we run a poultry farm and sell eggs,
eh, kiddie 2 ” he said genially. “That's where you
are wrong. Those old broodies are hatching out
pheasants for the Baron to shoot in the autumn.
And that reminds me. We had better get our
breakfast, for there is a case of patent food for the
young pheasants coming this morning. I was in
London buying the-the stuff, when I heard of old
Jack's trouble.”
They breakfasted together in the natty parlour,
and there ensued an hour of waiting, during which
Lomax fed the dogs and the hens, till the creaking
of wheels drew from him a satisfied exclamation. A
heavily-laden farm-cart came bumping along the
ruts of the woodland road and stopped at the door
of the cottage. The driver, a burly man with a
shock of red hair, winked at Lomax.
“Here's the grub for your little dicky-birds,


22 UNMASKED AT LAST
º
keeper,” he said, eyeing Charlie askance. “Come
and help us out with it. It's mortal heavy.”
The two men busied themselves with extracting
a large packing-case from the tail-board of the cart,
the weight of which taxed their strength to the
utmost. When they had got it to the ground a
disappointment awaited them. It was too big to
pass through the door of the house. Lomax ex-
changed a glance with the red-headed man.
“That licks us,” the latter exclaimed.
But Lomax, whose handsome, devil-may-care
face had shown something like consternation,
quickly recovered his equanimity. “It must stay
there till night,” he said. “Then we can unpack
it and carry the stuff inside. There is no other
way.”
When the cart had driven off Lomax turned to
Charlie. “I am now going into the town to get you a
rig-out more suitable to your calling,” he announced.
“You’ll want some leggings and a velveteen jacket
in place of that Cockney get-up. Now just listen to
me. You're in charge while I’m gone. It is a
hundred to one against anyone coming here, but
if they do you must order them off short and sharp,
after asking their names and addresses. No one
has any right in the wood, so they would be bound
to be trespassers.”
“What if the master—the Baron—should come 2"
hazarded Charlie.
“You can't be expected to know him by sight,
so he'd be the better pleased if you ordered him off
too,” replied Lomax with a sour smile. “Above all
let nobody go near that packing-case.”
After the departure of his superior, Charlie, as the


THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 23
best means of safe-guarding the case, seated himself
thereon. And, town-dweller though he was, he
found himself vaguely wondering at the heaviness
of pheasant food, and on the curious necessity for
preserving even its outer covering from prying eyes.


CHAPTER III
AN EASY CONQUEST
HARLIE had been sitting on the packing-case
for nearly an hour when he experienced the
strange feeling that he was being watched by unseen
eyes. A moment later the bushes on one side of the
glade were parted and a young man—a very young
man, little older than Charlie himself—advanced
into the open. Charlie slipped from his perch.
“You mustn't come here; you’ve no business
in the wood at all,” he shouted, the sudden responsi-
bility causing his usually gentle voice to ring shrill.
“What ho, my piping bull-finch, and who the
dickens may you be 2 ” the newcomer laughed
without checking his approach. Charlie saw that
he was well dressed and generally good to look
upon in his neat tweed suit and breeches and putties.
“I am assistant to Mr. Lomax,” said Charlie
boldly.
“Again I ask, who the dickens is Mr. Lomax 2 *
“The Baron de Guerin's head game-keeper.”
The young man laughed—quite boisterously
now. “Well of all the figures of fun ” he cried.
“So you are one of the Frenchman's underkeepers,
eh 2 More like an overgrown office-boy out of a
24


AN EASY CONQUEST 25
job, I should think. I only came down from Oxford
yesterday, so I haven’t met de Guerin, but you're
just about the sort an infernal foreign usurper would
employ as under-keeper.”
They had neared each other now, these two young
people thrown together by the iron law of What-
is-to-be, and were regarding each other critically.
The Oxford student had passed judgment on his
opponent's clothes, and for the first time was study-
ing the prettily pathetic face. But Charlie held
him rigidly to the matter in hand.
“I am the head keeper's assistant,” he said
firmly. “I am newly engaged, and my things
have not come yet. You must go away at once—
out of the wood. But first you must give me your
name and address.”
“Oh, you can have that readily enough. I'm
Roderick Bassett, son of Mr. Bassett of Bassett
Hall,” was the careless reply. “And ever since I’ve
been able to stand I’ve had permission to wander
in Hartslock Wood, till this interloper came and
rented Sir George Tressingham's place. What's in
that big case over by the door 2 A piano 2 It
would be just like a Frenchy's keeper to spend his
time in strumming.”
“It's nothing of the kind; it's food for the young
pheasants,” Charlie replied a little doubtfully.
Roderick Bassett looked genuinely puzzled, then
pursed up his red lips and emitted a jaunty whistle.
‘Pheasant food always comes in bags,” he said.
“I must have a closer look at that packing-case and
solve the mystery. What's the good of having a
cousin who is the tip-top detective of the age if
you can't find out why a wretched Frenchman


26 UNMASKED AT LAST
wants to feed pheasants on something that looks
jolly like hardware 2 ”
He pressed forward, but Charlie's slight figure
barred the way. Charlie was not sure that he liked
Jasper Lomax or his own present employment, but
he had given his word to Dad only yesterday to
“look after mother,” and he could best serve that
turn by being true to his trust. “You can’t come
any nearer,” he panted. “You must go right out
of the wood.”
Roderick was of the type in whom opposition
breeds defiance, and measuring his adversary with a
disdainful eye he made as though to brush the slight
obstacle aside. Instantly he received a stinging
box on the ear from the open palm of Charlie's hand.
Raising his own brown fist to return the blow, he
halted irresolute, and then, taking a step backward,
burst into a loud guffaw. For a marvellous thing
had happened. The valiant underkeeper had fol-
lowed up his brave resistance by bursting into tears.
Roderick checked his laughter, and raised his cap
with exaggerated politeness. “I see how it is now,”
he said. “I ought to have known before.”
“Seen what 2 ” murmured Charlie between the
sobs, another of those quick blushes springing rosy
red to his cheeks.
“That you are a girl, of course, and a jolly pretty
one at that. That open-handed slap was so in-
tensely feminine that I began to wonder. The
tears leave no room for doubt,” was Roderick's
amazing answer.
As by magic Charlie stopped crying and for a
moment seemed to be about to repeat the attack
in more masculine fashion. But somehow the


AN EASY CONQUEST 27
dancing mirth in his opponent's eyes, arid the crisp
curling hair on the uncovered brow, stayed his hand.
He dropped the now carefully clenched fist.
“You—you have no right to speak to me like
that,” he faltered.
“That remark, also intensely feminine, makes
me doubly sure,” Roderick persisted. “And to
prove my rooted conviction that I am right I shall
treat you as a gentleman should treat a lady by
immediately complying with your request. If I
still thought you were a boy I should punch your
head and go and have a squint at that packing-case.
As it is, I shall now take myself off without going
any nearer to it.”
He replaced his cap and turned to suit the action
to the word, but Charlie, whose heart was beating
fit to burst, ran after him. “If you say such
things about me,” he cried in tones of piteous en-
treaty, “you will lose me my situation, and it means
so much to me—and to another.”
Roderick wheeled round and doffed his cap again.
“Did I not say that I was a gentleman 2 ” he re-
plied with boyish dignity. “Rest assured that to
no one—not even to my sister, to whom I blab most
things—shall I relate an adventure which I regard
as altogether charming. But if ever you want
help-say in tackling a poacher—you had better
send for me.” -
When he was quite gone Charlie returned to his
perch on the big packing-case and, whether or no
the reflection on his manhood rankled, he buried
his head in his hands and so sat till an hour later
Jasper Lomax strode into the clearing. To him
Charlie truthfully reported how a young gentleman


28 UNMASKED AT LAST
had approached the house, and how he had forcibly
prevented him from coming nearer, but he omitted
all mention of the manner in which their difference
had ended.
“Did you get his name and address 2 ” asked
Lomax shortly.
“Mr. Roderick Bassett, he gave it.”
Lomax looked surprised.” I’ve heard of him.
According to my information he is a thorough young
tough,” he said. “How did you manage him 2 ”
“I—I Smacked his face. I don’t think he’ll
come back again,” was Charlie's reply, about the
latter half of which he was not at all sure, and still
less sure whether he wished his presage to be fulfilled.
But Jasper Lomax was well pleased with the
answer. “I knew old Jack Hext's kid would prove
a good 'un,” he exclaimed, clapping Charlie on the
back. “I couldn’t go far wrong in choosing one of
that breed—little feather-weight nipper though you
are. Our noble Baron has got the right sort of under-
'Keeper, I reckon, and here are some clothes to make
you look the part.”
A little later a handsome stripling in breeches and
gaiters and a smart new velveteen jacket was strutt-
ing about the glade. And now and again he smiled
Softly to himself, for somehow he was gaining con-
fidence that his place was in no jeopardy from the
incident of the morning.
Roderick Bassett might be what Jasper Lomax
called a “tough,” but Charlie Hext had trust in his
pledged word,


CHAPTER IV
ENTER THE BARON
ASSETT HALL, a timbered Elizabethan man-
sion, stood a mile beyond the northern
boundaries of Hartslock Wood—the great shooting
preserve that belonged to its more stately neigh-
bour, Longclere Castle.
On the day after Roderick Bassett's meeting with
Charlie Hext, which true to his promise the young
man had kept to himself, Roderick was discussing
certain debts contracted at Oxford with his father
in the library. The subject was a sore one, for the
demon of agricultural depression had reduced Mr.
Bassett’s income to an embarrassing ebb, and with
every wish to help his high-spirited son he knew
that he would be hard put to it to find the cash.
“Squire " Bassett, as he was generally called,
was a stoutly-built man of fifty, with a florid face
and legs slightly bowed from much addiction to the
saddle. Left a widower five years after his marriage
to the belle of the county, he had devoted himself
since to alternately spoiling and rating his two
children, Roderick and his sister Winifred.
It was this young lady who now put an end to the
unpleasant interview by bursting into the room,
29


30 UNMASKED AT LAST
imperiously demanding instant attention. The
heightened colour in her pretty, puguante face, and
the assertive poise of her graceful figure, showed
that Miss Winifred Bassett was very angry.
“Why, what's up, Winnie 2 ” her father asked
laughingly. “You look as if you were about to de-
clare war against someone. I hope it isn’t me—or
Roddy here, much as he deserves it.”
“Of course not; you two darlings are much too
adorable, and you know it,” replied the girl impet-
uously. “It’s that wretch de Guerin, the new
Frenchman at the Castle.”
“What has he done, lassie 2 I wasn’t aware that
you had met him. He has not yet returned my
call,” said the Squire, placing himself astride the
hearth-rug.
“I haven’t met him, and I hope I never shall,”
retorted the wrathful maiden. “What he has
done is to close Hartslock Wood to us—the wood
we have been allowed by the Tressinghams to walk
in from time immemorial. I was gathering prim-
roses not far from the keeper's cottage, when a big
giant of a fellow pounced on me and ordered me out
of the wood. He said he was the Baron’s new head
keeper, and though he was fairly civil he followed
me right out of Hartslock till I came to our own
ground"
Roderick, who pricked up his ears at first, evinced
a waning interest in his sister's description of the
keeper.
“It may be unneighbourly, but de Guerin is
within his rights,” said Mr. Bassett judicially.
“Very likely he has only given general instructions,
and will remove them so far as you are concerned


ENTER THE BARON 3I
when he learns that you have always had permission
to walk in the wood.”
The suggestion partially mollified the girl. “If he
doesn’t he'll have to look out,” she said more peace-
fully. “These new men on old acres are always a
nuisance in the country, upsetting the village folk,
and taking the bread from their mouths. Why,
this de Guerin, they tell me, doesn’t employ a sin-
gle native of Maplehurst, either at the Castle or on
the estate. His people are all strangers, brought
from a distance, and, to judge by that head keeper,
must be a funny lot.”
“You didn’t happen to see any of the under-
keepers?” inquired Roderick, lighting a cigarette
and looking carelessly out of the window.
But Winnie had seen no one but the “big giant
of a fellow " upon whom she had emptied the vials
of her wrath, and Roderick lounged out of the room,
exchanging as he passed through the doorway a
playful dig in the ribs with a tall young man in
clerical attire who at the same time entered.
Winnie dropped her eyes demurely, but the Squire
strode forward with outstretched hand.
“Glad to welcome you back, Landon, my boy,
and to congratulate you on your splendid record in
the East-end,” he said heartily.
“Thank you, Mr. Bassett; it is good to be in
Maplehurst again, though a little strange not to be
at the Castle,” the young clergyman replied. “And
Winnie—or must I call you Miss Bassett now—
haven’t you got a word for the gawky boy who went
away four years ago and has now come back a full-
fledged parson 2 I met Roddy in the village this
morning, and he prepared me for a formidable


32 UNMASKED AT LAST
grown-up young lady in place of the romping
maiden who used to tease me so.”
The girl came forward—shyly for her. But her
greeting was none the less warm for the playmate of
her hoyden days. She was a little afraid of him,
that was all, and in quite a pleasant sort of way.
For he was no longer the merry boy who had
pelted her with apples in the orchard at Longclere.
He was the Reverend Landon Tressingham, now
famous in the annals of Mile End as a “slum-parson”
who, if necessary, could knock down and afterwards
convert a refractory docker with equal devotion to
the cause he had at heart. “A man, every inch
of him,” was the verdict of the squalid parish where
he had worked till an attack of fever had driven
him to accept a curacy in his native village.
Landon was a younger brother of the Sir George
Tressingham whose diminished fortunes had led to
Longclere Castle being rented by the Baron de
Guerin. In the ordinary course Landon might
expect to succeed the present incumbent, for Maple-
hurst was a family living in the gift of his brother.
But that day should be far distant, for the present
rector was middle-aged and vigorous.
“How do you think that you will get on with
Mandible 2 ” said the Squire, mentioning the name
of that parochial dignitary.
Landon Tressingham shrugged his shoulders.
“I am supposed to be waiting for dead men's
shoes, you know, Mr. Bassett, and I ought not to
criticize my chief,” he laughed. “Mr. Mandible is
as inquisitive as ever about the sins of his parish-
ioners, and surely that ought to be accounted to
him for righteousness. We have a common bond


ENTER THE BARON 33
of union anyhow. He is smitten with a great anti-
pathy to the people at the Castle, owing to the con-
duct of the new gamekeeper, who ordered him away
from the cottage in Hartslock Wood when he went
to pay a parochial call. There was quite a scene,
and I think Mr. Mandible must have lost his temper.
“What did he do 2 ” Winnie asked, eagerly.
“The Rector admits that he accused Lomax of
being a Roman Catholic, as the servant of a French-
man, and that he told him that he should keep on
going to the cottage till he had converted him, but
I fancy he must have said a good deal more than he
owned up to,” laughed Landon.
“Good Mr. Mandible : " Winnie exclaimed, clap-
ping her hands. “I am not particularly fond of
him, but I do hope he’ll stick to his guns.” And
she proceeded to narrate how she too had been
ordered out of the wood by the new keeper. “I
am going to pitch into old de Guerin about it,” she
added, “when I make his acquaintance, and if he
doesn't—”
She came to an abrupt stop, for standing in the
doorway, slightly in advance of the butler who had
ushered him in, was a gentleman engaged in per-
forming an elaborate bow.
“The Baron de Guerin,” the servant announced
ere he retired.
“My dear Baron, how good of you,” said the
Squire, going forward to receive the distinguished
visitor and holding out his weather-beaten hand.
Winnie and Landon Tressingham in the back-
ground were waiting to see the Frenchman's face,
so protracted was his obeisance. When at last he
stood upright, Winnie at once recognized that her
C


34 UNMASKED AT LAST
reference to him as “old de Guerin" was all wrong.
The Baron might be many things, but he was cer-
tainly not old, not more than forty at most.
A waxed moustache, a carefully combed “goatee"
beard, closely cropped hair and a quiet suit that
spoke volumes for his tailor were the first impres-
sion. The second was that the Baron's features
were well chiselled and distinctly aristocratic in
type. The third, and perhaps the most important
of all, was that the expression of his face was so
obviously and intentionally artificial that it was
impossible to gather therefrom the slightest inkling
of his character or disposition.
“I have hastened at the earliest moment, my
dear Mr. Bassett, to return your kind call,” he
began, in perfect English. “It was neighbourly
of you to desire so soon the acquaintance of one
who might well be treated as an outsider. My own
family in France is of no mushroom growth, but it
makes me feel a positive parvenu to be living in the
ancient home of the Tressinghams at Longclere.”
The speech, gracefully turned, with a half inclin-
ation towards Landon, made matters easier. Mr.
Bassett introduced the two men, and then brought
Winnie forward as his “scatter brain puss.” The
Baron performed another of his profound obeisances,
but this time as he raised his head and looked full
into the girl's eyes, a tinge of colour came into his
sallow cheeks and a gleam, gone like a marsh-pixie,
danced for the fraction of a second in his dark eyes.
For Winnie was very fair to behold at any time,
but just now, burning to have it out with him, she
was positively radiant.
After a few minutes of general talk the Suqeir


ENTER THE BARON 35
innocently gave her her opening by referring to the
rumour that the Baron was a great sportsman, and
that the celebrated coverts were to be more rigor-
ously preserved than ever under his régime.
“You have been correctly informed,” replied
the Baron. “But,” he added, with a wave of his
white hand, “do not deem me a selfish fellow who
wants all the sport to himself. I shall hope that
you will come and help me shoot the pheasants in
the autumn, Squire, and that you, Mr. Tressingham,
will join us if your cloth permits you to carry a gun.
Indeed, you must know your ancestral woods so
well that you would be invaluable as a guide.”
“You would be very welcome to my knowledge
of the woods which I roamed as a youngster,” said
Landon.
“And,” interjected Winnie, emboldened by the
Frenchman's affability, “you can have all my
knowledge of Hartslock Wood without waiting till
the shooting season if you will speak a word to that
surly keeper of yours. The Tressinghams always
allowed us Bassetts to go there, but your man
ordered me out to-day, from my favourite primrose
bank.”
De Guerin's face expressed the deepest concern.
“If Lomax was rude, Miss Bassett, I will flay him
alive,” he said, making play with his fine eyes.
“He was distinctly rude, but that is not the
point,” returned Winnie, confident in her power to
gain her end.
“Ah, yes, and your point is 2 ”
“That I will forgive the man if the master behaves
prettily and removes the restriction so far as I am
concerned.”


36 UNMASKED AT LAST
The Baron made a deprecating gesture. “Mean-
ing that I am to continue the permission which
you have enjoyed to walk in the wood 2" he said.
“I assure you, Miss Bassett, that I would have
given a thousand pounds to have avoided this
unpleasantness at the opening of our acquaintance.
Indeed, I feel disposed to be annoyed with my
predecessors at the Castle for being the indirect cause
of it.”
“For having created the precedent 2 ” said Winnie
very quietly.
“Exactly,” the Baron replied. “For I sincerely
regret that not even in your case can there be any
exception to the rule I have laid down for excluding
every one from Hartslock Wood. Call me the
mad Frenchman if you like, for being so pertina-
cious about a whim, but do not hold me a churl
for a refusal that cuts me to the heart.”
The girl looked him up and down from head to
foot, and wincing ever so slightly from the gaze of
his unfathomable eyes, walked out of the room
without a word.


CHAPTER v >
LOVE's YoUNG DREAM
T was Saturday evening, and the choir-practice
at Maplehurst Church was just over. Wini-
fred Basset had, as usual, presided at the organ,
and the simple function had gained an added
strength from the clear tenor of Landon Tressing-
ham, who had taken over the superintendence of
the male voices. In this retired Hampshire village
they were old-fashioned, and the choir was a mixed
One.
The young men and maidens of the choir had
trooped down the central path of the quiet God's
acre, to disappear through the lych-gate, but Winnie
lingered in the porch while Landon locked the
church door. Then they, too, left the grey old
edifice that had braved the centuries from Norman
times.
A month had passed since Landon's return to his
native village as curate, and the creases under his
eyes, penalties of his hard toil in East-end slums,
were fast vanishing in the country air. His attenu-
ated frame, too, and his hollow cheeks, were filling
out under the homely but generous diet provided
27


38 UNMASKED AT LAST
by his landlady at Myrtle Cottage, where he
lodged.
But there was another influence besides fresh
air and good food at work. Landon Tressingham
was happy with a greater happiness than the con-
sciousness of service to mankind, great as that had
always been to him, could bring. He loved, and
hoped, nay, he believed, that he was loved in
return.
In the old days of his boyhood, and later when
he had come home to Longclere Castle for his Ox-
ford vacations, he and Winnie had always been
chums in spite of the four years difference in their
ages. But during his last visit, before he disap-
peared to carry the light of his helpful presence
into the deeper depths of London's homes of wretch-
edness, a new feeling had arisen for the merry girl
who had romped with him as a child. It was all
unconscious, and they were both too young to
understand why they had suddenly become so
stiffly polite to each other; but the feeling had lain
germinating through three years of separation,
in Landon's heart, at least, and now it had blos-
somed into a full-petalled flower.
Yes, he knew that with all the fire of a passion-
ate nature he loved “little Winnie,” as he had
always thought of her, and now as they walked
homewards under the stars he was going to tell
her so. With Landon Tressingham the course
to be taken was always the most direct.
Passing through the lych-gate, they turned to
the right into the leafy lane which ran towards
Bassett Hall. The members of the choir had gone
to the left in the direction of the village street.


LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 39
“Winnie, do you remember our goodbye three
years ago—how formal we were to each other ?”
said Landon presently,
“I remember it very well indeed, and that I
did not feel particularly formal myself,” the girl
laughed nervously. “I think it was your extreme
dignity on that occasion that made me so
prim.”
“Not dignity. Call it shyness,” Landon urged.
“Can you guess why I was shy, dear 2 ”
The term of endearment, used for the first time,
told her what was coming, and her answer was
almost inaudible. “Scarcely,” she murmured, with
a pardonable lapse from the whole letter of the
truth. -
“But you guessed just a little,” returned Lan-
don, catching at the opening. “And I, darling,
will tell you the rest. It was because I loved you,
and had hardly found it out—hardly knew what
love was. But now I know, my own, and more
than that—that my love has gone on growing and
growing till you are all the world to me.”
“Oh Landon,” the girl murmured with a happy
sob.
“Winnie, my light, my life "
Their lips met and sealed the compact, but that
first fond embrace was rudely disturbed by a huge,
fiery eye which suddenly shone upon them from a
bend in the lane and came swooping onwards. It
was the acetylene lamp of a motor-car whose rub-
ber tyres and splendidly geared mechanism had
deadened the sound of its approach. They sprang
apart and crushed back into the hedge just in time
to escape being run down, and as the car swept by


40 UNMASKED AT LAST
they saw seated in it the Baron de Guerin and his
chauffeur.
Apparently the Baron had neither seen them
by the light of his side lamps, nor recognized them,
for he did not raise his hat, and his gaze was kept
impassively fixed ahead.
Sobered by the interruption, they resumed their
walk, and it was Winnie who first broke the silence.
“I am sorry for that,” she said quaintly.
“So am I,” remarked Landon, about whom
there was still a good deal of the boy.
But there was a more serious note in Winnie's
voice when she explained. “It is like an evil
omen,” she went on, “that that man should have
separated us at the very beginning. Do you know,
Landon dear, that he comes a great deal to the
Hall and turns poor stupid Papa's head with all
sorts of vague promises of future wealth. That
wouldn't matter, for goodness knows we need it.
But the horrid creature is far too odiously polite
to me, though he is aware how much I hate him.”
“Has he made you free of Hartslock Wood 2 ”
Landon asked.
“Not he ; he sent Lomax, the head-keeper, up
to apologize for his rudeness, but he has not taken
off the embargo. That makes it worse.”
But Landon was far too elevated just then to
care about such trifles, or even about Winnie's im-
plied hint that she had another admirer in the Baron.
He knew that his sweetheart loved him, and he
feared no rivals. What troubled him was that,
scion of a once wealthy family as he was, he had
nothing but his miserable stipend to rely on for
the fulfilment of his hopes. Practically earnest


LOWE'S YOUNG DREAM 4I
as ever, he steered the conversation to that dis-
agreeable but necessary topic.
“You see, dailing,” he said, “if I come in with
you to-night and inform the Squire of my hopes,
he will naturally ask me if I can afford to marry.
As Mr. Mandible's curate I am worth exactly a
hundred and thirty pounds a year—not much of a
sum to start housekeeping on.”
“But you will be Rector when Mr. Mandible
dies.”
“Forty years hence, probably,” responded Lan-
don gloomily. “No, dearest, I know how pushed
your father is for ready money, with farms unlet
and Roddy to educate. I think I had better not
worry him by asking him for you just yet. We
can let things drift a little, and it will make no
difference to our love. It will be better than if I
was forbidden to speak to you, will it not 2 And
something may turn up—the offer of even a better
living than Maplehurst with the seven hundred a
year that Mandible enjoys.”
Winnie assented, a little reluctantly, that it
might be best not to try for a formal engagement
yet, and presently they lingered a while at the en-
trance gates of Bassett Hall, with no interruption
this time to their good-night kiss.
Landon was walking away, when he stopped,
as though struck by an afterthought.
“About that entering voluntary which you chose
for to-morrow,” he said. “You have made me so
happy that my heart cries out for something loud
and triumphant. I should like to substitute the
Hallelujah Chorus for that mildly tuneful harmony
you were practising to-night.”


CHAPTER VI
THE CRY FROM THE WESTRY
URELY, even if there can be no real foretaste
on earth of the tranquil joys of the Eternal
Rest, it is most nearly approached by the peaceful
calm of an English Sabbath in the country. Even
the landscape, untroubled by ploughshare or by
wain, seems to sleep.
The morning after Landon and Winnie plighted
their troth ushered in as fair a spring Sunday as
the heart of man could wish. Maplehurst village,
nestling in an oasis of sunshine amidst the encir-
cling woods of Longclere Castle and the smaller
coverts of Bassett Hall, woke gratefully to the sim-
ple routine practised by the “rude forefathers of the
hamlet’’ for centuries. This consisted of church
or chapel, as the case might be, in the forenoon, and
a lazy inspection of cabbage-patches and neigh-
bours' pigs later in the day.
At half-past ten the fine peal of bells in the Norman
tower of the parish church began to ring out their
summons to service, and a little later the main street
was thronged with a stream of villagers wending
their way to the ancient fane.
At ten minutes to the hour, Landon Tressingham
43


44 UNMASKED AT LAST
passed through the lych-gate and was walking up the
path to the main door of the church, when his
quick eye caught sight of a slender youth among the
graves at the angle of the chancel wall. In the
past month he had made the acquaintance, as he
believed, of every man, woman and child in Maple-
hurst, but this lad was a stranger to him. He was
half minded to go across and ask what he did there,
where he had no business, but he checked the im-
pulse, thinking that he might be a recent mourner
visiting some loved one's grave.
And as the boy—he was little more—at that
moment drooped his head over a head-stone, Lan-
don was confirmed in that view and passed on into
the already half-filled church. Winnie was seated
at the organ, and he stopped on his way to the
vestry to whisper to her:
“You haven’t forgotten my wish for the Hallelu-
jah Chorus 2 ” -
She looked up at him with a bright smile and
pointed to the music in front of her. It was Handel's
great masterpiece.
He nodded, well-pleased, and went on into the
vestry to robe. The vestry was in an annexe off the
main building, and could also be approached by a
separate door from the churchyard on the opposite
side from the big porch through which he himself
had entered the sacred structure, but this secondary
door was reserved entirely for the use of the Rector,
who had a private key for it. -
Mr. Mandible, who was a middle-aged bachelor,
was in the habit of coming across from the Rectory,
which adjoined the churchyard, precisely five
minutes before the commencement of service, and


THE CRY FROM THE VESTRY 45
Landon had hardly got into his surplice when the
key grated in the lock. The portly, black-coated
figure loomed in the entrance, and Mr. Mandible
bade his curate good-morning, closing the door
behind him.
“I am not late, I hope,” he said, as he struggled
into the surplice which he unhitched from its peg
in an old cupboard. “The fact is, my dear Tres-
singham, that I was detained at my study window
quite a minute beyond my usual time for starting.
I was looking at a real phenomenon, the nature
of which you will never guess.”
“What was that, sir?” Landon inquired respect-
fully.
“The Baron de Guerin on his way to church.
The path from the Castle, as you know, runs past
the Rectory. We shall find him in the Tressing-
ham pew, I expect, and I had taken it for granted
that the man was a Roman Catholic,” replied Mr.
Mandible.
Landon had thought it much more likely that the
Frenchman was an agnostic, or at any rate entirely
irreligious; but he was not surprised to hear that
he had joined the congregation of the village church.
After what Winnie had told him the previous night
about de Guerin's tiresome admiration for her, the
fact that she was a regular attendant would furnish
an adequate motive. Landon was by no means
disquieted. He even smiled at the thought that
in this case, “the poor had been filled with good
things, while the rich had been sent empty away.”
For Winnie's love was a good thing indeed, and
it was not for the Baron de Guerin, for all his signs
of opulence. He, Landon Tressingham, the needy


46 UNMASKED AT LAST
curate had won it, and he meant to hold it against
all comers.
It was the practice at Maplehurst church for
Goodger, the aged verger, to present himself at the
vestry door precisely at eleven o’clock, and to pre-
cede the clergy up the aisle to their places in the
chancel. He appeared now, his silver wand of
office in his arm, and, having caught Landon's eye,
turned to head the little procession, in which it was
customary for the Rector, as the chief dignitary, to
bring up the rear. The choir, being a mixed one,
were already in their seats.
As Landon stepped out into the aisle in the
verger's wake the triumphant music of the Hallelu-
jah Chorus swelled and throbbed from the organ,
and he knew that the glorious flood of sound re-
flected the glad heart of her whose firm young fingers
were on the keys. It was his turn to read prayers
that morning, as Mr. Mandible had arranged to
preach the sermon, so on reaching the reading-
desk, Landon turned into it and knelt down in
silent prayer.
When he raised his head from the folds of his
surplice and stood up to commence the service
his gaze ranged round the church, and, sure enough,
in the pew that had been occupied by generations
of Tressinghams sat the Baron de Guerin, his atti-
tude devoutly correct in every particular. His
white hand was placed to his ear, as though to
catch the last jubilant strains of the organ as they
died away, while his eyes were expectantly fixed
on the young clergyman in the desk.
Landon began the opening sentence:—“When
the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness


48 UNMASKED AT LAST
same—the door of the vestry at which the white
face of Goodger had now appeared. The Baron,
having the advantage of the start, was the first to
reach it, but he stood aside for Landon to pass in
before him. -
“After you, sir, please,” said the Frenchman in
his silkiest accents.


“Prone upon his face, lay the kindly vicar.”
(Page ſº.- 'm masked at / ast.)


i
|----


CHAPTER VII
THE BARON BOLTS THE DOOR
HE sight that met Landon Tressingham's
gaze, as he passed in front of de Guerin into
the vestry, would have unnerved the strongest.
Prone upon his face on the floor of this peaceful
ante-chamber of God's house lay the kindly, if
eccentric, rector, his life-blood welling from a
wound in his back. The crimson stain was slowly
spreading over the pure white of the surplice in an
ever widening blotch, and the old oak boards were
beginning to receive their meed of the ghastly
Stream.
Landon bent down, but rose immediately, turning
to the doorway into the church, where frightened
faces were craning for the view which the Baron's
figure to a great extent denied them.
“Run for the constable, one of you,” said Landon
quickly. “And some one ought to fetch a doctor
from Basingstoke, though I fear there is no hope.
Baron de Guerin, perhaps your motor car—”
“Yes, yes, certainly,” the Frenchman cut him
short. “My chauffeur shall start at once.”
Landon had thought that he would hurry off to
49 D


50 UNMASKED AT LAST
give the necessary orders, but he merely turned
and dispatched one of the bystanders with a message
to the Castle, retaining his position in the doorway.
He even showed a disposition to advance into the
vestry, but Landon checked him with a gesture.
“I think that we must have no one in here till
the police have taken charge,” he said politely but
firmly. “That is, of course, excepting the church-
wardens. I see them both there.”
Thus directly appealed to, the Baron stood on
one side while the churchwardens, Mr. Bassett and
a farmer named King, stepped past him into the
vestry. But he resumed his position afterwards,
his waxed moustache and carefully tended goatee
beard thrust forward, and his alert eyes seeming to
measure the distances and take in every detail of
the room, from the old oak vestment cupboard to
the diamond-paned casement windows and the
closed outer door into the churchyard.
“I shall be obliged if the congregation will quietly
disperse,” said Landon to the people pressing behind
de Guerin, and evidently intending to include the
latter in the appeal, which, however, was met with
instant compliance by every one except the French-
man. He drew back, it is true, momentarily into
the aisle in the wake of the departing villagers, but
amid the clatter of their footfall he stepped noise-
lessly back to the door.
By this time the attention of the curate and the
two churchwardens was all concentrated on the
silent figure on the floor. Taking advantage of
their preoccupation, de Guerin, without shifting
his feet, stretched his left arm to its full length
and very deftly shot home the uppermost of two


THE BARON BOLTS THE DOOR 5I
bolts which were used as supplementary fastenings
to the door in the outer wall leading into the church-
yard, but which had been withdrawn by the verger
before service to give access to Mr. Mandible.
A swift glance having assured him that his action
had been unperceived, he slipped away through
the church to the main porch, where many of the
parishioners still lingered. Winifred Bassett was
there with Roddy, their fresh young faces all white
and drawn at the sudden tragedy. Under the
influence of the overwhelming excitement, Winnie
forgot her antipathy to the new tenant of the Castle
so far as to ask him for news.
“Yes,” said the Baron gravely. “There is no
doubt, I fear, that the poor rector is dead. Mr.
Tressingham would not permit me to render any
assistance, but I saw enough—more than enough—
to shock and unnerve me.”
Winnie, listening to the coldly impassive tones,
glanced up at the well-controlled features and
thought that he did not look or sound in the least
unnerved.
“It must have been a fit, then—some sudden
seizure,” she urged, a note of unconscious pleading
in her voice. “Of course what old Goodger said
about murder was ridiculous.”
“On the contrary, Miss Bassett, I regret that
there is every evidence of an atrocious crime,” the
Baron replied more warmly, as though carried away
by indignation and the remembrance of what he
had seen. “A man cannot stab himself in the
back, between the shoulder-blades. Some scoundrel
must have concealed himself in the vestry and done
our poor friend to death just as he was starting to


52 UNMASKED AT LAST
follow Tressingham up the aisle. A bit of sordid
revenge probably, for some fancied wrong.”
Roddy looked up quickly. “There are bolts on
the inside of the outer vestry door,” he said. “Were
they shot home, do you know 2 ”
The Baron shrugged his shoulders, as though not
appreciating the point.
“Ah, I did not observe that,” he said. “But
here comes the policeman. He looks a very intelli-
gent officer, and will doubtless take note of every-
thing. And now, my dear Miss Bassett,” de Guerin
continued in a lighter tone, “if you will take the
advice of a foreigner who is also a man of the world,
there is nothing to be gained by courting unpleasant-
ness. I should recommend your setting an example
to these gaping rustics by going home. I am not
well acquainted with your English institutions, but
I believe you have a farcical function called an
inquest, before which bystanders are liable to be
haled, and which I at least, should wish to escape.”
He raised his glossy silk hat and strode down
the path to the lych-gate, Winnie and Roddy, swayed
by the vague mastery of his manner, following more
slowly. For the girl was loth to leave the spot
where her lover was confronted with such a cata-
clysm.
In the meanwhile the village constable, to dub
whom “an intelligent officer” must have required
the full bent of de Guerin's Gallic imagination,
had pushed his way through the throng and, pass-
ing into the church, showed his perspiring, rubicund
face at the vestry door.
“Come in, Squarey,” said Mr. Bassett, who had
just satisfied himself that the rector had really


THE BARON BOLTS THE DOOR 53
ceased to breathe. “You’ll have to do the best
you can till your Inspector arrives. You have
sent for him, I suppose 2 ”
“Soon as I heard,” the constable replied. “How
did it happen, gentlemen 2 If so be as 'tis known,
some one ought to be took in custody.”
“It isn’t known,” Landon made answer. And
he described briefly how he himself had proceeded
up the aisle to the reading-desk in the full belief
that Mr. Mandible was behind him, and how, on the
rector's absence from the chancel being noted,
Goodger had gone to the vestry and found him as he
now lay.
“Nothing has been touched or moved 2 ” the
constable inquired.
“Nothing, except that I raised his wrist slightly
to feel the pulse,” replied Landon.
Constable Squarey's vacuous gaze roamed round
the austere simplicity of the vestry walls and finally
settled, with something like a gleam of intelligence,
on the door into the churchyard. He took two
steps to it, and then turned upon the others, quiver-
ing with the excitement of his discovery.
“This here door's bolted on the inside,” he ex-
claimed. “It follows that if you gents ain't touched
nothing the murderer didn't go out that way. He
must have come out through the church."
The obvious sense of the announcement caused
his little audience to exchange glances of bewilder-
ment. It was clearly true that the guilty person
could not have escaped by the churchyard door and
then bolted it on the inside after passing through.
Yet for him to have gone out through the church, or
even to have taken a seat there, without being ob-


THE BARON BOLTS THE DOOR 55
to the actual murderer. It did not occur to him that
it might have been done by some other person after
the alarm and discovery, nor, if it had occurred,
would he have deemed it possible without his seeing
it.
Unless Goodger had done it after finding the
body—in a whirlwind of fear lest the assassin should
return. Landon was making a mental note to
grasp at this straw and ask the old man, when foot-
steps sounded in the church and a moment later
Roddy Bassett appeared at the door. Casting a
scared look at the corpse he addressed the Squire.
“Father,” he said, “Stewart Rattray is outside.
He came down by the morning train. Winnie and
I met him as we were going home and told him what
had happened. He doesn’t want to intrude, but
don't you think he might be useful ?”
The Squire looked doubtfully at Constable Squarey.
“Mr. Roderick alludes to my nephew—an officer in
the Indian Police, who has made a study of the
detection of crime.” he said.
“Can't help that, sir,” the constable replied
stolidly. “No harm in the gent standing in the
doorway, but till the inspector comes there can’t be
another living soul admitted here except the doctor.
I’d do it for you, Squire, being a magistrate, if
’twas any way possible, but it ain’t.”
Roddy turned and whispered to some one in the
church, and he was immediately joined at the door
by a slight, wiry man of military bearing. Stewart
Rattray's piercing eyes did not even notice the
Squire's nod of greeting, so absorbed were they in
darting from detail to detail in the chamber of death.
A strong face and inscrutable was that of the Indian


56 UNMASKED AT LAST
official who nad won his spurs tracking down Thugs
and Dacoits in the jungles of Bengal.
Landon Tressingham, who had heard of him, but
now saw him for the first time, scanned the stern
features and the square, firm jowl with interest.
Here was a man to rely on in time of need—provided
he decided to espouse your cause. A man who would
not judge lightly, but who having formed his con-
victions would stick to them with a grip of steel.
A man, on the other hand, who, if he had weighed
you in the balance and found you wanting, would
be merciless to the point of cruelty.
Such, at least, was Landon's impression of the
clean-built, alert figure at the vestry door, who was
so keenly scrutinising every item in the terrible
SCCI10.


CHAPTER VIII
* THE ODour of SANCTITY "
UNCHEON at Bassett Hall was an hour late
that Sunday, and by no stretch of imagina-
tion could it be considered a lively meal. Though
no one there mourned Mr. Mandible very deeply,
yet the shadow of the crime which had so mysteri-
ously struck him down brooded over all, and kept
the Squire and his family strangely silent.
Even Stewart Rattray's presence, usually so
inspiriting, especially to Roddy, failed to disperse
the gloom and unchain their tongues. Anecdotes
of wild life in the North West Provinces would have
fallen flat indeed, with that unsolved tragedy at
their very threshold, and Stewart was, perhaps,
the most preoccupied of the whole party. He ate
steadily through the courses of simple country fare,
but his brows were knitted in a frown which was
certainly not for his relatives.
It was not till near the close of lunch that Mr.
Bassett touched, without any preamble, on the sub-
ject that was in everyone's mind.
“I hardly like to ask if your experience has led
you to any conclusion in this dreadful business 2 ”
he said, addressing his nephew.
57


58 UNMASKED AT LAST
Stewart Rattray uttered a grim laugh. “Having
been very properly kept at arm's length as an out-
sider by the local talent, I have not had much
opportunity of forming an independent opinion,” he
replied, with an almost imperceptible emphasis on
the qualifying adjective.
“Then you have formed none at all, for I am
quite sure that no one else has,” said the Squire.
“What do you think of Inspector Maudsley 2
Did you ever see a man more at a loss 2 ”
“The inspector seemed to me to have his limita-
tions, as was to be expected of a provincial officer
suddenly confronted with what will probably be
the case of his lifetime, but I should not describe
him as wholly at a loss,” said Rattray, fingering his
bread crumbs. “I rather fancy that it will be
found that he has at least formed a theory. Whether
he will be able to substantiate it will be another
matter.” -
“You mean about the inside bolt being fastened?”
asked Roddy quickly.
“Ah no ; if he could fathom that he would have a
definite clue,” was the reply, vaguely non-committal.
“Well, hang it, man, let's get something out of
you anyway,” said the Squire, pouring himself out
a final glass of port. “Let’s make it a question of
odds. What are the odds where the murderous
wretch was when Goodger raised the alarm—in
the church or fled away outside 2 ”
Stewart Rattray shot a curious glance at his uncle
from his steel-grey eyes. “I know so little, have
heard so little, of the case and its surroundings that
1 should be sorry to risk any of my hard-earned
savings either way,” he answered. “But if I was


“THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY” 59
going to bet at all I should wager, and want long
odds too, that the murderer was in the church at
the time you mention, and left it some while later,
in the odour of sanctity and entirely unsuspected.
I should want the long odds because it is quite on
the cards that I might wish to hedge presently, after
a fuller examination of the case.”
Winifred, who had listened intently without
remark, now rose abruptly from the table, a spot
of colour burning in each of her fair cheeks. “It
is too horrid, all of it,” she said, as she sought the
door. “I am going out into the garden, Cousin
Stewart. When you have smoked your cigar with
Roddy and father I should like to show you my
greenhouse.”
Now this was exactly what Stewart Rattray had
come down to do ; to see a garden or a greenhouse—
a stable or a cucumber-frame would have served
him just as well—with Winifred Bassett as his guide,
so that he might ease himself of the secret he was
burning to tell; the secret that he held her dearer
than life, and wanted her all to himself for ever.
Home for a year's furlough after ten years in the
glowing East, he had fallen in love with his winsome
cousin in his strong, silent way on his first visit to
the Hall. That had been six months ago, and every
subsequent visit had fed the flame of his passion till
he could endure the suspense no longer.
With this high purpose in view, his cigar-smoking
was of brief duration, and he went out through the
French window of the dining-room to the terrace and
so down the steps to the old rose garden, where among
the tall standards Winnie's white blouse was flitting
to and fro. The girl, guessing nothing of his object,


6o UNMASIKED AT LAST
came frankly to meet him and put her hand through
his arm. The friendly familiarity was disheartening;
it was too cousinly to flatter his hopes.
“Stewart,” she began, as she began to walk him
up and down the sward, “you are so tremendously
clever that I want to ask you what you really meant
just now about—about the odour of sanctity. Was
it a chance phrase, or did it point to anyone in par-
ticular, in connection with this awful thing 2 It
almost seemed as though you said that designedly.”
For the moment Rattray had forgotten the exact
sequence in which he had used the words, and in
making the necessary effort to recall it he had to
analyse his mental attitude towards the case. He
knew now that, though he had not intended to con-
vey it to his hearers, a distinct train of thought had
suggested the phrase. His immediate feeling was
one of annoyance that his wooing should be ham-
pered by his having chosen to press it on this day
of all days, when murder was in the air and the
moral atmosphere was out of the normal.
“Anyone in particular 2 ” he repeated. “How
could my words have pointed to anyone when I am
in no position to make an accusation ? Why, my
dear Winnie, you must have a poor opinion of my
acumen if you expect me to formulate a theory
without having been permitted to so much as enter
the vestry.”
“Nevertheless, Stewart, I think that you have
a theory,” the girl persisted. “I cannot make you
tell it to me, but will you promise me this—to con-
fide it to me before you make it known elsewhere P’”
He looked down at the eager, upturned face in
some surprise at first, and then, being blessed or


“THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY” 6I
cursed with a keen insight, with a sudden sinking
of his hopes. But it was part of his creed to carry
out a once-formed resolution, and he decided not to
be diverted from the course he had marked out when
he started. At least he would not go back to
London till he knew the worst.
“Yes, I will promise that,” he replied. “But,
my dear little cousin, I did not come down by a
slow Sunday train to discuss gruesome horrors with
you. I can sup full on them any day in the year
when I get back to work again. Winnie, when I
do go back must I go alone 2 ”
And in a few straightforward, manly words he
confessed his love, and pleaded humbly for a re-
prieve if she could not see her way to passing a
favourable sentence then.
“I know that if you cannot be kind you will not
be cruel,” he concluded, with a catch in his usually
firm tones.
For answer Winnie, without withdrawing her
hand from his arm, burst into a flood of tears. She
liked her reserved, self-contained cousin so well that
she would not have had this happen for anything.
Unsophisticated country maiden as she was, and
without a trace of self-consciousness, she had never
dreamed that this man's trusty heartbeat for her with
a sentiment stronger than cousinly affection, for
his innate chivalry had not permitted him the deep-
drawn sighs and ardent glances in which the Baron
de Guerin expressed his as yet unspoken admiration.
“I am so sorry, Stewart,” she sobbed. “I am
so fond of you that it hurts me to give you pain.
But I—I have never thought of you in that way, and
there is a reason why I never can.”


62 UNMASKED AT LAST
“Then don't cry about it, dear, but just forget
my blunt folly in presuming to speak. I ought to
have known that you were not for a dry old stick
like me,” he replied, certain that her “reason " was
wrapped up in that premonition of failure, which
the exaction of that strange promise had inspired
just now. Though wild horses would not have
dragged from him a question on the subject, the
surmise filled him with a deep concern—so deep
that his commiseration for her overwhelmed for
the moment his own disappointment.
It came, therefore, as a shock full of embarrass-
ment when Winnie herself broached the subject,
so artlessly, too, that in his distress he could scarcely
restrain a smile.
“I want you to forgive me for not even trying
to make you happy, so may I tell you my reason 2"
she pleaded up at him.
“Of course you may, though I warn you that
whatever it is I shall not approve of it,” he replied
with a gallant attempt to laugh. It was not pleasant
to be told that she was in love with another man, and
he saw that red light ahead as clear as noonday.
“It is a secret. You will keep it, won't you,
Stewart 2 ”
“If you insist on sharing it with me, no one else
shall.”
“Then the reason is that I have promised to
marry someone else—someone whom I have been
fond of since we were boy and girl together, here in
dear old Maplehurst, while you were already a man,
doing man's work in India,” said Winnie. She
wanted to flatter him, and was all unconscious of the
sting in her reference to the disparity in their ages.


“THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY” 63
|
Never having thought of him as a lover, it had
never occurred to her to compare his five and thirty
years with her own twenty.
“Putting two and two together I suppose you
mean Landon Tressingham, the curate, who by
to-day's doings is in a fair way to be the next rector
of Maplehurst 2 ” he replied, and for the life of him
he could not keep a certain flinty timbre from his
voice.
Winnie looked up at him a little frightened,
“Yes, it is Landon,” she murmured. “And oh,
Stewart, he is the dearest fellow. You would like
him so much if you knew him. You cannot ima-
gine how anxious I am that you and he should be
friends. Will you try, for my sake, cousin 2 ”
“I will try for your sake, my dear little cousin,”
came the answer through clenched teeth.
“Thank you ever so much,” cried Winnie. And,
withdrawing her arm from his, she raised her face.
“You may have just one kiss for being so nice to
me,” she added, little thinking that she was inflicting
the cruellest wound of all, “and then I must run away
and be by myself for a little. You have made me
feel such a wretch, and I want to get over it slowly,
and persuade myself that I am not to blame.”
Rattray bent down and brushed her cheek with
a wiry moustache. “Don’t take it to heart; you
are not to blame,” he assured her.
But when he had watched the girlish figure trip
up the terrace steps and vanish into the house he sat
down on a seat in the rose-garden. Taking a case
from his pocket, he bit the end from a black cheroot.
“So I am pledged to befriend the chap who has
not only forestalled me, but who, according to every


64 UNMASKED AT LAST
rule of evidence, murdered the rector in the vestry
this morning,” he muttered, as he struck a match
and began to smoke. “For Winnie's sake I must
try and widen the view of the Mandible mystery
as it strikes me at present.”


CHAPTER IX
AMONG THE TOMBS
N the stillness of the Sabbath afternoon
Stewart Rattray smoked two full-flavoured
cheroots before he quitted the seat in the rose-
garden and sauntered back to the house. The
mystery at the church would have drawn him like a
magnet, had it not been for his now hopeless love
for Winnie. As it was, he would have given all he
possessed to have been miles away at the time of
the tragedy, for he saw unmistakable signs that
her young heart would be sorely bruised within the
approaching days.
If he was not much mistaken the girl was already
vaguely conscious of the mutterings of the coming
storm. It could only have been some such preoc-
cupied condition of mind that could have drawn
from her such a naïve appeal for friendliness towards
her lover almost in the same breath that had dashed
his own hopes. Even an unsophisticated country
maiden does not in cold blood try to enlist the sym-
pathies of the rejected for the more favoured swain.
Yet distasteful, and very probably in possible,
as was the task, Rattray was not the man to turn
65 E


66 UNMASKED AT LAST
his back on it because it was irksome and difficult
—still less because the love that had seized and
conquered him in his early middle-age had failed.
To his simple creed that was the stronger reason
why he should set his back to the wall in defence of
the girl he loved.
But only if there was a way out for Landon
Tressingham. The veriest loophole would serve to
start with, but if that were not forthcoming he
would drop the “Mandible mystery" like a live
coal and hark him back to his London chambers
till the end of his furlough. The instinct of the
tracker of crime was not going to let him condone
murder. He drew the line at that.
He found Roddy in the oak-beamed entrance-hall,
sucking at a briar pipe and suffering from a violent
reaction of dulness after the excitement of the morn-
ing. The young fellow started up, overjoyed at
the sight of his soldierly cousin–object of so much
boyship worship.
“Good old Stewart 1" he ejaculated. “The Dad
is doing a snooze, and I was afraid that Winnie had
booked you for the afternoon. Now we can wake up
and have a yarn about this murder I know you
must be just bursting to have a go at it.”
Rattray smiled at the youthful enthusiasm.
“Hardly that,” he replied. “But I confess to a
professional interest in it. What do you say to
walking up to the church and having a look round 2
The police will have cleared off by now, and I dare
say we can get the keys.”
Roddy jumped up and clutched his cap from the
hall stand. “Come along ' " he cried. “If there's
one thing I'm suited for it's acting as understudy


AMONG THE TOMBS 67
to an expert in the science of detection—especially
on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.” -
Stewart Rattray did not encourage his young
companion's vivacity as they walked between the
budding hedge-rows to the ancient church. He
was turning over and over in his keenly-trained
mind the conviction that had been forced on him
that Landon Tressingham had killed Mr. Mandible.
The whole case seemed to be driven into a cul-de-
sac from which there was no escape. But just be-
cause it looked so simple he was eager to discard
that view, and adopt a more intricate one if it were
anyway possible. Apart from his chivalrous de-
sire to help Winifred experience had taught him to
avoid trusting first impressions, however obvious.
They stopped at the sexton's ivy-clad cottage,
where the request of the Squire's son for the loan
of the church keys was promptly acceded to. Good-
ger informed them that the Inspector, having com-
pleted his examination of the vestry, had returned
to Basingstoke, and that the remains had been re-
moved to the Rectory to await the inquest.
Declining the garrulous old man's offer to accom-
pany them, Rattray and Roddy proceeded to the
main porch, and, entering the sacred building, made
their way to the vestry. The Oxford undergraduate
gave pride of place to his senior, and the Indian
policeman walked first into the chamber from which
the local jack-in-office had excluded him in the
morning.
Advancing to the middle of the vestry, he halted
by the circular table and let his eyes travel very
slowly from object to object. Beginning at the
door by which Mr. Mandible had.entered from the
3º nAl &!?. *
^*	o\-win’ſ
* . 3H1 30 *
Ҽ AW.


68 UNMASKED AT LAST
churchyard, and the bolting of which had introduced
such a grim shadow into the case, his analytic gaze
took in every detail till it was arrested by the great
wormeaten oak press in which the clerical vestments.
were kept. -
Stepping over to this ancient piece of furniture,
as though moved by a sudden impulse, he opened
the door. There hung on their respective pegs
quite an array of surplices and cassocks, the major-
ity belonging to Mr. Mandible, who seemed to have
been more than well provided in that respect. Lan-
don Tressingham's scantier but more modern
ecclesiastical wardrobe occupied one corner, the
whole collection filling the press completely. Rat-
tray drew aside the vestments, examined the back
of the press and its floor, stood for two minutes per-
fectly motionless, and then turned to Roddy with
the air of being about to put a question, which, how-
ever, he checked.
“Found anything 2 ” the lad asked eagerly.
“Nothing material,” Rattray made answer, and
after carefully closing the door of the press fell to
pacing the distance from it to the ghastly stain, as
yet but perfunctorily removed, at the spot where the
rector had fallen. In making the measurement he
had to pass one of the windows, and in doing so he
started slightly, but finished his pacing before dis-
closing the reason.
‘Youngster,” he said quietly jotting a memor-
andum on his shirt-cuff, “there is someone outside
in the churchyard. Take a peep, without allowing
yourself to be seen, and tell me who it is if you know
him.”
Roddy, keen to assist, looked cautiously from the


7o UNMASKED AT LAST
student applying the methods of his countryman
Gaboriau to this village tragedy. The science of
crime-detection has always held me fascinated.
Hearing that the provincial Inspector had gone
away in a brown study, I came across after lunch
to do a little prowl on my own account.”
“Then let me introduce you to my cousin, Mr.
Stewart Rattray of the Bengal Police; he is, of
course, a professional,” said Roddy with an air
of tolerant superiority. -
The two gentlemen bowed, the Frenchman with
easy grace, the Englishman politely but coldly.
“Then, Mr. Rattray, you will smile at the flounder-
ings of the amateur,” said de Guerin with a depre-
cating shrug and smile. “ Doubtless you will tell
me that my self-set task was quite beside the mark
—mere fool's play.”
“I shouldn't be so rude as that,” Rattray laughed
rather grimly. “May I ask what that self-set task
was 2 ” -
“I was looking for foot-steps. It occurred to
me that the Inspector curtailed his investigation
because he has jumped to a pretty obvious conclu-
sion, and that I might nip in the bud a very harrow-
ing blunder if I could discover traces of a hasty
flight on the ground.” The Baron said this with
a veiled air of generous sympathy, but though there
was no mistaking his meaning Rattray preferred
that he should be more explicit. There had been
no rain for some days; the earth was in no con-
dition to yield foot-prints. Such a quest as had
been mentioned seemed but a forlorn hope indeed.
“You think that there is danger of a blunder
being made 2 " Rattray inquired bluntly.


AMONG THE TOMBS 71
The Frenchman raised significant eyebrows. “I
do not go so far as that,” he replied. “I only mean
to suggest that if there had been footmarks—marks
coming from the private vestry door, bien entendu
—present conclusions would have ceased to be so
obvious.”
Rattray received the answer in silence, but with
the questioning gaze of a stupid man demanding
further enlightenment.
“Come, sir! Though I have not been able to be
of any service I may as well get credit for my
motives,” said de Guerin, as though honestly nettled
at the idea of being possibly misunderstood. “The
fact is that I like what I have seen of young Mr. Tres-
singham. I was anxious to discover the tracks of
some vulgar murderer in the churchyard in order
to prove that a more subtile assassin did not quit
the scene of his crime by the door into the church.”
“By Jove, if anyone says that—” Roddy was
beginning, but his cousin stopped him with a gesture
of impatience.
“Least said soonest mended, youngster,” Rat-
tray put in quickly. And turning to de Guerin he
added: “I quite agree that the inference you sug-
gest is obvious enough, Baron. I am not myself
acquainted with Mr. Tressingham, but I can under-
stand that if you have a regard for him you must be
disappointed by the non-success of your search.”
“It is more than disappointment; it is genuine
grief,” the Frenchman replied sadly. And abruptly
raising his hat, as though not trusting himself to
further speech, he retreated through the wicket gate
into the path leading to the Castle.
With slow deliberation Rattray took out his


72 UNMASKED AT LAST
cigar-case and lighted a cheroot, striking match
after match in the operation. When at last he had
got it to his satisfaction the Baron had passed out
of sight and, to Roddy's surprise, he set to work to
“quarter” the ground just as the other had done.
Young Bassett began to help him, protesting never-
theless that the ground was as dry as a brick, and
that they were wasting their time.
“If you think that, my son, you will be more use
elsewhere,” said Rattray. “Get back into the
vestry and see if you can find signs of the windows
having been forcibly opened.”
The young enthusiast sped away, and a quarter
of an hour later Rattray's lean brown fingers pounced
on something in the long grass—a shining object
that was quickly transferred to his vest pocket
without examination. For at that moment Roddy
reappeared at the door of the vestry to announce
that the windows bore no traces of having been
tampered with.


CHAPTER X
CHARLIE HEXT BEGINS WORK
N the day after that memorable Sunday the
bosky solitudes of Hartslock Wood yielded no
echo of the turmoil down in the village that was the
aftermath of the tragedy at the church. In the
clearing by the keeper's cottage the solemn hens
had hatched out their broods since we saw them
last, and the fluffy young pheasants were toddling in
and out of the coops. In one of the nearer thickets
a song-thrush was pouring out its soul in melody,
but of human life there was neither sight nor sound
till at seven o’clock Charlie Hext emerged from the
cottage.
Sniffing the fresh morning breeze, he went and
busied himself with giving fresh water to the hens.
Two huge mastiffs which had been loose all night
in the glade, having satisfied themselves that he
was one of the garrison, stalked round in friendly
fashion at his heels.
He had been thus occupied for half an hour when
Jasper Lomax strode out of the wood, carrying a
small sack. The head keeper cast a sharp glance
at Charlie, curtly bade him quit what he was doing,
and told him to come into the house. In the
kitchen he set down the sack, and stirring the fire
73


74 UNMASKED AT LAST
which Charlie had lighted into a blaze he fed it with
fresh fuel. When it had burned well up he put the
sack on the top of the coals and held it there with
the poker.
“Shall I get your breakfast 2 ” asked Charlie.
“No, I have been at the Castle since yesterday
and had it there before I started to come back,”
was the reply
“Did I do what you wanted to your satisfaction?”
Charlie inquired after a pause.
“Well enough,” Lomax responded indifferently.
“After all it wasn’t a job of much importance.
You have got to forget all about it, mind—just a
little game the governor wanted played. And see
here, you imp; that's the first and last time your
work will take you outside the wood. If I catch
you beyond its limits, or speaking to anyone within
them except to order them off, I’ll skin you alive.”
Charlie's heart sank, for as the calm monotony of
the days had flowed on he had wondered wistfully
whether it was not time for Roddy Bassett to put
in another appearance. Often when strolling in
the leafy shades, ostensibly on the look-out for
marauders of the Baron's rabbits, he had hoped
to see the bright brown face which he had slapped
suddenly round a bend in the path, but so far in
Waln.
Jasper Lomax continued to press the bundle
into the devouring flames, and in stirring it to speed-
ier consumption drew out a cloud of pungent smoke
which smelt like burning wool. Not till it had
sunk down into a heap of smouldering ashes did he
lay the poker aside and turn to Charlie with a sinister
laugh.


CHARLIE HEXT BEGINS WORK 75
“There ! that clears the air,” he said with a
grunt of relief. “You might not believe it,
but in a manner of speaking that stink that's gone
up the chimney has opened the way for you to make
yourself worth your salt. Mother Hext has drawn
her screw pretty easy so far. Now you’ll have to
earn it for her. Come along with me.”
Charlie followed him down a flag-paved passage
to the back of the house, and across a yard, at the
further end of which stood a stone outhouse of two
stories, grey with age. Originally the structure
might have been a store-room or granary, but if so
it must have been altered for present uses by the
removal of every window and aperture except a
strong oak door, so narrow that only one person
could pass through at a time. It was as though
advantage had been taken of a naturally strong
building to make it impregnable, and its privacy,
impenetrable.
Lomax unlocked the door with a very modern
key of peculiar construction, and, having ushered
Charlie into the dark interior and relocked the door
on the inside, was careful to veil the keyhole with
a metal flap affixed for the purpose. Then a
match flared up, and while Lomax lit a couple of
powerful oil lamps Charlie looked curiously round.
He was not surprised to hear that the pleasant
sinecure of the past month was to come to an end,
for even his town-bred mind had grasped the fact
that the remittances punctually forwarded to his
mother at Boger's Rents had not been earned.
. There was nothing of the high-souled philanthro-
pist about Lomax to lead him to expect that he
was to go on drawing two pounds a week for doing


CHARLIE HEXT BEGINS WORK 77
which he intuitively knew was at hand. When
everything was unpacked, and Charlie had removed
the litter of paper and shavings to a corner, Lomax
laid a heavy hand on each of his shoulders.
“A complete outfit, eh?” said the man who by
courtesy was the Baron de Guerin's head game-
keeper
“I don't know; I couldn't put a name to it,”
Charlie answered feebly. There was something in
the other's manner that frightened him.
“But you're spry enough to make a pretty good
guess,” persisted Lomax, glaring down with eyes
full of menace.
“There's a camera, and that's a printing-press,
but I can’t guess what they are for,” Charlie replied.
“Perhaps you are going to start an illustrated
paper,” he added desperately, for on the saturnine
features was a fierce demand for an answer that
would not be denied. It seemed better to hazard
a foolish guess than to preserve a silence which
Lomax seemed to be attributing to affectation.
Lomax pushed the frail figure roughly away
with a growl of annoyance, and then broke into a
harsh laugh. “What charming innocence 1 " he
sneered. “I am aware that old Jack Hext never
soared into the higher branches— never had am-
bition beyond his melting pots and moulds—but I
should have thought you would have picked up
enough to tumble to the meaning of this collection.”
And stooping swiftly he spoke a few words in a
sibilant whisper into the youth's ear. Then he
drew himself up to his full height and looked down,
watching the effect of his communication.
The first and most instant one was a scarlet flush


78 UNMASKED AT LAST
that suffused Charlie's smooth cheeks and spread
to his brow; the second was a nervous twitching
In the muscles at the corner of the sensitive mouth ;
the third and most pronounced was a dogged defi-
ance in the eyes that transformed the lad from a
milksop hobbledehoy, not exactly into the semblance
of manhood, but into a person to be reckoned with.
“And you have brought me here to help ?” he
said so quietly that the restraint was obvious.
“Yes, you’ve hit it,” returned Lomax, the chronic
scowl deepening till the massive forehead was fur-
rowed to the roots of the matted hair—deepening
so ominously to the blackness of a thunder-cloud
that Charlie shrank away before he answered —
“Then I shall not do it—that’s all. I would
have helped Dad gladly if he'd let me, because—
because I loved him. But for you, a stranger—
no, not even to keep mother in comfort will I do it.
You must get someone else to help you, Mr. Lomax.”
A long-drawn breath escaped the man's lips be-
fore his jaws closed like a steel trap, and then he
stood surveying the slight frame of his rebellious
assistant in such an excess of rage that for the
moment speech failed him. The hot gipsy blood
surged to his face in purple waves, so that Charlie
forgot his own peril in the expectation that the
tall form would fall down in a fit. But with a
supreme effort Lomax conquered the physical
disturbance, and gradually an evil grin, like that
of a snarling dog, bared his teeth to the gums.
“So that's to be your game,” he hissed at last.
“Well, I have had the taming of some harder
cases than you, my young shaver, and I’ll warrant
you’ll sing a different tune presently. A sound


CHARLIE HEXT BEGINS WORK 79
hiding will do to start with, and if that don't break
you, I'll try what tickling your feet with a hot iron
will do.”
He made a grab at Charlie's coat collar, but so
violent was the clutch of the great brutal fist that
it wrenched off the outer garments of the intended
victim, baring the latter's neck and shoulders.
For an instant, as his old comrade's child tried to
drag up the torn shirt with fluttering fingers to hide
the naked flesh, the bully fell back in sheer amaze-
ment. Then the exclamation, low-muttered yet
gloating in its note of triumph, burst forth. “By
God, but it’s a girl "
The assertion evoked no reply, unless the hot
tears that began to fall from the hunted, indignant
eyes could be taken as such. Jasper Lomax, at
any rate, viewed those scalding drops as an admis-
sion for which there was really no need, and they
roused no sense of pity in his callous heart. He
pointed to the ladder running up to the floor above.
“Up with you there, my lady,” he commanded.
“You’ll require different treatment now, but you
can reckon on getting it. There are ways of
bringing women to heel that one can’t practice on
the other sort.”


CHAPTER XI
THE GATHERING STORM
HE inquest on the dead rector of Maplehurst
was over, ending in an open verdict due
almost entirely to the affection in which the Tres-
singham family was held in its ancestral home. The
fact that Longclere Castle was occupied by a stranger
rather accentuated the loyal devotion of the local
jury than otherwise, the great mansion which had
formerly been the mainstay of the place now
drawing all its service, indoors and out, not from
the sons of the soil, but from imported menials,
many of them foreigners.
Yet in spite of the official condemnation of
“some person or persons unknown,” the tongue
of slander was busy, and there were not wanting
those who avowed that they knew the said person
very well indeed. In the best disposed country
village there is always a lurking undercurrent of
malice, and though in this case it was confined to
an unpopular minority it found justification in the
summing up of the coroner, and in the scarcely sup-
pressed ejaculation of that astounded gentleman
on hearing the verdict.
There was no doubt, indeed, that had the issue
so


THE GATHERING STORM 8I
depended on the evidence alone, Landon Tress-
ingham would have been found guilty of murder.
The police clearly believed that he was what the
rustics called “the man.” There was no proof
forthcoming that any one but Landon and the de-
ceased had been in the vestry before service, and
very little that any one could possibly have been
there. Inspector Maudsley, the officer in charge
of the case, without actually putting it in words,
showed that he had adopted that view by emphas-
izing from the witness stand his disbelief that the
guilty party had fled from the vestry directly into
the churchyard. The fact that the outer private
door was bolted, he maintained, precluded any such
idea, it being impossible for the fugitive to have
shot the bolt from the outside.
And half a dozen witnesses from the congregation
having been called to prove that they had been
sitting in pews whence they could have seen any one
quit the vestry by coming out into the body of the
church, but had seen no one except the curate
emerge on his way to the reading-desk, the inference
was so obvious that many people wondered why
Maudsley did not effect an arrest in face of the
verdict.
As that painstaking officer was to confess later,
it was only the prestige of the old Tressingham
name that prevented him from incurring that re- .
sponsibility.
In the meanwhile Landon was fully conscious
of what some people were saying and more people
thought. Even before the coroner's disregarded
indictment had put the most lurid construction on
his conduct, he had been made aware of a falling-
r


82 UNMASKED AT LAST
off in his popularity. Residents of Maplehurst,
many of whom had known him from boyhood, had
been polite but distinctly less cordial; and some,
mostly old maids who thought him too “high,”
had avoided him in marked fashion.
But it was not till the morning after the inquest
that it was brought home to Landon in all its
naked horror that he was to lose the regard of nearer
and dearer friends. Hungering for a sight of Winnie,
whom in all the turmoil of police interrogatories
he had not met since Sunday in the church,
he walked up to Bassett Hall, and for form's sake
asked if the Squire was at home. The groom-
footman who answered his ring looked sheepishly
uncomfortable.
“No sir,” the man replied, fidgeting nervously.
“The Squire told me to say if you called that he
couldn't receive you at present.”
“That applies to the rest of the family P"
“To all of them, sir.”
Landon forced a good-humoured laugh, but the
iron entered into his soul. “Ah, I understand;
I must clear my character first, James,” he said
pleasantly. “Well, give Mr. Bassett my kind
regards, and tell him that I myself am half inclined
to believe that I am guilty—after the coroner's
summing-up.”
He turned away with swimming eyes, and half-
way down the drive met the telegraph boy from
the post-office, who in handing him a message
explained that he had followed him from his lodg-
1ngs.
The telegram was from his brother, Sir George
Tressingham, who was ill in Paris.


84 UNMASKED AT LAST
cousin from India, of whom Roddy was always
talking.
Winnie came forward with outstretched hand, and
Landon perceived with a half sob of thankfulness that
she commiserated his position, and above all things
remained loyal to her belief in him. There was no
mistaking the gentle pressure of the soft, ungloved
hand, and the wistful sympathy in the true violet
eyes.
“I am so sorry about Papa; I think it is shame-
ful of him,” she murmured.
“Don’t say that,” Landon replied. “I have just
sent him a message that the coroner has very nearly
persuaded me that I murdered Mandible in order
to enjoy the emoluments of his office.”
Stewart Rattray, whose shrewd eyes had been fixed
on the young clergyman's face, took a step forward,
and Winnie, rightly interpreting the movement, intro-
duced the two men. “You have been such a sphinx
about this case that I don't know what your real
opinion is,” she said to her cousin, “but I warn you
that Mr. Tressingham is my friend, and that if you
are not nice to him I will never speak to you
again.”
Never a man of many words, Rattray laughed
rather awkwardly. Then, as though to make amends
for any rudeness, he produced his cigar-case and
offered it to Landon. The latter, taken aback by
the silent and somewhat stilted courtesy, smiled
and shook his head.
“A thousand thanks, but I don’t smoke,” he
said.
Rattray, incorrigible smoker that he was, bit the
end off a cheroot and solemnly returned the case to


THE GATHERING STORM 85
his pocket. At the same time his manner, which
had showed signs of constraint, thawed into some-
thing like geniality.
“Ah, perhaps your late rector did not approve
of a clergyman using the weed,” he said lightly.
“No, it isn’t that, but simply that I never cared
for it,” Landon replied. “Poor Mr. Mandible had
no objection to smoking, though, for a similar
reason to my own, he never smoked himself.”
Winnie, who had been studying her cousin's
face during this little interlude, suddenly saw
Rattray's eyes snap fire, and she knew intuitively
that this was no interlude at all, but a main issue in
the game which the tracker of Thugs and Dacoits
loved so well—the sport of hunting, with man for
a quarry. But on which side had he ranged him-
self 2 Woe betide him if this apparently innocent
questioning boded ill to her lover.
It was Landon himself who unconsciously sup-
plied the opportunity for her to learn the disposition
towards him of that strong, silent tracer of mysteries.
Landon, accepting in a single-minded simplicity the
offer of a cigar as a sign of belief in his innocence,
was moved impulsively to say:—
“I think that you are both my friends. I want
to appeal to you for advice, for Heaven knows a
man was never less in a position to trust his own
unaided judgment. My brother has wired, offering
me the rectory of Maplehurst. What ought I to
do 2 ''
It was on the tip of Winnie's tongue to urge
acceptance, but with a maiden blush she checked
herself, recognizing what such eagerness on her part
would imply, But Stewart Rattray, a grim smile


THE GATHERING STORM 87
“On the contrary,” Rattray remarked drily,
“there's hardly any scent at all, and the fox, whoever
he is, has been particularly careful to obliterate
what little there was.”


CHAPTER XII
THE AGATE BUTTON
FTER leaving Landon to pursue his way to
the post-office to reply to the telegram, Winnie
walked for some distance along the drive at Stewart
Rattray's side in silence. His evident desire to cut
short the interview had impressed her with the notion
that his mind was at work on some problem, and she
was loth to disturb his train of thought.
In her girlish admiration, little less than Roddy's
hero-worship for the Indian man-hunter, she believed
that, Stewart's allegiance being secured, the estab-
lishment of Landon's innocence was as good as
accomplished. Her cousin's first words, therefore,
as they neared the house, came as a rude awakening.
“All at sea in a fog ' " Rattray muttered at last
half to himself. And then he added more directly
to his companion : “Don’t go indoors just yet.
Come into the rose garden. There is something I
want to show you.”
When they had taken possession of the seat on
which he had fought out his battle with himself on
Sunday afternoon, he drew from his vest pocket a
wooden pill-box, which, however, he did not imme-
diately open. He kept it in his hand, and surveyed
88


THE AGATE BUTTON 89
the green expanse of turf while he leisurely weighed
his words.
“You mustn't build too much on my help, little
girl,” he said presently. “I am more at home in the
jungle than in unravelling such a tangled skein as
this, and I imagine that there isn’t much time at our
disposal.”
“You expect that Landon will be arrested 2 ”
Winnie exclaimed with a catch of her breath.
“I’m inclined to hope that he will be,” was the
reply that set the girl's face aflame and brought her
to her feet all quivering with indignation.
“How mean of you !” she was beginning, but
Rattray compelled to silence with a masterful
gesture.
“Sit down and don't say anything you'll be sorry
for,” he checked her. “I like your curate, and
believe in him. If I desired his arrest it would only
be in his own interests. There seems to be a combina-
tion of malign influences working against him which
might be broken up if one of them appeared to be
in the ascendant.”
“You are so clever and I am so stupid, you must
explain; but, oh, dear, Stewart, I am so ashamed—”
“Never mind that, this is my meaning. Things
look so black against Tressingham that one is led to
suspect that they have been made to look black. But
the difficulty is that no one in his senses would have
incurred the enormous risk of killing Mr. Mandible
merely to get Tressingham into trouble. There must
have been a separate and distinct reason for wishing
Mandible out of the way, and the two have been
brought into harmony by a very subtle mind. Now
if the first of these objects appeared to have been


THE AGATE BUTTON 9I
such a set of buttons had been habitually worn by
one of our Maplehurst men I should certainly have
noticed it. But it doesn’t quite look the kind of
thing that a peasant would affect, does it 2 ”
“A little too showy and expensive, eh?” said
Rattray thoughtfully. “Well, if it should come
back to you where and when you saw that button
before you must lose no time in informing me. I
am not sure, but it may be that it is a clue to Mr.
Mandible's murderer.”
“Oh Stewart 1 * Winnie cried. “How grand of
you. Where did you find it, and what makes you
think that it is a clue 2 ”
“That is precisely what I cannot tell you,” was
the disappointing reply. “Not that I don't trust
your discretion,” Rattray hastened to add, seeing her
face fall. “It is that you might, if you knew, un-
consciously put the interested party or parties on
their guard by an unintentionally altered demeanour
towards them. But here come Roddy and the
Baron de Guerin. Shall I ? Yes, I will. I’ll
just ask them if they recognize the trinket, but with-
out letting them know the importance I attach to it.
That is a secret between you and me.”
Across the emerald turf of the rose-garden Roddy
was conducting the Baron towards their retreat, the
undergraduate's expressive countenance showing
the disgust he felt at having to be civil to one
whom he cordially disliked. In his youthful breast,
as well as in his sister's, the veto against walking
in Hartslock Wood rankled, and neither of them had
forgiven the Frenchman for stopping their ancient
privilege. Roddy had stumbled on de Guerin with his
father in the drive, and the Squire had bidden his


92 UNMASKED AT LAST
son find Winnie and take the visitor to her. Mr.
Bassett had not been aware that she was with
Stewart, and Roddy, on seeing his hero, brightened
visibly, for he had a shrewd inkling that the Baron
had desired a tête-d-tête.
If so, de Guerin was successful in concealing his
disappointment, as indeed he always was in masking
his emotions. After being rather ungraciously
received by Winnie he greeted Rattray with just
the right shade of cordiality for a man whom he had
only met once before, but who was a connection of
the family whose friendship he desired to cultivate
as a near neighbour. Then he admired the garden,
praised the view of the old Hall from that par-
ticular aspect, and hoped he might be permitted to
see the roses when in bloom next month.
Rattray, who had risen from the seat, listened
patiently to all this small-talk, joining in now and
again in the hope of getting an opening for what he
had to say. He had won his spurs in the art of
detection in fields where finesse counted for little,
in comparison with a quick grasp of details and
material clues; so, growing impatient, he took
advantage of a pause in the flow of airy trifles to
introduce his subject.
“By the way, do either of you wear fancy waist-
coats, and, if so, have you lost a button 2 ” he blurted
out inconsequently.
At the same time he produced the agate button
and held it up between finger and thumb for in-
spection. Roddy at once disclaimed all recognition
or knowledge of the somewhat “loud l’’ fastening.
He would not be found dead with such a bounder's
ornament on him, was his sprightly way of putting it.


THE AGATE BUTTON 93
But Rattray's gaze had not been for his young
relative, and he hardly paid any heed to his answer.
His eyes were glued to de Guerin's face with all
the tense concentration of a thought-reader, search-
ing for the flicker of an eyelid or the quiver of a lip.
He was rewarded with none of these signs, but only
with a blank stare of surprise, first at the button
and then at his own questioning face. Then the
Baron, in the most natural way in the world permit-
ting himself the faintest trace of a shrug at such
close scrutiny over such a trivial affair, showed his
white teeth in a rippling laugh.
“No indeed,” he said; “I possess no such
bizarre trinkets.”
Quietly, almost carelessly, as the words were spoken,
to be received ostensibly with equalcarelessness, there
was a gleam in the eyes of both questioner and ques-
tioned that flickered for an instant in swift thrust and
parry like the flash of opposing rapiers. But on the
Baron's side there was no exaggerated hostility in his
glance; it might have passed for the momentary
annoyance of a gentleman who has been worried
rather impertinently by a churlish person about an
insignificant matter that did not concern him. And
he was the first to abandon the contest, if contest it
was, by turning to Winnie with a remark about her
carnations.
Rattray replaced the button in the pill-box and
tucked it into his vest pocket, de Guerin evincing
no interest in his proceedings.
“He never asked me where I found it,” was the
reflection that was in the Indian officer's mind, to
recur many times during the day after the party had
broken up. “Which shows that he has a nerve of


94 UNMASKED AT LAST
steel as well as the cunning of the devil, or else that
he isn’t in the job at all. In which case there was
nothing remarkable in the queer look with which he
favoured me. For I must have seemed to him a
pretty considerable ass.”


96 UNMASKED AT LAST
The well-trained butler, who had been standing
at the sideboard, was at his elbow in an instant.
“Glenister,” said the Baron, “Mr. Mandible’s
brother is coming to lunch here to-day before the
funeral. He is all alone at the Rectory, and my
position here warranted the extension of some
courtesy to him. He is, I believe, the sole surviving
relative, and is also a clergyman, being the chaplain
at Wormwood Scrubbs prison. That is the jail to
which convicts are sent to serve the first six months
of their time immediately after sentence, is it not ?”
“That is so, Monsieur le Baron,” the old man
replied, a scarcely perceptible crease wrinkling
his clean-shaved lips.
“I wish my household to be strongly repre-
sented at the funeral,” de Guerin continued. “It
is the custom of the country to be civil to the clergy
alive or dead, and as the most conspicuous resident
in the parish I can make no exception. I shall
rely on you to see that the right selection is made
of those servants who will attend at the grave-side,
and also of those who will wait at lunch—with a
due regard to precautions which will occur to you.”
The old man appeared to reflect. “Has his
Reverence officiated long in the capacity of prison
chaplain, Monsieur 2 " he asked.
“For not more than eight years,” was the
reply.
“Then there is only Kinson in the house, doing
duty as under footman, whom it would be necessary
to eliminate from the ceremonies,” replied Glen-
ister, who was evidently a lover of long words.
“There are others, but like myself not of such re-
cent date. Also,” he added, his high pitched voice


CHAPLAIN OF WORMWOOD SCRUBBS 97
taking on a more intimate tone, “outside the
house there is the-er—head gamekeeper. Jasper
Lomax would hardly be a suitable mourner for
several reasons, I submit.”
The baron wheeled round in his chair and looked
up into the aged servitor's face, a sudden frown
giving place to a transient smile as he noted the
perfectly correct and respectful set of the aged
features, slightly tinged with a very genuine anxiety.
“How old are you, Glenister 2 º’ the baron asked
kindly.
“Nearly eighty, Monsieur, and with many ex-
periences of the same kind that Jasper Lomax has
merely scratched on the surface. It is therefore
not my fault if, as Monsieur has perceived, I have
read between the lines of Monsieur's dispositions
—those, I mean, that are possibly beyond the limits
of my own department. Pardon me if I exceed
my office, but I have always played the game, and
I should like to win under Monsieur's banner in
what will probably be my last professional excur-
sion.”
“So you shall win, Glenister,” the baron replied
warmly. “So you shall win, old man. And do
not fear about the precautions, or try to read too
closely the workings of the master mind. I may not
have your years or your experience, but I have
success, my good Glenister, to crown my efforts,
and you may have confidence that I shall make no
mistake. Lomax has been very fully instructed.
He will lie close in Hartslock Wood to-day, and so
long as it may be necessary. In fact he knows,
better than most, the reason for his seclusion. As
I see that you have guessed ?”
G


CHAPLAIN OF WORMWOOD SCRUBBS 99
face, sea of delights though it is, was eloquent of,
what shall we call it—suppressed irritation,” re-
plied the Baron suavely. “Due no doubt to broken
slumbers. But as it is the privilege of your sex
to splash around a bit after a bad night I sent
the old man out of hearing. He is as true as
steel, but a little shaky from old age. I do not wish
to have him worried with the belief—the quite er-
roneous belief—that there is a split in the camp.”
For two minutes the woman went on eating stead-
ily without replying. Then she pushed her plate
away and poured a little cognac into the cup of
black coffee at her side. Having swallowed it at
a draught she surveyed her companion with un-
friendly eyes.
“Look here, Henri,” she began, in a harsh voice
that was in rude contrast to her alluring charms,
“you have just placed that elegant finger of yours
on the weak spot of your entire programme. There
will be a precious big split in the camp, with ructions
to follow, if I am not to count. In fact I have
concluded to kick over the apple-cart if I mayn’t
go about with you and enjoy things. It's no fun
living in a medieval castle with a French Baron if
one can’t play up to it. I have always been on
equal terms before.” “So you are now,” replied
de Guerin, “except on the surface. I thought you
understood, when I brought you, that you would
have to lie low for a while till the foreign part has
to be worked. That is where you will come in—
where your peculiar talents will once again render
you invaluable.”
“I know all that, and you can save your breath,”
was the angry answer. “I was prepared to go any
105655B


IOO UNMASKED AT LAST
lengths if you hadn't got in tow with that Bassett
girl at the Hall. You can’t keep me from hearing
things, and seeing them, even if I am not allowed
to go about with you.”
“But my good Coralie, you are aware that it is
necessary to be on good terms with the neighbours
—to play the game right through.”
“Why can’t I help you to play it—as the Baron-
ess 2 ”
“I am afraid that you lack the qualifications, my
own. For which reason it was desirable not to
have ladies calling at the Castle, as they would
have done had it been published to the world
that there existed such a treasure as a baroness.”
“I agreed to all that—should have kept on agree-
ing to it if it hadn’t been for that mincing miss you're
sweet on. I know you, Henri,” the angry woman
scowled at him. -
The object of these aspersions sat polishing his
well-cared-for finger nails, then looked up suddenly,
all the veneer of cynical politeness gone from his
handsome face. It had grown as frosty as the
Northern Lights, and his tongue cut like a whip-
lash. Yet his actual words might have been those
of a bishop addressing a confirmation class.”
“It grieves me that you should have adopted
this attitude, Coralie,” he said. “It forebodes a
cleavage in our interests which, if persisted in, will
be final.”
The woman looked at him long and searchingly,
the anger in her gaze yielding to physical fear which
vented itself at last in a shuddering sigh. “I
understand what that ultimatum implies from you,
Henri, she said quietly.” “There is only one way


CHAPLAIN OF WORMWOOD SCRUBBS IOI
in which you would terminate our partnership if we
ceased to run together. There wouldn't be room
in the world for two of us with a “cleavage' about,
isn’t that it 2 ”
In a trice de Guerin's manner reverted to his
earlier one of breezily affectionate bonhomie, but it
did not deceive his hearer. It only meant that
he saw that he had made himself understood.
“My queenly Coralie ' What a horrible threat
to read into my plain statement of a regrettable
possibility,” he laughed. “But there, I see that
you intend to be nice to me again, and I can
therefore, talk business. I have a guest coming
to lunch to-day, who would not be likely to amuse
you—a prison chaplain, brother of the late Mr.
Mandible. You will not object to taking that meal
in your own apartments 2 ”
The lady, who was known at the Castle as Made-
moiselle Coralie Le Brun, fell in with this altered
mood and made a wry face. “A prison chaplain
no thank you !” she exclaimed. “I will certainly
go into strict seclusion for the occasion.”
So it was that the Reverend Joseph Mandible was
entertained in solitary state at luncheon by the
Baron de Guerin, and did himself so royally on the
sumptuous viands that he was well fortified for the
funeral. At the conclusion of that ceremony he
met his host at the churchyard gate and thanked
him warmly for his hospitality, and also for the
compliment of attending with so many of his
Servants.
The baron replied that it was a duty which they
all owed to the memory of one who had earned
universal respect, and whose death was a personal


IO2 UNMASKED AT LAST
loss to himself in spite of their brief acquaintance.
“All we can hope for now is justice on your
brother's murderer,” de Guerin added, turning
his eyes as if unconsciously to where Landon
Tressingham, who had assisted a neighbouring
vicar at the ceremony, lingered bareheaded in his
surplice and cassock at the grave-side.
The prison chaplain started as he followed the
direction of that significant glance, and for the first
time he regarded the Frenchman with a closer
interest than he had yet accorded to the profferer
of a casual courtesy.
“Justice doesn’t lie in that direction, Baron,
for all the appearances,” he said with con-
viction. “You can take my word for that, for
I have spent eight years in the society of male-
factors, and I will wager that that young man
is no murderer.”
The baron raised his hands in horrified protest.
“My very dear sir, you mistake me entirely,” he
insisted. “I intended to convey nothing so dis-
tressing. Yet I am delighted that your error has
drawn from you that assurance, for people are
saying ugly things about the future rector. By
the way, have you any sort of theory as to the
perpetrator and his motive 2" -
“None whatever, but that reminds me that I
must hurry off,” the chief mourner replied. “I
have an appointment with Mr. Stewart Rattray,
the relative of the Bassetts, who, as an eminent
Indian police-officer, is taking an interest in the
case. I believe that he has a theory which he won't
divulge. It is probable that he may return to
town with me to-night to test it.”


CHAPLAIN OF WORMWOOD SCRUBBS 103
“By what train do you leave 2 ”
“By the 9.5o express from Basingstoke.”
“Ah indeed Well, good luck to Mr. Rattray
and good-bye to you. If you have occasion to
come down again to wind up matters I shall be
charmed to put you up.”
With which, as the chaplain turned towards
the Rectory, the Baron raised his hat and struck
into the path leading across the meadows to the
Castle.
“Amiable, but, oh dear, how very indiscreet !”
he murmured to himself as he strode along. And
when he was out of sight of the crowd round the
churchyard he started running, such was his haste.


CHAPTER XIV
“A LITTLE BLANK ?”
HEN the surviving Mr. Mandible entered his
late brother's study at the Rectory he
found Stewart Rattray waiting for him. It was
their first meeting, for the chaplain had only arrived
the previous night, having been abroad on a holi-
day when the news of the murder summoned him
home. The appointment was the result of a note
sent by Rattray in the morning.
The two men, both students of “human docu-
ments’’ though in widely different fields, sized
each other up and mutually approved. Mr.
Mandible recognized in Rattray a silent force and
shrewd insight that appealed to his own more im-
pressionable nature, while Rattray saw in the
prison chaplain a conscientious devotion to duty
and a love of his fellow man, that had not been
blunted by his calling.
“It is very good of you to interest yourself about
my poor brother's death,” Mr. Mandible said when
they had shaken hands. “I gathered from your
note that you had formed a theory.”
“A theory as to motives—not as to individuals,”
104


Iob UNMASKED AT LAST
Maplehurst would cease, and the murderer would
be free to pursue his nefarious enterprise, what-
ever it might be, without risk or hindrance.”
The chaplain sucked vigorously at his pipe for
fully a minute, then shook his head decidedly.
“Ingenious, but too far-fetched,” was his com-
ment. “Maplehurst is hardly the sort of place
where crimes worth the incidental taking-off of a
harmless clergyman are hatched. But am I right
in believing that something tangible inspired this
theory—that you have, in fact, what you consider
a clue 2 ”
“A very vague one—hardly to be called a clue.
It is the merest germ, and one which, in common
fairness, I cannot disclose even to you at present,”
Rattray replied. And then, after a pause, he added:
“But I can make this suggestive remark—that
there has lately been a considerable influx of
strangers into the place, most of them foreigners
about whom nothing is known as to their past re-
cords.”
The Reverend Joseph held up his hands in partly
assumed horror “My dear Mr. Rattray !” he
exclaimed. “The household of a French noble-
man, with whom I had the honour to lunch to-day,
to be aspersed like this Surely it is preposterous
to suggest that he would engage his retinue of ser-
vants without due inquiry. Why, there were half-
a-dozen to wait on the two of us—all of unexception-
able deportment, and certainly none of them were
old parishioners of mine from the Scrubbs.”
“So de Guerin invited you to lunch at the Castle,”
Rattray mused aloud absently. And he pondered
awhile amid his smoke-wreaths. “That certainly


IoS UNMASKED AT LAST
the Hall, it was arranged that Rattray should come
over at nine o'clock and share the fly which Mr.
Mandible had ordered.
The chaplain escorted his new friend to the front
door, and Rattray had already started when he
checked himself and came back.
“We seem by tacit consent to have avoided
the ugliest aspect of the case,” he said. “Yet it is
no use blinking facts, and it is undoubtedly the
fact that many people are talking about young
Tressingham in this connection. I must confess
to having looked askance in that direction myself.”
Mr. Joseph Mandible made a wry face. “On
the evidence it was very natural that you should,”
he replied.” He was alone in the vestry with poor
Samuel, and no one else was seen to come out.
Yet he doesn’t strike one as the kind of—”
“The kind of person to commit a dastardly
murder for wordly gain,” Rattray broke in. “That
is true enough, though even a saint can back-slide
for sufficient inducement, I suppose. But what
chiefly influences me in favour of his innocence is
that, supposing he had been guilty, he must have
known before the deed that suspicion would point
to him. A clumsier crime could never have been
devised, but he would at least have had sense
enough to unbolt that outer door, to suggest the
escape of the murderer by way of the church-
yard.”
“Quite so,” said Mr. Mandible thoughtfully.
“The point is a good one. Yet that bolted door
is the root of all the mischief. I could see that it
had impressed the Baron de Guerin unfavourably
towards Tressingham. I couldn’t resist, kind as


“A LITTLE BLANK ?” Io9
he had been to me, giving him a bit of my mind
about it.”
Rattray's heavy moustache concealed the sudden
closing of his upper teeth on his under lip. “So
the Baron is in the anti-Tressingham camp 2 ” he
muttered as though to himself. “I wonder if by
any chance it was Tressingham who bolted that
door, in some mistaken notion that it would help him
instead of exactly the opposite. His brain must
have been in a whirl of conjecture at that moment,
whatever his guilt or innocence. He may have
lost his head and done a silly thing which it is too
late to put right. I’ll go and sound him.”
So, instead of returning at once to the Hall, Rat-
tray strode up the village street to Landon Tres-
singham's cottage lodgings. The young clergyman
had returned from the funeral and received him
with an eagerness that excited Rattray's pity.
Here was evidently a man craving for human sym-
pathy because he was beginning to find out that
he was a pariah, a social leper, to most of those on
whose friendship he should have counted.
“I have taken your advice,” he said, after vainly
trying to induce his visitor to take the easy chair
in the tiny sitting-room. “I accepted my brother's
offer of the living by telegram, and now here I have
a letter from the bishop raising no objection to the
appointment. I shall go straight through with it,
Mr. Rattray, relying on you to clear me, for that is
what it amounts to. A rector who is popularly be-
lieved to have murdered his predecessor would be
too much of a novelty, eh?”
He broke off with a nervous laugh that was almost
hysterical, and Rattray looked at him sternly, ap-


IIO UNMASKED AT LAST
praising his limitations. He was willing to help this
man for Winnie's sake, but it would be small con-
solation to think that his self-sacrifice had been
made in favour of a weakling.
“I am glad that you did not funk it,” he said
brusquely. “But having made your choice for
the bold course you must live up to it. I want to
help you, but I can’t do it unless you help me.
Why, after the verger had raised the alarm, and
when you were face to face with the dead, did you
shoot the bolt of that outer door 2 ”
Landon Tressingham's face of blank bewilder-
ment answered the question a good deal quicker
than his—“I don’t know what you mean. I did
nothing of the kind.”
Rattray, keenest judge of human physiognomy
accepted the manner of the statement rather than
the words. “Then answer me a couple of ques-
tions,” he snapped. “Besides Goodger the verger,
who was in the vestry with you after the discovery
till the police took charge 2 ”
“Only the churchwardens—Squire Bassett and
Farmer King, was the reply.
“Anyone else try to come in—from the church,
I mean, of course 2 ”
“On the first alarm the Baron de Guerin hurried
down the aisle to the vestry, but I would not admit
him. He stood by the door, looking in, for a con-
siderable time.”
“Thank you,” said Rattray briefly. “I won’t
worry you further. I am going to town to-night,
and I am rather pressed for time. But see here,
Tressingham. There's no disguising that you are in
a tight corner. You may be arrested any moment.


“A LITTLE BLANK ?” III
If that happens—what I want you to do is this.
Instruct your solicitor to employ a reputable pri-
vate detective—not one of the showy sharks—and
tell the fellow to unearth someone in these parts who
wears, or has worn, a waistcoat with agate buttons.”
“I will do that,” said Landon, accompanying
him to the door. “But what is the detective to do
when he has found his man—if he does find him 2 ”
“It will depend upon who the man is. I shall
step in then and post up the solicitor, but there are
reasons why I cannot myself undertake the search
actively,” was the reply. “Though,” added Ratt-
ray, “it is possible that I may stumble on the
wearer of the button otherwise than through his
waistcoat. Not a word of this to a living soul,
mind.”
“I can see that your suspicions are directed to
the real murderer—that you have hopes of clearing
me,” said Landon with a wistful gleam in his harassed
eyes.
“I have not the faintest suspicion of anyone who
could have struck the fatal blow, but hope never
does any harm,” was all the meagre comfort that
Rattray permitted himself to dole out.
He walked back to the Hall, and, having packed
his bag, dressed for dinner and went down to the
drawing-room, where he found Winnie alone.
“Do you know,” she said, advancing to meet
him, “I feel sure that I shall be able to remember
about that button soon. It has eluded me like a
phantom so far, but it is growing clearer and clearer
in my stupid brain, and it only needs some connect-
ing link to make it all flash back to me.”
“If, for instance, you met the man who wore it,


1I2 UNMASKED AT LAST
but dressed quite differently 2 ” Rattray suggested.
“Yes, or if I happened to be in the place where
I saw the button on him,” replied Winnie, looking
thoughtfully into the fire, as though she would
drag the secret from the coals. “There is just a
little blank in my mind, that wants to be bridged
over. That is all.”
“Well, if you can bridge that little blank, as you
call it, you will practically solve the mystery that
is worrying us,” said Rattray. “I am going to
London to-night on this business. Try and fog it
out, my cousin, before I return to-morrow.”
“Oh, Stewart, won't I just try 1” cried the girl.
“But yesterday you spoke as if it only might be a
clue. Now you seem postively certain.”
“I am—positively certain,” Rattray replied in
his blunt way. The sweet, questioning face might
have tempted further confidences, but it was de-
creed that at that moment the Squire and Roddy
should come into the drawing-room and on their
heels the butler to announce dinner.
Which interruption, undramatic and common-
place as it was, was pregnant with great conse-
quences. For the confidences remained unspoken.


CHAPTER XV
THE YELLOW MOTOR-CAR
ARRYING his bag, Stewart Rattray walked
over to the Rectory after dinner and found
Mr. Joseph Mandible ready for him in the porch.
The fly not having arrived, they strolled up and
down while they waited for it.
“This has been a sad and fatiguing day for you,
I fear,” said Rattray politely, after vainly offering
the other one of his potent cheroots.
“It has been both, and it would have been still
more depressing but for the Baron de Guerin's
thoughtful kindness in asking me to lunch at the
Castle,” Mr. Mandible replied. And, warming at
the recollection, he added : “What a cultured
taste he has Art, literature, botany, science—
all the graces of life at his finger tips.”
Rattray was interested. “I am surprised to hear
that,” he said. “I have hardly spoken to the
Baron, but I understand from my cousins at the
Hall that he is a mighty sportsman—sets store on
breeding pheasants, and all that. It is seldom that
the two things go together.”
“He did not allude to outdoor occupations at all,
113
H


THE YELLOW MOTOR CAR 115
The road to Basingstoke from Maplehurst ran for
the first two miles between high banks topped with
untrimmed hedges, and till it struck into the main
highway a mile from the town was little better than
a succession of country lanes, narrow and tortuous.
But the ground was level, and the horse being a
good one and the driver used to the road, the fly
bowled along merrily.
The junction of the great highway with the minor
cross-road was approached by a sharp curve, and
as the fly reached this bend Rattray suddenly sat
up and put his head out of the window. From a
little ahead of them a flare of light gleamed at the
top of the bank at the roadside, shining into the
fly and rousing the Reverend Joseph Mandible to
alarmed curiosity. He, too, sat up and demanded,—
“What is it—a rick fire 2 ”
“I don’t think so,” said Rattray, who had his
head and shoulders out of the window now. “Ah!”
he cried, as they flashed past the source of the light,
“there is a man on the bank burning a torch. Now,
what can that mean, I wonder 2 A signal that we
are coming along—to some one in the main road,
eh 2 ”
“Can't be that. We're not old-fashioned smug-
glers,” Mr. Mandible replied with sleepy jocularity.
“More likely volunteers doing a little amateur
soldiering, or, perhaps, a poacher telling his mates
that the keepers are on the lookout.” -
Rattray sank back in his seat, setting his teeth
grimly. He liked the Reverend Joseph Mandible,
but he had small respect for his perspicacity. Fear
had no place in the Indian officer's vocabulary, yet
he was conscious at that moment that he expected


THE YELLOW MOTOR CAR 117
débris of the vehicle had hardly settled down into
a confused heap of matchwood than he was
down among the ruins, where all was ominous
silence.
“Are you hurt, gentlemen 2 ” he cried, scarcely
expecting the response which came in a groan from
under the opposite hedge.
“All right, sir, I’ll light a carriage lamp if I can
find one not smashed,” he shouted, and as luck would
have it he put his hand on one almost immediately.
The groan proved to have emanated from Mr.
Joseph Mandible, who had been tossed as though
by an angry bull, but by a miracle hardly injured,
to the roadside. He recovered his wind and his
courage on being helped to his feet, and limped over
to assist the driver in his search for Rattray.
They found him lying unconscious in the thick of
the wreck, his face ghastly white, and his limbs all
twisted anyhow in the chaos of broken woodwork
and shivered glass. When they had lifted him
tenderly clear of it the driver knelt down and felt
his heart.
“He’s alive, sir, and that's about all,” was his
verdict. “Whatever shall we do with him 2
We're a mile from the town, and three from Maple-
hurst.”
“The horse seems all right,” said Mr. Mandible.
“You had better remove the harness and ride bare-
back into Basingstoke for another fly and a doctor.
I will wait here with him. Then we will take him
back to Bassett Hall.” :
“Right you are, sir,” said the driver. “But we'd
best lift him up into the field. That cursed car
might come back.”


II8 UNMASKED AT LAST
“I should think it would get as far as possible
from the scene of such an inhuman outrage,” said
Mr. Mandible, as he stooped to help with the injured
man. “Did you recognize the car as belonging to
any one hereabouts 2 ”
“No, sir,” answered the driver, taking his share
of the unconscious burden. “It was painted yel-
low, and there's no car in these parts that colour.
If it hadn’t been for that I should have said 'twas
the Baron de Guerin's, the Frenchy that has taken
Longclere Castle. It was the same size and build
as one of his, anyway.”
“Did you notice the number of passengers ?”
“There was two in her, sir—all masks and goggles.
No chance to recognize them. But the shover seemed
to steer straight for my old shandrydan. There
was room to clear, if he'd been sober, or had
tried.”
They found a gate a little way along the lane,
and through it they carried Rattray into a meadow
where they laid him down with their coats for a
pillow. Then, the driver having started on his
errand of mercy, Mr. Mandible sat down to his
solitary vigil. But the hoof-beats of the fly-horse
had hardly ceased to reach him from the distant
main-road when the driver's forethought was
justified.
From the direction in which it had gone the dull
bur-r-r of the automobile sounded, coming up the
lane at a high speed, but slowing down before it
reached the scene of the disaster, past which it
almost crawled. Then Mr. Mandible heard the
interchange of half a dozen muttered words, and the
car shot ahead at a great pace, and, turning into the


THE YELLOW MOTOR CAR II9
main-road, droned away in the direction it would
have taken had it not made this calamitous detour
into the by-ways—that is to say, away from the
town to which the driver was riding for succour.


CHAPTER XVI
A SECRET FACTORY
WEEK had passed since, on the day after the
murder in the vestry, the unpacking of
Jasper Lomax's strange consignment had ended so
hardly for John Hext's defenceless child.
Still clad in the green velveteens of an under-
keeper, but with her sex no longer a secret from her
nominal chief, Charlie stood at the long bench in the
old barn stooping over an oblong porcelain dish.
The dish was half full of liquid in which a sheet of
paper floated, and Charlie's occupation was to keep
the paper moving with a glass rod so that every
part of the surface should be equally affected.
She went about the business with a listless apathy,
which now and again drew a muttered curse from
Lomax when he spared a glance for her from his own
occupation of working on a slab of stone with a
series of very finely tempered tools. The girl’s eyes
were dull and sunken; her whole attitude suggested
sullen resignation, if not blank despair.
“Come, you, can’t you put a little more life into
your work 2 You'll never do any good if you don’t
take an interest,” Lomax growled presently, as
120


A SECRET FACTORY I2I
though irritated beyond endurance by his com-
panion's manner.
“This one is nearly clear now,” said Charlie in a
low monotone, without the slightest inflexion.
Laying aside his graving tool, Lomax rose and
inspected the contents of the dish. Faintly visible
on the sheet of paper were lines of lettering, partly
engraved and partly hand-written, but all, even
while he looked, fading from the soaked sur-
face.
“Yes, you are getting the trick of it, but you must
remember that constant immersion of every portion
is necessary to obtain a uniform result,” said Lomax
more affably. “I have to go out for an hour or two,
and I shall expect to find this sheet finished and
dried when I come back.”
Collecting the tools and materials with which he
himself had been occupied, he put them carefully
away at his end of the bench, after which he
unlocked the door of the building and went out,
relocking the door behind him. The moment the
sound of his footsteps had died away Charlie ran up
the ladder to the floor above, displaced a plug of
mortar in the wall, and peered out through a chink
in the ancient stone-work in time to catch a glimpse
of Lomax's tall form receding into the woodland
path leading to the Castle.
“He has really gone—it is no trap this time,” the
girl murmured, as she descended to the lower com-
partment and examined the floating sheet of paper.
A few more prods with the glass rod sufficed to clear
it of all traces of printed and written matter. Having
drained the liquid from it and washed it in clean
water, she placed it between leaves of blotting


I22 UNMASKED AT LAST
paper and mounted the ladder again. There were
signs, by the faint light that filtered under the eaves,
that this upper floor was used as a living room. So
in truth it had been since Charlie had refused to do
the bidding of her task-master, and by her refusal
had had her life secret laid bare. There was a rude
wooden table with some simple crockery on it, a
rush-seated chair, and a truckle bed in one corner.
The place looked like a prison, and it was one. John
Hext's daughter had been imprisoned there for seven
days.
Having nothing to do while the sheet of paper
remained between the blotting leaves, Charlie flung
herself on the bed and let her mind drift back into
the past. In that past her father, John Hext, the
coiner, loomed a cherished memory, and, in her per-
verted view of things, a figure to be revered as a
paragon of all that was most worthy. Familiar
from her earliest years with the source of his liveli-
hood, she had grown to think it no harm, because the
father she worshipped practised it. For any one
else to turn base metal into coin of the realm was,
in her opinion, a heinous offence. For her beloved
“Dad” to carry on the practice was all as it should
be. By some childishly abstruse reasoning she
had come to accept it for granted that her father's
private virtues condoned his public misfeas-
ance.
And perhaps it was not surprising that a girl brought
up as Charlie had been should regard the matter
from the personal standpoint. Mental poise was
hardly to be expected in the child of parents who
were respectively a professional criminal and a con-
firmed drunkard. Her father had earned her devotion


A SECRET FACTORY I23
by being at pains to hedge her in from all possible
contamination by the associations of his “trade.”
The concealment of her sex had been his principal
device for shielding her from the temptations which
would beset the daughter of a notorious criminal.
In the furtherance of his whim he had christened her
Charlie ; and, as soon as she was old enough to
understand, had explained to her that she was to
grow up to all appearances as a man. He had also,
when she was older still, told her why.
“”Tain’t in common sense,” he had said, “that
you and me can mix with nice folk, my dear, my
calling being what it is. If I was a chap in a book,
I’d be leading a double life and introducing you in
the toniest circles. Facts are different, and we
must make the best of it, seeing that your poor
mother stands for nought as a protection for you.
The boys in my set ain’t the sort I’d choose for you
to know at all, but they won’t be the danger they
would be if you was amongst them as a woman.
So we’ll keep you at Charlie in public and private,
and be as good as we can.”
And the secret had been preserved till now, in
the hour of Charlie's budding womanhood, Jasper
Lomax's ruthless hands had torn the veil aside.
The whispered words that had drawn Charlie's
stubborn refusal, exciting Jasper's wrath, had come
as a thunderclap to her, but, casting-about in her
mind for what “Dad" would have her do in the
emergency, she had chosen the better part.
For Lomax had in two sentences explained the
meaning of the contents of the packing-case. The
mysterious “pheasant-food * stood revealed as a
complete plant for the engraving and printing of


I24 UNMASKED AT LAST
bogus notes and bonds. The occupation of a game-
keeper was only a blind to conceal the nefarious
operations which were to convert the lonely cottage
in Hartslock wood into a manufactory of spurious
securities. Charlie had been engaged under false
pretences, but in the full belief that she would not
object, in order to assist in the manufacture.
The immediate result of her refusal, and its con-
sequent disclosure of her sex, had been her im-
prisonment in the upper floor of the old barn, where
she had remained unmolested till the evening of the
same day. Then Lomax had made her surrender
the only condition on which he would bring her
food, but she had resolutely declined to entertain
it. At the end of another day, finding her spirit
still unbroken, and that she was prepared to face
starvation rather than yield, her vile jailor had
adopted moral in place of physical pressure, using
threats so dastardly that he had terrified the poor
child into submission at last. Hardly understanding,
yet wholly dreading, the alternative held out by the
wretch who had her in his power, she had given a
sullen consent to render assistance. The object of
Jasper Lomax was gained, and for several days now
Charlie had been compromised as an aider and
abetter in the forgery of bogus bonds.
But though she was now legally liable to justice,
and as the daughter of a convicted coiner would find
a plea of compulsion hard to sustain, Lomax had
not restored her liberty. Whenever business took
him away from the keeper's cottage the girl was
always locked into the barn, where also for better
security she had to spend the night. The slightest
hint of rebellion was invariably quelled by a renewal


A SECRET FACTORY 125
of the diabolical threats that had gained her as an
unwilling recruit to the ranks of crime.
Her father, the one friend on whom she could
have relied in her sore distress, and whose quixotic
whim had indirectly led her into it, had gone to
penal servitude for fourteen years, and was powerless
to help, even could he be apprised of her trouble.
Yet during the past miserable days she had felt
an unutterable longing to communicate with him
and let him know. “Dad” had always been re-
sourceful, and might have found some way to
revenge and frustrate the base treachery of his
former comrade.
Charlie rose listlessly, to go down and take the
sheet of paper from the blotter. It was a foreign
government bond of a small denomination, whence
it was desired to remove all but the water-mark, so
that it might be reprinted with its face value enhanced
a hundredfold. But before descending to the ground
floor she went to the chink in the wall which she had
made in the first hours of her captivity, in the wild
hope that some one to whom she could appeal for
assistance would pass through the glade.
She would not dare to do so now that she was
herself a criminal, but the use of her spy-hole had
become a habit with her and she sought it as an act
of volition—without other expectation than to see
the good sunlight that was denied to her.
She saw the sunlight, but she also saw something
else that quickened her pulse and kept her eye glued
to the chink—the fresh healthy face which she had
smacked a month ago on the first morning of her
duty as an assistant game-keeper.
Roddy Bassett was leisurely crossing the clearing


CHAPTER XVII
THE SECOND AGATE BUTTON
HARLIE'S first impulse on seeing the young
fellow who had returned her rudeness with
such good-natured chaff was to call out and attract
his attention. She had often thought of him since
that morning when she had ordered him out of the
wood and prevented his too near approach to the
newly delivered packing-case. She felt confident
that she would not have to appeal for his assistance
in vain. He would break in the door, and she
would be free to make her escape from the wood
before Lomax returned.
But for two reasons she checked the cry which
rose to her lips, the chief one being the shame which
would overwhelm her at meeting again one who
had gone far towards guessing her secret. She
knew she would want to sink into the ground the
moment she stood before him in her male attire,
which now for the first time in her life she hated with
an intense loathing. The other reason was an
exaggerated sense of her guilt as a participator in
the criminal operations of Jasper Lomax. To invite
the breaking down of the door would entail the dis-
127


I28 UNMASKED AT LAST
closure of the real uses of the barn. She would be
handed over to the police to be brought to justice,
for no one would believe her story that she had
acted under compulsion.
Yet she looked wistfully at Roddy's healthy brown
face, and she was longing that she might have been
as other girls so that she might crave his help, when
all other resolutions and considerations were scat-
tered to the winds. Round the corner of the cottage
two huge mastiffs bounded, their eyes agleam and
their white fangs bared as they rushed fiercely
upon the intruder. In ten seconds they would be
mangling their as yet unconscious prey.
Putting her mouth to the chink, Charlie raised the
shrill cry—“Down, Grip ! Down, Tearer I Get
back to your kennels.”
The dogs, whose friend and companion she had
been during her few weeks of freedom about the
glade, knew her voice and obeyed instantly, slinking
back round the angle of the cottage. Roddy stood
looking this way and that in perplexity, evidently
recognizing the voice that had saved him, but in
doubt as to whence it came.
“Here, I say, young shaver !” he shouted at last.
“Where have you hidden your engaging person-
ality ? You might as well emerge from your ob-
scurity and be properly thanked for doing a base
trespasser a good turn like that.”
A wan Smile flitted across Charlie's features as she
saw that he had not the slightest idea of her where-
abouts. Roddy's wandering gaze had settled defi-
nitely on the upper windows of the keeper's cottage,
whence he had now concluded that the dog-quelling
voice had come. The girl had to exercise all her


THE SECOND AGATE BUTTON 129
self-restraint not to undeceive him, but still the false
estimate of her guilt kept her silent.
Boy-like, and he was little more than a boy, Roddy
essayed a taunt. “I shall be surer than ever what
I said a month ago was right,” he sang out to the
empty cottage. “Only a girl would play such a
silly game of hide-and-seek as this.”
But only the whisper of the breeze in the fresh
green foliage of the wood answered him. The artful
Roddy, in whose breeding on the mother's side there
was an Irish strain, dropped insult in favour of
blarney.
“Well, I do call this hard lines,” he called to all
points of the compass. “Here have I been risking
my life, and jolly near got gobbled up by those
ferocious brutes, all to renew my acquaintance
with the cheeky young vagabond who boxed my
ears, and he—or I should say she-will have nothing
to do with me.”
Ah, Master Roddy Bassett, your time as a wooer
of fair ladies was not yet fully come, but you were
trying your prentice hand to some purpose, for
that bow shot at a venture sent its arrow surely
home to the breast of the poor harassed waif in the
loft To Charlie's friendless ears the careless words
sounded like heavenly music. That this handsome
young gentleman should have given her a second
thought—to say nothing of having incurred personal
peril in order to see her again—was a beautiful and a
wonderful thing. Such generous remembrance must
be repaid in kind. Charlie threwcaution to the winds.
“I am up here—in the loft over the old barn,”
she called down through her chink in the ancient
masonry. -
I


I30 UNMASKED AT LAST
Roddy turned a puzzled stare towards the window-
less building, then approached it rapidly, to try the
door and find it barred against him.
“What's the game now 2 ” he shouted. “Why
don't you come out and behave decently to a decent
chap that means no harm 2 I am more than ever
convinced that this is a case of a mysterious prin-
cess—”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” interrupted Charlie, suf-
fused with invisible blushes. “I can’t come out to
you because I’m locked in.”
“Locked in An assistant gamekeeper locked
into an old barn in the middle of his beat 2 I’m
blessed if I understand,” exclaimed the bewildered
Roddy, trying to focus the voice of his unseen inter-
locutor. And then as an after-thought he added—
“Do you want to get out 2."
“No, I don’t,” Charlie faltered through her chink.
“At least if I did I should be in worse trouble than
I am in now. I wish you would go away, Mr.
Bassett. It would be the kindest thing you could
do.”
“Not me—not till I know a little more,” Roddy
insisted. “Unfortunately my cousin, who is a first-
class detective, got smashed up in a motor accident
last night, or he would have been at the bottom of
this in no time. So I must do it myself. What have
you been up to, to be locked in 2 And who did it—
the head keeper ?”
Now fearful as Charlie was, both on her own
account and Roddy's, that Jasper Lomax would
return and catch the trespasser there, she was loth
to lose what might be her last chance of communica-
tion with the outer world without an effort to utilize


THE SECOND AGATE BUTTON I31
it. Yet her difficulty was to achieve her purpose
and retain the good opinion—oh, how she valued
it !—of the scatterbrain undergraduate whom she
was rapidly exalting to the pedestal of a hero. She
sighed as she reflected that she could not possibly re-
concile those two objects without a considerable
deviation from the path of truth.
Another, and no less important, end to be obtained
was the prevention of any desire on Roddy's part to
return to the glade. She shuddered to think what
would be his fate if the gipsy-browed Lomax caught
the adventurous youth prowling about the secret
factory of bogus bonds, and though it cost her a
bitter pang to abandon all hope of seeing that bright
face and hearing that cheery voice again, she un-
selfishly addressed herself to the task.
“Yes, ’twas the head keeper locked me in,” she
admitted as though with reluctance. “Fact is I’ve
got the sack.”
“What for 2 ” demanded Roddy quickly.
“Letting him have some of my cheek,” replied
Charlie.
“I can understand that,” said Roddy drily. “It’s
a funny way to give any one the sack, though—
locking 'em in a barn. At this present moment I’m
rusticated from Oxford—which means the temporary
sack—but they didn't do it by locking me in my
rooms there. I had to do a bunk—right out of the
place.”
“So have I got to bunk,” Charlie continued to
pour her mendacious stream through the chink.
“But the Baron being from home Mr. Lomax can’t
draw my pay till to-morrow, so he locked me up to
keep me out of mischief while he went his rounds.


132 UNMASKED AT LAST
s-
Thought I might steal something and bolt, I
suppose.
“But you wouldn't have done any such thing,
I’m sure. You didn’t look at all that sort of er—
young person,” said Roddy, a note of real anxiety in
his tone.
“No, I’m not a thief, but Lomax was not to know
that, me having been with him so short a time,”
Charlie responded with great astuteness. She
dared not pose as an ill-treated victim, lest the
chivalrous Roddy should constitute himself her
champion and break down the door. On the other
hand, she clung tenaciously to his good opinion, and
would not admit as merited the aspersions which
her essay into fiction had compelled her to make on
her own honesty.
“Well, if it suits your book to stay there, stay
there by all means,” Roddy called up after ponder-
ing her answer. “But isn’t there anything I can
do for you when you leave to-morrow 2 Have you
anywhere to go 2 ”
“Oh yes, sir; I shall be off to London to my
people directly I get away from here,” replied
Charlie. And then, inspired by a tremendous idea,
she added—“There's one thing you could do for
me. If you would post a letter to my father telling
him I’m coming, I would never forget you.”
“That would be a consideration,” said Roddy
gravely. “Hand over the filial screed, and I’ll see
that it reaches His Majesty's mails.”
“I won’t keep you five minutes,” Charlie cried,
and she darted down to the lower floor, where the
office outfit of Lomax included a supply of writing
materials. There, as briefly as she could, she wrote


I34 UNMASKED AT LAST
A tapping on the inside of the door of the barn
distracted his attention, and, hastily slipping the
button into his vest pocket, he obeyed the sum-
mons. Charlie had tried in vain to pass her letter
through the chink in the loft, and had then bethought
her of the aperture under the door. There was barely
room enough, but she had succeeded at last, and
the envelope was lying free of the sill.
“I haven’t got a stamp,” came Charlie's voice,
muffled by the thick oak panels.
“All right, I’ll see to that,” Roddy replied, pick-
ing up the letter. “But here ! I say ! Your father
isn’t doing time, is he ”
For the letter was addressed to—“Mr. John
Hext, Wormwood Scrubbs Prison, London, W.”
“No, no, no 1 ° poor Charlie lied her last lie for
very shame; and then, as Roddy shouted his
cheery good-bye, she fell to weeping for her loneli-
ness, and because for the first time in her life she
had felt ashamed of her beloved “Dad.”


CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE SICK ROOM
HEN Roddy returned to the Hall his first
inquiry on meeting his father in the
grounds was for Stewart Rattray.
“Still unconscious,” was the Squire's reply.
“Doctor Metcalf says it is concussion of the brain,
and that he may lie like a log for days. Winnie
and the housekeeper are looking after him till the
trained nurse I have wired for arrives from town.”
“Any news of the infernal car that did the
damage 2 ”
“Not a word,” Mr. Bassett replied. “The police
can discover no trace of a yellow motor having been
seen within a hundred miles of the place yesterday.
It seems to have vanished as though swallowed up
in the earth.”
“We want old Stewart himself to solve the mys-
tery,” said Roddy sadly. The mishap to his hero
had hit the boy hard, and it had been in an attempt
to soothe himself by distraction that he had taken
his adventurous ramble in Hartslock Wood.
He passed on into the house, and, running up-
stairs, tapped at the door of Rattray's bedroom.
135


136 UNMASKED AT LAST
It was instantly opened by Winnie, who admitted
him without demur. The doctor had told her that
the injured man was sunk in such deep coma that
noise mattered nothing to him. Conversation
might be carried on in his presence, doors might be
slammed, and windows rattled with a beneficial
effect if anything, as sound might rouse him from
his stupour. The treatment was the circulation of
plenty of fresh air, and the frequent application
of cold water bandages to the temples.
Rattray lay face upwards on the bed, breathing
stertorously; but Roddy, looking down at the stern
features, rigid as graven marble, was surprised to
see them so little changed. Save that the wide-
open eyes staring at the ceiling were absolutely
expressionless, the famous tracker of Thugs and
Dacoits showed no outward signs of his injuries.
True, they might be concealed by the bandages that
swathed his brow, but there was a faint tinge of
colour in the cheeks, and the lean jaws had lost none
of their iron snap.
“Poor old boy ' " murmured Roddy, regarding
his wrecked hero with affection. “Doesn’t he ever
move, Brewster 2 ”
“Not a quiver in him, sir, except that half an
hour ago, when Miss Winnie entered the room,
I fancied that his eye-lashes flickered a little,” re-
plied the portly housekeeper from her place by the
bedside. “And now as there are two of you to
mind him,” she added, rising ponderously, “per-
haps I had better go down for my bit of lunch.”
Brother and sister had been left alone together
with the sick man for some time before Roddy re-
membered the agate button which he had found


IN THE SICK ROOM I37
outside the keeper's cottage, and even then he was
in no hurry to speak of it. He did not share Win-
nie's knowledge of the importance which Rattray
attached to the buttons in connection with the
murder in the vestry, and moreover the lad was a
little shy about talking of his visit to the forbidden
solitudes of the wood. More than ever convinced
that his doubts of Charlie's professed sex were
correct, he felt doubly bound by the promise he had
made on the first occasion not to make them
public, and he therefore decided to eliminate all
reference to the Baron de Guerin's mysterious
under keeper in narrating his discovery.
“I took a prowl in Hartslock Wood this morning,”
he began at last.
“Good boy, and braved the Baron's edict,” said
Winnie, who had taken the chair vacated by Mrs.
Brewster. “Did you have a row with the game-
keepers ?”
“I didn't see any of them,” Roddy was able to
answer with literal truth. “But, I say, Winnie ;
I found something that would interest poor old
Stewart if he could only take a squint at it. You
recollect that agate button he was trying to find the
owner of the other day ?”
“Yes, yes!” cried his sister eagerly. “What
of it 2 Do you know to whom it belonged 2 ”
“No, I don’t ; but I picked up its own brother in
a heap of cinders that had been thrown out of the
keeper's cottage. Here it is, all blackened and
burned, but undoubtedly one of the same set of
buttons.”
And Roddy held up his treasure-trove for in-
spection, and, obeying her unspoken command,


138 UNMASKED AT LAST
dropped it into Winnie's outstretched palm. Long
and fixedly she gazed at the scorched and useless
trinket, as though it were possessed of some mes-
meric force to which she was abandoning herself.
Then, suddenly, her brow cleared, and she looked
up brightly to meet her brother's wondering eyes.
“You have done a good morning's work, Roddy
boy ' " she cried joyously. “I cannot tell you how
or why just yet, because I promised Stewart. But
the moment he comes to I shall inform him of your
find, and then perhaps he'll take us both into con-
fidence. I really don't quite know the importance
of the button myself. May I keep it, to show him
at the earliest opportunity ?”
Roddy gave a willing assent, and shortly after-
wards left the room to go out and post the letter
which Charlie Hext had entrusted to him.
When he was gone Winnie carefully wrapped the
button in paper, and placed it on the dressing-table,
ready to be given to Rattray directly his senses re-
turned. And, more than that, she would be able
to impart to him the name of its owner, for the
circumstances under which Roddy had picked it
up had bridged over that “little blank” in her
memory which was all that she had needed to com-
plete the chain.
The second button had been found in the clearing
in Hartslock Wood, close to the house occupied by
the Baron de Guerin's gamekeeper. That fact, as
narrated by Roddy, had opened the cells of her
brain to the swift recollection that it had been on
the waistcoat of the Baron de Guerin's gamekeeper,
on the occasion of his ordering her out of the wood,
that she had first seen a complete set of agate but


IN THE SICK ROOM I39
h
tons similar to the two that had so strangely come
to hand.
She stole a glance at the silent figure on the bed,
and there was impatience as well as loving sym-
pathy in the glance. Stewart had hinted plainly
that the knowledge of the ownership of the agate
buttons would help him in solving the problem of
the late rector's murder, and here was the knowledge
available and her chivalrous champion was unable
to profit by it. It was an unkind shaft from Fate's
quiver that saddened and depressed her, for she
had met her lover in the village street an hour be-
fore, and the stolen interview they had dared to
snatch had filled her with apprehension. -
Landon Tressingham had begged her to let their
secret engagement drop—not that his love was less,
but because he had reason to believe that he was the
object of renewed activity on the part of the police.
Men in plain clothes were hanging about his lodg-
ings; his steps as he visited the parishioners
were dogged. Winnie had declined to be absolved
from her promises, and had done her best to revive
Landon's drooping spirits with hopes of brighter
days.
But here, by herself, in the solitude of the sick
room, she could not disguise from herself that the
frail bark that carried her happiness was in stormy
waters indeed. The pity of it was that there, insen-
sible and helpless, lay the strong, resourceful friend—
she had never been able to think of him as a lover
—who had been devoted to her service. Struck
down, too, on the eve of this discovery of Roddy's
that might have placed in his hand the very weapon
which he was seeking for Landon's defence. Tears


I40 UNMASKED AT LAST
were very near to the tender girl's eyes as she realized
the cruelty of the blow which unkind fortune had
dealt her.
Winnie's gloomy reflections were interrupted by
the entrance of Mrs. Brewster, to announce that the
trained nurse had arrived, and had gone to her room
to take off her cloak before assuming charge of the
sick-room.
“Seems a capable young woman, too,” added the
housekeeper, “which I expect is more than we are,
miss, with all the will in the world. Nurse Redfern,
her name is, and that’s about all she told me about
herself. Not one to talk, or to think too much of
her own comfort, I should judge.”
A minute later the door opened again, and a tall
young woman in a dove-coloured dress and the
frilly cap of a nurse came into the room—quite
noiselessly, yet without any ostentation in her
avoidance of sound. Her clear grey eyes seemed to
sum up the situation at a glance, passing over the
two amateur attendants with a gleam of kindly
greeting, and settling the next moment on the
patient in a long searching look that plainly said
that to her for the present Stewart Rattray was the
only serious business in hand.
She walked to the bedside, made a slight alter-
ation in the lie of the pillows and turned with a
pleasant smile to Winnie.
“I can safely release you from attendance now,
Miss Bassett,” she said in the hushed yet perfectly
audible tone which can only be acquired by a hos-
pital course. “I have read the note which the doctor
left for me, and I shall know quite well what to do
till he pays his afternoon visit.”


IN THE SICK ROOM I4I
“I am sure you will,” said Winnie, rising and
yielding her place. “You can’t think what a
relief it is to have one’s ignorance replaced by skilled
competence.”
There was a charm in the nurse's gracious person-
ality that attracted her, and, accompanied by the
housekeeper, she left the room, well pleased that
her cousin should be so carefully tended.
As soon as she was alone with her patient Nurse
Redfern, after adjusting the bandages, took her
clinical thermometer from the chain at her waist-
belt, and inserted it under Rattray's tongue.
When it had remained there the requisite time she
read the record on the instrument, puckered her
brow in a puzzled frown and, seizing the limp wrist,
pressed her cool, firm fingers to the pulse.
Then, drawing a long breath, she rose to her full
height and stood for at least five minutes looking
down at the motionless features and the steadfast
expressionless stare of the upturned eyes. And, as
she looked, she became conscious of a change in the
mask-like face of the victim of the yellow car—not
a change of movement, for not a muscle twitched,
but rather of colouring. The faint flush that had
been from the first noticeable in the bronze of the
rigid cheeks had slightly deepened under her scru-
tiny.
Nurse Redfern's own grave, sweet face took a
tinge of added colour, it might be from excitement
or annoyance or both, as soon as she was assured
that she was not mistaken in this phenomenon.
Stooping suddenly over the prostrate figure, she
laid her hand on the shoulder nearest to her and
shook it gently,


I42 UNMASKED AT LAST
“Mr. Rattray,” she said in her low, musical
tones, “you are no more unconscious than I am,
though it is very well done. What are you sham-
ming for 2 "


CHAPTER XIX
THE STORM BREAKS
Y the second day after the accident to Stewart
Rattray the most alarming reports as to his
condition began to be circulated in the village, and as
they emanated from the various members of the
family at the Hall there was no doubt as to their
authenticity. Nor was there any doubt that
Winnie and the Squire and Roddy believed the sad
news which they imparted to inquirers.
Doctor Metcalf had pronounced the opinion that
the patient might remain in a state of stupor for
weeks if he lived so long, and that if he escaped
with his life his brain would in all probability be a
blank as to the whole of his career preceding the
accident. He would have to begin all over again
like a little child, learning to know his own friends,
to read and write, probably even to acquire the
faculty of speech.
The inhabitants of Maplehurst were sorely grieved,
for the family at Bassett Hall was popular, and
moreover the rustic mind had felt a certain pride in
the fame of the Indian officer who had made a name
for hounding down evil-doers in Bengal. If he had
148


I44 UNMASKED AT LAST
won that name as a catcher of poachers nearer home
it would possibly have been a different matter.
Amongst the most assiduous of the inquirers for
the injured man had been the Baron de Guerin,
quite an army of his coroneted visiting cards collect-
ing on the table in the entrance hall. He usually
came in person, and on those occasions was always
closeted with the Squire for the best part of an hour,
contriving to time his departure so as to meet Winnie
in the grounds. His cordial anxiety for the patients
and his abstention from the gallantries that she
detested, went far towards reconciling the girl to-
wards him, and once or twice she had voluntarily
walked down the drive with him to the lodge gates.
The Baron's good taste prevented him from dash-
ing up to the house in his motor-car, when, as he
was at pains to explain, that poor fellow Rattray
was lying between life and death, struck down by
one of the infernal things. He was beginning, he
alleged, to think that motoring was a selfish form
of amusement, and he hinted that he had nearly
decided to give it up. In the meanwhile his great
chocolate-coloured Panhard waited always outside
the precincts.
On the fourth day after the establishment of Nurse
Redfern at Stewart Rattray's bedside Winnie started
at noon for the post-office, her excuse being the des-
patch of a telegram for her father, her real reason
the chance that she might see Landon Tressingham,
whom she had not met since the morning after Rat-
tray's accident. The new rector, having been for-
bidden access to the Hall by the Squire's orders,
was the only resident who had not been to inquire,
thongh he of all others was consumeb with a desire


THE STORM BREAKS 145
to know how it went with the shrewd brain that had
been going to help him in his dire need.
On leaving the grounds, Winnie struck into a
path across the meadows, which by way of the
churchyard constituted a short cut to the village.
She had passed through the lych-gate and was
traversing the gravel walk between the graves
when the sound of voices reached her. Looking in
that direction she saw, perched upon the boundary
wall whence a view of the vestry window could be
obtained, Inspector Maudsley, Constable Squarey,
and a burly man with a squint and a shock of
red hair, whom she recognized as one of the Baron
de Guerin's numerous imported retainers.
“That settles it then, if you're prepared to swear
as much, but I can’t guarantee that you won’t get
into hot water for not informing us before,” the
inspector was saying.
“I’ll swear it, mister, and I must chance the other
thing,” the man replied. “I was a fool to keep it
to myself, but I was fair frightened. Seems like
tempting Providence to accuse a parson of a thing
like that.”
“Well, it's good enough to apply for a warrant
on, and leave a jury to worry it out with Provi-
dence,” said the inspector. “I’ll get on and see
the Squire about a warrant at once, and we’ll have
his reverence under lock and key by dinner time.”
The heads of the three disappeared on the other
side of the wall, and Winnie, who had stood as
though turned to stone, sank down on a monument,
overcome with blank dismay. The policemen and
their witness had been too engrossed in their
business to observe her, or, if they had, in their
K


146 UNMASKED AT LAST
ignorance of her relations with Landon Tressing-
ham, they had not troubled to hush the voices
that had struck terror to her breast.
But Winnie was not the girl to take a blow lying
down, and in less than a minute she was on her feet
again, hurrying to the village. She knew full well
that her lover would not seek safety in flight, but at
least he should not be taken unawares by the police
when they came to arrest him. He should have
time to set his affairs in order, if he had not done so
already, and to arrange for his defence. And he
should have the bitter sweetness of her fond fare-
wells to sustain him in the ordeal he had to face.
This was no time for observing the conventions,
or for fearing her father's anger, and she meant to
go straight and openly to her lover's lodging and
ask for him. And as she sped up the lane past the
rectory she debated in her mind whether she should
tell Landon of the clue found by the unwitting
Roddy, which she had been able to carry a stage
further, but which was rendered useless so long as the
master mind that could piece it together and make it
effective lay obscured by stupor.
Alas, only an hour before Nurse Redfern had
told her that there was no change in Stewart Rat-
tray's condition, and that the longer he remained
unconscious the smaller grew his chances of recovery.
In these sad circumstances Winnie decided that it
might only raise false hopes if she mentioned the
agate button to Landon, and the importance placed
by her cousin on the discovery of its wearer. She
would keep her secret, at any rate till she had put
into practice a project of her own for carrying
on the work which Stewart had begun.


THE STORM BREAKS I47
As it happened, there was no need for her to seek
Landon at his lodgings. On turning out of the
rectory lane into the village street she met him, and
in a few breathless words she told him what she had
overheard.
“Let us walk back a little way along the lane,”
said Landon quietly. “You must be brave about
this, my darling, for I am rather glad that the
storm has burst at last. It will clear the air, and
the suspense was growing intolerable.”
“But surely it is as intolerable to be the victim of
a false charge sustained by the mouth of a false wit-
ness,” said Winnie, choking down a sob. “That
red-headed scoundrel can’t even think that he saw
anything, can he, Landon 2 ”
“Nothing that I have to fear, certainly.”
“Then you should have no difficulty, with the
help of a clever lawyer, in tearing his lies to tatters.
But oh, dearest one, it is all too horrible,
just as we might have been so happy. And papa
is against you, and poor Stewart, who would have
moved heaven and earth to help, likely to become
a human wreck if he lives.”
And for a minute—no more—Winnie broke down
and gave way to tears. In order to comfort her it
was on the tip of Landon's tongue to confide to her
what Rattray had enjoined on him to do in case of
arrest—to employ a detective to search for the
wearer of a set of agate buttons. But before he
spoke Winnie checked her weeping, and he held his
peace. He took the manly view that it would be
a meau thing to drag his plucky little sweetheart
into all the sordid details and intricacies of crime
detection. It would be time enough for her to know


148 UNMASKED AT LAST
of it when the end had been attained and he had
triumphantly weathered the storm.
Little did he think that she was, from very similar
motives, concealing from him her intention to pursue
the mystery of the agate buttons herself, and that
she knew more about it already than his private
detective would be likely to find out in a month.
Could he have but divined the secret project that
she was hugging to herself what a flood of protest
would have burst from him ' What a chain of
horror, doubt and catastrophe, involving the issues
of life and death to some, would have been snapped
there and then
But no subtle influence of thought-reading came
to the rescue to break down the barrier of unselfish
reticence between the lovers as they paced the
shady lane under the rectory wall, trying to com-
fort each other with vague platitudes. Their very
love held them apart, inasmuch as it silenced the
confidence which alone could have brought them
into line to face the foe together—the confidence of
the vital significance of Stewart Rattray's half-
solved clue of the button.
“There is one thing that I have remembered that
might have a bearing on the case,” said Landon
thoughtfully, after a pause. “On approaching the
church that terrible Sunday morning I saw a strange
youth among the graves. I had not seen him about
the village before, nor have I set eyes on him
since. He did not look otherwise than a harmless
lad, but I wish that I had mentioned it to Mr. Rat
tray.”
“It is too late now,” replied Winnie sadly. “I
cannot recall having seen any strange youth in


THE STORM BREAKS I49
Maplehurst myself, but I will keep my eyes open,
now that you have told me.”
So it was that, through Roddy's shy reluctance to
tell his sister of Charlie Hext, another valuable clue
was lost, and the deadly coil which blind fate was
weaving round the lovers was drawn closer. It was
as though some intangible force was hindering every
effort of a kindlier destiny to direct attention to the
denizens of Hartslock Wood.
Very soon Landon insisted on saying good-bye,
rather than run the risk of being arrested while Win-
nie was with him, and of providing food for village
gossip. It was a parting in which words counted for
little, in which even tears played but a trifling part,
but in which the eyes, eloquent of anguish, spoke all
there was to say.


IN THE BLUE DRAWING-ROOM 151
old and respected family, had no other course open
to it but to keep its clutch on the prisoner, in view of
the gravity of the charge against him and the direct
nature of the evidence.
The new witness who had come forward, Zebulon
Caunt, a stableman in the employ of the Baron de
Guerin, had sworn positively that he had seen the
fatal blow struck by Landon Tressingham. He had
climbed the churchyard wall to rifle a starling's nest
in a cranny, and from this post of vantage had
actually witnessed the crime in the vestry. He
seemed a stupid,superstitious creature,and explained
his delay in giving information by fear of being
mixed up in a case against a clergyman.
“I allowed as I’d have no luck if I peached on
un,” was all the chairman could extract from Mr.
Caunt.
“And what induced you to do so at last 2 ”
“I couldn't rest at nights for thinking of what
I saw. I know as I did wrong, but I 'ope your
worships will pardon a poor chap that was sore
frightened through no fault of his own.”
The prisoner not being represented on this occasion,
the witness was not cross-examined, and the remand
followed as a matter of course. -
But it was not Mr. Zebulon Caunt's evidence that
was bringing Landon Tressingham's sweetheart hot-
foot to Longclere Castle through the sultry haze of a
June afternoon. That lying tale would crumble to
pieces later, dastard fabrication that it must be,
when she had followed to its conclusion the clue that
had fallen from Stewart Rattray's helpless hands.
It was the business of the agate button that had
braced her nerves to an errand against which all her


I52 UNMASKED AT LAST
maiden pride revolted, but which must be performed
for Landon's sake.
A month ago, if any one had told her that she
would of her own free will go to Longclere Castle to
seek a private interview with the Baron de Guerin
after taking precautions that her visit should be a
secret one, she would have answered that person
rudely indeed. Yet now the stress of her lover's
peril had induced a humbler frame of mind, and she
had made a long detour into the country in order to
approach the detested interloper unobserved. She
had told no one of her destination, feeling that by
the success of her self-set task could her call on the
Baron alone be justified.
As it was, her heart almost failed her when, round a
bend in the avenue, she came into view of the ancient
castle, with its hoary Norman keep dominating the
whole noble pile. From the summit of the tower a
flag was flying, and as its gaudy folds caught her
gaze she saw also the figure of a man pacing to and
fro behind the battlements. The quaint notion
occurred to her that the Baron kept up feudal state,
with a warder on the watch-tower to herald the
approach of friends and foes.
The man seemed to catch sight of her almost at
the same moment, and Winnie half expected him
to blow a horn. Instead of that, the sparkle of
glass reflecting a ray from the westering sun suggested
that he was using a telescope, after which he disap-
peared for a short time. But he soon returned to
his post, and resumed his solitary vigil under the
folds of the flag.
“I suppose he is stationed there to enable the
Baron to say ‘not at home ' to undesirable


IN THE BLUE DRAWING-ROOM 153
visitors,” Winnie mused as she continued her way.
And with the vital importance of her errand weigh-
ing upon her she began to be anxious lest she should
have been placed in that category.
But no such disappointment was in store for her.
When she reached the great brass-studded door
under the main portico there was no hint of inhos-
pitality, for it stood invitingly open, and from the
dim half-light of the oak-beamed hall an old man in
the correct evening dress of a butler came forward
before she had had time to ring the bell. Winnie's
fluttering little question met with an immediate
and affirmative response.
Yes, the Baron was at home, and if Miss Basset
would come into the blue drawing-room, he should at
once be informed of her presence.
With a sigh of relief that her expedition had not
been in vain, Winnie followed the shrivelled major
domo across the entrance hall, and entered the noble
apartment,which she had not seen since the Tressing-
hams went into voluntary exile. The door had hardly
closed upon her when it opened again and the Baron
walked in, debonair and volubly polite.
“My dear Miss Winnie, how very charming of
you !” he murmured, bending low over her hand.
“Doubly so, because I am not vain enough to think
that you would so honour me unless there were some
service that I can render, and what pleasure that
will be ’’
Intent as she was on her mission, Winnie could not
fail to notice a genuine curiosity in the Baron's
greeting, which neither his smiling eyes or flowery
speech could wholly veil.
“Yes,” she said, sitting down in the chair he


I54 UNMASKED AT LAST
placed for her, “I did come over in the hope that
you would do something for me, Baron de Guerin—
or, rather, that you could do something for me; for
I am quite sure that you will if you can. It’”—she
faltered for a moment—“it has-it is connected with
the tragedy at the church, which has been making
us all so unhappy for weeks past.”
The Baron, who had remained standing, a pic-
turesque figure in his velvet jacket and knicker-
bockers, suddenly sat down in front of his visitor.
“Tell me,” he said briefly.
“Of course we begin from the starting-point that
Mr. Tressingham is innocent, in spite of the absurd
evidence of your stableman,” Winnie proceeded,
gathering courage after the first plunge. “My
cousin Stewart Rattray, who began by suspecting
him, is convinced of that, and, further, he obtained a
clue to the real murderer of the late rector, which
only his unfortunate accident prevented him from
following up.”
The Baron bowed. “That deplorable accident 1"
he exclaimed, with a gesture subtly conveying his
desire to brush the yellow motor-car from the face
of the earth. “And,” he added, after a pause, “is
it permitted to inquire the nature of the clue which
our clever, our highly talented friend procured 2*
“That is what I came to tell you,” Winnie went
on eagerly. “It was an agate button—the one, by
the way, which he showed you and Roddy in the
garden at the Hall. He was certain that if he could
find the man who wore a set of buttons like that he
would solve the mystery of Mr. Mandible's death.”
“Dear me ! And he was struck down before he
had run to earth, with that unexampled skill of his,


IN THE BLUE DRAWING-ROOM I55
the wearer of the button,” murmured the Baron, a
world of regretful sympathy in his almost tearful
eyes. -
“Yes, but I have discovered the wearer since
Stewart's accident : * cried Winnie proudly, her
fresh young voice rising in her excitement—“discov-
ered him by the merest trick of memory that would
have saved Landon from arrest if I could have
remembered it when my cousin showed me the
button. Baron de Guerin, the man who wore a set
of that pattern is in your employment. I have
come to you, unknown to my father and brother, or
indeed to any one, to beg you to help me trace his
antecedents, prove his guilt, and—I will make no
secret of it—save the man I love from further
subjection to this disgraceful and unfounded accu-
sation.”
The Baron did not answer immediately, but,
rising swiftly, rang the nearest bell. The old
servant who had admitted Winnie appeared so
quickly that he might have been waiting outside the
door. Winnie was too agitated now to observe him
closely. Had she done so she might have noticed that
the creases on his clean-shaved face had deepened
—that a quick interchange of glances passed between
him and his master.
“Send tea, Glenister,” said the Baron curtly.
“And stay a moment,” he added as the butler was
retiring, “I am expecting a friend this evening.
Have the oak room in the east wing prepared.”
“At what time does the guest arrive, Monsieur
le Baron 2 ”
De Guerin consulted his watch. In about an
hour,” he replied. “Instruct the servants to see


IN THE BLUE DRAWING-ROOM 157
“No, it is in Mr. Rattray's possession, and, as he
is unconscious, I could not obtain his permission to
bring it,” Winnie replied. She did not add that
she had the charred button carefully put away at
home, but had refrained from bringing or even
mentioning it for fear of dragging Roddy into the
business.
The Baron appeared to reflect deeply for fully a
minute, smoothing the sleeve of his velvet coat
gently with a ringed finger while he kept his eyes
fixed thoughtfully on the girl’s face. His train of
ideas was broken by the entrance of two liveried
footmen with a handsome tea equipage. When
they had set it down and retired he rose with an air
of decision.
“The best plan will be for me to send for Lomax
at once,” he said. “The fellow should be here by
the time you have had some much needed refresh-
ment after your walk, and we will cross-examine
him together. Possibly we may entrap him into
some admission, and so complete the work which Mr.
Rattray so ably began. But perhaps you cannot
spare the time 2 Your people will not approve of
your paying me such a lengthy visit * *
“I will make the time, and no one, as I said just
now, has the slightest notion where I am,” replied
Winnie eagerly.
“You are sure of that P*
“Quite sure. Papa has some strange prejudice
against Mr. Tressingham, and as he would have
disapproved of my interference I was careful to
cover up my traces. No one saw even the direction
in which I started.”
“Then,” said the Baron gently, “we will put


158 UNMASKED AT LAST
my plan into practice, and going to the door he gave
a rapid order, which Winnie did not hear, to some
one outside. “And now,” he exclaimed with a
cheery laugh, as he returned and busied himself with
the tea-table, “let us forget all disagreeables till
Lomax comes, making due allowance for the short-
comings of a bachelor's hospitality.”
Winnie, taking the cup that he brought her,
wondered at her former repugnance for this courteous
gentleman, who could be so generously helpful to a
girl who had been barely civil to him, and who had
suddenly sprung upon him such an unpleasant
complication.


16o UNMASKED AT LAST
out of his room further along the corridor on his way
downstairs.
“How is he to-night, nurse ?” the scapegrace
asked anxiously.
“About the same—no real change,” was the
soft-voiced reply.
“May I just have a peep at the dear old chap 2 ”
Nurse Redfern's pretty dove-coloured dress
rustled ever so faintly into the sick-room and out
again. “Just for a second, Mr. Roderick,” she said,
taking up the tray and carrying it to a table by the
window. “He hasn’t moved the fraction of an inch,
has he, since you saw him this morning 2"
Roddy tip-toed to the bed and looked piteously
down on the calm, unruffled face of his hero—
motionless as though carved from stone, with its
glassy stare fixed on the ceiling.
“Won't he get better, nurse 2 ” whispered the
boy with a catch in his breath. “He—he looks
the same as when he was brought home—just
awful.”
“I’m doing my best, but it is a very peculiar
case,” said Nurse Redfern, glancing significantly at
the tray.
“Wants her dinner, and no wonder,” said Roddy
to himself, and, taking the hint, he went away,
answering aloud—“We all know that, nurse. It
won’t be your fault if—if anything happens.”
As soon as the door had closed on him Nurse Red-
fern glided across the floor and locked it. When she
turned to the bed again Stewart Rattray was sitting
up in it, a grim smile on his face.
“In the tortuous course on which we have em-
barked, nurse, that goes against the grain more than


A TAP AT THE DOOR I6I
anything—I mean the deception of that youngster,”
he said, watching her as she manipulated the contents
of the tray, deftly dividing the viands thereon into
two portions.
“He will be the first to admire your motives when
you have achieved success, Mr. Rattray,” said the
nurse, as she set before her patient one half of the
meal. '
“You seem very confident about that success,”
said Rattray, falling to on his plate of roast chicken
with a relish hardly suggestive of an invalid.
Nurse Redfern went back to the table and sat down
to her own dinner, making an equally healthy
commencement before replying. “Well, yes; I
am confident,” she remarked at last. “I should
not have felt sufficiently interested in you to aid and
abet your well-intentioned fraud if you had not
seemed a capable person.”
“That is reassuring, and I may tell you at once that
without your co-operation my rapidly evolved scheme
would have been doomed to early failure,” replied
Rattray, with an appreciative glance at the dainty
figure in the window. “I had forgotten all about
the food question. I was already beginning to get
hungry when you arrived—on nothing but spoonsful
of beef tea administered through my clenched teeth.”
The pretty nurse held up a finger in mock reproof.
“You have satisfied your appetite, sir, at the expense
of my reputation,” she frowned at him. “What
they must think of me in the kitchen I blush to
imagine. Nurse Redfern's greediness in demanding
fare enough for two will remain a by-word in this
household for ever—unless you put me right at the
finish.”
L


I62 UNMASKED AT LAST
“I shall certainly put you right at the finish if
there ever is one,” Rattray replied gravely.
They had grown to know each other well, these
two, and knowledge had begotten a mutual trust
and liking, in the four days since the nurse had ap-
peared on the scene, to detect instantly what had
escaped the limited experience of the country prac-
titioner—the fact that Stewart Rattray's uncon-
sciousness was feigned.
For the victim of the yellow motor-car had partially
recovered his senses shortly after being placed in the
fly in which he was driven back from the scene of
the accident, and by the time he reached the Hall
had been very wide awake and alert indeed. He
had been on the point of making known his recovered
consciousness to the Reverend Joseph Mandible who
sat by his side, when he had perceived on his coat a
smear of wet yellow paint. The inference from that
smear caused him at once to relapse into a state of
seeming coma. -
For that inference was that he had not been the
victim of an accident at all, but, as he had suspected
on seeing the signaller in the hedge, of a cunningly-
devised and deliberate attempt to kill. The subtle
instinct of his craft had suggested that he could
best combat his would-be murderer by simulating
a helplessness that might induce his secret enemy
to play a careless game. His old jungle lore was
the germ of the inspiration. Does not the wounded
tiger often pretend to be dead, so as to tempt the
heedless sportsman within striking distance of its
claws 2
The determination had been come to on the spur
of the moment, without any working-out of details,


A TAP AT THE DOOR 165
pected that the arrest of Landon Tressingham
would spur him to re-commence his campaign, but
it left him unmoved, except that he had asked her
to glean all the particulars she could of what had
passed when the accused was brought before the
magistrates. He had listened to her report of the
fresh evidence tendered by Zebulon Caunt with
interest, but without excitement. She had said
nothing at the time, but she was a little disappointed
at his reticence. Having done so much to further
his scheme, she had hoped to be allowed to share
to some extent the probing of the mystery. She
felt that she deserved his trust.
Possibly Rattray saw something of this in her
face, for, presently, when she had made the dinner-
tray look as if it had only done duty for one, and
had placed it on the stand outside the door, he
beckoned her to his side. It was, of course, neces-
sary that they should always converse in the lowest
of undertones.
“You want to know my attitude towards this
Tressingham arrest,” he began. “No, don’t deny
it, nurse. I am getting to read you like a book.
Well, Tressingham is no more guilty than you are,
and his arrest is a perfect justification of the little
trick we are playing. It shows that the enemy
is growing active as the result of my supposed
impotence,”
“I am so glad ; the idea of a clergyman doing
such a thing was too horrible. But what I am
even more interested in,” Alice Redfern added,
“is when you are going to grow active. I imagine
that you do not intend to solve the puzzle from this
room, lying in bed 2 ”


A TAP AT THE DOOR 167
what occurred at the police-court this morning, for,
when I come to think of it, she didn't pay her usual
visit this afternoon.”
What could have been happening to Stewart
Rattray during the last few days, that he should
have to cudgel his memory as to Winnie Bassett 2
Could it be that a new influence was dawning, to
the displacement of the old master-passion that
had gripped him so long 2
He lay thinking for a while, and Alice Redfern sat
at the window, looking out over the rose-garden to
the distant woods. Suddenly she rose, and held
up her hand in warning.
“Hush ' " she whispered. “There is some one
coming along the corridor. You must be ready
to contemplate the ceiling again, Mr. Rattray, with
that well-conceived glassy stare of yours.”
The steps came on, stopped outside, and there
was a tap at the door.
With her graceful, gliding motion the nurse was
there in a second. “Well, what is it 2 ” she called
through the panel.
It was Roddy's voice that answered. “I have
been sent up to see if Winnie is with you,” said he.
“The governor is getting rather uneasy about her.
She went out for a walk early this afternoon, and
hasn’t turned up at dinner. We thought she might
be in there.”
“No, she isn’t here, and hasn’t been here,” replied
Alice, glancing nervously round at the bed. For
Rattray was sitting up, glaring at the door in blank
dismay, all his preparations for feigning insensi-
bility discarded in face of the boy's announcement.
“Thank you, nurse; then we must look else-


I68 UNMASKED AT LAST
where,” came Roddy's answer. “I expect she's
all right—stopped to see some sick person in the
village, very likely.”
With which his footsteps died away in the corri-
dor, and Rattray moved his horror-struck eyes from
the door to the nurse's face.


CHAPTER XXII
THE ALARM GUN
OR some minutes neither of the occupants of
the sick room spoke, Rattray busying his
mind with matters of which he alone could grasp
the full significance, while Alice Redfern, perceiving
the activity of his brain, was only too willing to
give it free play. She guessed, though she could not
know, that he attributed Miss Bassett’s absence to
the machinations of those whom he was pledged
to defeat.
That was indeed, the trouble that was vexing
Rattray's soul with self-reproach, and also with a
feeling of helplessness as to the steps he ought to
take. He blamed himself for not having confided
more fully to Winnie his reasons for regarding the
agate button as a clue, but far more harshly did he
bring himself to book for not having let her into the
secret of his feigned unconsciousness.
He suspected that the girl, rendered desperate by
her lover's arrest, had endeavoured to pursue further
the chance discovery by Roddy of a similar button,
and that in doing so in ignorance of the real meaning
of the clue she had met with foul play. The sur-
~


THE ALARM GUN 171
stern features in repose, silently wondering what
was passing behind that impenetrable mask.
“Nurse !” he exclaimed. “I must go out to-
night, and it must be your business to see that I am
not missed while out of the house. The Doctor
won't call till the morning, so that he has not to be
reckoned with. Refuse every one admission to the
room, and say that I have reached a stage in my
malady when disturbance might be fatal. And see
here, you are a clever girl, I know. I must have a
disguise. Something rustic—to make me look like
a poaching peasant.”
Nurse Redfern came to the bedside. “You
won't need to go out if Miss Bassett returns before
dark 2 ” she asked quietly.
“Miss Bassett won't return,” said Rattray.
“You think that she is another victim of the
gentleman who smears his motor car with yellow
water paint with a view to “accidents’ 2 ”
“I think it not improbable, in which case—”
“The poor child would be in deadly peril 2 Yes,
you shall have your disguise, Mr. Rattray, but we
must make it in this room. Given half an hour and
your oldest suit of clothes, I will engage to make a
poacher of you, so far as an appropriate costume
goes. But what about your face 2 ”
The patient smiled grimly. “You can leave my
face alone,” he said. “I have twisted it into some
funny shapes before now, when I have had to
go into native villages in the Punjab to bring
out some desperado to justice. I will manage
my face, Miss Redfern, if you will contrive the
costume.”
An hour later, in an old tweed cap daubed with


THE ALARM GUN I73
make a fresh start it was quite dark, and he was
able to pick up lost time by traversing the grounds
at a good pace. After climbing the boundary wall,
rather than risk leaving by one of the gates, he
crossed a succession of fields and so came to the
lands now rented by the Baron de Guerin. Another
half-mile brought him to the outskirts of Hartslock
Wood.
For Rattray's immediate purpose was to see, if
possible, what manner of people dwelt at the keeper's
cottage in the clearing where Roddy had found the
second button. He felt that he could be of more
use in that direction than in scouring the country-
side in a search for Winnie ; for he was convinced
that, if he solved the mystery of the vestry murder,
enlightenment as to what had befallen the missing
girl would follow as a matter of course. At present
he had no idea of the constitution of the head keeper's
household—whether he was a married man with
half-a-dozen children or a bachelor ; whether he had
any underlings living with him in the wood or not.
All he had heard was Winnie's irate description of
the keeper as “a black-haired brute" who had
ordered her out of the wood.
Till he could add to his limited knowledge on these
points there was not even presumptive evidence that
the button found by Roddy belonged to the Baron's
head-keeper at all.
The wood was enclosed by a hedge, with a ditch
on the side nearest the field, and, having found a
gap, Rattray climbed over and began to push his
way through the tangle of undergrowth. But he
had not gone ten yards from the hedge when his
knees pressed against a taut-stretched wire, and


I74 UNMASKED AT LAST
from somewhere close at hand there followed a loud
report.
“D—n ' " he muttered under his breath, the
infrequent oath dragged from him by the knowledge
that his expedition was doomed to failure from the
start. There could be no exploration of the keeper's
clearing for him that night, for the keeper would be
on the alert, and his assistants as well.
It was plain enough what had happened. The
wood was protected by alarm guns, one of the wires
of which he had sprung, and every watcher within
hearing would be already hastening to the spot. It
all depended how near was the nearest whether he
would be able to get away undetected.
His first impulse was to scuttle back to the hedge
and make good his escape across the fields—not
from personal fear of an encounter, but because
it was imperative that the secret that he was abroad
and active should be preserved. And yet, having
come so far, he was loth to lose all chance of results,
and reluctant to go back to his fair “nurse" with
a tale of total failure. Alice Redfern was beginning
to loom more largely on the horizon of this lonely
man than he would have cared to confess, and it
would be a pity if all that natty handiwork of his,
that had turned him into a ragged scarecrow, should
be wasted. And—yes—there was still a chance
that a crumb of information might be gleaned, if
fortune would only smile through the dense darkness
of the overhanging foliage.
He felt, rather than looked, for a suitable tree,
and having found one he swung himself up into the
branches with a faint reminiscence of having escaped
a tiger in similar fashion years ago. When there


THE ALARM GUN 177
the struggle. It seemed to Rattray at least sus-
picious that the keeper had known that he was having
a tussle with the policeman all along.
In which case the question presented itself:
Why should the Baron de Guerin's head keeper,
himself a guardian of law and order, have gone for
the constable on sight, taking it for granted that he
was hostile.
It was a nice point, which Rattray put away in
one of the pigeon-holes of his brain, mentally
docketed for further consideration.
Just now he was more concerned to pay heed to
what was passing below, for Constable Squarey's
next words riveted his attention :-
“I shouldn’t ever have heard the alarm-gun if it
hadn’t been that I was out searching for the Squire's
daughter.”
“Why,what's wrong with her?” came the keeper's
question.
“Do you mean to say you haven’t heard 2 ”
“How should I, when I haven’t been outside the
wood all day, and no one has been nigh my place 2 ”
“Well, she's not to be found nowhere,” rejoined
the policeman with the pomposity of his class in
imparting semi-official information. “Went for a
walk early in the afternoon, and didn’t come home
to dinner. Squire Bassett is in a fine taking and
sent word to me at once, but though there's been a
rare hue-and-cry for her these two hours past there
ain’t never a trace.”
“Humph 1 that's bad news, Constable Squarey,”
said Lomax in his quietest manner. “I’m in two
minds what to do about it. If it wasn't for this
blessed poacher who must be about somewhere I
M


178 UNMASKED AT LAST
think I should go up to the Castle and tell my master.
The Baron thinks a lot of Miss Bassett, it's common
talk among the indoor servants.”
“And it’s common talk in the village,” came the
constable's pat reply. “If it would be any comfort
to your governor to know the worst, Mr. Lomax, I
should go and tell him if I was you, for he's a real
gentleman is the Baron—nobleman I should say.
I’ve had two quid off him in the last fortnight for
doing nothing. He was terrible put out that that
stableman Caunt played the fool in delaying his
information against the Reverend Tressingham, and
wanted us, out of his good heart, to let the poor
softy down easy.”
“Master is wonderful generous,” Lomax assented.
“Yes, I’d best get up to the Castle and inform him
of this affair, for if Miss Bassett is to be found. he is
that clever I'll warrant he'll find her. 'Tisn't likely
that poacher will do any mischief after kicking up
the row. He'll have made off out of the wood, I’ll
wager, expecting some of our people to come along.”
“Well, I’ll get back across the field the way I
came,” said the constable. “Funny, our punching
each other like that, all over a trifling error, but no
offence, I hope. You might mention it to your
governor, that I was on hand, ready with assist-
ance.”
“I will see that you don't suffer, Squarey.”
The sounds below told Rattray that the amicable
interview, so strangely begun, had come to an end.
The policeman was heard blundering through the
hedge into the open, but the keeper stood his ground
under the tree for at least a couple of minutes.
Then a match flared up, and Rattray, craning for-


CHAPTER XXIII
THE SCREAM IN THE EAST WING
ATTRAY listened to the retreating footsteps of
the man whom the policeman had addressed
as Lomax, but he soon found that he was not yet
finally rid of the fellow. For some time the sounds
from the undergrowth told that he was searching
for the disturbed wire and re-setting the alarm-gun,
so that a quarter of an hour elapsed before further
footsteps and subsequent silence suggested that
Rattray might safely descend from his refuge in
the tree.
He knew that it would be useless to pursue his
original intention of exploring the region of the
keeper's cottage that night, as any attempt to pene-
trate further into the wood would cause a repeti-
tion of the alarm. But, as nearly as possible in the
dark, he located the place where he struck the wire,
so that if he decided to return in daylight he could
step over or cut it. Having marked the tree in
which he had lain concealed, he took his bearings from
it and clambered through the hedge into the field.
As he did so the distant church clock struck eleven.
Why should Lomax have expressed the intention
to the constable of going up to the Castle with the
180


THE SCREAM IN THE EAST WING ISI
-
news that Winnie was missing, and then have deli-
berately gone back into the wood to his lair 2
That was the question which tugged at Rattray's
brain with dogged insistence, yet failed of a satis-
factory answer. And the man's laugh—that un-
canny chuckling laugh in which he had indulged
after the stolid Squarey's departure ? Could it
have meant that Lomax, while inspiring a contrary
idea in the policeman's mind, had no wish for his
master to have early enlightenment about the trouble
at the Hall, and that he had no real intention of
bringing that enlightenment about 2
Or could it be that Lomax's private mirth was
due to having humbugged the constable for a
different reason, namely that he did not mean to
carry the news to the Baron because he had cause
to believe that the Baron was aware of it already ?
If so what could have been his motive in playing such
an apparently unprofitable prank on the police-
man 2
“In either, or in any, case,” said Rattray to him-
self, “I cannot go back and confront Alice Red-
fern's critical eyes with no report but that I have
been literally and figuratively “up a tree" all
the time. I will take upon myself the keeper's neg-
lected duty of informing the Baron of Winnie's dis-
appearance. A visit to the Castle might furnish a
compensating interest in exchange for the risk of
being recognized.”
But as he trudged over the fields he began to devise
measures for reducing the risk of recognition to a
minimum. There was a great chance that he would
be recognized if he went into the Baron's presence,
but he might find a method of satisfying his curiosity


THE SCREAM IN THE EAST WING 183
of ever having met any of the Baron's men, he had
every reason for confidence in his disguise.
“Say, gents, can I see the governor 2 ” he gurgled
in husky accents. “I’ve got a message for him from
Squire Bassett up at the Hall.”
“Come a bit nearer, sonny, and let's have a look
at you,” said one of the men quietly.
“I ain't much to look at,” replied Rattray in the
whining tone of a rustic with a grievance. “How
should I be when I’ve been sent all over the shop,
up hill and down dale, searching for a gal as ain’t
fond enough of her victuals to come home to dinner.
That's what brought me here. Squire's kind com-
pliments to your governor, and has he seed anything
of Miss Winnie this afternoon 2''
The first speaker, he who had flashed the torch,
took a step closer and peered into Rattray's face.
He was a bullet-headed, heavy jowled man, of a
thicker build than is usually associated with work in
stables.
“What is your particular line at the Hall ?” he
asked at the end of his prolonged scrutiny.
“Labourer on the home farm,” Rattray answered
without turning a hair.
“And your master gave you that message in
person 2 It isn’t a fairy tale of your own—just a
try-on for some beer * *
“The Squire, he sent me hisself,” was the only
reply open to Rattray without giving himself
away.
“Then, though it is very late, you had better
see the Baron,” said the spokesman, standing aside.
“Zeb, take him up to the Castle, and send in word
what he's come about. Don't forget to mention


184 UNMASKED AT LAST
that he was instructed by Squire Bassett personally
to make inquiries here !”
His companion, a tall hulking fellow with red
hair, whom Rattray set down as Zebulon Caunt,
the new witness against Landon Tressingham,
turned into the gates, beckoning Rattray to follow.
There was nothing for it but to obey, or at once to
confess himself a fraud by taking to his heels—a
course from which he shrank as too hazardous while
there were two possible pursuers to deal with. If
it was to come to an open rupture he would stand
a better chance of getting away undetected if he
made his bolt from only one of them.
And that he must break away before he came into
the Baron's presence, if he was to preserve the secret
of his identity, he was now thoroughly assured.
That the man who had done the talking at the yard
gate did not believe in his good faith he was con-
vinced. The spokesman had been very quiet, very
smooth in handling him, but there had been a me-
tallic ring in his snappy questions which suggested
that he was aware that they were eliciting lies.
And his parting injunction to his mate, to take care
that the Baron was apprised of his biggest lie of
all—as to the Squire having sent him to make in-
quiries—was more than ominous. In one way it
was satisfactory, as it tended to prove that he had
accomplished his chief purpose in coming to the
Castle—that was an explanation of Lomax's laugh-
ter. Lomax's hilarity must have been due to a
knowledge that the Baron was already aware of
Winnie's absence. The wielder of the torch must
have sent him up to the Baron, because he, too,
knew that the Baron had been informed, if in no


THE SCREAM IN THE EAST WING 185
other more mysterious way, probably by a previous
messenger from the Squire, or possibly by the
Squire himself.
In the latter case his own story was, of course, a
patent falsehood, for the anxious father would not
have sent two messengers on the same errand ; and
his interview with the Baron was likely to be
embarrassing, even if he were not recognized.
And the trouble was that the events of the even-
ing were surely convincing him that the course he
was taking in concealing the slight result of his
“accident’’ was very gravely justified, though he
was far from being in a position to court publicity
yet. In fact it might be fatal to his aims if he were
forced into a premature disclosure. The whole
fabric of suspicion which he had been raising would
topple to the ground before he had been able to
crown it with the coping-stone of proof, and the
cause he had espoused would be lost for ever.
To that cause was now added Winnie's myste-
rious disappearance—a fresh item in his self-set task,
which increased his anxieties a hundred-fold.
It was, therefore, with a wary eye for chances
that he followed Zebulon Caunt through the exten-
sive range of stabling into the shrub-girt carriage-
road by which vehicles were brought from the yard
to the portico entrance, whence, after taking up
their occupants, they would leave the park by way
of the broad avenue and the lodge gates. This
“service ’’ road was some two hundred yards in
length, and Rattray and his conductor had traver-
sed just half of it when they turned a corner into
view of the rear of the Castle.
Evidently the Baron's household was not given to


186 UNMASKED AT LAST
primitive habits in the way of going to bed early.
Most of the windows were brilliantly lit up, and
Rattray noted with a thrill of interest that the blinds
were not drawn. It was as though the tenant of
Longclere Castle announced to all and sundry that
in this great establishment all was open by night
as by day—and even more so. That, in spite of
characteristic French gaiety, there were no secrets
which prying eyes might not probe, or mysteries
which it needed curtains to veil.
A little further on Caunt diverged into a foot-path,
evidently with the intention of entering the mansion
at the back. The red-haired giant had taken but
two steps along this path, when from one of the
windows in a wing to the left there rose a most ap-
palling scream—half fear and half defiance—in the
tones of a woman at bay. Caunt halted in his
tracks, and in that moment Rattray’s instinct
drove him to action swift and violent as though
he had been in the Indian jungle with no cause to
count the cost. He drew a heavy army revolver,
and with the butt dealt his guide a blow on the head
that felled him like a bullock.
Then, his teeth set and his clutch shifted from
the barrel to the butt of his pistol, he raced for the
window whence the cry had arisen, only to fall back
in bitter chagrin before the scene which met his eager
gaze.
The apartment was a magnificently-appointed
smoking-room. The central figure in the grouping
was the Baron de Guerin, who stood with one hand
lightly resting on a Moorish table, while with the
other he calmly warded off the furious assaults
of a woman in evening dress. There was


THE SCREAM IN THE EAST WING 187
hardly time to notice the diamonds flashing in
her hair and the posy of hot-house flowers at
her heaving breast when the picture changed.
Three men, two of them in livery, rushed in and at
a gesture from the Baron flung themselves on his
beautiful assailant, quickly overpowering her and
bearing her from the room. De Guerin followed
them out, and peace reigned in the deserted solitude
of the brilliantly-lit interior.
Stewart Rattray fell back from the window,
mopping the perspiration from his brow.
“My God . I thought I'd found Winnie, and it
was only a domestic row,” he murmured, hardly
knowing whether to be disappointed or pleased at
the trick which his instinct had played him. But
he soon recovered his composure, seeing in the inci-
dent the chance he had been looking for to get away
unrecognized. Zebulon Caunt was still lying stun-
ned and senseless where he had left him, and escape
by way of climbing the park palings was easy.


CHAPTER XXIV
A MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE
T was an hour after midnight by the time Rat-
tray arrived under his window at the Hall
from his evening's adventure, but it was not till
past two o'clock that Alice Redfern was able to slip
down and admit him. The Squire and Roddy, she
told him as soon as he was safely back in his room,
had been concerting their plans for the morrow,
and had only just retired for a short sleep till day-
light should enable them to resume the search.
“And how has it gone with you ?” Alice asked.
“You don’t look as if you had had any better luck
than the rest of them 2 ”
“Worse, except that I have broken the head of
a lying scoundrel,” responded Rattray gloomily,
as he began to divest himself of his rags preparatory
to donning a dressing-gown. “Mix me a whisky
and soda, nurse, for I am about done, and while I
drink it I will tell you what happened. I’d give
fifty pounds for a smoke, but I mustn't show my
hand yet. I’ve done no good, but I think I have
satisfied myself that I am best on an imaginary sick-
list for the present.”
And, having made himself comfortable, he de-
188


A MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE 189
y
scribed his expedition to Hartslock Wood, his stop-
page on the outskirts of the wood by the explosion
of the alarm-gun, and his subsequent visit under
false pretence, to Longclere Castle.
His fair confederate listened gravely throughout,
and nodded with keen conprehension as he described
his disappointment over the violent scene he had
witnessed between the Baron de Guerin and the
handsome virago in the smoking-den.
“Am I right in believing that you would not
have told me so much unless you had meant to tell
me more ?” she said softly. “Come! perhaps the
mouse can help the lion, Mr. Rattray. You wanted
to explore the wood because you thought Miss Bas-
sett might possibly be detained at the keeper's cot-
tage, and afterwards you went to the Castle for the
same reason 2 ” - -
“You are wrong and you are right,” was the
reply. “Yes, I went to look for traces of Winnie
at the Castle, but I did not go to the wood for that
purpose, except indirectly. And,” added Rattray
with a quizzical glance that sat oddly on his stern
features, “you are also right in your surmise that
you are to be told all that there is to tell. This
thing, as it appears to me, shall be an open book to
you before I take a step further.”
And without any preamble he began at the
commencement with his arrival at the Hall on the
Sunday morning when he had found the village in
confusion and everyone in a ferment owing to the
murder of the rector in the vestry. Nor did he spare
himself in the recital. Having once embarked on
it he treated himself as a pawn in the game, and in
simple language confessed that he had been pre-


190 UNMASKED AT LAST
r
judiced against Landon Tressingham, even to the
extent of believing him guilty at first, and had
only consented reluctantly to modify that view on
finding that Tressingham was secretly engaged to
Winnie.
“I suppose you discovered that by proposing to
your cousin, Mr. Rattray ?” Alice Redfern inter-
posed demurely.
“Eh 2 What Yes, that was the way of it.
I had loved the girl since she was a child,” blurted
Stewart. “But how on earth—?”
“Never mind by what method I detected you.
And, having discovered this tender idyll by being
rejected yourself you at once set to work to clear
your successful rival 2 I am beginning to under-
stand you, Mr. Rattray. Now go on, please.”
And Rattray went on, rather diffidently after
such a disconcerting interruption, but gathering
strength as he proceeded by keeping his eyes averted
from the piquante young lady who had summed
him up so tersely. He tried to feel that he resented
her shrewd insight, but the alluring prettiness of
his fair critic, and her frank friendliness, kept him
civil and conquered an inclination to withdraw
into his shell.
He told how, having once decided to try to clear
Landon Tressingham, he had gone to the church
with Roddy and had inspected the scene of the
crime. He had discovered nothing materially con-
tradicting his original suspicion till he had opened
the old oak cupboard in which the vestments were
kept. He had at once been struck by a smell of
strong tobacco hanging about the surplices and
cassocks, as though it were possible that someone
:
*


A MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE I91
who was a smoker had made the cupboard a lurk-
ing-place, Of this he had later on been convinced
on ascertaining that neither the late Mr. Mandible
nor Landon Tressingham were smokers.
This was no clue, only a matter for future inquiry,
but on looking out into the churchyard through the
vestry window he had caught sight of the Baron
de Guerin engaged in making a diligent search
of the ground among the graves. On joining
him outside the Baron had alleged that he was
amusing himself by looking for footsteps of the
murderer, but not being entirely convinced by his
manner Rattray had commenced a search on his
own account after the Baron's departure, and had
found in the long grass an agate button, such as
might have been worn on a man's waistcoat.
“It was not much to go upon, of course, as it
might have had nothing to do with the Baron's
quest,” continued Rattray. “Still it was some-
thing, and pursuing inquiries on the assumption
that the Baron had been looking for the button, I
have met with a rather startling chain of circum-
stances.
“In order to test my theory I did what may
have been a rash thing. I took an early oppor-
tunity of showing the button to the Baron, so that
I might judge from his manner whether he was
interested in it. He is so fiendishly clever that
I did not gather much, but I think I may safely
say that he was stirred by the sight of the button
in my hands. The next link in this curious chain
was the “accident’ brought about by a disguised
motor-car while I was on my way to London with
the chaplain of Wormwood Scrubbs prison, the late
t


I92 UNMASKED AT LAST
Mr. Mandible's brother, to inspect the photographs
of convicted criminals. The Baron was aware of
my projected journey, and he has a car which in all
but colour resembles the one that did the mischief.
“You are making out a strong case,” Alice
Redfern murmured.
“But purely of suspicion. Well, now we come
to this horrible affair of Winnie's disappearance.
She was in my confidence as to the importance of
the button, but without knowing any details beyond
the fact that I believed the button to have been
dropped by the slayer of the late rector as he fled
through the churchyard. Her brother Roddy, who
knew that she and I were looking for the owner of
the button, but who was ignorant of our reasons,
stumbled on a similar button that had been defaced
by fire outside the gamekeeper's cottage in the
wood.”
“I begin to see the tangle. Roddy's discovery
was made after your supposed accident 2 ”
“You are quick to take the points, Nurse,”
assented Rattray. “Yes, the boy seems to have
been prowling in the wood the next morning, and
he informed his sister of what he had found and
where, here in this room, just before you arrived.
From Winnie's reception of the news I think she
then and there spotted the wearer of the buttons,
but as I was shamming unconscious she could not,
of course, communicate his name to me. Was there
ever such a fool as I not to abandon pretence there
and then and learn what she could have told 2 ”
But Alice Redfern shook her head at this self-
reproach. “I think I see that you had an excellent
reason for not doing so,” she said. “You wanted


A MIDNIGHT CONCLAVE I95
“My dear Nurse,” Rattray summed up his con-
clusions, “my whole case is that we have lawless
people to deal with, and that they have chosen a
quiet English village for the scene of their labours
because of its seclusion. I am also very much
inclined to doubt if the principal character in the
piece is a French nobleman at all. Now I decline
to say another word till we see what the morning has
in store.”


CHAPTER XXV
THE OLD HOUSE IN LAMBETH
HE morning had nothing in store in the way of
comfort. Winnie was still missing, nor was
there any trace of her to assist the diligent band of
searchers. The Squire and Roddy were afoot shortly
after daybreak, and, returning for a brief interval
to snatch some food, went out again immediately,
remaining out for the rest of the day. During the
morning the Baron de Guerin called in person to .
inquire if there was any news, and left messages
of the deepest condolence.
“Tell Mr. Bassett,” he said to the servant who
answered the door, “that I am having an organized
search made by my people in all my shooting coverts,
in case the young lady should have strayed into
them and lost her way.”
This was duly reported by Alice Redfern to her
patient, who perforce spent the hours in chafing and
fuming in his bedroom, having decided to keep up
his deception at least for that day, so that he might
make one more expedition after dark.
“That bears out my view that Hartslock Wood
contains the kernel of the mystery,” he said. “That
196


THE OLD HOUSE IN LAMBETH I97
smooth-spoken scoundrel only wanted to prevent
an independent search being made there, but I
shall certainly have another go at it to-night. I
must find the wires of the alarm-guns and cut
them.”
But by the afternoon post there arrived at the
Hall a letter which at first took the wind out of
Rattray's sails and entirely altered the complexion
of matters. The envelope was addressed to “Nurse
Redfern,” and its contents, which were dated the
same day, ran as follows:–
37, Kite's Lane, Lambeth,
London, S.W.
DEAR NURSE,
You are so kind and sympathetic that
I am writing in the strictest confidence to ask you
to do something for me. In the first place let me
tell you that I am safe and sound, having left home
of my own free will to try to prove the innocence
of Mr. Tressingham, to whom I am privately en-
gaged. My father would be terribly angry if he knew
what I am doing, so I am relying on your womanly
heart not to inform a living soul that you have heard
from me. I shall put an end to the suspense of my
friends at the earliest possible moment, but you,
dear Nurse, will understand that my lover's safety
must take precedence of all other considera-
tions.
What I want you to do is to look in my cousin
Stewart Rattray's pockets—probably the waistcoat
pocket that he was wearing at the time of his acci-
dent will be the one—for an agate button, and send


198 UNMASKED AT LAST
it to me by post to-night. It is an important clue
which Mr. Rattray was following up when he was
incapacitated, and I am doing my best, with every
prospect of success, to finish the work which he had
begun. He would, I know, approve of the course I
am taking. But it is imperative that I should have
the button in my possession.
Now do, dear Nurse, post it to me so that it may
reach me here by first delivery to-morrow, and say no-
thing to any one—not even to Stewart if he is better,
for I have reached a stage when only I can obtain the
needed proof. I am not heartless really, but I must
clear Landon, even if my father and Roddy suffer for
a few days. I have disguised my handwriting so
that no one may know that you have heard from me,
and to make it all quite secure please destroy this
letter directly you have read it, and address your
reply to Miss Sylvia Grey. If you do this for me it
will greatly curtail the time that I shall have to
remain away from home.
“Yours gratefully in anticipation,
“WINIFRED BASSETT.”
Shortly before the arrival of the letter the doctor
had paid his daily visit, and Rattray was still lying
on his bed after one more deception of that guileless
savant when Alice Redfern placed the communication
in his hand. Like most people when they are con-
fronted by an unknown handwriting he turned to
the signature first, but he showed no excitement
and read steadily to the end.
“What do you make of it 2 ” asked Alice
quietly.


THE OLD HOUSE IN LAMBETH I99
“That it was never penned by Winnie, but that it
is a try-on to get possession of the button—the only
material evidence against Mandible's murderer,”
was Rattray’s reply. “Is there a railway time-table
in the room 2 Ah, thank you.”
Quickly turning the pages of the guide she brought
to him, he found what he wanted.
“There is a train from Basingstoke at 9.2 p.m.
reaching Waterloo at Io.6. I shall have to make
that do, though it will be rather early to get away
from the house unseen,” he said. “As to getting
back unobserved, it will be simply impossible. There
is no train at all to-night, and none to-morrow that
would bring me down before people were about.
However, a little research in Kite's Lane, Lambeth,
ought to make further concealment unneces-
sary.”
“You expect to find Miss Bassett there 2"
“It is possible,” replied Rattray doubtfully.
“But what I do expect to find is some one interested
in securing that button, and therefore also interested
in keeping her out of the way. So that my journey
should have a two-fold result and eventually land me
on her trail.”
After that the hours passed slowly till it neared
the time when Rattray would have to slip out of the
house without attracting notice. On this occasion
extra precaution would be necessary, for, as he
was going to London, a disguise such as he had
worn on the previous hight was out of the question,
and he would have to go in his own proper
person.
Absorbed as he had been in his plans for probing
the mystery, he overlooked almost to the last


2OO UNMASKED AT LAST
minute the very awkward predicament in which his
loyal ally would be placed if his absence should be
discovered before his return. Even were he at
hand to explain matters and to assume responsi-
bility, there would probably be a fuss with Squire
Bassett, but if there were any hitch, and he were
detained, Alice Redfern's position would be intoler-
able.
And he was in antagonism, he knew, to desperate
men who would not stick at trifles if it came to
close grips. There was more than a slender chance
that he might never return at all.
It was the girl's quivering lip as he held out his
hand to say good-bye that reminded him that he
was leaving her all alone to bear the brunt of Heaven
only knew what contingencies. And in her zeal
for their common aim not a word of complaint had
escaped her He sat down and dashed off a note
to the Squire, omitting all mention of the assistance
his nurse had rendered him, and so wording it as
to induce the inference that he had given her the
slip.
“Look here,” he said, handing her the note, “if
I don’t turn up by noon to-morrow just raise the
alarm that I am not in my room and give that to
the Squire. No need to let on when you missed me.
If you say that you found that note on the dressing-
table they will imagine that you have only found
it that minute.”
“You won't incur unnecessary danger ?” fal-
tered Alice, her quick sympathy enabling her to
guess the reason that had prompted the note.
“Rather not ; my nerves were all broken up by
that motor accident, and I’m in much too great a


202 UNMASKED AT LAST
her had said, “ of her own free will.” A place
more calculated to strike terror to the heart of an
unprotected country maiden could not be conceived.
Even the Indian officer, with a six-chambered
revolver in his pocket, wondered what adventures
that shady by-way might have in store.
Kite's Lane, as he turned into it, was revealed
as of the same type as the street it sprang from, only
narrower and a little more sordid. At that hour,
half-past ten on a summer night, it was in the hey-
day of what it called “life.” Blowzy women
lolled out of windows and called to each other in
terms not always endearing; children played in
the gutter; slouching men lounged in doorways
with an air of waiting, as if it were as yet much too
early for such as they to sally forth on serious busi-
IleSS. -
Stewart Rattray could not well have found him-
self in surroundings differing more widely from
those amidst which he had won his spurs in police-
work—a filthy South London slum as contrasted
with the free starlight of the Indian sky and the
silent expanse of the jungle. But the instinct of the
born tracker was as keen here as there, and he saw
the necessity of not appearing, as in truth he was,
a very puzzled man. He walked up Kite's Lane
with a purposeful step and both eyes busy in quest
of No. 37.
He had to traverse the whole length of the lane,
for it was not till he came to the last house on the
right that the tarnished figures on a worm-eaten
door told him that he had found what he sought.
He discovered also that the lane was really a cul-
de-sac, ending abruptly in a blind wall. But what


THE OLD HOUSE IN LAMBETH 203
interested him most was that No. 37 appeared to
be quite unoccupied. It was a tall house of five
floors, and had evidently seen better days before
Kite's Lane had grown up around it; but from
basement to attic the windows were without
blinds, and all were in darkness. The area
railings were broken and rusty, and there was
not a whole pane of glass in either of the two lower
floors.
“Now what can this mean 2 ” murmured Rattray
to himself. “If my little friend Nurse Redfern
had fallen into the trap there would have been no
one here to receive the button when the postman
delivered it to-morrow morning. Perhaps the
writer relied on its being thrust into the letter-box,
though that is hardly likely. The odds against a
postman delivering at an empty house would have
been too great.”
He mounted the half dozen worn stone steps to
the front door, a quick scrutiny of which settled the
question. There was no letter-slit at all in the
worm-eaten, paintless door.
“Then there is to be someone here to meet the
postman as he goes his round,” was Rattray’s next
conclusion. “Standing on the top step, no doubt,
as though he belonged to the place, and ready to
take in the packet from the postman. I wonder
if anyone round here can tell me about this eerie
old crib.”
At that moment he became conscious that a
pair of very bright eyes were watching him from
the doorway of a small shop on the opposite side
of the lane—eyes set beneath a mop of shaggy grey
hair.


206 UNMASKED AT LAST
florin as he noted the quick scowl on the Hebrew's
pent-house brows.
“Thircumthtanthes alter catheth, my tear,”
exclaimed the fish merchant, pocketing the coin
and regarding his visitor more affably. “What
might you be wanting to learn about the rank and
fashion of the lane 2 Ain't a 'tec, are ye? But no,
you couldn't be that, with that great wiry mouth-
tathe.”
“No, I'm not from Scotland Yard,” replied
Rattray, dodging the truth. “I want some informa-
tion about that empty house opposite. How long
has it been vacant, and has anybody been looking
at it lately with a view to taking it 2"
The Jew pursed up his fleshy lips and affected to
consider. “Your firtht quethtion ith eathy
anthered,” he replied. “No man hath lived there
in twenty year to my thertain knowledge. About
the other matter I can’t take my davy. There
wath a feller hanging about the door only yester-
day, but I don’t think he went inthide, and he didn't
come here, like motht of 'em do, to arthk for the
key.”
“You have the key?” Rattray jerked out quickly.
“Not me; they only think I might have,” said
the Jew. “But what’th your little game about
No. 37, Mithter 2 Want to take it, and sublet it .
to a thcore of weekly tenanth at five bob a week
each 7 Coth if tho you can’t, my tear. The drainth
are all wrong, and the landlord aint got the coin
to put 'em right according to County Counthil
requirementh.”
“I don’t require it for residential purposes, but I
thought—I thought the house might do for a jam


THE MAN WITH NO LEGS 207
factory that I intend to start,” replied Rattray
with a deeper plunge into mendacity. He would
have known how to hoodwink a native in a Hindoo
village, but in the presence of this cunning-looking
Jew he was beginning to feel a little out of his depth
in a London rookery. And he had an uncomfortable
sensation that the shop-keeper did not believe a word
he said.
“There's money in jam,” remarked the Hebrew
cordially, as though to convey his pleasure that
commercial interests were not to clash. “And
jam,” he added with swift helpfulness, “ain’t got
no uthe for drains.”
He had propped himself up against his unwashed
counter, and as he delivered himself of this obvious
truism he beamed upon his interviewer with an
expansive benevolence that seemed intended to
invite further confidences. Rattray could not quite
make him out. There was an undernote of some-
thing very like sarcasm in his ready acceptance of
whatever he was told. Could it be that he suspected
that Rattray’s interest in the unoccupied house
was a hostile one, and that he had some secret reason
for throwing dust in his eyes 2 That would imply
a knowledge of, perhaps complicity in, the plans
which Rattray had set out to thwart; and it seemed
incredible that this petty shop-keeper, established
in Kite's Lane for twenty years, could be connected
with the Maplehurst mystery.
“Can you tell me the landlord's address, in the
event of my deciding to look over the premises to-
morrow 2 ” asked Rattray at length.
“That I can't, except that he liveth thomewhere
Brixton way,” was the reply. “But,” added the


208 UNMASKED AT LAST
Jew with a cunning leer, “if itth the key you're
after I can put you onto an eathier way than that.
All you’ve got to do ith to go down the area and try
the kitchen window. There aint no catch on it,
you'll find.”
“That would certainly save trouble,” said Rattray,
and by the light of the information thus tendered
he thought he divined the intention of the author
of the letter to Nurse Redfern. That unknown
individual was aware of this mode of access, which
would enable him to enter the house, unlock the
front door from within, and so be lounging in the
open doorway when the postman came round. It
would, Rattray saw, be an improvement on his own
idea that the person told off to receive the packet
would be hanging about outside, and absolutely
sure of success. Seeing the house opened up and
apparently occupied, the postman would have no
option but to tender the packet.
Rattray was curious to know whether the Jew
had given anyone else the wrinkle about the kitchen
window lately, but he checked the impulse to in-
quire. If the information had been imparted to
the writer of the request for the button it would
probably have been in exchange for value received,
and the vendor of fried fish would as likely as not
warn his first customer that there was a second Rich-
mond in the field.
And that would not suit Rattray's book at all,
for he meant to be inside No. 37 when the postman
delivered in Kite's Lane next morning. There
would assuredly be no letter addressed by Alice
Redfern to “Miss Sylvia Grey,” but that mythical
young lady's representative would probably be


THE MAN WITH NO LEGS 209
waiting for it. His disappointment would be almost
as interesting a study as would his identity.
Well pleased with the result of his inquiry, Rat-
tray was turning to go, when something prompted
him to ask the old man how he had lost his legs.
He, perhaps, thought that by casually striking the
personal note he might check awkward questions on
his real business and conceal his eagerness for de-
parture now that his point was gained. To his
surprise the reference to the missing limbs was in-
stantly and openly resented. The repulsive face
of the Jew worked with sudden fury, and he spat
viciously on the floor.
“That’th my buthineth,” he spluttered. “Who
are you to be raking up thingth againtht an honetht
tradethman. You’d betht leave such talk alone,
Mithter. My legth wath my own, I spothe, to do
what I liked with. If I chothe to sell 'em for catth-
meat it wath my look-out, weren't it 2 ”
“No offence meant,” said Rattray. “I had no
wish to call up unpleasant recollections.” And
deeming it wise to appease one who might hinder
his subsequent proceedings, if so disposed, he tossed
another florin on to the greasy counter and bade his
informant good-night.
On leaving the shop he walked away towards the
entrance to the lane, threading his way through the
brawling women and the brats swarming on the
narrow side-walk. But when he had gone a little
distance he practised a manoeuvre acquired by long
experience in the shady corners of the East—that
of casting a backward glance over his shoulders with-
out seeming to turn his head.
As he had expected, the man with no legs was at
O


CHAPTER XXVII
BEHIND THE IRON DOOR
ITE'S Lane, Lambeth, was not the kind of place
in which a well-advised gentleman would
consult a gold watch, and it was not till he reached
a broader and better lighted thoroughfare that
Stewart Rattray was able to learn that it was a
quarter past eleven.
His plan of campaign was to return to the Lane
as soon as its midnight amenities should have
simmered down, when he would enter Number 37
in the manner indicated by the Jew. He would then
conceal himself and wait till that mysterious
someone should put in an appearance to claim the
agate button from a postman who brought it
not.
But Kite's Lane, shy and retiring as it was, was
not the neighbourhood to simmer down till an hour
after the public-houses had closed, and there were
two hours to be spent before it would begin to
snatch its brief repose. There were two ways of
passing the interval—either for Rattray to go to
his rooms in St. James's Street, or to drop in at one
of his clubs.
He chose the latter course for two reasons. Arrival
211


2I2 UNMASKED AT LAST
at that hour at his rooms, to be followed by depar-
ture shortly afterwards in the middle of the night,
would demand explanations, whereas a look in at
one of the resorts where men of the world congregate
might serve a useful purpose—the solution of a
point that had been a good deal in his mind lately.
He was desirous of ascertaining if there really was
such a personage in the French aristocracy as the
Baron de Guerin.
A quick cab put him down at the marble portals
of the Peregrine, in Piccadilly—an exclusive in-
stitution whose members had all qualified by resi-
dence beyond the seas. On entering the smoking-
room, he cast a glance round and saw just the man
of all others who would be likely to possess the
knowledge he required. What the Honourable
George Darcy of the Foreign Office did not know
about the undercurrents of European society was
not worth knowing. Dapper in his dress, and with
a slender moustache waxed at the tips, Mr. Darcy
might have given the impression of being an ex-
quisite. But among his intimates he had quite
another reputation—that of a hard-headed diplo-
matist, who counted no item of fact or rumour too
trifling to be added to his equipment.
“Ah, Rattray,” he said, as his friend took a
seat beside him on the lounge where he had been
busy with an evening paper. “Back in town, eh?
We have missed you from your usual haunts
lately.”
“Yes, I have been in the country, with my
relatives, the Bassetts at Maplehurst. I want to ask
you about a man down there who has taken Long-
clere Castle.”


BEHIND THE IRON DOOR 213
Mr. Darcy cocked his eye at the speaker in a quiz-
zical grimace. “So you can’t let it alone, even when
enjoying a well-earned furlough,” he laughed.
“When the eminent hunter of men wants to know
things about someone living at Maplehurst it is odds
on the someone being mixed up in the affair that has
brought Maplehurst into unpleasant notoriety.”
But it was no part of Rattray's cue to make any
such admission. “On the contrary, it is a very
minor affair that I am trying to elucidate,” he re-
plied. “I was capsized and battered the other
evening by a motor-car, whose occupants made off
without stopping to apologize. That sort of thing
rankles, you know. I believe, however, that I have
spotted the culprit—one Baron de Guerin, a French-
man.”
Darcy sat up on the lounge and emitted a low
whistle. “The Baron de Guerin taken Longclere
Castle !” he said slowly. “Is he well fixed, as the
Americans call it—got money and an establishment
and all that ?”
“Oh yes, he has got all that in abundance, or
seems to have it,” Rattray replied. “There is
such a person, then, Darcy, in the French noblesse 2
That was the point I wanted to be clear on, for it
occurred to me that he might be an impostor, with
no right to the title.”
“The title is a bona fide one, and there is not the
shadow of a doubt that the person using it is en-
titled to it,” Darcy answered drily.
“And what might be the meaning of that cryptic
utterance 2 ”
“Simply, my dear fellow, that the Baron de
Guerin's title is an honour—save the mark— which


2I4 UNMASKED AT LAST
no one in the know would pick up with a pair of
tongs. If an adventurer wanted to pose as a French
nobleman in this country he would invent a new
name and title rather than borrow one which its
rightful owner has invested with about as evil a re-
putation as could belong to a man outside a jail.
Indeed it is only because of the Baron's devilish
cleverness that he did not land in chokey long
ago.”
Rattray's hungry eyes asked for more, and Darcy
went on to impart what he knew of the Baron's career.
It must have been a chequered one, according to
his astute historian. There was no long line of
ancestors to blush for the misdeeds of their descen-
dant, for the title was one of those prizes of infamy
which the third Napoleon tossed with lavish hand
to his pandars and financial parasites. The present
holder was the grandson of the first, the second
Baron having shot himself in the Casino gardens
at Monte Carlo.
“This chap was 'cuter than the others,” Darcy
proceeded, sipping the iced drink he had ordered.
“That is to say he knew his limitations, and only
used his pinchbeck aristocracy as a useful help to
living on his wits. His wits have enabled him in
turn to exist on the earnings of fashionable actresses,
on the more questionable ones of the leaders of the
demi-monde, and finally, so far as my knowledge
goes, on the proceeds of blackmailing the more
respectable admirers of his female friends. But
country life in England 1 The tenant of Longclere
Castle ! That is a new departure with a vengeance.
And you, you wily old tracker of human wolves, I
believe that you have one of those wiry fingers on


BEHIND THE IRON DOOR 215
the pulse of the mystery. Tell me, my dear chap—
did de Guerin kill the parson of Maplehurst 2 ”
Stretched on the lounge, and enjoying to the full
the flavour of one of those cheroots that had been
denied him so long, Rattray shook his head. “No,”
he replied. “I am sorry to repay you by tantaliz-
ing your thirst for information, but whatever the
Baron has done he did not kill the Reverend Samuel
Mandible—with his own hand, at any rate. But I
fancy he has done other things down there which
want looking into from an impartial standpoint,
and which may be bound up with the tragedy of
the vestry. Wheels within wheels, you know.”
“Such as running into and trying to smash up
the holiday-making investigator who was hot on
his trail 2’ suggested Darcy with playful insistence.
“But there ! it isn’t fair to push you too far,” he
added, as he noted the grim expression on Ratt-
ray's face. “You will tell me all about it as soon as
you want to, and that will be soon, enough for
me.”
The two friends smoked and chatted on indifferent
matters till Darcy got up to go; but Rattray stayed
on, allowing time for the inhabitants of Kite's Lane
to finish their nightly orgie before he returned to
that choice locality. When at last he passed
through the swing doors of the club out into the
quiet street it was an hour after midnight, and he
knew that he had waited long enough if he was to do
what he had set himself under cover of the brief
darkness of the summer night.
Dismissing the cab which he had taken, some
distance from the Lane, he loitered about till the
constable on the beat had passed into and out of


2I6 UNMASKED AT LAST
the narrow entrance, and then slipped in himself, to
find that the rooks had all gone to roost. At any rate
the filthy side-walks were deserted, and not a ray
of light came from the teeming tenements on either
hand. It was an easy matter to step light on the
garbage-littered roadway, and Rattray approached
the blind wall at the end of the Lane with every
reason to believe that he had been unseen and un-
heard. The shop of his Hebrew acquaintance was
shut up and in darkness, the only thing unchanged
in appearance through the length and breadth of
Kite's Lane since his earlier visit being the gaunt
house opposite the fish-shop, which wore the same
look of solitary decay, its unveiled windows resemb-
ling the eyes of a blind man who stared and stared
but could not see.
Rattray tip-toed down the area steps and found
that the Jew had not deceived him about the kitchen
window. Exerting an even pressure, he was able
to push it up noiselessly, and having climbed over
the sill he shut the window down again, to prevent
attracting the attention of the constable when next
he passed the house. Then he stood stock still,
wondering whether it would best conduce to his
purpose to remain in the basement or to mount to
one of the higher floors.
He had by no means forgotten the glimpse which
his backward glance had given him of the old Jew
in his doorway gazing at the upper windows oppo-
site. Nor had he forgotten certain peculiarities in
that worthy's manner, which had inspired mistrust.
There was at least a chance that the individual who
was to await the postman had taken up his position
overnight, and was in the house at that moment


BEHIND THE IRON DOOR 217
Rattray had no nerves and no fear. He had
stalked and captured, single-handed, a quartette of
the most crafty assassins in the Punjab. But in this
case anxiety on Winnie's behalf made him dread
taking a false step which would prematurely alarm
his quarry.
And then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the
gloom, he perceived that he was not wholly in dark-
ness in the empty kitchen. The gleam of a street
lamp threw enough light into the room to enable
anyone peering in from outside to detect his presence.
If the person he was waiting for saw him his plan
would be frustrated. And it was brought home to
him that at any moment the policeman on the beat
might supplement that feeble ray with a flash of
his bull's-eye. Yes, it would be better to go up-
wards out of sight of passers-by on the pavement,
and take the risk of meeting the mysterious someone
in the silent rooms overhead.
He removed his boots, and carrying them in his
hand stole up the kitchen stairs, which landed him
in the passage that had been the front hall in the
palmier days of the old house. The doors of all the
rooms stood open, and he peeped into them, only to
find the musty interiors without a sign of life, the
light from the street lamp being stronger up here,
than below, and enabling him to see quite clearly.
For that reason he decided to mount higher still,
and he trod lightly up to the first floor. Here dark-
ness reigned, absolute and profound, and he had to
grope his way.
He had a very keen sense of touch, and this soon
told him that here also all the doors stood open—a
fact of which he was doubly assured by the draught


218 UNMASKED AT LAST
from the broken windows in the front of the house.
He entered each room in turn, and having remained
perfectly motionless in each for a while, he was
convinced that there was no one on that floor. He
had listened for the sound of human breathing before
now in the dark and intense silence, and he knew
that there was no mistake.
So he climbed higher still, and here on the second
floor, where the windows were out of range of street
missiles, he was at once struck by a certain subtle
change of atmosphere—not wholly to be accounted
for by lack of draught, and quite indescribable
Yet his nostrils dilated as he sniffed it, and he in
tuitively began to feel his way along the landing
towards the back of the house, disdaining the open
doors which he passed, and which yielded no clue to
the sensation that had gripped him.
“It is a kind of an occupied smell,” he murmured
under his breath. “This floor, or part of it, has
been used as a dwelling recently, and more or less
habitually. There is a blended aroma suggestive of
civilization, quite out of keeping with Kite's Lane,
to say nothing of an unoccupied house. Ah! What
is this 2 ”
For his groping hand had suddenly come into
contact with a smooth, cold surface of metal, and
his fine sense of touch quickly assured him that it
• was an iron door, built across the passage and barring
his access to the rooms at the rear. The door was as
solid and impregnable to strangers as that of the
strong-room of a bank.
But, as his sensitive fingers ran lightly over it,
searching for possible knobs and projections by
which it might be opened, he drew back a pace,


BEHIND THE IRON DOOR 219
startled for once out of the equanimity that served
him so well.
From somewhere behind the iron barrier came the
unmistakable pop of a cork, faint but distinctly
audible, and quickly followed by a ripple of laughter
in a polished voice that he knew too well.


CHAPTER XXVIII
THE DOOR OPENS
ATTRAY'S first impulse on hearing that
laughter was to retreat into another part of
the house and conceal himself till the crucial moment;
but before he could put it into practice the iron door
swung slowly open. There, framed in a halo of
sudden light, stood the Baron de Guerin, bowing
profoundly.
“Do me the honour to step into my little
sanctum,” said the Baron in his smoothest accents.
“I have been expecting you, Mr. Rattray.”
Rattray looked past the speaker into the room be-
yond. Abottle of champagne, flanked by a couple of
glasses, stood on a silver tray on the table, but there
appeared to be no one there but the Baron. Rat-
tray took the bold course and accepted the invitation,
noting as he entered that the apartment was luxu-
riously furnished and lighted by hanging oil lamps.
He also noted that de Guerin, though he pushed
it to, did not quite close the iron door.
“That you have been expecting me is good,” he
said, glancing curiously about him. “We shall
begin by understanding each other. I confess,
however, that you commence with the advantage
220


222 UNMASKED AT LAST
“And I believe I also owe to that medium the
indirect invitation to call upon you which you were
good enough to send,” rejoined Rattray, adopting
the same tone of banter. It reminded him of the
preliminary flourishes with which swordsmen salute
each other before setting to.
“Yes, and the good Isaac went further than to
point out to you that mode of entry,” laughed de
Guerin. “He prepared it specially with a view
to that entry. For you will have begun to guess
that an unlatched window is not a normal condition
in the basement of 37.”
“I can understand that,” said Rattray more
gravely than he had yet spoken, for it was not pleas-
ant to the hunter of men to learn how simply he
had been induced to walk into this pretty parlour
among the cobwebs of the old house, where the
spider sat awaiting him. And he voiced a question
on which he was sincerely curious when he added:
—“I have still to learn how you fathomed my in-
tentions, so as to put all these hospitable prepara-
tions in trim.”
The baron sipped his wine and affected to consi-
der for a moment. Then he turned to his guest
with a winning smile that was almost sad in its
kindly sympathy. “Do you know, Mr. Rattray,”
he said, “I fear that I must really have hurt you
more than you thought when I ran my motor into
your fly the other night. Otherwise a man of
your renowned acumen would surely have seen that
you couldn’t come prowling about my country
house and assault one of my servants without giving
yourself away. That you were not really on the
sick-list. I mean.”


THE DOOR OPENS 223
Stewart Rattray for the moment wished himself
back in an Indian Jungle, tracking Eastern male-
factors. This suave Frenchman carried too many
guns for him. All too late he saw now that his
subtle antagonist had read between the lines of
the spurious messenger from the Squire to Long-
clere Castle the previous night, who had knocked
Zebulon Caunt insensible in the park. Possibly
his own modesty had prevented him from thinking
that that deed would be attributed to himself, but
Rattray felt that he had made a lapse that might
cost him his life. Yet he was not going to admit
that he was beaten while breath remained to him.
“Sometimes the end justifies the means, Baron,”
he said coolly. “The event will show whether I was
rash or not. Very probably I was, but anyhow it
is refreshing to play with our cards on the table.
Let us come to the point. You have, using your
own pretty phrase, invited me here, first by means
of a forged letter to Nurse Redfern, which you guess-
ed she would show me ; secondly by Mr. Isaac Levy's
fidelity as an outpost. What is it that you want 2
The agate button 2 ”
The Baron raised his eyebrows in polite but pained
surprise. For a moment the other thought that
he was going to profess indifference to the button,
but the time for such a crude device had passed.
“The agate button, Mr. Rattray ?” de Guerin
murmured with reproachful tenderness, as though
chiding a child or an invalid. “You surely are not
quite yourself yet. The havoc that a forty horse-
power Panhard can wreak in an analytical mind
in truly distressing. Why on earth should I want
the agate button when I have got you ?”


224 UNMASKED AT LAST
That mildly uttered answer sounded in its recip-
ient's ears like the pronouncement of doom, im- .
plying as it did that he would never again be free to
use the button as a hostile weapon. But it had a
significance more terrible still in the suggestion that
Winnie Bassett, who alone beside, but in a lesser
degree, could have made trouble with the evidence
of the button, was no longer to be reckoned with.
Rattray had all along attributed her disappearance
to the Baron, but it was none the less a shock to him
to receive confirmation that the simple country
maiden, who had been queen of his heart so long,
had fallen into the hands of this ruthless adversary.
Had de Guerin killed her already, he wondered, or
was pressure of another sort being put on his pretty
cousin to ensure her silence 2
As frankness was the order of the night he would
see what a plain question would elicit. Ignoring
the implied threat against himself, he said:—
“And I presume that you have got Miss Bassett
too. 2 ”
The Baron bowed a polite assent. “As you
correctly surmise I have got Miss Bassett too,” he
replied, adding after a moment's reflection :-‘As
you are in the toils yourself and powerless to hinder
my programme, there is no reason why you should
not be informed of it. In two days your charming
relative will have left England in a specially char-
tered steamer for South America, where within the
next three months I shall join her and make her
the Baroness de Guerin.”
“With her consent 2 ” asked Rattray quickly.
“She will consent when the time for our wedding
arrives,” was the reply, uttered with a sardonic





THE DOOR OPENS 227
Guerin had left it after admitting him. A rush for
it and a scamper down through the deserted floors
of the house seemed an easy way to freedom, but
just because it was so obvious Rattray mistrusted
it. That the Baron was well served by able con-
federates the events of the last few days had clearly
proved, and he had no mind to run into a lurking
ambush on the dark stairs, to be instantly over-
whelmed by superior numbers.
The Baron must have read what was passing in
his mind, for he said jeeringly:-"Why don't you
walk down and out 2 You have my word for it
that there is not a living soul between here and the
basement to stop you.”
Stung by the taunt Rattray's shrewdness failed
him for the moment, and he did not see that it was
intended to goad him to action. Resolved that if it
was to be an affair of thews and sinews he would have
it out with the Baron alone, he sprang forward to
shut the iron door, turning his back for one brief
second on his adversary. That slip was ill-advised
indeed. The Baron's hand stole quietly to the wall
at his side, and his finger pushed a porcelain knob,
like the button of an electric bell.
Directly Rattray touched the iron door he leaped
three feet in the air, and then fell, a quivering heap,
on the floor.


CHA P T E R XXIX
THE DOOR IS SHUt
HE shock which had paralyzed Rattray's
limbs and senses passed off almost as quickly
as it had laid him low. To his joy he found that he
had suffered neither in mind nor body, and by the
time he had sprung to his feet he had realized the
cause of his undoing. The iron door was connected
with a powerful electric battery, and de Guerin
must have switched on the current at the moment
his fingers came into contact with the metal surface.
He also realized two other facts of even greater
importance. The Baron had left the mysterious
apartment, and the iron door was shut fast. He
was alone and a prisoner.
It all seemed so simple now that it had been accom-
plished that Rattray cursed his own imprudence—
the more so as he had been within an ace of upsetting
the Baron's calculations. That astute schemer had
reckoned on his getting the shock while pulling the
door open preparatory to flight, whereas his intention
had been to push it shut, so as to have it out with
his opponent without interference. All too late
now he wished that he had taken the latter risk and
gone straight for his enemy, leaving the door un-
228


THE DOOR IS SHUT 229
touched. It might well have been so, and he would
have stood to win in the fray.
However, he was too old a campaigner to cry
over spilt milk, and he turned to the business in
hand, which must be to see what openings there were
for escape. The thing that puzzled him most was
that he was alive. His captor had plainly told
him that he would not leave No. 37, Kite's Lane
a living man, and he had had it in his power to
kill him, either by an extra turn of the electric
switch or by other means, as he lay helpless on the
floor.
The agate button | Yes, it must have been that
all-powerful lever that had saved him, and he re-
joiced that he had been cautious enough not to bring
it with him. If he had done so, and the Baron had
found it on him, he guessed that he would not be
standing there. It was comforting, on that night of
reverses, to be able to take credit for one act of fore-
sight. De Guerin must have counted on his not
allowing that important factor to go out of his
possession for an instant, whereas he had entrusted
it to Alice Redfern's care before setting out on his
perilous expedition.
But why had he been left alone in this luxurious
oasis in a London slum, with his faculties unimpaired
and all the will in the world to break out of durance 2
He had just walked to the window, to find, after
pulling aside the curtain, that it was heavily
shuttered, when an answer came from an unex-
pected quarter.
The bell attached to the private telephone tinkled
softly. He went to the instrument and placed the
receiver to his ear.


THE DOOR IS SHUT 231
“But how are you going to give me the satis-
factory guarantees that I should require 2 ” Rattray
put the tentative question.
“You are not in a position to demand guaran-
tees,” the telephone croaked at him. “I can kill
you where you stand—will do so if you don’t give
way, you fool. Where is the button 2 ”
“The button wouldn’t do you any good if you had
it,” replied Rattray. “I have advised Mr. Tressing-
ham to employ a detective to trace the wearer of
such a button as the best means of defending him-
self against the infamous charge of your false wit-
ness.”
“Bah!” came the Baron's sneer, faithfully
reproduced in the instrument, “a detective would
take months to piece together the chain of evidence
you and Miss Bassett have stumbled on by accident.
And then it wouldn’t be any use without you as a
witness to say where you picked it up. Once for
all, where is that button 2 ”
“I am not going to tell you,” was the reply.
The telephone was silent, and Rattray hung up
the receiver hastily, not knowing whether it might
not be made the means of his electrocution. Keep-
ing carefully in the centre of the room, he brought
all his wits to bear on his position. That he
would have to take some steps to escape was ob-
vious, for he could not remain there motionless
indefinitely. To do so would be to carry out him-
self the sentence of death passed on him. He
would first drop from exhaustion, and finally die
of starvation without requiring the assistance of
any of the Baron's ingenious contrivances.
Yet, as his gaze travelled round the room for the


232 • UNMASKED AT LAST
twentieth time, he failed to discern any loophole
or outlet which could be attempted without facing
the risk of that deadly current. In order to open
‘the window shutters he would have to manipulate
the iron bar that fastened them ; to try the second
door in the side wall he would have to lay his hand
on the brass handle; and he had already had
painful experience of the peril entailed by contact
with the iron door through which he had entered.
It was impossible to discover whether any of these
exits were practicable without touching metal that
might contain a fatal charge.
The idea occurred that, if he could only find the
wires through which the various objects were
electrified from the hidden battery, he might destroy
the circuit while keeping himself insulated. But
they had been too cunningly concealed beneath
the floor or in the walls to make the discovery with-
out tools, which he did not possess. To smash the
“push "with which the Baron had administered the
shock would avail nothing, as there would certainly
be the means of controlling the system from without
as well as inside the chamber.
The device was evidently not a thing of yester-
day, designed merely for his own destruction, but
a death-trap, thought out by wily brains and pre-
pared laboriously by skilful hands, to which de
Guerin could lure inconvenient antagonists who
were pressing him too hard, and so make away
with them. Rattray shuddered as he wondered
if he was to be the first victim of that gruesome
pair, or if he was only an item in a long list of
others who had crossed the Frenchman's felonious
path.


234 UNMASKED AT LAST
reach the instrument, and, without thought now of
the danger in touching it, placed the receiver to his
ear.
“You see what I can do to you now,” came de
Guerin's mocking voice. “And there are other
ways besides. Will you say where that button is,
and put it in my power to get it 2 ”
Rattray, the sweat pouring from his forehead,
swayed this way and that as he tried to school him-
self to reply.
“You have rather knocked me out of time,
Baron,” he said at last. “I am not quite in a
condition to decide with a head buzzing like a steam
hammer. Will you give me five minutes ?”
“Take ten if you like,” came the answer.
Rattray got back to the easy-chair and sat
down to consider, though he knew pretty well what
his decision would be. His request for time was due
rather to a vague hope that something might happen,
or some way pointing to safety occur to him, in
the interval, than to any doubt on the issue of his
deliberations.
For, apart from his conviction that the surrender
of the button would not make any difference to the
fate the Baron had prepared for him, there was
an insuperable bar to his disclosing its whereabouts.
It was in the possession of Alice Redfern, who was
holding it during his absence, and it would be a
poor requital of her loyal assistance to set the ruth-
less de Guerin on to her. That scion of the new
régime had a knack of clearing the decks of those
who held a key, however slight, to his misdeeds,
and to ask Alice for the button directly would hardly
be his way of procuring it. He would be more


THE DOOR IS SHUT 235
likely to take it from her by force without putting
questions that would compromise him.
No, not even to save his life could Rattray expose
to the Baron's methods the bright girl who had
been his companion in the sham sick-room. She
had given him her photograph on that last day that
they had spent together, as a reward, she had told
him laughingly, for taking her into full confidence.
He drew it out and looked at it now, a sigh of regret
escaping him at the thought that he should never
see that firm sweet mouth and those steadfast grey
eyes again.
There, in the hour of his peril, it first dawned on
him that if fortune had been kinder, and had kept
him from the trap into which he had fallen, Alice
Redfern might have brought to his seared heart the
consolation that it craved.
But such reflections savoured of weakness, and
he wanted all his strength, all his manhood, to
endure the ordeal ahead of him, and he laid the
photograph aside. Assuring himself that suspense
would be worse than the reality—that to die like
a rat in a cage would be a shade pleasanter than
sitting still and looking forward to it—he went to
the telephone and rang up.
The voice that answered him was not de Guerin's,
but that of Isaac Levy, the “outpost " of this
fatal man-trap, who kept watch and ward over it
from the fried-fish shop over the way.
“Well, Mithter, how are you getting on with
your jam factory 2” came the jeering question.
“Never mind that,” said Rattray sternly. “Is
the Baron de Guerin there 2 I am ready to speak
with him now.”


236 UNMASKED AT LAST
“The Baron had to go, but he left me power to
act, with full instructionth,” was the reply in the
wheezy tones of the Jew. “I was to inquire if you
are now willing to tender the information he de-
manded.”
“No, I am not willing, and that is my last word
about it,” Rattray retorted firmly.
“Then, as the Old Bailey black-caps say, may
God have mercy on your soul,” the mocking re-
joinder came from the instrument.
And immediately afterwards the weird puff-puff
of the unseen bellows recommenced, and Rattray
felt the cruel blast from it resume its attack on his
lungs and brain. This time the apparatus worked
faster, and with a stronger sound. Evidently his
decision had been accepted as final, and a second
respite was not to be granted to him.
How better could he die than looking into Alice
Redfern's honest eyes, even though they were but
the counterfeit presentments of those which his
fair young ally had turned on him, sometimes
in reproach, but always in the spirit of a true com-
rade 2
He took the photograph from the table where he
had laid it down, and, gasping now for breath in the
fumes of the deadly gas, held it under the light of
one of the oil lamps that depended from the ceiling.
“I wonder what she would say if she could see
me in this plight,” he murmured. “Or what she
would do. Could she do anything 2 Can I do
nothing 2 My God, but it is hard to die like this l’’
The inexorable pumping went on, and the ever
growing pressure clutched at his chest. Staring
at the calm face on the card he begun to dream of


THE DOOR IS SHUT 237
other things—of a midnight ride in Bengal years
ago, hot on the trail of a murderer with a record.
He could even feel his spurs tear the flank of his
brave Arab, and hear the clank of his steel scabbard
as he sped through the jungle


CHA PT E R XXX
A COUNCIL OF WAR
N the clearing in Hartslock Wood the keeper's
cottage looked the picture of dripping desola-
tion. The rain poured down in ceaseless torrents,
and the wind raged through the branches of the
encircling trees, raising wild music. The weather
had broken with a violent thunder-storm in the
night, and had now settled down into steady mis-
behaviour.
Through the turmoil of the elements, with an air
of despising them, the Baron de Guerin strode out
of one of the woodland paths and knocked at the
cottage door. The two mastiffs had met him at
the verge of the glade, but had wagged their tails
in friendly greeting, and had trotted off after a
word from the visitor. There was no answer to the
Baron's summons, and without wasting time he
walked across the yard, as though perfectly familiar
with the place, to the old barn at the back.
There he performed a more elaborate knock, all
short and long dashes, like, what in truth it was, a
private signal.
The narrow door was opened by Jasper Lomax,
239


r
A council of war 241
with instructions for a full dose of the deodorized
carburetted hydrogen, and I have had a wire from
Isaac this morning reporting that he has done his
duty. Rattray is out of the way for ever, but there
are other reasons for cleaning up here sooner than
I had intended.”
“It isn’t like you, Baron, to let a pretty face
stand in the way of business,” Lomax interrupted,
with a side-glance of professional pride at the
strange jumble of papers and tools on the
bench.
De Guerin flushed darkly, but he went on in his
smoothest accents—“My dear Jasper, you cannot
be expected to understand the Gallic temperament.
I have met, in this quiet English village, the flame
of a lifetime. It burns me so vigorously that when
we have raked in the shekels over this job I am
going to reform and live cleanly as an expatriated
French nobleman whose Napoleonic leanings have
driven him to exile in South America. But let
that pass. It brings me back to the cause of my
seeking you in this atrociously damp wood to-day,
and, incidentally, to the subject of our incubus
upstairs. Coralie has been playing the very
devil.”
“That was to be expected, as soon as she reckoned
on getting the chuck,” said Lomax gloomily.
“But she is not going to have the chuck, my dear
Jasper, till she has fulfilled her mission of planting
and realizing on the Continent those beautiful
imitations on which you have been engaged,”
replied the Baron, pointing to the stacks of engraved
paper. “Her fit of very natural jealousy has
passed, and she is restored to the belief that her
Q


242 UNMASKED AT LAST
reward of success will be the title of Baroness.
But in order to prolong that complacent frame of
mind in my dear friend it is necessary that Miss
Bassett should leave the Castle at once. I have
arranged for a steamer to take her abroad, but it
cannot be ready till the day after to-morrow.”
“Where do I come in 2 ” asked Lomax with a
scowl. “I didn't sign on as a lady's man, if you
mean that you want me to pacify Coralie.”
The Baron laughed with the good-humour of a
born leader. “Hardly that, my dear Jasper.
You are not quite my fair country-woman's style,
with all the respect for your undoubted talents.
No, I simply want you to receive another guest for
a couple of nights—take care of Miss Bassett here
till I can remove her to the coast.”
“She can shift the best way she can up yonder,”
said Lomax with a jerk of his thumb to the loft
overhead. “I won’t engage to entertain her, but
I'll take thundering good care she don’t get
out.”
“That’s the right spirit, my son. And now
for my scheme for shelving the inconvenient young
person in the loft. I will send over some female
clothes, and she must put them on, in readiness to
wait on Miss Bassett when she arrives. As they
are both actuated by unfriendly feelings towards
our confederacy, they will probably put their heads
together to effect an escape. So they shall, the
charming creatures, but it will be in a manner which
will place them aboard the steamer, thus obviating
the necessity for transporting a couple of refractory
women forty miles across country.”
“And the Hext wench will sail on the steamer ?"


A COUNCIL OF WAR 243
asked Lomax in a tone of relieved comprehen-
SIOil.
“The Hext wench will sail on the steamer with
her young mistress for the no-man's land, where I
intend to create a new kingdom of all the delights,”
the Baron replied with mock solemnity. “And I
will guarantee that by the time Hext père comes
out of jail she will of her own accord write the old
man that she wouldn’t exchange her lot for any-
thing. Thus, my Jasper, will you be absolved from
having brought the girl to harm.”
“Humph : It’s better than having Jack on my
trail for the other thing,” Lomax assented a little
doubtfully. “And it’s a long time off before he's
to be reckoned with. Yes, I don't mind taking
that risk, Baron.” -
“Then have the loft fixed up decently for Miss
Bassett, and see that the girl is properly fixed up
in the maid's clothes I shall send directly I get back
to the Castle,” said de Guerin. “Caunt and one or
two of the others will bring the young lady in the
brougham between midnight and dawn, when the
village is asleep. Arrangements have been made
tol Constable Squarey to look deeply into the wine-
cup, or rather the beer-mug, this evening. He is
the only prowler during the small hours in these
parts.”
“Besides the Baron de Guerin's gamekeepers,”
said Lomax grimly.
The two laughed a little, and then fell to talking
of other things—highly technical matters of great
interest to both of them, entailing the frequent use
of such phrases as “face value,” “payable to
bearer,” “gold bonds,” and “municipal stock.”


A COUNCIL OF WAR 245
at Maplehurst,” snapped Lomax, and he almost
slammed the door on his principal.
But the Baron laughed gaily at the little outburst
of temper, as he strode off through the dripping
wood.


CHAPTER XXXI
THE BARON TRIES A BLUFF
UT, for all the Baron's laughter, as he walked
homewards under the sodden skies, he began
to feel increasing qualms about the button which
had caused him so much preoccupation in the midst
of his scheme. Jasper's surly slap at his own
“entanglement” he dismissed with an airy
“pouf / " Yet the button was a flaw in the
beautiful mechanism of his plans, which, under
given conditions, might wreck everything.
He had good reason to have little faith in the
efficiency of detectives, public or private, but there
was the bare chance that the man whom Rattray
had advised Landon Tressingham to engage might
stumble on a clue from the slender data before he
himself was ready to ring down the curtain on the
gigantic masquerade at Longclere Castle.
The odds, as he had said, were a thousand to one
against it; but, though the Baron never shirked a
necessary risk, he avoided all chances where avoid-
ance was possible.
He would feel a good deal more comfortable if the
button which Rattray had picked up in the church-
yard could not, by any combination of circumstances,
246


THE BARON TRIES A BLUFF 247
be produced at Tressingham's trial, which, if the
prisoner were committed at the next hearing before
the magistrates, would come off before his great
coup was complete.
With the Baron de Guerin to desire a thing was to
try to obtain it, and turning the matter over in his
mind the button seemed by no means beyond his
reach. Not having been on Rattray's person, it was
pretty certain that he had bestowed it for safety
somewhere in the room which he had been occupying
at the Hall. Among the collection of expert ban-
ditti gathered in the guise of servants at Longclere
Castle was a gentleman who had elevated burglary
to a fine art. So far his talents had languished for
want of need for his services, but he should now have
his chance for justifying himself in a raid on Rattray's
bedroom.
Pondering on this plan, and not wholly satisfied
with it as somewhat crude of conception, the Baron
found that he had left the wood and was traversing
a stretch of high road which would shortly take him
past Bassett Hall. He had just turned a bend which
brought him in sight of the gates, when a rain-squall,
which had been increasing in fury for the past five
minutes, suddenly took the form of hail. On a piece
of waste ground at the road side a little ahead of him
was a farmer's wagon-shed, and to this the Baron
ran for shelter.
The moment he crossed the threshold he changed
his mind about employing his professional burglar.
The stress of the elements had brought him face to
face with a plan far more congenial to his subtle mind.
With a flourish he took off his hat to it, and,
incidentally, to its fair embodiment, Alice Redfern,


248 UNMASKED AT LAST
who was also apparently sheltering from the storm.
“Wretched weather " " de Guerin began affably,
as to a stranger in whom he took no particular
interest. Then, as his mind seemed to assimilate
the grey cloak and nurse's bonnet, he gave a visible
start and exclaimed—“You must be the nurse who
has been in attendance upon Mr. Rattray at Squire
Bassett’s 2 ”
“Yes, sir,” said Alice demurely.
“And how is Mr. Rattray this morning 2 ” the
Baron inquired with every show of kindly, if
slightly patronizing, interest.
“He is much the same, sir, thank you. He had
a very uncomfortable night, but he is certainly no
worse,” was the reply, which caused de Guerin to
draw back and straighten himself for a moment.
But a glance satisfied him that there was no hidden
meaning in a statement so singularly near the truth
in part, yet to his certain knowledge so false in the
main. He laughed rather unpleasantly.
“Do you know, nurse, that you are an extremely
untruthful young person,” he said. “I am in two
minds what to do about you.”
“Indeed, sir! And what, pray, gives you the
right to insult 2 ”
“Ta, ta, ta " '' the Baron checked her. “No use
to ride the high horse, my girl. The fact is I am
fully cognisant of the gross deceit you have been
practising on my friend Mr. Bassett and his family.
I happened to see Mr. Rattray late last night in
London, and spoke to him, so that it is of no use your
denying anything. He expressed the intention of
not returning just yet.”
Alice Redfern shrank back, her hand raised in a


THE BARON TRIES A BLUFF 249
helpless gesture, as though to ward off a trouble
like to overwhelm her.
“Where—where did you see him 2 ” she gasped.
The Baron was sure of his ground now. “The
place is immaterial from your point of view,” he
went on sternly. “I do not mind telling you, how-
ever, that it was at Waterloo Station, where Mr.
Rattray had just arrived as I was about to return
here by the last train.”
The shaft had evidently struck home, for Alice
cast a glance behind her, as though dreading some
unseen listener to her peccadillo among the rows
of wagons ranged in the dim interior. Then she
faced her accuser with something like despair in her
expressive face.
“Mr. Rattray overpersuaded me,” she faltered.
“It was all so pretty and romantic, and I couldn't
resist. I—I think he was in love with his cousin,
and that he wanted to find her without Mr. Bassett
knowing. At least that was what he told me.”
“I dare say; it was what he told me too. But it
does not exonerate you from a charge of breach of
faith. Nor,” added the Baron, with a beautifully
executed shrug that seemed to put the business on a
friendly footing at once, “does it exonerate me
from grevious treachery to my dear friend Bassett
in what I am going to do. You know who I am, by
the way ?”
“I can only guess, sir—the Baron de Guerin 2 ”
“Of Longclere Castle. Well, nurse, I have
frightened you enough, since I am going to do
violence to my better sentiments by aiding and
abetting your fraud. Mr. Rattray gave me a
message to you. I was on my way to the Hall to try
|


THE BARON TRIES A BLUFF 253
fellow conspirators, in a sense, for deceiving my good
friend the Squire. For the sake of your professional
reputation we had better keep the subject of this
button, and our dealings over it, as secret as pos-
sible.”
“Then I will send it to you at Longclere Castle,”
was the reply. “There is a boy at the Hall whom
I can trust. You must really let me go now, or I
shall get into trouble if Mr. Rattray’s absence is
discovered before I deliver his note.”
The Baron released her, well pleased with his
morning's work. “What an attractive personality
wasted by means of a dull brain,” he murmured, as
he watched the nurse's tall, lithe form go swinging
towards the Hall gates. “Not quite bright enough
to add to my collection of demons, or I might—but
there !” he checked himself, “I am forgetting that
my menagerie is so soon to be disbanded, and their
chief to take to the paths of rectitude.”
He lingered for a moment to adjust his waterproof
cloak, and then he too quitted the shed and strode
off towards the Castle. But he had not gone a hundred
yards when a strange metallic sound on the road
behind him caused him to turn back, and to halt in
his tracks, waiting for him whom he saw to overtake
him.
It was a man with no legs, Isaac Levy, the keeper
of the fried-fish shop in Kite's Lane, Lambeth—a
grotesque figure as he stubbed the iron rings that did
duty for feet into the muddy road, covering the
ground at a wonderful pace in spite of his deformity.
The Baron received him with a face as black as
thunder, and the single word—“Well ?”
“It’th about the remains,” the Jew whined, noting


254 UNMASKED AT LAST
the anger in his leader's eyes. “I daren't write or
telegraph, so I thought I’d better pop down. You
didn't give instructionth, and— ”
“Bah, you idiot 1" de Guerin cut him short with a
snarl. “You had no right to quit your post for such
folly. Don't you know that I never forget or over-
look a detail 2 I gave you no instructions because
there were none to give. Let the carrion stay where
it is. No. 37, Kite's Lane, will never be wanted
again by me, and there are eleven years of my lease
to run. The remains, as you call them, will not be
discovered for that period at least. Get you back to
London at once.”
“I done it for the betht; no offenth, I hope,”
the old man replied in his carneying tone, and without
more ado obeyed the order. The iron rings started
stumping in the direction whence they had come
towards, instead of from, the railway station.
“It is time to break up the school when my people
take to acting on their own initiative,” the Baron
muttered, as he looked thoughtfully after the reced-
ing figure of the crippled Jew. “Isaac Levy, too,
the most fawning servile rascal of the lot. Well, in
a few more strenuous weeks I shall have earned my
peaceful retirement with my charming English bride,
and then good-bye to such company.”


CHAPTER XXXII
THE FAITH OF CHARLIE HEXT
INNIE BASSETT, hollow-eyed, and with her
fresh beauty showing the traces of a
sleepless night, but with no signs of a broken spirit,
stood in the centre of the loft over the old barn
in Hartslock Wood, listening intently.
She was listening to the footsteps of Jasper Lomax
and Zebulon Caunt as they descended the ladder after
introducing her to her new prison. The footsteps
and their gruff voices died away at last, and the
shutting of the door of the barn relaxed the tension
and allowed her to take stock of the secret place to
which she had been brought in the dead of night.
She had made no resistance during her transfer
from the Castle, recognizing that it would be vain
in the lonely country lanes and the still lonelier wood
in the swiftly driven brougham packed with silent
men, whose fierce eyes rather than their tongues
bade her make no noise. From the first horrible
moment when she had realized that in seeking the aid
of the Baron de Guerin at Longclere Castle she had
walked into a trap, she had abandoned the idea of
escape by woman's usual weapon, her voice.
Above all she had striven, and with entire success,
255


THE FAITH OF CHARLIE HEXT 257
the sweets of solitude 2 At first sight of the black
dress and white apron Winnie recoiled a little, think-
ing that it was one of the correctly dressed but bold-
eyed “maids” who had formed the female part of
the establishment at the Castle. But a second glance
at the shrinking figure and the peaked, pathetic face
shook the supposition. If this curious looking girl,
with hair cut short like a boy's, was one of the Baron's
crew, she was of a different type to the rest—probably
a recruit enlisted for some special qualification which
Winnie had yet to learn.
“I am to do what you tell me while you are
here,” said Charlie Hext in an almost inaudible tone.
She was overwhelmed with the awkwardness of
wearing female apparel for the first time in her
life, and also with finding herself in the presence of
Roddy's sister. Lomax, in preparing her for the
duties she was to perform, had incidentally alluded
to the new prisoner by name, and Charlie had
guessed the rest. -
“I am not likely to be here long if you do what
I tell you,” replied Winnie, wondering whether the
shyness was assumed, and if so for what purpose.
“It is that you at once help me to get away from
this place to my father's house—Bassett Hall.”
But Charlie only shook her head sadly. “If I
could let you out I could get out myself,” she an-
swered. “But Jasper Lomax always locks me in
at night, and when he is not about himself.”
“Always locks you in 2 ” cried Winnie, catching
at the phrase. “Do you mean to tell me that you
have been here for some time and that you are, like
myself, detained against your will ?”
“I came here of my own accord, but—but I
R


258 UNMASKED AT LAST
wouldn't do what they wanted, so I am kept close,”
said Charlie, adding in a tremulous whisper—“If
I had my way we'd both be a thousand miles from
this wood to-night.”
Winnie looked hard at this strangely boyish
girl, more than suspecting some trap in the claim
to a like misfortune to her own. But as she looked
at the innocent eyes that seemed to be downcast
more from shame than conscious guilt, at the
sensitive mouth all a-quiver with varying emotions,
and at the signs of extreme youth in the slight
frame, she began to doubt, and the doubt gave
place to pity.
“You poor little thing !” she burst out. “I
believe you are honest, and it seems ages and ages
since I spoke to any one honest. Tell me all about
it, and perhaps we can help each other.”
But such was the terror with which Lomax had
inspired her, such also was her fear of being treated as
an accomplice of the criminals whom she had been
forced to assist, that Charlie would not go to that
length yet. She made an effort to skirt the subject,
and in so doing endeavoured ingenuously to intro-
duce another profoundly interesting to herself.
“I have seen your brother. He-he was very
good to me when I boxed his ears,” she faltered.
Winnie began to forget her troubles in the curios-
ity aroused by this odd young person. “You
boxed Roddy's ears 1” she exclaimed, not knowing
whether to be angry or amused. “Where did you
meet him, and what had he been doing to make you
forget your position so 2 ”
“It was when he thought I was an assistant game-
keeper, miss. I was dressed like a man then, by


THE FAITH OF CHARLIE HEXT 263
-
Charlie and herself, to escape from the old barn
themselves, with the law on their side and friends
to safeguard them within a few miles. She said so,
in so many words.
But Charlie, growing bolder in the absence of
personal blame, threw cold water on that scheme
with good reason.
“Lomax and the Baron have got it up for us that
way,” she said. “I heard them talking below this
morning, through a hole I’ve made in the floor.
They are reckoning that I shall try to help you,
and I am to be allowed to think that I have
found a way of escape. Then we are to fall into a
worse trap than ever, and be put on board a steamer
for foreign parts.”
“I have been told of that steamer,” said Winnie
shuddering. “We must put our wits together and
make them believe that we are going to take the
way they will leave open, while all the while we have
devised a better one. Let us get some sleep now
for an hour or two, and set to work in earnest in the
morning.”
“You had better trust in dad, miss—jail or no
jail,” said Charlie with sturdy insistence, as she
began to perform the unaccustomed duty of a lady's
maid, awkwardly enough, but with a devotion more
than half due to the fact that she upon whom she
waited was the sister of scapegrace Roddy.
As for Winnie, she lay down on the trumpery
iron bedstead that had been brought over from the
keeper's cottage with a greater sense of security than
during the nights she had passed in waking terror
at Longclere Castle. Though she did not share
Charlie's simple faith in the coming of “dad,” and


264 UNMASKED AT LAST
the chance of escape was narrowing with every
moment, the atmosphere of this cobwebbed loft
seemed easier to breathe than that infected by
the specious scoundrel who had her in the toils.
So, living but for the moment, she slept.


CHAPTER XXXIII
JASPER LOSEs the KEY
LL the next morning Jasper Lomax was busy
on the ground floor of the barn, working
those double shifts which the Baron had enjoined.
But he worked without assistance now, for he had
reached the final stages of his handicraft on his
final batch of “paper,” and there was no pressing
need for Charlie's elementary services.
Overhead the two girls spoke but little, and noth-
ing at all about that which engrossed them, lest it
should reach the ears of the industrious felon under-
neath. But they were both on the lookout for the
sham facilities he was to afford for an escape which
was to play into the hands of de Guerin.
Charlie kept watch and ward at the spy-hole
which she had scraped in the crumbling mortar,
but through the long hours of the forenoon no one
appeared in the solitude of the glade. A lazy smoke
curled from the chimney-stack in the cottage, to
which, after locking the barn, Lomax betook him-
self several times during the morning; but with
the exception of his stalwart figure crossing the
clearing on these periodical visits, Charlie's vigil
met with no reward.
265


JASPER LOSES THE KEY 267
inspired her with a very firm belief in the deadly
method that underlay the Baron's fantastic con-
ceptions.
The “steamer at the rendezvous on the coast ’’
had become a terrible reality to her, and there
were only a few hours left in which to avoid the
fulfilment of that vague menace.
Yet nothing occurred to break the dull monotony
of waiting till at an hour after noon Jasper Lomax
shouted up the ladder:-
“Here, you Charlie Come with me to the
cottage and fetch the lady's lunch.”
“Be careful * Winnie whispered, as her com-
panion quitted the spy-hole to obey the command.
Charlie answered with a nod, and descending the
ladder found Lomax standing at the door, which
he had already opened and which he was at pains
to shut and lock after she had passed out. But
instead of putting the key in his pocket, as was
usual with him, Charlie noticed that he kept it in
his hand. On reaching the cottage he led the way
into the kitchen, where an evil-visaged old French-
man was putting a final garnish to several dainty
dishes.
“The Baron has sent a chef to do the cooking for
our honoured guest,” said Lomax in contemptuous
explanation of the new-comer's presence. “Nearly
ready, Leroux 2 ”
“In one—two minutes,” was the reply.
“Then I'll go and have a wash while you finish
your job,” said Lomax, and he turned to go into the
adjoining scullery. But, as he passed out, in a
perfectly natural, absent-minded way, he laid the
key of the barn on the corner of the dresser, as


JASPER LOSES THE KEY 269
crossed the yard at the back the girl's knees trembled
so that she nearly dropped her burden. Did he
really think that he had the key in his pocket 2
Did he really know that she had it in hers ?
Coming to the door of the barn, he put his hand
in his pocket and withdrew it with an oath.
“The key !” he growled. “I must have left it
in the cottage.”
And placing his finger to his lips he sent a shrill
whistle across the clearing. The cook appeared at
the back door of the cottage.
“Search in the kitchen and in the scullery for a
key; I may have dropped it on the floor, or laid it
on the side of the sink while I was washing,” Lomax
shouted to the man.
The wicked face vanished into the house, and
Lomax stood waiting in silence, his dark brows
puckered in a frown. Charlie strove to forecast the
many contingencies that might arise, and what she
should do in them, but she was so frightened that she
could form no plans. Over everything hung the hor-
rible surmise that she had been intended to take the
key, and that Lomax knew that she had got it.
After a considerable interval the Frenchman
reappeared at the door to announce that he had
failed in his search. He could find the key nowhere
in the places indicated.
Another oath broke from Lomax, and the scowl he
cast at Charlie caused her to expect the worst. But
when he spoke it was to abuse her for what was
neither in her mind nor reflected in her face.
“Don’t look at me like that, you impudent hussy!”
he snarled. “You may think I’m cornered because
I've mislaid the key, and that I’ll have to break in


27o UNMASKED AT LAST
the door, leaving you loose till it's repaired. We
don’t run the show like that. I have got a duplicate
key, and I’ll go and fetch it.”
He strode back to the house, muttering. Charlie
was torn asunder as to the course she should pursue.
To set the tray down and race for the cover of the
trees was her first impulse, trusting, before Lomax
returned, to gain sufficient start to make her way
out of the wood. The idea of arriving breathless
at the Hall with news for Roddy of his missing
sister was enchanting. But then was not that the
obvious course she might have been expected to
take, and therefore the one for which there was
some cunning counter-move in readiness 2
Again, she might hide in the wood till dark, and
then come back to the barn and release Winnie, with
the key she had annexed, while Lomax slept. But
that plan, too, was of the obvious, and would assur-
edly have been calculated on if, as she feared,
Lomax's annoyance at losing the key was all a pre-
tence. No, either of those ways bristled with unseen
dangers. She dared not accept the responsibility.
So she stood for what seemed an interminable
time, clutching the tray and unconsciously worried
by the wind-tossed streamers of the smart cap that
was part of her new outfit. It was not till after the
lapse of a long ten minutes that Lomax returned
with another key, and his manner made Charlie
glad that she had not yielded to impulse. There was
every symptom that he was in a blind rage, repressed
with a violence that forbade words. It was as if
he was disappointed at something that she had left
undone—something that threw a preconceived pro-
gramme out of gear. &


JASPER LOSES THE KEY 271
He thrust the duplicate key into the lock and
opened the door.
“In with you !” was all he would allow himself
to say.
Charlie entered, and the door was immediately
slammed to upon her and relocked. She managed
to climb the ladder with the tray, and, setting it
down, she ran to her spy-hole. Jasper Lomax had
nearly reached the cottage, walking slowly, with head
bent and every appearance of dejection. Only when
he had disappeared into the back door did Charlie
turn to Winnie with a half sigh, half sob, of relief.
“He had got it up for us, miss—pretended to
lose the key,” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t resist
taking it, but I was afraid to do anything when it
came to the pinch.”
And into Winnie's eager ears she poured the
story of the key, of the existence of a duplicate, and
of Lomax's apparent disappointment at finding her
standing patiently at the door of the barn.
“He was gone so long to fetch the other key—
nearly a quarter of an hour,” said Charlie with
significance.
“You think he was giving you time to do some-
thing with the one you have secured 2 ”
“Either to run away with it and use it later, or
to call you down and let you out,” Charlie suggested.
But to Winnie the defeat of the enemy did not seem
so conclusive. There was the possibility that the
whole incident of the lost key had been enacted
with a view to creating in their minds the impression
that an attempt to entrap them had been made and
had failed, so that they would be more likely to use
the key carelessly later in the day. On one point


272 UNMASKED AT LAST
they were both agreed—that Lomax did not really
believe that he had lost the key, but was well aware
that Charlie had secreted it during his absence in
the scullery.
“You did well not to be tempted into anything
rash,” was Winnie's comment. “But how we are
to get through another night with the key in our
possession and abstain from using it is more than I
know.”
“Perhaps dad will turn up before night,” replied
Charlie wistfully. “He would very soon show us a
way.”


CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BARON's FINESSE
WO hours later the Baron de Guerin was pacing
to and fro on the terrace at Longclere Castle.
His frequent glances were cast rather in the direction
of the approach from the path across the park from
the woods than towards the carriage drive that
wound from the lodge gates to the portico entrance.
His attitude was more of assured expectancy than
of impatience, in spite of a certain eagerness of eye
and walk.
Yet after all it was not to the great woodland tracts
in the rear of the Castle, where the game coverts had
furnished a pretext for the establishment of his
secret bond factory, that his attention was first
drawn. Mademoiselle Coralie, a superb figure in her
Parisian draperies, stepped from one of the long
windows of the blue drawing-room and came
rapidly to meet him.
The virago, who had tried to stab him only a
few nights ago, was wreathed in smiles. That little
episode had been forgotten—by her, at any rate—
after the removal of her rival to Hartslock Wood,
pending, as the Baron had assured her, either re-
lease, or a more permanent removal in the event
of her refusing to abandon a certain line of conduct
273 S


274 UNMASKED AT LAST
which the Baron had vaguely described as dangerous
to the safety of their lawless commonwealth.
“What is it, ma chérie 2 * asked de Guerin.
“You are the personification of a beautiful herald.
You have the air of coming to announce something.”
“Only that the man on the tower has blown down
the speaking-tube to say that a boy has passed the
lodge gates and is coming up the drive,” the French-
woman replied. “That was well thought of by you,
Henri–that device to guard against sudden sur-
prises.”
The Baron patted the plump arm which she
had passed under his own. “I am a sort of Moses,
leading all you, my children, to the promised land,” he
purred in his silkiest accents. “And how good for
you all to have a man with brains at the helm, who
does not forget details. Yes, my vanity allows me
to boast that the watch-tower idea was good busi-
ness. It enabled me to meet with becoming prompt-
ness the designs of that miserable English miss the
other day. You have forgotten your absurd jeal-
ousy, queen of my heart 2 ”
“Ah yes, I have forgotten that. It is gone like a
puff of wind,” sighed Coralie with effusion. Never-
theless she watched him sideways from the corner
of her nearest eye, wondering why his gaze was so
furtively attracted to the path from the woods
rather than to the broad drive whereon the boy
whom she had announced would presently appear.
“Tell me, Henri,” she continued, stroking the
sleeve of his coat, “is the girl who interfered with
our schemes, and about whom I was so silly, still in
the wood 2 ”
The Baron returned the caress by pressing the hand


THE BARON'S FINESSE 275
that stroked him. “Yes, poor fool, she is still
in the care of our good Lomax,” he replied. “It
all hinges on a paltry button—whether she stays
there for good and all, in an unknown grave under
the greenwood tree, bien entendu, or whether she
goes back to Papa Bassett with a story of having
been detained by a villainous gamekeeper, whom that
beau prince of chivalry, the Baron de Guerin, will at
once proceed to chastise, only to discover that he has
fled from the scene of his outrage.”
Coralie pondered the lying tale, her fine eyes
more than ever observant of her companion. “I
am not jealous,” she said presently. “All that is
gone—pouf / But, mon cher ami, I should not wish
to set out on my travels to dispose of the grande
fabrique of Monsieur Lomax till I was assured that
everything was quite safe.”
“It will be quite safe,” said the Baron. “And
here, if I mistake not, comes the messenger to tell
us so.”
A bright-faced country lad had turned aside from
the drive to mount the terrace steps, and now, as
he approached, was taking a small package from
his pocket. -
“The nurse at the Hall told me to bring you this,
sir, and I wasn’t to let any one touch it but you,”
said the lad as he tendered the parcel, which was
carefully sealed.
The Baron, with a smile of scarce repressed
triumph, tossed the boy a coin, bidding him begone
to the village to spend it. Not till the little mes-
senger was out of sight and earshot did he open the
packet, to find an agate button and the following
brief note:—


THE BARON'S FINESSE 277
into the blue drawing-room, and as Lomax joined
him the Baron heard the door of the room shut.
Coralie had evidently returned to her own luxurious
snuggery, where she spent the idle hours that were the
prelude to her great campaign in devouring the
most doubtful literature of her fellow-countrymen.
Jasper Lomax still wore the frown which had
frightened Charlie Hext two hours before, and it
deepened as he met the mocking eye of his chief.
“It didn't come off,” he growled. “She prigged
the key right enough, but she did nothing else.”
De Guerin laughed softly. “My dear Jasper,
that temper of yours is simply terrible,” he chuckled.
“Let me show you something to brighten you
up—the agate button from the waistcoat of a too
careless fugitive.”
Lomax uttered a hoarse cry and pounced on the
tiny stone globe which the Baron held out to him.
“You are a fair caution, Baron,” he said. “I
will never doubt your powers again. This frees
us from that bit of bad luck, eh?”
“Entirely. We can proceed with the great game
as if the priestly Mandible and the asinine Rattray
had never existed. And now to cheer you still
further, my excellent but slow-brained and most
malign-tempered craftsman. I did not expect that
the girl would make use of her purloined key till she
had consulted her fellow-prisoner. The ruse was even
deeper than you imagined. It was designed to
satisfy myself on a certain point, Jasper, mon
cher.”
“On what point, Baron 2 ”
“Whether the little Hext had not overheard our
plans when we talked in the factory. You were so


278 UNMASKED AT LAST
cocksure, as usual, that she could not, you know.
But I don’t take such risks as that. Now we know
{that she did hear, or something would have been
done with the key.”
“It seems so,” Lomax admitted grudgingly.
“I told you that they should fall into a trap which
should end in delivering them on board my specially
chartered steamer, but I did not say that this little
ruse of the key was to lead to the final deliverance,
my Jasper. It was of the nature of a soporific, to
lull them into credulity. You must prepare to be
arrested to-night, my faithful colleague.”
“What the devil do you mean * * Lomax snorted.
His was not the temperament to understand the
Baron's Gallic persiflage.
“The arrest will be effected by a posse of our own
boys dressed as policemen,” de Guerin laughed at
his henchman's discomfiture. “The uniforms and
everything are ready. Old Glenister will make a
first rate inspector, and we have some promising
assistants for him on our staff. They will escort the
rescued ladies out of the wood to the main road, where
my fastest motor will be waiting. I shall be there
myself, Jasper, in the character of a still higher
police official. You can guess the rest—a little
persuasion to induce them to enter the car, and a
lofty disdain for legal speed limits on a well-planned
route to Emsworth, where the Lynx will be lying
in one of the creeks near Hayling Island.”
Lomax regarded his principal with unfeigned
admiration. The recovery of the agate button had
so relieved him that he could forgive the Baron's
divergence from the huge felony that had brought
them together.


THE CHAPLAIN’S NEWS 28I
on fire. It will not be a more unpleasant death than
what I am suffering now.” -
He rang off, and after scribbling an accusation of
the Baron on the back of Alice Redfern's photograph,
carried out his threat of pushing it out on to the
landing under the iron door. But there his strength
failed him. The mephitic gas had done its work
too well, and in a last supreme attempt to break the
lamp with a chair he recoiled from his misdirected
blow and fell headlong to the floor.
When he came to, for Stewart Rattray was not
doomed to die at 37, Kite's Lane, his nose told him
where he was more surely than his eyes. The evil
odour that assailed his nostrils was familiar, but he
had never before looked upon the low-ceiled, dark
little room in which he was lying upon a narrow
iron bedstead. The smell of fried fish left no doubt
that he was in the abode of Isaac Levy.
He tried to rise, but fell back helpless. The fumes
that he had inhaled were not to be shaken off so
lightly, and he lay down to try to solve the question
why the wicked old man who had been engaged in
asphyxiating him should now be giving him shelter.
It was not yet broad daylight, so that his adven-
tures at No. 37 were quite recent. Isaac Levy's
repentance must have been as swift as inexpli-
cable.
The explanation, however, was at hand, and it
came from Isaac Levy himself, who at that moment
protruded his villainous countenance into the back
room from the shop. Seeing that Rattray's eyes
were open, he came forward, holding Alice Redfern's
photograph in his lean, dirty hand. To his surprise
Rattray observed that he carried the card with the


282 UNMASKED AT LAST
picture towards him, with no apparent interest in
what he had written on the back.
“Ith Nurthe Redfern a friend of yourth 2" the
Jew asked, bending a keen glance from under his
bushy brows at the prone figure on the bed.
“A very good friend—one whom, if I live, I hope
to make more than a friend,” replied Rattray
feebly. “I wish to goodness she was here now, to
clear my throat and chest of your murderous
gas.”
“If she ith your friend I am glad I saved you,”
said Levy solemnly. “My life ith not so happy that I
cannot lay it down; yes, it will mean that. The
Baron will not pardon my work this night. But I shall
have repaid the debt that I owe to that angel of mercy
who could be kind in hith pain to an ugly old wretch
like me.”
“Tell me about it,” said Rattray quietly. He
recognized that by no merit of his own he had been
snatched from the very brink of the grave, but that
was no reason why he should notenlist the strong arm
of coincidence that had saved him as an ally against
his enemies. His brain, he felt, was stronger than
his body. He might as well spend some of the time
of his forced inaction in learning what influence had
wrought so strangely in his favour.
Isaac Levy's narrative was brief and to the point.
Five years previously he had met with the accident
which had deprived him of his legs, and he had
been removed to the Middlesex Hospital, where
Alice Redfern had nursed him with a tender pity
that had awakened a responsive chord in his seared
old heart. He rather slurred the details of his
accident, but Rattray guessed that he had fallen from


284 UNMASKED AT LAST
the attempted murder of himself, but there were
issues of far greater importance than that.
Winnie Bassett had to be found and restored to
her friends, and the false charge against Landon
Tressingham had to be removed by the discovery of
Mr. Mandible's assassin.
He chafed at the delay, but when Levy next looked
into the backroom he had hit upon a plan for bridging
over the interval of his forced inactivity. Above all
was it necessary to preserve the agate button from the
Baron's clutches, and such was the fiendish ingenuity
of the man that he would be quite likely to approach
Alice Redfern, perhaps with violence, in order to
obtain it. At all hazards she must be safeguarded
from any such danger.
On hearing that his “angel of mercy” might be in
peril, Isaac Levy at once consented to journey down
to Maplehurst and see her, taking a message from
Rattray imploring her to be careful and, if the Baron
made any overtures about the button, to dally with
him and lead him to suppose that she would do her
best to procure it. It was imperative that de Guerin
should be made to believe that he was winning his
game, as he would be if he could obtain and destroy
the evidence connecting him with the rector's
murder.
Having established a Hebrew youth in charge of
the shop, Levy departed, expressing the intention of
calling at the Castle on the pretext of asking for
instructions about Rattray's body, so as to lull the
Baron's suspicions in case he should be seen in the
neighbourhood.
He was back again late in the afternoon with a
report of his doings. He had met Alice Redfern, in


THE CHAPLAIN’S NEWS 287
news. “My own yarn can wait, though it is
probably part of yours.”
“I cannot see that what has occurred has anything
to do with my brother's murder,” replied Mr.
Mandible. “A convict here had a letter yesterday
from his son, who apprised his father that he had been
engaged as an assistant to the Baron de Guerin's
gamekeeper, but that he had found that his real
functions were to help in the manufacture of bogus
bonds at the keeper's cottage in Hartslock Wood.
It is a preposterous story, but, of course, the police
are going to investigate it. The letter arrived a week
ago, but the convict, John Hext, was not entitled
under the rules to receive one till yesterday. As
usual it was perused by the chief warder before being
delivered.”
“The story is perfectly true,” blurted Rattray,
“and it is intimately connected with your brother's
death. I came here to have a look at your photo-
graph album, but now I had better see this man
Hext at once. You can arrange that, I sup-
pose 2 22
The chaplain made a wry face. “I could have,
easily,” he said, “if Mr. John Hext had been at
home to receive visitors. Unfortunately he broke
out of jail last night and is still at large.”
“The police are after him 2 ” Rattray snapped.
“Certainly, but their movements are rather slow.
They have to go through the routine business of
looking up records and all that, but I expect they
will succeed in narrowing the circle so as to corner
our fugitive in Hartslock Wood to-night. They have
formed the theory that Hext has escaped in conse-
quence of the letter he received.”


288 UNMASKED AT LAST
“Formed a theory !” Rattray repeated with
fine scorn. “I must get on to Scotland Yard at
once. I fancy that I can tell them something that
will accelerate their “movements, as you politely
call them.”


CHAPTER XXXVI
John HEXT
OHN HEXT was very tired. It was twenty hours
since, just before dawn the previous might,
he had escaped from Wormwood Scrubbs Convict
prison. The tussle with the ventilator, which he
had dragged bodily from the wall of his cell in order
to gain an exit, had taken it out of him at the start.
His subsequent gymnastics in climbing walls and
shinning down stack-pipes before he could win free
of the prison had not been restful. And since then
he had tramped the first half of the fifty miles from
London rather than risk recapture at a railway
terminus.
He was not, however, hungry, for he had gone
straight to the house of an acquaintance at Shep-
herd's Bush, who had replaced his convict garb with
plain clothes and given him a sovereign for imme-
diate expenses.
He could have had ten for the asking, but he
would not accept more than one, all he wanted being
enough ready money to take him part of the way
by rail into Hampshire and to feed him till he had
reckoned with Jasper Lomax. As he intended that
ºw T


290 UNMASKED AT LAST
to come off before another sun rose a sovereign was
ample for his needs.
He had no idea of ultimate escape, knowing that
for such a celebrity to remain at large for any length
of time was impossible. He was quite prepared to
go quietly back to serve out his sentence, or to
suffer any fresh sentence that he might incur, after
he had spent a very brief time in the company of
his former colleague.
And now at eleven o'clock at night he was near-
ing his goal. Charlie's artless letter had told him
how to avoid the alarm-guns with which Hartslock
Wood was surrounded, and, though he knew it not
and cared less, the savage mastiffs were on chain
that night lest they should fail to discriminate be-
tween friends and foes.
At the edge of the clearing he halted to recon-
noitre, and also to rest awhile before he disclosed
himself. He had no doubt of the issue of a per-
sonal encounter with Jasper Lomax, for all the
swarthy giant's thews and sinews, having a serene
confidence in the physical superiority of his own
broad chest and perfect training. But it would be
as well to get his wind, and stretch his limbs, so as
to shorten a distasteful job.
Whether he killed Lomax outright or thrashed
him within an inch of his life would depend on
whether he had carried out the threats which had
cowed Charlie into submission. He had no mind to
be hanged, but he would cheerfully put up with
that as a mere detail if his child had suffered greater
wrong than at the time when she had written her
letter.
He would have very nearly to kill Lomax any-


JOHN HEXT 293
long ago. The police trooped in, and immediately
the unseen watcher heard a voice ring out :—
“Come down, Miss Bassett, please, and the young
woman Hext as well. We are police officers, come
to rescue you. You are quite safe now.”
The faint echo of a cry of delight was wafted to
John Hext's greedy ears, and then it seemed an
interminable time before the little crowd, its numbers
increased by two, came out into the moonlight.
The veteran inspector came first, gesticulating and
talking fast; next came the two girls, one of whom
Hext hardly recognized as Charlie in her feminine
attire ; while the rear was brought up by Lomax,
scowling savagely, in charge of the tall constable.
Who the young lady could be, to whom the
inspector addressed himself so volubly, or why
Charlie was dressed as a maid, Hext could not con-
ceive, nor did he care much. There must have been
some new development of the mystery that had
enveloped Charlie, since she wrote. The paramount
fact remained that Charlie was free and apparently
in good spirits, and on the whole it was good that
his girl had had one of her own sex to share her
captivity.
The inspector lost no time in making his arrange-
ments.
“Constable Simpson, you will remain here with
the prisoner till we return from escorting Miss
Bassett and this young woman out of the wood,”
he was saying. “I am sorry, madam,” he added
to the half-weeping, half-laughing girl at his side,
“that you will have to walk so far, but we could not
bring a vehicle for fear of alarming the prisoner.
The Chief Constable of the county is, however,


294 UNMASKED AT LAST
waiting for us on his motor on the road outside, and
he will whisk you to Bassett Hall in no time. After-
wards we shall deal with the Baron de Guerin and
the gang at Longclere Castle.”
“You are a dear man ” cried Winnie in an
ecstacy. “And Mr. Landon Tressingham will be
released from custody now, will he not? You have
evidence that that wretch there killed the rector,
have you not ? If not, I can give it to you directly
I get home.”
“All is perfectly clear to us, and doubtless you
will be a most important witness,” was the inspec-
tor's reply. “Now the sooner we are off the sooner
we shall make sure of the Baron. Hold your man
fast, Simpson, as you value your prospect of pro-
motion in the force.”
So there was a murder to be expiated by Lomax,
Hext told himself. He was glad that he had not
touched the creature now. The supreme penalty
might well be left to cover all delinquencies.
The party moved rapidly off towards the ride,
with the exception of Lomax and his guardian, who
began to walk more slowly in the direction of the
cottage. As they passed John Hext's place of
concealment he was surprised to see that the con-
stable had relaxed some of his vigilance by removing
his hand from the prisoner's shoulder. Had it not
been for the handcuffs they might have been the
best of friends, so amicably did they saunter side by
side.
They had covered half the distance to the house,
and the other group had disappeared into the wood-
land path, when something happened that caused
John Hext to rise to his feet and stare after them in


JOHN HEXT 295
blank amazement. On the still night air a whisper
reached him—a hoarse, chuckling whisper from
Lomax, followed by a subdued laugh from the
other.
What did this portend ? Was Lomax bribing the
constable to let him go 2 Had they recognized
each other as brothers or old friends, and was the
policeman going to ruin his career by defeating the
ends of justice P John Hext stole silently in the
wake of the pair, moved with a fierce joy that his
escape, after all, might not have been in vain.
The constable and his prisoner entered the cottage,
and by the shadows on the blind Hext saw that they
had passed into one of the front rooms. Creeping
close to the window he was just in time to hear a
gruff voice say:—
“Now that the curtain's down on that farce I’ll
take your darbies off. Lord, how those wenches
will stare when they find themselves doing forty
miles an hour in the Baron's best car ! How they'll
squeal when they are dumped on board the steamer
the boss has got waiting at Emsworth !”
John Hext did not want to hear any more. He
perceived that a trick, which at present he did not
rightly understand, had been played—that this was
no real arrest and rescue, but that Charlie and the
young lady who had gone off so trustfully were the
victims of a cruel deception. He walked into the
house, straight into the room where the two men
Were.
The “constable" had produced the key of the
handcuffs, but stood with it poised in his hand as
Hext's sturdy frame darkened the doorway. Lomax
turned green with fear.


296 UNMASKED AT LAST
“Quick with the key, Zeb,” he screamed. “It's
Jack Hext, the girl's father. Can't you see he's
i dangerous 2 Loose me quick, so as I can help, or the
4 odds 'll be even.”
But John Hext did not allow them a moment.
While Zebulon Caunt was still gaping and hesitating
the convict hit him a smashing blow on the temple,
that felled him like a bullock, and then turned to
loose his pent-up fury on the cowering Lomax.
Seizing him by the throat, he thrust him down into
a chair and stood over him, the blood-lust shining
in his eyes. For five seconds the evil life of Jasper
Lomax trembled in the balance, but John Hext,
curbed his passion with an effort that knotted his
veins into cords.
“Why should I swing for you, seeing as you're
gallow's meat already yourself 2 ” he said quietly.
“I’ll tie the two of you together and take you to
the nearest police-station.”
There was a hank of rope in the room, and Hext.
set methodically to work to lash the dazed Caunt to
the handcuffed Lomax. They had no choice but to
submit, and then, taking an end of the rope, the
coiner kicked them into the open—kicked them,
indeed, into the arms of Stewart Rattray and a
strong force of genuine police.
John Hext took in the situation at a glance.
“I surrender myself to you, gentlemen,” he said.
“I expect you are looking for me—the convict who
broke out of “The Scrubbs’’ last night. I also
hand over to you Jasper Lomax and a confederate
who have been forging bonds in connexion with
some one they call the Baron. Lomax, I gathered
from a lady whom some of the gang have just re-


JOHN HEXT 297
moved from here, is, or ought to be, wanted for
murder.”
“Couldn't you prevent the lady being taken
away ?” Rattray groaned.
“I would have had a good try if I had twigged the
game, sir,” Hext replied sympathetically, “seeing
as my daughter was taken away with her. But
the gang were made up as policemen, same as this
cur here. I only learned of the fraud after they were
gone, through hearing these two talk. There was
mention of a fast motor drive to Emsworth, and a
steamship at the end of it.”
The leading police official, an assistant commis-
sioner from Scotland Yard, tapped Rattray on the
shoulder.
“There's not a second to he wasted here,” he
said. “As it is, I am afraid that they have got
too good a start for us to catch them.”


CHAPTER XXXVII
A STERN CHASE
HE Assistant Commissioner, whose name was
MacTaggart, was a Scottish gentleman of
exceptional ability and resource. Quickly dividing
his forces, he left a few of his men in charge of the
cottage, with orders also to take charge of and search
the barn; the rest he withdrew with himself and
Rattray to join the still larger party of London
police who were concealed beyond the village with
a view to surrounding the gang at Longclere
Castle.
The three prisoners they took with them, Caunt
and Lomax still roped together as John Hext had
bound them, and the coiner walking between Mac-
Taggart and Rattray, to whom he gave, as they
traversed the wood, a fuller description of what had
happened at the barn.
“That is the whole truth, gentlemen,” he con-
cluded. “I can't make head nor tale of most of
it, and I expect you know more than I do, for till
those two blackguards got cackling I had heard
nothing of any steamer, nor till I saw her did I know
298


A STERN CHASE 299
that there was another girl in their hands. I broke
jail solely to come and help my daughter, and you
needn’t fear that I shall try and run from you.
Save my child for me, and I shall be a proud man
that it was I who handed you the first two of our
prisoners.”
“I cannot make promises outside my own depart-
ment, Hext, but I don't anticipate that they will be
very severe on you for this,” MacTaggart replied.
“I know your story about the steamer is true,
because it is confirmed by the information Mr. Rat-
tray has given us.”
They pressed on, guided by a local rustic whom
they had enlisted in the as yet unexplained absence
of Constable Squarey, who was presently to be found
very drunk in the kitchen at Longclere Castle. They
had approached, and were leaving, the cottage by the
opposite side from which the sham rescue party had
come, it having been deemed advisable not to go
near the Castle till they were ready for the final
pounce.
On the confines of the wood, hidden away in a
narrow lane, they came upon the main body of
police, thirty strong, who had been sent down under
the command of MacTaggart to break up and cap-
ture the most daring and most cunningly organized
criminal band of the century. All the officers were
in plain clothes, and further to avoid alarming their
quarry they had come from town in motors, con-
verging on Maplehurst by different routes, and not
reaching the rendezvous till long after dark.
There was a full complement of inspectors and
sergeants, and to his chief subordinate MacTaggart
gave the revised orders made necessary by having to


A STERN CHASE 303
Rattray's night-accustomed eyes were the first
to descry the object to which the coiner's finger
pointed—a black mass on the white ribbon of road
that was beginning to be visible in the first flush
of dawn.
“Hext is right !” he cried. “I believe it is the
car broken down in front of us. Dig your spurs
in, man, or whatever you do to make this thing
move.”
But they were going at their car's full capacity
already, and the commissioner could do no more
than swoop down at their present pace. They had
got within a hundred yards of the motionless car,
when the scream of a woman reached them and
John Hext sent a lusty answering hail along the road.
Then suddenly, the black mass lurched forward with
a jerk, and shot ahead, whirring away with fast-
decreasing sound towards the shimmer of light be-
low.
“By Jove, but she had broken down just at my
cousin's gates,” cried MacTaggart. “But that is
neither here nor there. This puts us on better
terms, and we should be able to overhaul them
before they can transfer their passengers to a
boat.”
His optimistic forecast had hardly been shouted
into Rattray's ears when the police car seemed to
drop several inches, stagger and rise again in a gal-
lant effort to buck against some unseen obstacle.
Then she sank down and canted over to one side,
brought up by the same soft earth over a recently
repaired drain that had delayed the preceding
Caſ.
The constables and John Hext groaned aloud,


304 UNMASKED AT LAST
and MacTaggart swore, but Rattray was out on to
the road-side in a second, feeling his own man again,
now that he was on his feet. His keen eyes had
already espied a range of stabling.
“You say you know the people who live here,”
he said. “I want a horse. Come and help me
to get one.”
So it was that after ringing up a sleepy groom
MacTaggart saw Rattray gallop off southwards,
and having ascertained that it would take an hour
to extricate the bogged car, fretted and fumed till
the second and slower car came up.
In the meanwhile Rattray urged the stout hunter
down the road, elated by the mishap that had placed
him in the saddle. The familiar motion gave him
confidence as he clattered past the sombre shades
of Bere Forest and woke the echoes with the ring
of honest iron. He felt himself a man once more,
with a will of his own and a firm hand to impose it
—not the mere cargo of a mechanical toy, prone to
collapse at the slightest obstruction.
But by degrees, as he put mile after mile behind
him and he failed to sight the fugitive car, his exhil-
aration wore off, giving place to the sickening dread
that he might have taken the wrong road. He had
passed several turnings, down any one of which de
Guerin might have steered and still preserved his
general direction towards the sea. Indeed it was
not likely that the Baron's journey, with the kind of
work he had to do at the end of it, had been planned
to terminate on the main road.
It was growing lighter quickly now, and at the
next turning Rattray drew rein and surveyed the
view of the sluggish waters of the creeks. Yes, sure


A STERN CHASE 305
enough four miles off amid the maze of sand dunes
he descried the masts of a steamer, and in the middle
of the silver streak of the main channel a boat
pulling steadily shorewards in the silent dawn. As
far as he could judge, the boat would come to land
at a place that looked like mud flats or oyster-beds
a couple of miles from where he had halted. There
were no habitations near; it was just the lonely
spot that would have been selected for the Baron's
evil purpose.
Contact with horse - flesh had revived the old
jungle instinct, and with the born tracker's faith
in Mother Earth, Rattray flung himself from the
saddle and examined the roadway. In the matter
of a 40-horse-power automobile Mother Earth
could not have kept her secrets had she wished,
and there, plain enough, were the scores of the great
tyres, turning aside from the highway into the
cross-road.
With a thrill of relief Rattray mounted again and
galloped hard on those broad tracks. Here the
view was lost behind untrimmed hedges, and it was
only after a breathless pelter, that lasted some-
thing under five minutes but seemed a hundred
years, that the flat shore of the creek was opened up
to him once more.
And on the low bank, at the edge of the oily
tide, a panorama met the horseman's straining
gaze that mocked him for a solution of its true
significance, till a revolver shot, crisp and clear in
the morning air, explained some of it, though not
all.
There stood the great Panhard motor-car, with
a strangely assorted group round it; and there,
U


306 UNMASKED AT LAST
fifty yards from the shore with the crew resting on
their oars, lay the steamer's boat.
Rattray kicked his horse's flanks and galloped
on. He would have given all he was worth if his
heels had been armed with spurs


CHAPTER XXXVIII
“THE DEVIL LAUGHS.”
HE Baron de Guerin, with the confidence
of unvarying success, had no idea that he
was being followed in his nocturnal “scorch"
through Hampshire, till he had extricated his
car from the annoying break-down which had en-
abled the police car nearly to overtake him.
The deep-lunged “Charlie, we're coming ' "
which John Hext had sent hurtling down the road
had come as a rude awakening. Though a moment
later his pursuers were involved in disaster, pursuit
meant that his whole gigantic scheme had snapped
somewhere at a weak link of which he had never
dreamed. It meant that he could not return to
Longclere Castle to put the artistic finish to his
work that he had shaped for himself—the completion
of Lomax's forgeries and their committal to Made-
moiselle Coralie for realization on the bourses of
Europe. It meant that he was a hunted fugitive
with a price on his head if one tithe of his misdeeds
was known, and that he would have to curtail and
revise his programme considerably.
Well, he had very far from wholly failed, he told
himself as he re-started his car and, looking back,


308 UNMASKED AT LAST
witnessed the misfortune of his pursuers. He had
only a few miles to go to reach the steamer. Instead
of merely consigning his prisoners to her captain
he himself would accompany them to the oversea
refuge where he had promised himself to enjoy the
proceeds of his English raid. He always carried
about Lomax's finished work for better security,
and he had spurious bonds of the nominal value of
five million pounds with him. When he reached
his retreat he would have to find some other emis-
sary than Coralie for negotiating them—that was all.
It did not cost him a pang that he was leaving
all his confederates at Longclere Castle, including
the fair Coralie, in the lurch. It rather amused
him than otherwise that he would have obtained
their services without their having to share the
spoils, and if, as was possible, they fell into the
clutches of the law—well, they were the rakings of
the criminal scum of Europe, and would have been
pretty sure to end so sooner or later. Anyhow he
could credit himself with having at infinite pains
saved Lomax from the gallows by obtaining the
incriminating button, though, as he cynically
reflected, those pains had only been taken so that
the accomplished craftsman might finish his work
in peace.
The worst crumple in his rose-leaf was that he
would have to take abroad with him his chauffeur,
Gaston, and the two ruffians who had charge of the
cowering girls in the rear compartment of the car.
John Hext's cry had left no doubt that the car be-
hind was really in pursuit of them, and his subor-
dinates would make a fuss if they found that they
were to be abandoned in face of imminent capture
a
:


312 UNMASKED AT LAST
And the maid with the pathetic smile, who pre-
sently came out with a bounteous tea-tray, was
Charlie Hext, taken into Winnie's service once for
all—to be with her as long as she remained under her
father's roof, and to move with her to the rectory a
month hence, when wedding bells should have rung
from Maplehurst steeple.
The only absentees of note were Roddy and John
Hext, the former gone on a reading tour with a tutor,
and the convict back to prison to serve out the few
months of a reduced sentence. In consideration of
his having been instrumental in the capture of
Lomax, Hext was to be liberated at the end of
twelve months from his conviction, when he was to
take up the post of gardener at the rectory, his
drunken wife's death having made the appointment
possible.
“The poor chap, having forsworn his moulds and
melting-pots, will be able to turn white chrysanthe-
mums into yellow ones, if he brings his ingenuity
into the country,” Landon was saying, as Charlie's
approach with the tray turned their thoughts to the
sad little history so strangely interwoven with their
OWn.
“What about Roddy?” murmured Winnie in a
low voice.
“A mere boy and girl affair, and nipped in the bud
at that,” replied Landon decisively. “Roddy has
plenty of common sense, and he had already begun
to cast sheep's-eyes at the youngest Miss Bateman.
As for Charlie, I saw her in close conversation with
that nice boy, Goodger's son, last night, so I don’t
think you need worry.”
Indeed there was no room for worry on that lovely


THE DEVIL LAUGHS 313
summer afternoon amid the ripe glories of the rose-
garden. The cruel tangle that had enmeshed the
lives of those present had been unravelled, and the
noxious trail which the Baron de Guerin, like some
poisonous serpent, had cast over the peaceful
village was fast fading away. Nearly all of the gang
who had worked under that master mind were under
lock and key; while the black-browed Lomax was
awaiting his trial for murder.
With the evidence collected by Stewart Rattray
at the risk of his life it was easy to reconstruct the
crime at the vestry, and Charlie Hext's testimony
as to her innocent share in it fixed the guilt on
Lomax without the shadow of doubt. Mr. Man-
dible's death was due to his ability to recognize
Lomax's portrait in his brother's album of male-
factors. The spurious game-keeper, with the
connivance of his principal, had gone early to the
vestry, and at the signal from Charlie had concealed
himself in the press. Landon Tressingham having
started down the aisle, Lomax had stolen forth and
stabbed the rector in the back, afterwards escaping
by the door into the churchyard, which the Baron,
to throw suspicion on the curate, had afterwards
bolted.
In crossing the churchyard Lomax had felt one of
his waistcoat buttons drop, but had feared to stop
and search for it. The Baron, also, had failed to
find it later in the day, and its discovery by Rattray
had given that dogged tracker the clue to the truth.
But the most interesting adventure in the career
of the agate button was its last. The button which
Alice Redfern was happily inspired to send to the
Baron, in order to lull him to carelessness, was not