"What do you think about it?" she asked abruptly. "What is it that is wrong? Oh, Mr. Cleek, do you think----"

"I'll be beyond 'thinking' before the morning. I shall know," he interposed. "Now, show me the way to that ruin, please. I want a word or two with Mr. Harry Raynor if he is there. Down that path, is it? Thanks very much." And swinging down from the veranda, he moved away in the direction indicated.

A brisk two minutes' walk brought him to the picturesque ruin with its ivy-wrapped walls, its gaping Gothic windows, and its fern-bedded battlements, so artfully copied that the stones actually seemed to be crumbling and the plants to have been set there by Nature rather than by man. Even the appearance of a dried-up moat and a ruined drawbridge was not wanting to complete the picture and to give an air of genuine antiquity; and he had just stepped on the latter to make his way across to the wide arch of the entrance when he was hailed, not from within, but from behind.

He faced round suddenly to see young Raynor moving quickly toward him.

He was walking rapidly, and appeared to be in a state of great excitement.

"I say, Barch, hold on a moment, will you?" he sang out. Cleek gave him time to get to the drawbridge and then the reason for his excitement became known. "Look here, old chap, I'm afraid we shall have to give up our little 'lark' for this evening, after all. Rotten bad luck, but I've just got a message that will call me to--well, somewhere else; and I've got to go at once. Don't expect I shall be able to get back this side of midnight; but if you don't mind prolonging your stay and making it two nights instead of one----"

"Not in the least. Delighted, old chap."

"Oh, well, then, that's all right. Have our night out to-morrow instead--eh, what? Look here, Barch, blest if I don't like you immensely. Let you into the secret. It'll be with 'Pink Gauze.'"

"Pink Gauze? Don't mean the little Frenchy, do you--the little beauty of the photograph?"

"The very identical. Be a good boy, Barchie, and I'll take you to see her to-morrow night. What do you think--eh, what?"

Cleek didn't say what he thought; it would have surprised the young man if he had.

"Well, ta-ta until midnight or thereabouts, old chap. So long!" And with a wave of the hand he was gone.

Cleek stood and looked after him for a moment, a curl on his lip, an expression of utter contempt in his eyes; then he gave his head a jerk indicative of a disgust beyond words, and, facing about, walked on into the ruins.

The General had done the thing well, at all events. The atmosphere of antiquity was very cleverly reproduced: walls, roof, floor--all had the appearance of not having been disturbed by the hand of any one for ages.

Half-defaced armorial bearings, iron-studded doors, winding staircases, even a donjon keep.

This he came to realize when the sight of a rusted iron ring in the floor tempted him to pull up and lay back a slab of stone that appeared centuries old, and to expose in doing so a twisting flight of stone steps leading downward into the very depths of the earth.

Really, you know, the old chap had done it well. Cells down there, no doubt--cells and chains and all that sort of thing. Well, he had time to spare; he'd go down and have a look at those cells. And, leaving the stone trap-slab open, he went down the black stairway into the blacker depths below, flicking the light of his torch about and going from cell to cell. One might swear that the place was centuries old. Rusty old barred doors, rustier old chains hanging from rings in the walls.

Nothing modern, nothing that looked as if it had known use or been disturbed for these hundreds of years; nothing that---- h.e.l.lo! There was a break in the illusion, at all events: a garden spade, with fresh earth clinging to the blade of it, leaning against the wall. Fancy a man so careful of preserving an atmosphere of antiquity letting one of the gardeners leave---- No, b'gad! it hadn't been left merely by chance. It had been brought here for use, and was probably left for _further_ use.

There was a place over in that corner that most decidedly had been recently dug up.

He walked over to the place in question and directed the glow of the torch so that the circle of light fell full upon it. Somebody had been digging in the earthen floor of the cell, and had made an attempt to hide the fact by sprinkling bits of stone and plaster sc.r.a.ped from the walls over it. In the ordinary course of things, and with a light less powerful than this of the electric torch, the thing would have pa.s.sed muster very well, and would, in all probability, have escaped observation. Now, asked Cleek of himself, what the d.i.c.kens should any one wish to dig in this place for? And, having dug, why try to disguise the fact? Hum-m-m!

He switched round suddenly, walked to the place where the spade stood, in the angle of the wall opposite, took it up, and, returning, began to dig where the digging had been done before.

This he had to do in the darkness, for the moment his thumb was removed from the b.u.t.ton of the torch the light went out. But, having once located the place, this was not difficult, for the earth, having once before been disturbed, yielded easily to the spade.

For five--possibly six--minutes he worked on, shovelling out the loose earth and tossing it aside unseen; then, of a sudden, the spade encountered something which, though soft and yielding, would not allow the blade to penetrate it at all, press his foot down as hard as he might. If Cleek knew anything at all, he knew that that betokened a fabric of some sort, and knew, too, that he had got to the bottom of the original excavation.

He laid aside the spade, and the electric torch spat its light into the hole.

Clothing at the bottom of it--buried clothing!

He stooped and pulled it to the surface, letting the articles thus unearthed drop one by one from his fingers. A cap, a pair of trousers, a coat with a badge on it, a stick with a loop of leather by which to carry it, a belt, and a number on that belt.

He looked at the number; it was a bra.s.s "4." He looked at the badge, and then rose upright, clamping his jaws hard and understanding.

What he had unearthed was the clothing of the Common keeper who had been done to death last night--the clothing which the a.s.sa.s.sin had stolen and worn.

And he had found that clothing here, hidden in the grounds of Wuthering Grange! Why, then, in that case, the murderer---- He stopped; and the thought went no farther--stopped, and releasing the b.u.t.ton of the torch, let utter darkness swing in and surround him.

Some one had entered the ruin--some one was moving about overhead.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE THUNDERBOLT

It was not a man's foot that made that soft noise; his trained ear recognized that fact at once. A woman, eh? What woman would be coming here at this time when all the ladies of the household would be in their rooms dressing for dinner?

He crept in the darkness out of the cell in which he had been digging, through the one next and through the next again, until he came to the pa.s.sage leading to the staircase, and then, dropping on his hands and knees, went soundlessly up the stone steps.

Above him as he crept upward--as slow as any tortoise and with far less noise--sounded the woman's faint footfalls pacing the paved floor with that persistent restlessness which tells of extreme agitation. He had but just begun to ask himself what that agitation might portend, when something occurred which caused him to twitch up his head with a jerk and crouch there, a thing all eyes and ears.

The woman's footsteps had ceased abruptly, brought to a sudden halt by the ring of others--the nervous, heavy-heeled, fast-falling steps of an excited man coming across the drawbridge and into the ruin at a pace which was almost a run; and that man had no more than come into range of the woman's vision when the thin, eager voice of Lady Katharine Fordham sounded and made the situation clear.

It was a tryst--the lovers' meeting upon which Cleek had built such high hopes and upon which he had blundered by the merest fluke.

"Geoff!" sounded that enlightening voice, with a nervous catch in it which told of a hard-hammering heart. "Thank heaven you have come. Ailsa thinks I am in my room dressing for dinner. Now tell me what it is all about, there's a dear, for my head has been in a whirl ever since I read what you wrote. Why did you want me to come here and meet you without anybody knowing? Whatever can it be that you 'have to say to me that no one on this earth must hear'? Do tell me. I'm frightened half to death!"

"Are you?" His footsteps clicked sharply as he moved rapidly across the floor toward her. "You have not gone so far as I, then, for I believe I have been frightened _past_ death, and that after this nothing on earth or in heaven or h.e.l.l can appall me! Come here, into my arms, and let me hold you while I speak. How I love you! My G.o.d, how I love you!"

"Geoff!"

"Put your arms round me. Kiss me! I want you to know that I love you so well I'll fight all the dogs of justice and all the devils of h.e.l.l but what I'll stand by you and save you from them. They can't kill my love for you. Nothing on G.o.d's earth can do that. I'll come between them and you no matter what happens, no matter what it costs me--life with all the rest. That's what I've come to tell you! But, oh, my G.o.d, Kathie, why didn't you let _me_ kill him?"

"Kill him, Geoff? Good heavens, what are you talking about? Kill whom?"

"De Louvisan!"

"De Louvisan? Let you kill De Louvisan-- I? Oh, my G.o.d!

Geoff--you--think--_I_--killed--killed--him?"

Geoff groaned and buried his face in his hands. "There was no one in the house but you," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "It was you who took me into the place; it was you who showed me his dead body spiked up there against the wall--you and you alone. My G.o.d! Kathie, what is the use of denying what we both know?"

Cleek sucked in his breath, drew every muscle of his body taut as wire, and then crouching back in the darkness listened intently.

Lady Katharine remained perfectly silent for a moment, as though she had been stricken dumb by the directness of the charge: as though the half-despairing, half-impatient protest of that final "What is the use of denying what we both know?" had impressed her with a realization of the utter futility of longer endeavouring to act a part.

It was either that that held her silent, Cleek told himself, or she was utterly amazed, utterly overcome by an accusation which had no foundation in fact and had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt. If the latter should prove to be the case, why, then, Geoff Clavering would be lying, and she would be wholly and entirely innocent of the crime with which he had charged her.

Then she spoke suddenly:

"You mean this thing? You really and truly _mean_ it?"