The Baronet's Bride Part 48

"Probably not, Mr. Norris. Do as you please about the police, only if you ever wish your master to recover from that death-like swoon, you will carry him at once to the house and apply restoratives."

She turned away with her loftiest air of hauteur, and Miss Silver had always been haughty to the servants. More than one dark glance followed her now.

"You're a hard one, you are, if there ever was a hard one!" said the butler. "There's been no luck in the house since you first set foot in it."

"She always hated my lady," chimed in a female. "It's my opinion she'll be more glad than sorry if she is made away with. She wanted Sir Everard for herself."

"Hold your tongue, Susan!" angrily cried Edwards. "You daren't call your soul your own if Miss Silver was listening. Bear a hand here, you fellers, and help me fetch Sir Heverard to the house."

They bore the insensible man to the house, to his room, where Edwards applied himself to his recovery. Sybilla aided him silently, skillfully. Meantime, the two gigantic footmen were galloping like mad to the village to rouse the stagnant authorities with their awful news.

And the servants remained huddled together, whispering in affright; then, in a body, proceeded to search the house from attic to cellar.

"My lady may be somewhere in the house," somebody had suggested. "Who knows? Let us try."

So they tried, and utterly failed, of course.

Morning came at last. Dull and dreary it came, drenched in rain, the wind wailing desolately over the dark, complaining sea. All was confusion, not only at the Court, but throughout the whole village.

The terrible news had flown like wild-fire, electrifying all. My lady was murdered! Who had done the deed?

Very early in the wet and dismal morning, Miss Silver, braving the elements, wended her way to the Blue Bell Inn.

Where was Mr. Parmalee? Gone, the landlady said, and gone for good, n.o.body knew where.

Sybilla stood and stared at her incredulously. Gone, and without a word to her--gone without seeing the murdered woman! What did it mean?

"Are you sure he has really gone?" she asked. "And how did he go?"

"Sure as sure!" was the landlady's response; "which he paid his bill to the last farthing, like a gentleman. And as for how he went, I am sure I can't say, not being took in his confidence; but the elderly party, she went with him, and it was late last evening."

Miss Silver was nonplused, perplexed, bewildered, and very anxious.

What did Mr. Parmalee mean? Where had he gone? He might spoil all yet. She had come to see him, and accuse him of the murder--to frighten him, and make him fly the village. Circ.u.mstances were strongly against him--his knowledge of her secret; his nocturnal appointment; her disappearance. Sybilla did not doubt but that he would consider discretion the better part of valor, and fly.

She went back to the house, intensely perplexed. There the confusion was at its height. The scabbard had been found near the terrace, with the baronet's initials thereon.

Men looked into each other's blank faces, afraid to speak the frightful thoughts that filled their minds.

And in his room Sir Everard lay in a deep stupor--it was not sleep.

Sybilla, upon the first faint signs of consciousness, had administered a powerful opiate.

"He must sleep," she said, resolutely, to Edwards. "It may save his life and his reason. He is utterly worn out, and every nerve in his body is strung to its utmost tension. Let him sleep, poor fellow!"

He lay before her so death-like, so ghastly, so haggard, that the stoniest enemy might have relented--the pallid shadow of the handsome, happy bridegroom of two short months ago.

"I have kept my oath," she thought. "I have wreaked the vengeance I have sworn. If I left him forever now, the _manes_ of Zenith the gypsy might rest appeased. But the astrologer's prediction--ah! the work must go on to the appalling end."

Early in the afternoon arrived Lady Kingsland and Mildred, in a frightful state of excitement and horror. Harriet murdered! The tragic story had been whispered through The Grange until it reached their ears, thrilling them to the core of their hearts with terror.

Miss Silver met them--calm, grave, inscrutable.

"I am afraid it is true," she said, "awfully incredible as it seems.

Sir Everard fainted stone-dead, my lady, at sight Of the blood upon the terrace."

"Great heavens! it is horrible! That unfortunate girl. And my son, Sybilla, where is he?"

"Asleep in his room, my lady. I administered an opiate. His very life, I think, depended on it. He will not awake for some hours. Do not disturb him. Will you come up to your old rooms and remove your things?"

They followed her. They had come to stay until the suspense was ended--to take care of the son and brother.

Lady Kingsland wrung her hands in a paroxysm of mortal anguish in the solitude of her own room.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" she cried, "have mercy and spare! My son, my son, my son! Would G.o.d I might die to save you from the worse horrors to come!"

All that day, all the next, and the next, and the next, the fruitless search for the murdered bride was made. All in vain; not the faintest trace was to be obtained.

Mr. Parmalee was searched for high and low. Immense rewards were offered for the slightest trace of him--immense rewards were offered for the body of the murdered woman. In vain, in vain!

Had the earth opened and swallowed them up, Mr. Parmalee and the baronet's lost bride could not more completely have vanished.

And, meanwhile, dark, ominous whispers rose and circulated from mouth to mouth, by whom originated no one knew. Sir Everard's frantic jealousy of Mr. Parmalee, his onslaught in the picture-gallery, the threats he had used again and again, overheard by so many, the oath he had sworn to take her life if she ever met the American artist again, his ominous conduct that night, his rus.h.i.+ng like a madman to the place of tryst, his returning covered with blood--white, wild, like one insane. Then the finding of the scabbard, marked with his initials, and his own words:

"Blood! Good G.o.d! it is hers! She is murdered!"

The whispers rose and grew louder and louder; men looked in dark suspicion upon the young lord of Kingsland, and shrunk from him palpably. But as yet no one was found to openly accuse him.

Toward the close of the second week, a body was washed ash.o.r.e, some miles down the coast, and the authorities there signified to the authorities of Worrel that the corpse might be the missing lady.

Sir Everard, his mother, and Miss Silver went at once. But the sight was too horrible to be twice looked at.

The height corresponded, and so did the long waves of flowing hair, and Sybilla Silver, the only one with nerve enough to glance again, p.r.o.nounced it emphatically to be the body of Harriet, Lady Kingsland.

There was to be a verdict, and the trio remained; and before it commenced, the celebrated detective from Scotland Yard, employed from the first by Sir Everard, appeared upon the scene with crus.h.i.+ng news.

He held up a blood-stained dagger before the eye of the baronet:

"Do you know this little weapon, Sir Everard?"

Sir Everard looked at it and recognized it at once.

"It is mine," he replied. "I purchased it last year in Paris. My initials are upon it."

"So I see," was the dry response.

"How comes it here? Where did you find it?"

The detective eyed him narrowly, almost amazed at his coolness.

"I found it in a very queer place, Sir Everard--lodged in the branches of an elm-tree, not far from the stone terrace. It's a miracle it was ever found. I think this little weapon did the deed. I'll go and have a look at the body."

He went. Yes, there in the region of the heart was a gaping wound.