The Heath Hover Mystery Part 24

THE DISUSED ROOM.

If ever a country ramble was a success, a grand success, that one was.

In the gnarled oak-wood dim in cool gloom, comparative, as regarded the flood of suns.h.i.+ne outside, the girl would let imagination run riot, and as she rattled on--fitting this and that vista into the scenes of her favourite romance--her companion listened, enjoying the extraordinary naturalness of her. And he entered into it all, adding here and there an apposite suggestion, which thoroughly appealed. Then, too, when they got out upon open heathland, though the time of its crimsoning had not yet come--and a wide sweep of rolling valley, and dark belts of firwoods contrasting with the brighter, richer green of oak, she would point him out this or that old church tower in the distance, and expatiate upon the archaeological treasures contained within the same, and her wide eyes would go bright with love of her subject, and her cheeks glow with the soft sun-kiss and the bracing upland air--even her words would trip each other up in her anxiety to get out a description. And then Helston Varne would decide to himself that it was just as well he was strong-headed beyond the ordinary, for anything approaching the perfect charm of this girl at his side, he, with a large and varied experience of every conceivable shade and phase of life, had certainly never encountered.

She was so natural, so intensely and confidingly natural--and therein lay a large measure of her charm. There was not a grain of self-consciousness about her, and she talked to him throughout as though she had known him all her life. It was not often he had struck anything approaching such an experience. So the morning wore on--fled, rather-- all too quickly for him at any rate; for he was enjoying this experience as he could not quite remember ever having enjoyed an experience before.

They were near home now, threading a narrow keeper's path, through the thick covert. Once she laid a light hand on his sleeve to stop him, as a cuckoo suddenly gurgled forth his joyous call right overhead, so near, in fact, as to be almost startling.

"Look. There he is. You can see him," she whispered, gazing upward.

"Ah, he's gone," as the bird dashed away. "But, did you notice--he's got the treble note. I don't like that. When they get on the treble note it means that we'll soon hear no more of them."

"Well, now you've told me something I didn't know. Yes--I noticed the treble call, but I'll be hanged if I've ever noticed it before."

Melian laughed--that clear, rich, joyous laugh of hers. Incidentally he had noticed that before.

"And I've actually been able to tell you some thing you never knew before. You! Well, Mr Varne, I do feel proud.--Wait--look."

Again she laid a restraining hand upon his sleeve. They had reached the pond head, and on the long expanse of glowing surface the perfect reflection of the tossing greenery overhanging it lay outlined as though cut in silver. A waterhen with her brood was swimming across, and at the shrill, grating croak of the parent bird, alarmed by human proximity, a dozen tiny black specks rushed with hysteric flappings through the surface to bunch around her.

"Aren't they sweet?" whispered Melian. "Such jolly little black things!

I've caught them two or three times when we've been out in the boat fis.h.i.+ng, but they get so horribly scared that I've never done it again.

I'm so fond of all these birds and beasts, you know, that I hate to think I am bothering any of them."

Helston Varne merely bent his head in a.s.sent. Curiously enough, just then he did not feel as if he could say anything. A wave of thought--or was it a consciousness--such as he never remembered to have experienced before, had come over him. He just let her talk, and was content to watch her. He wanted to absorb this picture and carry it away with him in his mind's eye; and somehow the idea of having to go away at all, for a long period at any rate, had suddenly become utterly distasteful to him.

He watched her, radiant, animated, lighthearted. He remembered their talk on the road in the evening's dusk, on the last occasion of his visit. He had intended to revert to it, to find out whether he could do anything to help in relieving her mind. But now, looking at her, the idea seemed out of place. She seemed so utterly happy, lighthearted, and without a care.

And she? She had wished for his presence so that she could put to him the matters that were troubling her, yet now that it was here, somehow or other she could not. But as they wandered homeward through the shaded woodland path, she told him something about her past experiences, and he listened sympathetically, careful not to betray that he already knew all that she was telling him. Then--for the path skirted the pond--they came to the scene of the midnight rescue in the ice; and suddenly Melian stopped, for an idea had struck her.

"Mr Varne," she said, her eyes fixed full upon his face. "Do you know that the police suspected my uncle of killing the man he had just saved?"

"Yes. I know."

"I ask you--_you_--had they the slightest reason for that suspicion?"

"Why do you ask it?"

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose it's because you are you; and if any one can see through a thing, you can."

"Thanks greatly for that compliment. I shall treasure it," he answered, glad of the pretext for turning a lighter vein on to what was becoming somewhat tense. "Wait now,"--seeing a spasm of disappointment begin to flit over her face, at the fancied consciousness that she was not being taken seriously. "What I was going to say is this: All tragical happenings of this nature, involving mystery, are bound to convey a certain element of suspicion. Very well then. This affair answers exactly to these conditions. The local police, therefore, did no more than their duty in watching it. But they have now realised the futility of doing so any longer."

Melian looked up quickly.

"Have they?" she said.

"Yes. You may take it from me."

A breath of relief escaped her, but it was not wholehearted relief.

This a.s.suredly did not escape her companion's keen perception.

"Tell me another thing," she said swiftly, and again looking him full in the face. "I hardly like to ask it, but I will. Was it not the investigation of this--mystery, that brought you down here in the first instance?"

This was. .h.i.tting straight out and no mistake. But Helston Varne did not for a moment hesitate.

"Yes. It was," he said.

"Ah!"

For a moment neither spoke. She was still looking him straight in the face, but what she read there was hardly disquieting.

"And--what conclusion have you arrived at?" she went on, slowly.

"The conclusion that I might just as well have remained away--but for one thing."

The relief which had sprung to her animated, speaking face, died down suddenly.

"And--that one thing?"

"That one thing? Why, then I should never have met you; should never have known such a delightful time as I have enjoyed this morning for instance."

That killed the tragic element in the atmosphere. Melian broke into a peal of clear, wholehearted laughter, not more than a third due to reaction, for she had a very complete sense of humour. Her companion was smiling too, perfectly at ease and natural, as though he had stated a mere obvious fact. There was no consciousness of having paid a pointed compliment about his manner, nor any manifestation of a desire to carry it further.

"Well--it's very nice of you to say so," answered the girl, all her easy lightheadedness apparently restored, "because I thought I'd been talking your head off all the time we've been out; and if it wasn't that we seem to have a lot of ideas in common, should have thought I'd been boring you to death. But, here we are at home again, and--I don't care how soon old Judy turns on lunch. Do you?"

"Candidly, I don't. This gorgeous country air makes all that way."

It is not strange that, seated opposite each other at table, in the cool, old-world room, the June sunlight slanting through the creepers which partly shaded the wide open window, Helston Varne should have let his imagination run riot. In fact, he was picturing to himself this girl, in her uncommon beauty, her complete naturalness, her quick, unfeigned interest in everything, her grace of movement even in the smallest of things--seated thus with him--always. Albeit those who knew him--even the very few who really knew him--would have reckoned it strange. For since his salad days he could not call to mind any woman he had ever been acquainted with who could be capable of calling up such a suggestion. And the two of them were there alone together; the glow of sunlight outside, the fragrant breaths of glorious summer wafting in from without. Even a straggling wasp or two winnowing down over the table, was not unwelcome, as a sure guarantee that summer was here: rich, glowing, vernal, English summer.

He talked to her--easy, very contented with the hour--and interested her more and more. He told her a few strange, out of the way, bizarre experiences--and the girl listened, almost entranced. This was the sort of thing that appealed, and she contrasted it with the boredom of commonplace, which she was as capable of appreciating--on the wrong side--as she was of appreciating these cullings from a life of action; of keen, intricate, intellectual unravellings of strange occurrences almost unimaginable in their surroundings of weird mystery. Yet he so talked in no wise for the sake of talking, or to glorify himself, but simply and solely because it interested her; and to see that face lit up with vivid interest was sheer enjoyment to Helston Varne at that stage.

And the little black fluffy kitten, as though cunningly appreciating the situation, was taking its toll, jumping up first upon one, then upon the other, nibbling daintily at this or that tidbit bestowed upon it, quite unrestrained by Melian, who had always set her face against spoiling it.

"What a life you must have had," she said. "But--what made you take to it?"

"I don't know. The sheer sporting instinct, I suppose," he answered.

But he did not tell her as much as he had told Nashby, as to its perils--its continuing perils. Then he deftly switched the conversation on to her own particular interests, in the result of which, when they got up from table, Melian said:

"There's some queer old oak stuff in one of the lumber rooms upstairs if you'd like to look at it. It's all jolly dusty though."

"Certainly I would," he answered. "I really do like that sort of thing." And with the remark came the thought of how cheaply he had purchased his hour and a half's imprisonment in that ghastly ice-house of a vault, what time he had introduced himself here--under false pretences.

"Come along then."

She led the way upstairs. Now by some curious instinct, Helston Varne's professional faculties became on the alert. It was as though some mysterious instrument string had suddenly been tuned in his ear.

She opened a door, and the atmosphere, albeit it was nearly midsummer, struck a chill through them both. The one window was clouded up with cobwebs, and the dust lay thick upon everything.

"We don't use this part of the house," she explained, "and we've only enough hands to take care of the part we do use. Look, this is the best thing in the room," putting a hand upon an old sideboard of well nigh black oak, and then withdrawing it. "Wait a bit. I'll go down and get a duster. This isn't fit to be touched as it is, and I want to open it and show you."