Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 16

"But he has not taken any of his things."

"I am going to pack his things and send them after him."

"But----_when_ did he go, papa?"

Mr. Barbary, who had kept on working, drew himself bolt upright. Letting his hands rest on the handle of his spade, he looked sternly into Katrine's face.

"He went last night."

"He----he never told me he was going. He never said anything about it."

"And why should he tell you?" demanded Mr. Barbary. "It was enough that he told me. He thought he had been quite long enough away from his work, and that it was high time to go back to it. I thought the same. That's all, Katrine; you need not inquire further. And now you can go indoors."

She walked slowly up the narrow path, conscious that some mystery must lie behind this. Joan was standing in the yard, outside the back-kitchen door, trying to pull it open.

"This here back'us door's locked!" exclaimed Joan, in her country vernacular. "I want the spare jack out; t'other's given way at last."

"It can't be locked," dissented Katrine. "It never is."

"Well, I've never known the door locked afore; but 'tis now, Miss Katrine. I noticed it was shut to all day yesterday, but I didn't try it."

"It is only stuck," said Katrine, laying hold of the high old-fas.h.i.+oned bow handle which served to lift the latch inside; and she shook it well.

"What's that? What are you about?" called out Mr. Barbary, das.h.i.+ng up the path like a flash of lightning. "Let the door alone."

"Joan says it is locked, papa," said Katrine, frightened by his manner.

"And what if it is? I have locked up some--some wine there that came in.

How dare you meddle with the places I choose to keep closed?"

"It's the other jack I want out, sir," said Joan, hearing imperfectly.

"You can't have the other jack."

"But, master, the old jack's broke clean in two, and it's time to put the lamb down."

"Cut it into chops," he cried, waving them both off, and standing, himself, before the door, as if to guard it, with a white, imperious, pa.s.sionate face.

Single-minded old Joan went indoors, marvelling a little--such a bit of a trouble for him to have opened the back'us door and given her out the jack! Katrine followed, marvelling very much. She did not believe in the wine: felt sure no wine had come in; they never had any; what was it that was locked up there? All in a moment a thought flashed over her that it might be game: poached game: pheasants and partridges and hares.

But, upon that thought came another: why should the spoil have been brought in on Tuesday night when it had never (as she believed) been brought before? Just a little came in for their own use, nothing more.

II

That day, Thursday, we had news of Don. And we had it in this way.

Tobias Jellico--who had a small draper's shop at Evesham, and went about the country with a pack, out of which he seduced unwary ladies to buy finery, more particularly some of our ladies living in Piefinch Cut--was at Church d.y.k.ely to-day on one of his periodical visitations. We did not like the man or his trade; but that's neither here nor there. Hearing that the Squire's dog was lost, he at once said he had seen d.i.c.k Standish that morning in Bengeworth (a portion of Evesham) with a large Newfoundland dog. White-and-brown, he called it; which was a mistake, for Don was white and black; but Jellico might not know colours. It was Mr. Duffham who brought us this news in the afternoon: he had been sent for to Lena, whose throat was getting worse. Duffham heard it from Perkins the butcher, to whom Jellico told it.

I don't know which item pleased the Squire most: that Don was found, or that the guilt of Tuesday night was traced home to the Standishes; for the three brothers had in general a certain gentleman's own luck, and were rarely caught.

"Don went out roaming, through that villain Giles unloosing him and leaving the yard gate open," decided the Squire, in his excitement. "The dog must have sprung upon them; he has a mortal enmity to tramps and poachers, you know, Duffham; and the Standishes captured him. I'll send a message to the police at Evesham at once, to look after Mr. d.i.c.k, and go over myself in the morning."

"Anyway, I'm glad the dog's found," said Duffham. "But what an idiot d.i.c.k Standish must be to allow himself to be seen with the dog in the public streets."

"Johnny," said the Squire, turning to me as he was leaving the room to send a man galloping on horseback to the Evesham police, "you run over to Caramel Cottage. Make my compliments to young Reste; say that I am going to drive to Evesham to-morrow morning, and shall be happy to take him if he likes to accompany me. I offered to drive him over some day before he left, but this bother has caused me to delay it. Shall start at nine o'clock, tell him."

About the time the Squire was charging me with this message, Katrine Barbary was sitting in the homely garden at Caramel Cottage, amidst the fruit trees, the vegetables, and the late flowers. The October sunlight fell on her pretty face, that somehow put you in mind of a peach with its softest bloom upon it.

Katrine was striving to see daylight out of a ma.s.s of perplexity, of which I then knew nothing, and she could not discern a single ray. Why should that fine young barrister, Edgar Reste, staying with them so peacefully for several weeks past, and fully intending to stay this week out--why should he have run away by night, leaving behind him an atmosphere of mystery? This question would never leave Katrine's mind by night or by day.

Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet it seemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had disappeared--vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected, stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody?

"It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger, with not a minute to spare," mused Katrine.

At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front door.

"Sit down, Johnny," she said, holding out her hand, and making room for me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for--to deliver the Squire's message to Mr. Reste.

"Mr. Reste has left us," said Katrine. "He went away last night."

"Went away last night!" I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly.

"What took him off so suddenly?"

Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel.

"It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him--don't you see that, Johnny?" she said. "Even that little desk, full of private papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left."

"He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps."

"The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning," returned Katrine. "It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds; but it did not call him away. _Nothing_ called him away, that I can discover. You can't think how it is worrying me; it seems just a mystery."

"Look here, Katrine," I said, after mentally twisting the matter this way and that, "I've known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he went?"

"Well, yes; I fancy he does: he is indoors now, packing Mr. Reste's things: but he does not tell me."

After talking a little longer, we strolled up the path together, and had reached the yard when Mr. Barbary suddenly opened the kitchen door to shake the dust from a coat that seemed covered with it. His handsome face took a haughty expression, and his slender, shapely form was drawn up in pride as he looked sternly at me, as much as to say, "What do you want here?"

I turned, on my way to the side gate, to explain: that Don had been seen at Evesham in the company of d.i.c.k Standish, that the Squire would be driving thither on the morrow, and had thought Mr. Reste might like to go with him.

"Very kind of Mr. Todhetley," drawled Barbary in his stand-off manner.

"Tell him, with my compliments and thanks for his courtesy, that my nephew has left for London."

"Left for good, I suppose?" I said.

"For the present, at any rate. A pressing matter of business recalled him, and he had to attend to it without delay."

I glanced at Katrine: there was the explanation.

"So the dog is at Evesham!" remarked Mr. Barbary. "The Standishes are great rogues, all three of them, and d.i.c.k's the worst. But--I think--had you gone after him to-day, instead of delaying it until to-morrow, there might have been more certainty of finding him. Mr. d.i.c.k may give you leg-bail in the night."