Witching Hill

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  WITCHING HILL

  BY E. W. HORNUNG

  AUTHOR OF "RAFFLES"

  HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

  _Reprinted, 1914._

  "You won't improve his chances by keeping anythingback."]

  CONTENTS

  UNHALLOWED GROUND

  THE HOUSE WITH RED BLINDS

  A VICIOUS CIRCLE

  THE LOCAL COLOUR

  THE ANGEL OF LIFE

  UNDER ARMS

  THE LOCKED ROOM

  THE TEMPLE OF BACCHUS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  "YOU WON'T IMPROVE HIS CHANCES BY KEEPING ANYTHING BACK."

  I SAW A BEDIZENED BEAUTY GO MAD BEFORE MY EYES.

  I DROVE DELAVOYE BEFORE ME.

  A HANDSOME, SINISTER CREATURE, IN A BROWN FLOWING WIG AND RAIMENT ASFINE AS ANY ON THE WALLS.

  TRYING TO TUG THE FIERCE MOUSTACHE OUT OF HIS MILD FACE.

  A HEAVY BLACKTHORN HELD IN MURDEROUS POISE.

  HIS THIN ARMS LOCKED ROUND THE NECK OF THE YOUNG NURSE.

  DELAVOYE FIRED OVER MY HEAD.

  CHAPTER I

  Unhallowed Ground

  The Witching Hill Estate Office was as new as the Queen Anne houses ithad to let, and about as worthy of its name. It was just a wooden boxwith a veneer of rough-cast and a corrugated iron lid. Inside there wasa vast of varnish on three of the walls; but the one opposite my counterconsisted of plate-glass worth the rest of the structure put together.It afforded a fine prospect of Witching Hill Road, from the levelcrossing by the station to the second lamp-post round the curve.

  Framed and glazed in the great window, this was not a picture calculatedto inspire a very young man; and yet there was little to distract abrooding eye from its raw grass-plots and crude red bricks and tiles;for one's chief duties were making out orders to view the still emptyhouses, hearing the complaints of established tenants, and keeping suchan eye on painters and paperhangers as was compatible with "being on thespot if anybody called." An elderly or a delicate man would have foundit nice light work; but for a hulking youth fresh from the breeziestschool in Great Britain, where they live in flannels and only work whenit is wet or dark, the post seemed death in life. My one consolation wasto watch the tenants hurrying to the same train every morning, in thesame silk hat and blacks, and crawling home with the same evening paperevery night. I at any rate enjoyed comparatively pure air all day. I hadnot married and settled down in a pretentious jerry-building wherenothing interesting could possibly happen, and nothing worth doing beever done. For that was one's first feeling about the Witching HillEstate; it was a place for crabbed age and drab respectability, and ablack coat every day of the week. Then young Uvo Delavoye dropped intothe office from another hemisphere, in the white ducks and helmet ofthe tropics. And life began again.

  "Are you the new clerk to the Estate?" he asked if he might ask, and Iprepared myself for the usual grievance. I said I was, and he gave mehis name in exchange for mine, with his number in Mulcaster Park, whichwas all but a continuation of Witching Hill Road. "There's an absolutehole in our lawn," he complained--"and I'd just marked out a court. I dowish you could come and have a look at it."

  There was room for a full-size lawn-tennis court behind every house onthe Estate. That was one of our advertised attractions. But it was notour business to keep the courts in order, and I rather itched to say so.

  "It's early days," I ventured to suggest; "there's sure to be holes atfirst, and I'm afraid there'll be nothing for it but just to fill themin."

  "Fill them in!" cried the other young man, getting quite excited. "Youdon't know what a hole this is; it would take a ton of earth to fill itin."

  "You're not serious, Mr. Delavoye."

  "Well, it would take a couple of barrow-loads. It's a regular depressionin the ground, and the funny thing is that it's come almost while myback was turned. I finished marking out the court last night, and thismorning there's this huge hole bang in the middle of one of myside-lines! If you filled it full of water it would take you over theankles."

  "Is the grass not broken at the edges?"

  "Not a bit of it; the whole thing might have been done for years."

  "And what like is this hole in shape?"

  Delavoye met me eye to eye. "Well, I can only say I've seen the samesort of thing in a village churchyard, and nowhere else," he said. "It'slike a churchyard starting to yawn!" he suddenly added, and looked inbetter humour for the phrase.

  I pulled out my watch. "I'll come at one, when I knock off in any case,if you can wait till then."

  "Rather!" he cried quite heartily; "and I'll wait here if you don'tmind, Mr. Gillon. I've just seen my mother and sister off to town, soit fits in rather well. I don't want them to know if it's anythingbeastly. May we smoke in here? Then have one of mine."

  And he perched himself on my counter, lighting the whole place up withhis white suit and animated air; for he was a very pleasant fellow fromthe moment he appeared to find me one. Not much my senior, he had noneof my rude health and strength, but was drawn and yellowed by sometropical trouble (as I rightly guessed) which had left but little of hisouter youth beyond a vivid eye and tongue. Yet I would fain have addedthese to my own animal advantages. It is difficult to recapture a firstimpression; but I think I felt, from the beginning, that thosetwinkling, sunken eyes looked on me and all things in a light of theirown.

  "Not an interesting place?" cried young Delavoye, in astonishment at achance remark of mine. "Why, it's one of the most interesting inEngland! None of these fine old crusted country houses are half sofascinating to me as the ones quite near London. Think of the variedlife they've seen, the bucks and bloods galore, the powder and patches,the orgies begun in town and finished out here, the highwaymen waitingfor 'em on Turnham Green! Of course you know about the heinous LordMulcaster who owned this place in the high old days? He committed everycrime in the Newgate Calendar, and now I'm just wondering whether youand I aren't by way of bringing a fresh one home to him."

  I remember feeling sorry he should talk like that, though it argued atype of mind that rather reconciled me to my own. I was never one tojump to gimcrack conclusions, and I said as much with perhaps morecandour than the occasion required. The statement was taken in such goodpart, however, that I could not but own I had never even heard the nameof Mulcaster until the last few days, whereas Delavoye seemed to knowall about the family. Thereupon he told me he was really connected withthem, though not at all closely with the present peer. It had nothing todo with his living on an Estate which had changed hands before it wasbroken up. But I modified my remark about the ancestral acres--and madea worse.

  "I wasn't thinking of the place," I explained, "as it used to be beforehalf of it was built over. I was only thinking of that half and itsinhabitants--I mean--that is--the people who go up and down in top-hatsand frock-coats!"

  And I was left clinging with both eyes to my companion's cool attire.

  "But that's my very point," he laughed and said. "These City fellows arethe absolute salt of historic earth like this; they throw one back intothe good old days by sheer force of contrast. I never see them in theiroffice kit without thinking of that old rascal in his wig and ruffles,carrying a rapier instead of an umbrella; he'd have fallen on it likeBrutus if he could have seen his grounds plastered with cheap red bricksand mortar, and crawling with Stock Exchange ants!"

  "You've got an imagination," said I, chuckling. I nearly told him he hadthe gift of the ga
b as well.

  "You must have something," he returned a little grimly, "when you'restuck on the shelf at my age. Besides, it isn't all imagination, and youneedn't go back a hundred years for your romance. There's any amountkicking about this Estate at the present moment; it's in the soil. Thesebusiness blokes are not all the dull dogs they look. There's a man upour road--but he can wait. The first mystery to solve is the one that'scrying from our back garden."

  I liked his way of putting things. It made one forget his yellow face,and the broken career that his looks and hints suggested, or it made oneremember them and think the more of him. But the things themselves wereinteresting, and Witching Hill had more possibilities when we salliedforth together at one o'clock.

  It was the height of such a June as the old century could produce up tothe last. The bald red houses, too young to show a shoot of creeper, ora mellow tone from doorstep to chimney-pot, glowed like clowns' pokersin the ruthless sun. The shade of some stately elms, on a bit of oldroad between the two new ones of the Estate, appealed sharply to myawakened sense of contrast. It was all familiar ground to me, of course,but I had been over it hitherto with my eyes on nothing else and myheart in the Lowlands. Now I found myself wondering what the elms hadseen in their day, and what might not be going on in the red houses evennow.

  "I hope you know the proper name of our road," said Delavoye as weturned into it. "It's Mulcaster Park, as you see, and not Mulcaster ParkRoad, as it was when we came here in the spring. Our neighbours haverisen in a body against the superfluous monosyllable, and it's beenpainted out for ever."

  In spite of that precaution Mulcaster Park was still suspiciously like aroad. It was very long and straight, and the desired illusion had notbeen promoted by the great names emblazoned on some of the little woodengates. Thus there was Longleat, which had just been let for L70 on athree-year tenancy, and Chatsworth with a C. P. card in the drawing-roomwindow. Plain No. 7, the Delavoyes' house, was near the far end on theleft-hand side, which had the advantage of a strip of unspoilt woodlandclose behind the back gardens; and just through the wood was WitchingHill House, scene of immemorial excesses, according to this descendantof the soil.

  "But now it's in very different hands," he remarked as we reached ourdestination. "Sir Christopher Stainsby is apparently all that my ignoblekinsman was not. They say he's no end of a saint. In winter we see hisholy fane from our back windows."

  It was not visible through the giant hedge of horse-chestnuts nowheavily overhanging the split fence at the bottom of the garden. I hadcome out through the dining-room with a fresh sense of interest in theseDelavoyes. Their furniture was at once too massive and too good for thehouse. It stood for some old home of very different type. Largeoil-paintings and marble statuettes had not been acquired to receive thelight of day through windows whose upper sashes were filled with cheapstained glass. A tigerskin with a man-eating head, over which I tripped,had not always been in the way before a cast-iron mantelpiece. I feltsorry, for the moment, that Mrs. and Miss Delavoye were not at home; butI was not so sorry when I beheld the hole in the lawn behind the house.

  It had the ugly shape and appearance which had reminded young Delavoyehimself of a churchyard. I was bound to admit its likeness to somesunken grave, and the white line bisecting it was not the only evidencethat the subsidence was of recent occurrence; the grass was newly mownand as short inside the hole as it was all over. No machine could havemade such a job of such a surface, said the son of the house, with alight in his eyes, but a drop in his voice, which made me wonder whetherhe desired or feared the worst.

  "What do you want us to do, Mr. Delavoye?" I inquired in my officialcapacity.

  "I want it dug up, if I can have it done now, while my mother's out ofthe way."

  That was all very well, but I had only limited powers. My instructionswere to attend promptly to the petty wants of tenants, but to refer anymatter of importance to our Mr. Muskett, who lived on the Estate butspent his days at the London office. This appeared to me that kind ofmatter, and little as I might like my place I could ill afford to riskit by doing the wrong thing. I put all this as well as I could to my newfriend, but not without chafing his impetuous spirit.

  "Then I'll do the thing myself!" said he, and fetched from the yard somegarden implements which struck me as further relics of more spaciousdays. In his absence I had come to the same conclusion about a couple ofhigh-backed Dutch garden chairs and an umbrella tent; and the final bondof fallen fortunes made me all the sorrier to have put him out. He wasnot strong; no wonder he was irritable. He threw himself into his taskwith a kind of feeble fury; it was more than I could stand by and watch.He had not turned many sods when he paused to wipe his forehead, and Iseized the spade.

  "If one of us is going to do this job," I cried, "it shan't be the onewho's unfit for it. You can take the responsibility, if you like, butthat's all you do between now and two o'clock!"

  I should date our actual friendship from that moment. There was someboyish bluster on his part, and on mine a dour display which heeventually countenanced on my promising to stay to lunch. Already thesweat was teeming off my face, but my ankles were buried in rich brownmould. A few days before there had been a thunderstorm accompanied bytropical rain, which had left the earth so moist underneath that one'smuscles were not taxed as much as one's skin. And I was really very gladof the exercise, after the physical stagnation of office life.

  Not that Delavoye left everything to me; he shifted the Dutch chairs andthe umbrella tent so as to screen my operations alike from the backyardbehind us and from the windows of the occupied house next door. Then hehovered over me, with protests and apologies, until the nobleinspiration took him to inquire if I liked beer. I stood upright in mypit, and my mouth must have watered as visibly as the rest of mycountenance. It appeared he was not allowed to touch it himself, but hewould fetch some in a jug from the Mulcaster Arms, and blow the wives ofthe gentlemen who went to town!

  I could no more dissuade him from this share of the proceedings than hehad been able to restrain me from mine; perhaps I did not try very hard;but I did redouble my exertions when he was gone, burying my spade withthe enthusiasm of a golddigger working a rich claim, and yet depositingeach spadeful with some care under cover of the chairs. And I had hardlybeen a minute by myself when I struck indubitable wood at the depth ofthree or four feet. Decayed wood it was, too, which the first thrust ofthe spade crushed in; and at that I must say the perspiration cooledupon my skin. But I stood up and was a little comforted by the gay bluesky and the bottle-green horse-chestnuts, if I looked rather longer atthe French window through which Delavoye had disappeared.

  His wild idea had seemed to me the unwholesome fruit of a morbidimagination, but now I prepared to find it hateful fact. Down I went onmy haunches, and groped with my hands in the mould, to learn the worstwith least delay. The spade I had left sticking in the rotten wood, andnow I ran reluctant fingers down its cold iron into the earth-warmsplinters. They were at the extreme edge of the shaft that I wassinking, but I discovered more splinters at the same level on theopposite side. These were not of my making; neither were they part ofany coffin, but rather of some buried floor or staging. My heart dancedas I seized the spade again. I dug another foot quickly; that brought meto detached pieces of rotten wood of the same thickness as the jaggededges above; evidently a flooring of some kind had fallen in--but fallenupon what? Once more the spade struck wood, but sound wood this time.The last foot of earth was soon taken out, and an oblong trap-doordisclosed, with a rusty ring-bolt at one end.

  I tugged at the ring-bolt without stopping to think; but the trap-doorwould not budge. Then I got out of the hole for a pickaxe that Delavoyehad produced with the spade, and with one point of the pick through thering I was able to get a little leverage. It was more difficult toinsert the spade where the old timbers had started, while still keepingthem apart, but this once done I could ply both implements together.There was no key-hole to the trap, only the time-eaten ring
and a pairof hinges like prison bars; it could but be bolted underneath; and yethow those old bolts and that wood of ages clung together! It was only bygetting the pick into the gap made by the spade, and prizing with eachin turn and both at once, that I eventually achieved my purpose. I heardthe bolt tinkle on hard ground beneath, and next moment saw it lying atthe bottom of a round bricked hole.

  All this must have occupied far fewer minutes than it has taken todescribe; for Delavoye had not returned to peer with me into a wellwhich could never have been meant for water. It had neither the widthnor the depth of ordinary wells; an old ladder stood against one side,and on the other the high sun shone clean down into the mouth of apalpable tunnel. It opened in the direction of the horse-chestnuts, andI was in it next moment. The air was intolerably stale without beingactually foul; a match burnt well enough to reveal a horseshoe passagedown which a man of medium stature might have walked upright. It wasbricked like the well, and spattered with some repulsive growth thatgave me a clammy daub before I realised the dimensions. I had struck asecond match on my trousers, and it had gone out as if by magic, whenDelavoye hailed me in high excitement from the lawn above.

  He was less excited than I expected on hearing my experience; and heonly joined me for a minute before luncheon, which he insisted on ourstill taking, to keep the servants in the dark. But it was a verybrilliant eye that he kept upon the Dutch chairs through the openwindow, and he was full enough of plans and explanations. Of course wemust explore the passage, but we would give the bad air a chance ofgetting out first. He spoke of some Turkish summer-house, or pavilion,mentioned in certain annals of Witching Hill, that he had skimmed forhis amusement in the local Free Library. There was no such structure tobe seen from any point of vantage that he had discovered; possibly thiswas its site; and the floor which had fallen in might have been a falsebasement, purposely intended to conceal the trap-door, or else builtover it by some unworthy successor of the great gay lord.

  "He was just the sort of old sportsman to have a way of his own out ofthe house, Gillon! He might have wanted it at any moment; he must havebeen ready for the worst most nights of his life; for I may tell youthey would have hanged him in the end if he hadn't been too quick forthem with his own horse-pistol. You didn't know he was as bad as that?It's not a thing the family boasts about, and I don't suppose yourEstate people would hold it out as an attraction. But I've read a thingor two about the bright old boy, and I do believe we've struck the siteof some of his brightest moments!"

  "I should like to have explored that tunnel."

  "So you shall."

  "But when?"

  We had gobbled our luncheon, and I had drained the jug that myunconventional host had carried all the way from the Mulcaster Arms; butalready I was late for a most unlucky appointment with prospectivetenants, and it was only a last look that I could take at my not ignoblehandiwork. It was really rather a good hole for a beginner, and agrave-digger could not have heaped his earth much more compactly. Itcame hard to leave the next stage of the adventure even to as nice afellow as young Delavoye.

  "When?" he repeated with an air of surprise. "Why to-night, of course;you don't suppose I'm going to explore it without you, do you?"

  I had already promised not to mention the matter to my Mr. Muskett whenhe looked in at the office on his way from the station; but that was theonly undertaking which had passed between us.

  "I thought you said you didn't want Mrs. Delavoye to see the pit'smouth?"

  It was his own expression, yet it made him smile, though it had not mademe.

  "I certainly don't mean either my mother or sister to see one end tillwe've seen the other," said he. "They might have a word too many to sayabout it. I must cover the place up somehow before they get back; butI'll tell them you're coming in this evening, and when they go aloft weshall very naturally come out here for a final pipe."

  "Armed with a lantern?"

  "No, a pocketful of candles. And don't you dress, Gillon, because Idon't, even when I'm not bound for the bowels of the globe."

  I ran to my appointment after that; but the prospective tenants broketheirs, and kept me waiting for nothing all that fiery afternoon. I canshut my eyes and go through it all again, and see every inch of mysticky little prison near the station. In the heat its copious varnishdeveloped an adhesive quality as fatal to flies as bird-lime, and therethey stuck in death to pay me out. It was not necessary to pin anynotice to the walls; one merely laid them on the varnish; and thatmorning, when young Delavoye had leant against it in his whites, he hadto peel himself off like a plaster. That morning! It seemed days ago,not because I had met with any great adventure yet, but the wholeatmosphere of the place was changed by the discovery of a kindredspirit. Not that we were naturally akin in temperament, tastes, oranything else but our common youth and the want in each of a companionapproaching his own type. We saw things at a different angle, and whenhe smiled I often wondered why. We might have met in town or at collegeand never sought each other again; but separate adversities had drivenus both into the same dull haven--one from the Egyptian Civil, which hadnearly been the death of him; the other on a sanguine voyage (before themast) from the best school in Scotland to Land Agency. We were bound tomake the most of each other, and I for one looked forward to renewingour acquaintance even more than to the sequel of our interruptedadventure.

  But I was by no means anxious to meet my new friend's womankind; neveranything of a lady's man, I was inclined rather to resent the existenceof these good ladies, partly from something he had said about them withreference to our impending enterprise. Consequently it was rather latein the evening when I turned out of one of the nominally empty houses,where I had gone to lodge with a still humbler servant of the Estate,and went down to No. 7 with some hope that its mistress at all eventsmight already have retired. Almost to my horror I learned that they wereall three in the back garden, whither I was again conducted through thelittle dining-room with the massive furniture.

  Mrs. Delavoye was a fragile woman with a kind but nervous manner; thedaughter put me more at my ease, but I could scarcely see either of themby the dim light from the French window outside which they sat. I wasmore eager, however, to see "the pit's mouth," and in the soft starlightof a velvet night I made out the two Dutch chairs lying face downwardover the shaft.

  "It's so tiresome of my brother," said Miss Delavoye, following myglance with disconcerting celerity: "just when we want our gardenchairs he's varnished them, and there they lie unfit to use!"

  I never had any difficulty in looking stolid, but for the moment Iavoided the impostor's eyes. It was trying enough to hear his impudentdefence.

  "You've been at me about them all the summer, Amy, and I felt we were infor a spell of real hot weather at last."

  "I can't think why you've put them out there, Uvo," remarked his mother."They won't dry any better in the dew, my dear boy."

  "They won't make a hopeless mess of the grass, at all events!" heretorted. "But why varnish our dirty chairs in public? Mr. Gillon won'tbe edified; he'd much rather listen to the nightingale, I'm sure."

  Had they a nightingale? I had never heard one in my life. I was obligedto say something, and this happened to be the truth; it led to a littleinterchange about Scotland, in which the man Uvo assumed a Johnsonianpose, as though he had known me as long as I felt I had known him, andthen prayed silence for the nightingale as if the suburban garden were abanqueting hall. It was a concert hall, at any rate, and never wassweeter solo than the invisible singer poured forth from the black andjagged wood between glimmering lawn and starry sky. I see the picturenow, with the seated ladies dimly silhouetted against the Frenchwindows, and our two cigarettes waxing and waning like revolving lightsseen leagues away. I hear the deep magic of those heavenly notes, as Iwas to hear them more summers than one from that wild wood within a fewyards of our raw red bricks and mortar. It may be as the prelude of whatwas to follow that I recall it all so clearly, down to the couplet thatUvo could not qui
te remember and his sister did:

  "The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown."

  "That's what I meant!" he cried. "By emperor, clown, and old manMulcaster in his cups! Think of him carrying on in there to such a tune,and think of pious Christopher holding family prayers to it now!"

  And the bare thought dashed from my lips a magic potion compounded ofmilky lawn and ebony horse-chestnuts, of an amethyst sky twinkling withprecious stars, and the low voice of a girl trying not to drown the onein the wood; the spell was broken, and I was glad when at last we hadthe garden to ourselves.

  "There are two things I must tell you for your comfort," said theincorrigible Uvo as we lifted one Dutch chair from the hole it coveredlike a hatchway, but left the other pressed down over the heap of earth."In the first place, both my mother and sister have front rooms, so theywon't hear or bother about us again. The other thing's only that I'vebeen back to the Free Library in what the simple inhabitants stillinsist on calling the Village, and had another look into those annals ofold Witching Hill. I can find no mention whatever of any subterraneanpassage. I shouldn't wonder if good Sir Chris had never heard of it inhis life. In that case we shall rush in where neither man nor beast hastrodden for a hundred and fifty years."

  We lit our candles down the shaft, and then I drew the Dutch chair overthe hole again on Delavoye's suggestion; he was certainly full ofresource, and I was only too glad to play the practical man with myreach and strength. If he had been less impetuous and headstrong, weshould have made a strong pair of adventurers. In the tunnel he would gofirst, for instance, much against my wish; but, as he put it, if thefoul air knocked him down I could carry him out under one arm, whereashe would have to leave me to die in my tracks. So he chattered as wecrept on and on, flinging monstrous shadows into the arch behind us, andlighting up every patch of filth ahead; for the long-drawn vault wasbearded with stalactites of crusted slime; but no living creature fledbefore us; we alone breathed the impure air, encouraged by our candles,which lit us far beyond the place where my match had been extinguishedand deeper and deeper yet without a flicker.

  Then in the same second they both went out, at a point where theoverhead excrescences made it difficult to stand upright. And there wewere, like motes in a tube of lamp-black; for it was a darkness aspalpable as fog. But my leader had a reassuring explanation on the tipof his sanguine tongue.

  "It's because we stooped down," said he. "Strike a match on the roof ifit's dry enough. There! What did I tell you? The dregs of the air settledown like other dregs. Hold on a bit! I believe we're under the house,and that's why the arch is dry."

  We continued our advance with instinctive stealth, now blackening theroof with our candles as we went, and soon and sure enough the old tubeended in a wad of brick and timber.

  In the brickwork was a recessed square, shrouded in cobwebs whichperished at a sweep of Delavoye's candle; a wooden shutter closed theaperture, and I had just a glimpse of an oval knob, green withverdigris, when my companion gave it a twist and the shutter sprang openat the base. I held it up while he crept through with his candle, andthen I followed him with mine into the queerest chamber I had everseen.

  It was some fifteen feet square, with a rough parquet floor and panelledwalls and ceiling. All the woodwork seemed to me old oak, and reflectedour naked lights on every side in a way that bespoke attention; andthere was a tell-tale set of folding steps under an ominous square inthe ceiling, but no visible break in the four walls, nor yet anotherpiece of movable furniture. In one corner, however, stood a great stackof cigar boxes whose agreeable aroma was musk and frankincense after thepenetrating humours of the tunnel. This much we had noted when we madeour first startling discovery. The panel by which we had entered hadshut again behind us; the noise it must have made had escaped us in ourexcitement; there was nothing to show which panel it had been--nosemblance of a knob on this side--and soon we were not even agreed as tothe wall.

  Uvo Delavoye had enough to say at most moments, but now he was a man ofaction only, and I copied his proceedings without a word. Panel afterpanel he rapped and sounded like any doctor, even through his fingersto make less noise! I took the next wall, and it was I who firstdetected a hollow note. I whispered my suspicion; he joined me, and wasconvinced; so there we stood cheek by jowl, each with a guttering candlein one hand, while the other felt the panel and pressed the knots. And aknot it was that yielded under my companion's thumb. But the panel thatopened inwards was not our panel at all; instead of our earthy tunnel,we looked into a shallow cupboard, with a little old dirty bundle lyingalone in the dust of ages. Delavoye picked it up gingerly, but at once Isaw him weighing his handful in surprise, and with one accord we satdown to examine it, sticking our candles on the floor between us intheir own grease.

  "Lace," muttered Uvo, "and something in it."

  The outer folds came to shreds in his fingers; a little deeper the lacegrew firmer, and presently he was paying it out to me in fragile hanks.I believe it was a single flounce, though yards in length. Delavoyeafterwards looked up the subject, characteristically, and declared itPoint de Venise; from what I can remember of its exquisite workmanship,in monogram, coronet, and imperial emblems, I can believe with him thatthe diamond buckle to which he came at last was less precious than itswrapping. But by that time we were not thinking of their value; we werescrewing up our faces over a dark coagulation which caused the last yardor so to break off in bits.

  "Lace and blood and diamonds!" said Delavoye, bending over the relics ingrim absorption. "Could the priceless old sinner have left us a moredelightful legacy?"

  "What are you going to do with them?" I asked rather nervously at that.They had not been left to us. They ought surely to be delivered to theirrightful owner.

  "But who does own them?" asked Delavoye. "Is it the worthy plutocratwho's bought the show and all that in it is, or is it my own venerablekith and kin? They wouldn't thank us for taking these rather dirty coalsto Newcastle. They might refuse delivery, or this old boy might claimhis mining rights, and where should we come in then? No, Gillon, I'msorry to disappoint you, but as a twig of the old tree I mean to takethe law into my own hands"--I held my breath--"and put these things backexactly where we found them. Then we'll leave everything in plumb order,and finish up by filling in that hole in our lawn--if ever we get out ofthis one."

  But small doubt on the point was implied in his buoyant tone; the waythrough the panel just broached argued a similar catch in the one wesought; meanwhile we closed up the other with much relief on my side andan honest groan from Delavoye. It was sufficiently obvious that SirChristopher Stainsby had discovered neither the secret subway nor thesecret repository which we had penetrated by pure chance; on the otherhand, he made use of the chamber leading to both as a cigar cellar, andhad it kept in better order than such a purpose required. Sooner orlater somebody would touch a spring, and one discovery would lead toanother. So we consoled each other as we resumed our search, almostforgetting that we ourselves might be discovered first.

  It was in a providential pause, broken only to my ear by our quietmovements, that Delavoye dabbed a quick hand on my candle and doused hisown against the wall. Without a whisper he drew me downward, and therewe cowered in throbbing darkness, but still not a sound that I couldhear outside my skin. Then the floor above opened a lighted mouth with agilded roof; black legs swung before our noses, found the step-ladderand came running down. The cigars were on the opposite side. The manknew all about them, found the right box without a light, and turned togo running up.

  Now he must see us, as we saw him and his smooth, smug, flunkey's faceto the whites of its upturned eyes! My fists were clenched--and often Iwonder what I meant to do. What I did was to fall forward upon oozingpalms as the trap-door was let down with a bang.

  "Didn't he see us, Delavoye? Are you sure he didn't?" I chattered as hestruck a match.

  "Quite. I was watching his eyes--weren't you?"

&nbs
p; "Yes--but they got all blurred at the finish."

  "Well, pull yourself together; now's our time! It's an empty roomoverhead; it wasn't half lit up. But we haven't done anything, remember,if they do catch us."

  He was on the steps already, but I had no desire to argue with him. Iwas as ripe for a risk as Delavoye, as anxious to escape after the onewe had already run. The trap-door went up slowly, pushing something overit into a kind of tent.

  "It's only the rug," purred Delavoye. "I heard him take it up--thankGod--as well as put it down again. Now hold the candle; now thetrap-door, till I hold it up for you."

  And we squirmed up into a vast apartment, not only empty as predicted,but left in darkness made visible by the solitary light we carried now.The little stray flame was mirrored in a floor like black ice, thencaught the sheen of the tumbled rug that Delavoye would stay to smooth,then twinkled in the diamond panes of bookcases like church windows,flickered over a high altar of a mantelpiece, and finally displayed ourstealthy selves in the window by which we left the house.

  "Thank God!" said Delavoye as he shut it down again. "That's somethinglike a breath of air!"

  "Hush!" I whispered with my back to him.

  "What is it?"

  "I thought I heard shouts of laughter."

  "You're right. There they go again! I believe we've struck a heavyentertainment."

  In a dell behind the house, a spreading cedar caught the light ofwindows that we could not see. Delavoye crept to the intermediate angle,turned round, and beckoned in silhouette against the tree.

  "High jinks and junketings!" he chuckled when I joined him. "The oldbloke must be away. Shall we risk a peep?"

  My answer was to lead the way for once, and it was long before weexchanged another syllable. But in a few seconds, and for more minutes,we crouched together at an open window, seeing life with all ourinnocent eyes.

  It was a billiard-room into which we gazed, but it was not being usedfor billiards. One end of the table was turned into a champagne bar; itbristled with bottles in all stages of depletion, with still an unopenedmagnum towering over pails of ice, silver dishes of bonbons, cutdecanters of wine and spirits. At the other end a cluster of flushedfaces hung over a spinning roulette wheel; nearly all young women andmen, smoking fiercely in a silver haze, for the moment terribly intent;and as the ball ticked and rattled, the one pale face present, that ofthe melancholy croupier, showed a dry zest as he intoned the customaryadmonitions. They were new to me then; now I seem to recognise throughthe years the Anglo-French of his "_rien ne va plus_" and all the rest.There were notes and gold among the stakes. The old rogue raked in hisshare without emotion; one of the ladies embraced him for hers; and onehad stuck a sprig of maidenhair in his venerable locks; but there hesat, with the deferential dignity of a bygone school, the only verysober member of the party it was his shame to serve.

  The din they made before the next spin! It was worse when it died downinto plainer speech; playful buffets were exchanged as freely; but oneyoung blood left the table with a deadly dose of raw spirit, and satglowering over it on a raised settee while the wheel went round again. Idid not watch the play; the wild, attentive faces were enough for me;and so it was that I saw a bedizened beauty go mad before my eyes. Itwas the madness of utter ecstasy--wails of laughter and happymaledictions--and then for that unopened magnum! By the neck she caughtit, whirled it about her like an Indian club, then down on the tablewith all her might and the effect of a veritable shell. A ribbon ofblood ran down her dress as she recoiled, and the champagne flooded thegreen board like bubbling ink; but the old croupier hardly looked upfrom the pile of notes and gold that he was counting out with his sly,wintry smile.

  I saw a bedizened beauty go mad before my eyes.]

  "You saw she had a fiver on the number? You may watch roulette many along night without seeing that again!"

  It was Delavoye whispering as he dragged me away. He was the cool onenow. Too excitable for me in the early stages of our adventure, he wasnot only the very man for all the rest, but a living lesson in just thatthing or two I felt at first I could have taught him. For I fear Ishould have felled that butler if he had seen us in the cigar cellar,and I know I shouted when the magnum burst; but fortunately so dideverybody else except Delavoye and the aged croupier.

  "I suppose he was the butler?" I said when we had skirted the shallowdrive, avoiding a couple of hansoms that stood there with the cabmensnug inside.

  "What! The old fogey? Not he!" cried Delavoye as we reached the road. "Isay, don't those hansoms tell us all about his pals!"

  "But who was he?"

  "The man himself."

  "Not Sir Christopher Stainsby?"

  "I'm afraid so--the old sinner!"

  "But you said he was an old saint?"

  "So I thought he was; my lord warden of the Nonconformist conscience, Ialways heard."

  "Then how do you account for it?"

  "I can't. I haven't thought about it. Wait a bit!"

  He stood still in the road. It was his own road. There was that hole tofill in before morning; meanwhile the sweet night air was sweeter farthan we had left it hours ago; and the little new suburban housessurpassed all pleasures and palaces, behind their kindly lamps, with theclean stars watching over them and us.

  "I don't want you think the worse of me," said Delavoye, slipping hisarm through mine as he led me on: "but at this particular moment Ishould somehow think less of myself if I didn't tell you, after allwe've been through together, that I was really quite severely tempted totake that lace and those diamonds!"

  I knew it.

  "Well," I said, with the due deliberation of my normal Northern self,"you'd have had a sort of right to them. But that's nothing! Why, man, Iwas as near as a toucher to laying yon butler dead at our feet!"

  "Then we're all three in the same boat, Gillon."

  "Which three?"

  It was my turn to stand still, outside his house. And now there wasexcitement enough in his dark face to console me for all mine.

  "You, and I, and poor old Sir Christopher."

  "Poor old hypocrite! Didn't I hear that his wife died a while ago?"

  "Only last year. That makes it sound worse. But in reality it's anexcuse, because of course he would fall a victim all the more easily."

  "A victim to what?"

  "My good Gillon, don't you see that he's up to the very same games onthe very same spot as my ignoble kinsman a hundred and fifty years ago?Blood, liquor, and ladies as before! We admit that between us even youand I had the makings of a thief and a murderer while we were under thathaunted roof. Don't you believe in influences?"

  "Not of that kind," said I heartily. "I never did, and I doubt I nevershall."

  Delavoye laughed in the starlight, but his lips were quivering, and hiseyes were like stars themselves. But I held up my hand: the nightingalewas singing in the wood exactly as when we plunged below the earth.Somehow it brought us together again, and there we stood listening tilla clock struck twelve in the distant Village.

  "''Tis now the very witching time of night,'" said Uvo Delavoye, "'whenchurch-yards yawn'--like our back garden!" I might have guessed hisfavourite play, but his face lit up before my memory. "And shall I tellyou, Gillon, the real name of this whole infernal Hill and Estate? It'sWitching Hill, my man, it's Witching Hill from this night forth!"

  And Witching Hill it still remains to me.