The Black Abbot
sugary. It appeals to the senses. I’ve had many an argument with my
brother churchwardens----”
“Are you a churchwarden?” asked Dick, in surprise.
Again the gleam of laughter in the man’s deep-set eyes.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said modestly, “but I am.”
Soon after this, Harry left the table, and was gone five minutes when
he returned with a fat volume under his arm.
“You’re right, Mr.----”
“Puttler,” suggested Dick.
“You’re right about Robinson Crusoe. What an extraordinary fact, to
think that one has lived all one’s life under such a mistaken
impression!”
This evidence of literary skill on the part of the visitor brought a
remarkable change in Harry’s attitude. Before, Puttler might have had
no existence. He was one with the milkman, the grocer, and the village
postman.
He took Puttler affectionately by the arm and led him into the
library, and there Dick left them, knowing exactly the course of
instruction that Mr. Puttler would receive; for Harry’s first act was
to unlock his desk and take out the Diary. He was relieved to have
Puttler off his hands for an hour or two. Dick that day was
experiencing a sense of unbelievable relief. A great burden had been
lifted from his shoulders, and one of his more pressing and secret
troubles had been half dissipated.
He ran halfway down the drive to meet Leslie’s car, and leapt on the
running-board while the car was moving.
“Practising for a tram-conductor,” he said cheerily. “I’ve decided on
my profession, when you arrive at Fossaway Manor, mistress of all
these demesnes.”
“When will that be, Dick?” she asked, looking steadily ahead.
“Never, I hope.”
In his lightness of heart he had not kept that usual guard on his
tongue, and the words were out before he could stop them. Twice he had
been taken off his guard, and he would have given anything to unsay
his words.
Apparently she did not attach any great significance to them, for she
did not turn her head, sending the car spinning to the broad gravelled
place before the old porch. He jumped down when she stopped the
machine and helped her alight.
“I have to prepare you for a curious bird,” he said, and described Mr.
Puttler with more truth than flattery.
“What is he, Dick?”
“He’s an accountant,” said Dick glibly. “He’s also quite an amusing
fellow and full of weird information. I’m going to try a little on
you. Do you know that Robinson Crusoe was a German?”
“Why, of course, his father lived in Bremen,” she said, and he was
still laughing when he took her into the library.
In the presence of his fiancée Lord Chelford exhibited a nervousness
and a _gaucherie_ which might have been understandable if he were
meeting her for the first time. He had never quite overcome the
novelty of his engagement, and his attitude toward her was one of awe
rather than of reverence.
“How do you do, Leslie?”
He had never kissed her in his life; now he held her hand for a
fraction of a second and dropped it as though it burnt him.
“Do you know Mr. Tuttler?”
“Puttler,” said the other, and Leslie looked into the melancholy eyes
and read something in them that Dick had missed, and possibly Mr.
Puttler’s closest associate had not seen.
She did not pay him the poor compliment of feeling sorry for him,
though she read in those quick-lighting deeps a craving for woman’s
sympathy which nature, by her cruel handiwork, had repelled in
advance.
“Glad to know you, Miss Gwyn. I know your brother--Mr. Arthur Gwyn,
the solicitor, isn’t it? I thought so.”
“Has Arthur come?” asked Harry.
“No,” said Dick. “We’re going to have tea in the drawing-room. Will
you come along, Harry?”
“Surely, surely,” he said hastily. “You’ll excuse me, dear----” It was
an effort to employ even so banal an expression of affection.
When they reached the beautiful drawing-room, with its windows open to
the terrace, and a riot of gorgeous sulphur chrysanthemums showing
above the stone balustrade, they found they were alone. Mr. Puttler
had melted away as they were passing through the hall. He explained,
afterward, that he wanted to stroll through the gardens, but the girl
knew that the man’s uncanny instinct had told him that, of all the
people in the world, these two were satisfied best with each other’s
company.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I didn’t get up till lunch time,” he said. “And you?”
She shook her head.
“No, I couldn’t sleep. Poor Arthur!”
“Did you try beefsteak?” he asked brutally. “Really, the most
incongruous company I can imagine is a black eye and Arthur Gwyn!”
“He is awfully shaken,” she said seriously. “I have never known him to
be so upset. It _was_ Mr. Gilder.”
“I knew,” said Dick, “or, at least, I guessed. Did you find out the
cause of the quarrel?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t know; I think it was something to do with me.”
“What was Gilder doing at your house?”
“Arthur didn’t tell me,” she replied. “From what he said I gather that
Mr. Gilder had been watching Arthur and had followed him somewhere.”
“To the Abbey ruins--yes, that is quite possible. And of course your
brother objected to that, naturally. Why are they watching each
other?”
“Is Arthur watching Gilder?” she asked in surprise.
“It almost looks like it. Leslie, I want to tell you something that
nobody else knows, not even Harry. It may bring a little ease to your
mind in the dark hours of the night. Puttler is a detective, a
Scotland Yard man.”
She stared at him.
“A detective? Why on earth----?”
“Things have been happening that I don’t very much like,” said Dick.
“I’ve been worried nearly sick about them, and though I’m quite
capable of dealing with most contingencies, the Lord has ordained that
I should take seven hours’ rest in every twenty-four, and there must
be somebody awake when I’m asleep.”
“The Black Abbot--is that what is worrying you?”
He bit his lip thoughtfully.
“Yes and no. Some aspects of the Black Abbot’s activities trouble me
more than I should like to confess. Leslie, do you believe in the
treasure?”
“The Chelford treasure?” she asked, in surprise. “And what do you mean
by believing in it? It is true that the gold was brought to Fossaway
Manor in olden times, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly true,” said Dick, “and perfectly true, I should imagine,
that it was taken away. But do you believe that it has any existence,
that it can be found? Suppose one dug up every square inch of the
park, pulled down this old house of ours, probed into the bowels of
the earth, do you think it is possible that the gold could be found?
Because, if you don’t, there are other people who do besides Harry.”
“Do you believe?” she challenged.
He heaved a deep sigh.
“Heaven knows, I’m ready to believe anything! And I thought I should
never drag down my lofty intelligence to such deeps. But, Leslie, my
dear, I am getting----” He paused for a word.
“Convinced?”
“Not exactly convinced, but shaken in my obstinacy. I’ve become a
doubter of my own scepticism, and that’s the worst mental condition a
man can reach--or almost the worst,” he added.
“Does Harry know you are a convert?” Her fine eyes twinkled with
mischief.
“He suspects me,” said Dick gloomily. “If I thought the money was
here----”
She regarded him steadily.
“Would it make a big difference to you, Dick?” she asked.
“Me personally?” He shook his head. “Lord, no! It would make a
difference to the----” He paused. “To Harry. I was going to say the
estate. The estate, to me, is something distinct from any personality.
It stands for the agglomeration of dead men’s efforts, the cumulative
sum of all their strivings.”
She looked at him for a long time in wonder. She loved him in this
serious mood of his.
“You’ve made rather a fetish of Fossaway Manor and the Chelford
estates, haven’t you?”
“Have I?” He was genuinely surprised. “I wonder…” And then he laughed.
“It isn’t a bad line for a second son to exalt the estates to which he
will never succeed, above the personality of the man who will get it!
It makes him rather superior to the real heir. Put my fetish worship
down to vanity, for the Lord knows I have my share of that.”
“I doubt it,” she said quietly. “Come out on to the terrace. Your
flowers are lovely.”
“‘Everything in the garden----’” he began, but she checked him with a
warning finger.
“If you get banal I shall go in and find Puttler.”
XXV
She leaned on the gray stone balustrade and looked down upon the
wind-stirred tresses of great golden chrysanthemums, each as big as a
large-sized saucer. They were not all gold; there were deep red blooms
and snowy white and flaming orange, and beyond them a huge bed of
late-flowering roses; even from this distance, she could catch the
delicate fragrance of them.
“It’s a beautiful old place,” she said in a hushed voice. “I don’t
wonder that you love it. How long has your family owned this estate,
Dick?”
“Eight hundred years,” he said. “The first of the Chelfords sliced off
the head of the original owner and stole the property. Successive
generations of Chelfords, whose own heads were cut off with monotonous
regularity, enclosed a few thousand acres of common land belonging to
the people--and there you are!”
She laughed softly.
“You have very few illusions, have you?”
“None,” was his curt reply, and somehow the answer hurt her.
They had to send twice for Harry before he put in an appearance, and
he seemed disappointed to find that Puttler was not there.
“That is quite an intelligent fellow, Dick,” he said, delicately
spearing a cucumber sandwich. “He has an extraordinary knowledge of
history, particularly English history. Unfortunately, he doesn’t read
German” [Harry read German as well as he read English, French, or
Italian] “but I have persuaded him to take up the study. Have you
everything you want, Leslie?”
He had helped her to nothing, and was happy to find that her
requirements had been supplied. Only twice he spoke to her: once to
ask about Arthur, and the other time when he made an oblique reference
to his forthcoming marriage.
“Marriage ceremonies and the pomp of them are a little indelicate, I
think. It is a barbarous custom, these veils and bridesmaids and
barbaric orange-blossoms. Now in America I am told that it is quite
the usual thing to be married in a drawing-room. I’m sure that could
be arranged, couldn’t it, Dick? The bishop is quite an obliging old
gentleman.”
“Turn Puttler on him: he’s an authority on church ritual,” said Dick.
“The man is an authority on most things,” said Harry, with
unaccustomed enthusiasm. “He was telling me that possibly there was
some cryptogram in existence which would give a direct clue as to the
treasure.” And then, seeing the half smile on the girl’s face, he gave
one of his rare boyish laughs. “We are still chasing shadows, Leslie,
but it is a very substantial shadow, believe me. Now, Puttler thinks…”
They listened without comment to Puttler’s views, which in this case
were neither informative nor particularly brilliant.
“Puttler’s mind apparently runs to dungeons, and there are dungeons to
this place,” said Harry vigorously. “I am going to have a look round
to-morrow. There are probably secret places under the floor which
might be profitably examined.”
“The dungeons, as you call them, are wine cellars,” said Dick
ominously; “and if Puttler goes fooling around my port there will be
trouble! Besides which, Harry, I don’t suppose there has been a single
ancestor of ours who hasn’t dug up the floor of that unfortunate
dungeon--one of them in the days of the Regency had the walls
stripped, and the beggar never replaced the stone. It cost our father
the best part of a thousand pounds to repair the damage done by this
old gold-hound!”