The Black Abbot
“I must, Dick; I have given my word. I cannot trick him. The last
thing I said to him was ‘If I tell you I will marry you, you can make
the arrangements about the money--I will not fail you.’ I cannot fail
him; I cannot fail myself.”
His face was drawn and haggard.
“This can’t be!” he said. “Something will happen. I don’t know
what----”
He stopped.
“What’s that?” she gasped, terrified.
From somewhere in the grounds came a shrill shriek that was hardly
human. Again it came: a sobbing, blubbering shriek that turned her
heart to ice.
“Stay here,” said Dick, as he made for the open window, but she flung
herself upon him.
“You sha’n’t go! You mustn’t go!” she cried wildly. “Dick, something
dreadful is happening. Oh, God! listen, Dick!”
This time the shriek was shriller, and died away into a thin wail of
sound.
He pushed her aside and ran out on to the lawn.
“From which way did it come, do you think?”
“Over there.” She pointed ahead to the drive.
“Let me come with you--do, please do!” she begged. “I dare not be left
alone.”
He hesitated.
“Come,” he said roughly, and took her arm with a grip that made her
wince.
Together they ran toward Elm Drive, and then he stopped.
“Go back and get my hand lamp. It’s on my writing table,” he said. “I
will wait here for you.”
She fled back to the room, took up the lamp with fingers that trembled
so violently that she could scarcely hold it, and rejoined him.
“It was over there. I heard something a second ago. If I hadn’t
promised to wait…”
He turned on the light, swinging its rays over the ground before him,
and going ahead of her. Presently she saw him stop and a circle of
light focus on something black that lay huddled on the grass.
“Stay where you are,” he commanded, “and turn your back.”
A voice hailed him in the distance: it was Puttler, and, guided by the
lamp, he came on the scene.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Dick in a low voice.
At his feet was the huddled figure of a man. He was lying on his face,
and was attired from head to foot in a long black habit around which a
rope was girdled.
“The Black Abbot?” said Puttler incredulously. “Is he dead?”
“Look,” said Dick, and pointed to the wet shoulder and the horror of
the throat.
Puttler knelt down, and, putting his arms under the figure, turned it
on its back.
The face was covered by a black cowl, and this he gently raised.
“Merciful God!” said Dick, in a hushed voice.
He was looking into the gray face of Thomas, the footman.
XL
“Thomas--the Black Abbot!”
Dick looked at the pitiable thing, bewildered; and then he remembered
the girl and, with a low word of instruction to Puttler, went back to
her.
“Is he--dead?” she asked fearfully.
“Yes, I’m afraid he is.”
“Who--who is it?”
“One of the servants,” he said evasively.
“Not Thomas?”
Why she should think it was Thomas she could not for the life of her
tell.
“Yes--Thomas.”
She made no inquiries, and they walked back without a word to his
room. He rang the bell, and, to the footman who answered:
“Ask Mr. Glover to come to me,” he said.
The old butler came apprehensively. All the servants had heard the
scream in the park.
“Where is his lordship?”
“He went up to bed about five minutes ago, Mr. Alford.”
“Had he heard--anything?”
“No, sir. He’s so particular about our talking of the Black Abbot----”
“How do you know it was the Black Abbot?” asked Dick sharply, and the
butler explained that somebody had seen the figure in the grounds.
“He was trying to open a window. One of the maids looking out of her
window saw him walking on the paved path below, and raised an alarm.
Has he hurt anybody, Mr. Richard?”
“No, he has hurt nobody,” said Dick.
He drew the butler out into the hall and closed the door behind him.
“A man has been found in the grounds in the dress of a black
abbot--and he is dead--murdered!”
“Good Lord, sir!” said the startled servant. “Is it anybody we know?”
“Thomas,” said Dick laconically, and the old man staggered back
against the panelled wall.
“Not our Thomas? Thomas Luck, the man who was dismissed?”
Dick nodded.
“Get the servants to bed. Tell them that the scream came from somebody
who was skylarking and that we caught him--anything you like.” Then,
catching a glimpse of the man’s ashen face: “First of all you’d better
go down into the dining-room and help yourself to a good stiff glass
of brandy and water; you look a corpse, man!”
“Thomas!” muttered the old man. “It’s terrible! Do you think----”
Dick cut short his question.
“Do as I tell you; get the servants to bed. The police will be up here
soon enough, but I’ll arrange that your staff are not questioned till
the morning.”
He went back to the girl.
“As for you, young lady,” he said, with a grim smile, “I seem to spend
my life taking you back to your home.”
“Couldn’t I stay?” she asked timidly.
Dick shook his head.
“We shall have to call in the police, and I want to keep your name out
of the business. Arthur is at home?”
“Yes, Arthur is at home,” she said listlessly.
At that moment the telephone bell rang and he took up the instrument.
“Is that Lord Chelford’s house?” said an unfamiliar voice.
“Yes,” said Dick shortly.
“I’m speaking from the sub post office. That isn’t Lord Chelford
speaking?”
“No, it’s Mr. Alford,” said Dick.
“Well, listen, Mr. Alford. Have you sent anything very important from
the local post-box?”
“Why?” asked Dick quickly.
“Because our roundsman reported that the box had been tampered with.
He couldn’t get in his key, so the letters that had been posted
between six and ten have not yet been collected.”
Dick uttered an exclamation.
“Right! When it’s cleared, will you ask the postman to bring the
letters up to the hall? There are one or two that I want to withdraw.”
The man at the other end of the wire hesitated.
“Why, in the special circumstances, yes,” he said, and Dick hung up
the receiver and turned slowly to the girl.
“The letter box hasn’t been cleared.”
Slowly the significance of the words dawned upon her.
“What shall I do?” she whispered.
“Give me authority to withdraw your letter to Gilder. There are six
more days.”
She held her breath. For a second a vision of her brother in convict’s
garb came to her eyes, and then she looked at the man before her.
Something of his vitality, his confidence, passed to her soul.
“I will do as you tell me,” she said, in a voice little above a
whisper. “But, Dick, what will happen?”
“I am going to do my duty,” said Dick.
And all that sleepless night, as she tossed from side to side in her
bed, she pondered those words but could find no solution to their
mystery.
XLI
Puttler, unshaven and weary-eyed, dragged himself to the study and
poured out a large cup of tea that the butler had brought in, and
drank it at a gulp.
“Scotland Yard has given me charge of this case, for which you may
thank your stars!” he said. “Considering we’ve had to do all our work
between eleven and four, I think I’ve set up a record in
investigation. Thomas’s monkish attire was hired, as you thought, from
a theatrical costumier’s in Wardour Street----”
“I saw him coming out with a bundle under his arm and wondered what
use he could find for fancy dress,” interrupted Dick.
“That is fact No. 1,” counted Puttler. “Fact No. 2 is that he was
making ready for a getaway. He even tried to open your local letter
box, probably earlier in the evening. Do you send money by post?”
“My brother does, frequently. It’s a habit I’ve tried to cure, without
success.”
“That is fact No. 2,” said Puttler. “He couldn’t open the box, but we
found the key on him. He had moved everything of value from Gilder’s
house. I found his portmanteau packed and cached in the field where
you say Gilder parks his car. And obviously he was coming to relieve
your brother of any loose cash he might find in the library. I found
his tools scattered on the flower bed under one of the library
windows.”
“How was he killed?” asked Dick.
Puttler scratched his head.
“By a regiment of soldiers, to judge from the appearance of him!”
They talked till the sleepy-eyed Mr. Glover staggered in and asked
permission to go to bed, and then they walked out into the cold
morning and joined the party of police that were searching the
grounds.
“I suppose the best thing we can do is to go to bed also,” said Dick,
and at that instant Puttler stooped and picked something from the long
grass.
It was a long dagger, its steel hilt black with age, the blade coated
with something that was still wet. They looked at one another.
“Do you know this?”
Dick nodded mutely.
“What is it?” asked Puttler.
“It is the dagger that once belonged to the Black Abbot’s slayer,”
said Dick.
The man’s jaw dropped.
“Where does it come from?”
Dick shook his head.
“The last time I saw it,” he said slowly, “it was hanging in the hall
of Arthur Gwyn’s house.”
XLII
“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Puttler, who had literary leanings.
Dick heard his name shouted in an agitated voice, and, looking round,
saw the butler running toward him, no longer sleepy-eyed, but very
alert and white.
“What is the matter, Clover?”
“The maid… foolish girl only just told me… frightened!” gasped the old
man, and pointed to the open study windows.
Dick walked quickly back, followed by Puttler. Drooping in his study
chair was a plain-looking girl, wearing over her coarse nightdress a
man’s overcoat; her lank hair falling over her shoulders, she
presented a sight which at any other time would have moved Dick Alford
to laughter.
“Now, Alice, tell Mr. Alford what you told me,” said the old butler,
beside himself with anxiety.
It was some time before she could speak coherently, and then she told
her amazing story. She had gone to bed in the servants’ quarters soon
after eleven, with a sick headache. She had heard nothing of the
scream, but at some time--which she placed with accuracy, having an
alarm clock with a phosphorescent dial by her bedside, at 1.45--she
heard “a terrible commotion” downstairs. Her room was immediately
above Lord Chelford’s. She heard shouts and screams, the smashing of
glass and the sounds of a struggle.…
“Hurry, hurry, woman!” said Dick, frantic with anxiety. “Downstairs,
in his lordship’s room--are you sure?”
“Yes, sir,” whimpered the girl. “I simply dared not get up for fear I
was murdered. I simply laid there and fainted and come to again.…”
Before she had finished, Dick was across the hall and running up the
stairs two at a time. He tried the door of Harry’s room but it was
bolted. He called him by name, and hammered on the panels, but there
was no answer.
“We’d better break in the door,” said Puttler. “Have you got an axe?”
Mr. Glover went downstairs in search of the tool and returned with an
axe and a case-opener. In a second the panel of the door was smashed
and Dick peered in.
All the blinds save one were drawn, and the exception afforded
sufficient light to enable him to examine the room. He gave one glance
and his heart sank. The room was in hopeless confusion; the bedclothes
were thrown on the floor, two mirrors, one a cheval glass, had been
smashed; the uncurtained window was open. Dick put his hand through
the hole in the panel and unbolted the door, and the two men ran in.
There were signs as of a terrible struggle. The wreckage of two chairs
lay scattered about the floor. The table which had held the medicines
was overturned and the floor was littered with broken glass and wet
with the spilt medicines.
Puttler walked over to the bed. The mattress had been half dragged to