Part 5 (1/2)
”Good-night.”
Then the door closed again, and the house dropped once more into stillness. In ten minutes Merriton tumbled into bed. He slept like a log.... He hadn't seen the doctor drop that sleeping draught into that last whisky while Tony West kept him talking. That was why he slept.
Later on, however, his shame at his own foolishness in firing his pistol at mere flames of the night was the cause of grave difficulty. For when he related the story of the whole affair to Cleek's master mind he left that out! And very nearly was it his own undoing, for strange was to be the outcome of that shot in the night.
CHAPTER VII
THE WATCHER IN THE SHADOW
But if Merriton slept, the others of the little party did not. After his door had closed upon him they appeared from their rooms, and met by arrangement once more in the study. Doctor Bartholomew-a little late at having waited and listened for the outward result of his drug in Nigel's comforting snore-joined the group with an anxious face. There was no laughter now in the pleasant, heated smoking room. Every face there wore a look that bordered closely upon fear.
”Well, Doctor,” said Tony West, as he entered the room, ”what's the plan? I don't like Wynne's absence, I swear I don't. It-it looks fishy, somehow. And he was in no mood to play boyish pranks on us by turnin' in at the Brelliers' place. There's somethin' else afoot. What's your idea, now?”
The doctor considered a moment.
”Better be getting out and form a search party,” he said quietly. ”If nothing turns up-well, Nigel needn't know we've been out. But-there's more in this than meets the eye, boys. Frankly, I don't like it. Wynne's a brute, but he never liked practical joking. It's my private opinion that he would have returned by now-if something hadn't happened to him. We'll wait till dawn, and then we'll go. Nigel is good for some hours yet. Wynne always had a bad effect on him. Ever noticed it, West? Or you, Stark?”
The two men nodded.
”Yes,” said Tony, ”I have. Many times. Nigel's never the same fellow when that man's about. He's-he's got some sort of devilish influence over him, I believe. And how he hates Nigel! See his eyes to-night? He could have killed him, I believe-specially as Nigel's taken his girl.”
”Yes.” The doctor's voice was rather grave. ”Wynne's a queer chap and a revengeful one. And he was as drunk as a beast to-night.... Well, boys we'll sit down and wait awhile.”
Pipes were got out and cigarettes lighted. For an hour in the hot smoking-room the men sat, talking in undertones and smoking, or dropping off into long silences. Finally the doctor drew out his watch. He sighed as he looked at it.
”Three o'clock, and no sign of Wynne yet. We'll be getting our things on, boys.”
Instantly every man rose to his feet. The tension slackened with movement. In comparative silence they stole out into the hall, threw on their coats and hats, and then Tony West nervously slid the bolts of the big front door. It creaked once or twice, but no sound from the still house answered it. West swung it open, and on the whitened step they quietly put on their shoes.
The doctor switched on an electric torch and threw a blob of light upon the gravelled pathway for them to see the descent. Then one by one they went quietly down the steps, and West shut the door behind them.
”Excellent! Excellent!” exclaimed Doctor Bartholomew, as the gate was reached with no untoward happenings. ”Not a soul knows we're gone, boys. That's pretty certain. Now, then, out of the gate and turn to the right up that lane. It'll take us to the very edge of the Fens, I believe, and then our search will commence.”
He spoke with a.s.surance, and they followed him instinctively. Unconsciously they had made him captain of the expedition. But-no one had heard them, he had said? If he had looked back once when the big gate shut, he might have changed his mind upon that score. With white face pressed close against the gla.s.s of the smoking-room window, which looked directly out upon the front path, stood Borkins, watching them as though he were watching a line of ghosts on their nightly prowl.
”Good Gawd!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as he discerned their dark figures and the light of the doctor's torch. ”Every one of 'em gone-every one!” And then, trembling, he went back to bed.
But the doctor did not look back, and so the little party proceeded upon its way in comparative silence until the edge of the Fens was reached. Here, with one accord, they stopped for further instructions. Three torches made the spot upon which they stood like daylight. The doctor bent his eyes downward.
”Now, boys,” he said briskly. ”Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way-if he was bent upon going there at all.... h.e.l.lo! Here's the squelchy mark of a man's boot, and here's another!”
They followed the track onward, with perfect ease, for the marshy ground was sodden and took every footprint deeply. That some man had crossed this way, and recently, too, was perfectly plain. The footprints wavered a little that was all, showing that the man who made them was uncertain upon his feet. And Wynne had left the house by no means sober!
”It looks as though he had come here after all!” broke out Tony West, excitedly. ”Why the track's as plain as the nose on your face.”
They zig-zagged their tedious way out across the marshy gra.s.sland, their thin shoes squelching in the bogs, their trousers unmercifully spattered with the thick, treacley mud. They spoke little, their eyes bent upon the ground, their foreheads wrinkled. On and on and on they went, while the sky above them lightened and grew murky with the soft cloudiness of breaking dawn. The flames in the distance began to pale, and the vast stretch of Fen district before them was shrouded in a light fog, misty, unutterably ghostlike and with the chill lonesomeness of death.
”Whew! Eeriest task I've ever come across!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Stark with a grimace as he looked up for a moment into the dull mist ahead. ”If we're not all down with pneumonia to-morrow, it won't be our own faults!... Some distance, isn't it, Doctor?”
”It is,” returned the doctor grimly. ”What a fool the man was to attempt it!... Here's a footprint, and another.”