The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 30

He turned quickly towards Deede Dawson. Their eyes met, and in that mutual glance Rupert Dunsmore read that his suspicions were correct and Deede Dawson that his dreadful trap was discovered.

Neither spoke. For a brief moment they remained impassive, immobile, their eyes meeting like blows, and then Deede Dawson made one spring to seize again the revolver he had laid down in the hope of enticing Rupert into the awful snare prepared for him.

But quick as he was, Rupert was quicker still, and as Deede Dawson leaped he lifted his pistol and fired, though his aim was not at the man, but at the revolver lying on the top of the roll of carpet where Deede Dawson had placed it.

The bullet, for Rupert was a man who seldom missed, struck the weapon fair and whirled it, shattered and useless, to the floor. Deede Dawson, whose hand had been already outstretched to seize it, drew back with a snarl that was more like the cry of a trapped wolf than any sound produced from human lips.

Still, Rupert did not speak. With the smoking pistol in his hand he watched silently and steadily his helpless enemy who, for his part, was silent, too, and very still, for he felt that doom was close upon him.

Yet he showed not the least sign of fear, but only a fierce and sullen defiance.

“Shoot away, why don't you shoot?” he sneered. “Mind you don't miss. I trusted you when I put my revolver down and I was a fool, but I thought you would play fair.”

Without a word Rupert tossed his pistol through the attic window.

They heard the tinkling fall of the glass, they heard more faintly the sound of the revolver striking the outhouse roof twenty feet below and rebounding thence to the paved kitchen yard beneath, and then all was quiet again.

“I only need my hands for you,” said Rupert softly, as softly as a mother coos to her drowsy babe. “My hands for you.”

For the first time Deede Dawson seemed to fear, for, indeed, there was that in Rupert Dunsmore's eyes to rouse fear in any man. With a sudden swift spring, Rupert leaped forward and Deede Dawson, not daring to abide that onslaught, turned and ran, screaming shrilly.

During the space of one brief moment, a dreadful and appalling moment, there was a wild strange hunting up and down the narrow space of that upper attic, cumbered with lumber and old, disused furniture.

Round and round Deede Dawson fled, screaming still in a high shrill way, like some wild thing in pain, and hard upon him followed Rupert, nor had they gone a second time about that room before Rupert had Deede Dawson in a fast embrace, his arms about the other's middle.

One last great cry Deede Dawson gave when Rupert seized him, and then was silent as Rupert lifted him and swung him high at arm's length.

As a child in play sports with its doll, so Rupert swung Deede Dawson twice about his head, round and round and then loosed him so that he went hurling through the air with awful force, like a stone shot from a catapult, clean through the window through which Rupert had the moment before tossed his pistol with but little more apparent effort.

Right through the window, bearing panes and sash with him, Deede Dawson flew with the impetus of that great throw and out beyond and down, turning over and over the while, down through the empty air to fall and be shattered like a piece of worthless crockery on the stone threshold of the outhouse door.

Surprised to find himself alone, Rupert put his hand to his forehead and looked vacantly around.

“My God, what have I done?” he thought.

He was trembling violently, and the fury of the passion that had possessed him and had given his mighty muscles a force more than human, was still upon him.

Going to the window, he looked out, for he did not quite know what had happened and from it he looked back at the wardrobe door.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes.”

He ran to it and tore open the door and from within very tenderly and gently he lifted down the half-swooning Ella who, securely gagged and tightly bound, had been thrust into its interior to conceal her from him.

Hurriedly he freed her from her bonds and from the handkerchief that was tied over her mouth and holding her in his arms like a child, pressing her close to his heart, he carried her lightly out of that dreadful room.

Only once did she stir, only once did she speak, when lifting her pale, strained face to him she murmured very faintly something in which he just caught the words:—

“Deede Dawson.”

“He'll trouble us no more nor any one else, I think,” answered Rupert, and she said no more but snuggled down in his arms as though with a feeling of perfect security and safety.

He took her to her own room and left her with her mother, and then went down to the hall and took a chair and sat at the front door.

All at once he felt very tired and one of his shoulders hurt him, for he had strained a muscle there rather badly.

His one desire was to rest, and he did not even trouble to go round to the back of the house to see what had happened to Deede Dawson, though indeed that was not a point on which he entertained much doubt.

For a long time he sat there quietly, till at last his father arrived in a motor-car from Wreste Abbey, together with a police-inspector from the county town whom he had picked up on the way.

Rupert took them into the room where Deede Dawson's chessmen and the board were still standing and told them as briefly as he could what had happened since the first day when he had left his home to try to trace out and defeat the plot hatched by Walter Dunsmore and Deede Dawson.

“You people wouldn't act,” he said to the inspector. “You said there was no evidence, no proof, and I daresay you were right enough from the legal point of view. But it was plain enough to me that there was some sort of conspiracy against my uncle's life, I thought against my father's as well, but I was not sure of that at first. It was through poor Charley Wright I became so certain. He found out things and told me about them; but for him the first attempt to poison my uncle would have succeeded. Even then we had still no evidence to prove the reality of our suspicions, for Walter destroyed it, by accident, I thought at the time, purposely, as I know now. It was something Walter said that gave Charley the idea of coming here. Then he vanished. He must have roused their suspicions somehow, and they killed him. But again Walter put us all off the scent by his story of having seen Charley in London, so that it was there the search for him was made, and no one ever thought of Bittermeads. I never suspected Walter, such an idea never entered my head; but luckily I didn't tell him of my idea of coming to Bittermeads myself to try to find out what was really going on here. He knew nothing of where I was till I told him that day at Wreste Abbey, then of course he came over here at once. I thought it was anxiety for my safety, but I expect really it was to warn his friends. When I saw him here that night I told him every single thing, I trusted the carrying-out of everything I had arranged to him. If it hadn't been for a note Miss Cayley wrote me to warn me, I should have walked right into the trap and so would my father too.”

The police-inspector asked a few questions and then made a search of the room which resulted in the discovery of quite sufficient proof of the guilt of Deede Dawson and of Walter Dunsmore.

Among these proofs was also a hastily-scribbled note from Walter that solved the mystery of John Clive's death. It was not signed, but both General Dunsmore and Rupert knew his writing and were prepared to swear to it. Beginning abruptly and scribbled on a torn scrap of paper, it ran:

“I found Clive where you said, lucky you got hold of the note and read it before she sent it, for no doubt she meant to warn him. Take care she gets no chance of the sort again. I did Clive's business all right. She saw me and I think recognized me from that time she saw me over the packing-case business, before I took it out to sink it at sea. At any rate, she ran off in a great hurry. If you aren't careful, she'll make trouble yet.”

“Apparently,” remarked the inspector when he had read this aloud, “the young lady was very luckily not watched closely enough and did make trouble for them. Could I see her, do you think?”

“I don't know, I'll go and ask,” Rupert said.

Ella was still very shaken, but she consented to see the inspector, and they all went together to her room where she was lying on her bed with her mother fussing nervously about her.

She told them in as few words as possible the story of how she had always disliked and mistrusted the man whom so unfortunately her mother had married, and how gradually her suspicions strengthened till she became certain that he was involved in many unlawful deeds.

But always her inner certainty had fallen short of absolute proof, so careful had he been in all he did.

“I knew I knew,” she said. “But there was nothing I really knew. And he made me do all sorts of things for him. I wouldn't have cared for myself, but if I tried to refuse he made mother suffer. She was very, very frightened of him, but she would never leave him. She didn't dare. There was one night he made me go very late with a packing-case full of silver things he had, and he wouldn't tell me where he had got them. I believe he stole them all, but I helped him pack them, and I took them away the night Mr. Dunsmore came and gave them to a man wearing a mask. My stepfather said it was just a secret family matter he was helping some friends in, and later on I saw the same man in the woods near here one day—the day Mr. Clive was killed by the poachers—and when he came another time to the house I thought I must try to find out what he wanted. I listened while they talked and they said such strange things I made up my mind to try to warn Mr. Dunsmore, for I was sure there was something they were plotting.”

“There was indeed,” said Rupert grimly. “And but for that warning you sent me they would have succeeded.”

“Somehow they found out what I had done,” Ella continued. “As soon as I got back he kept looking at me so strangely. I was afraid—I had been afraid a long time, for that matter—but I tried not to show it. In the afternoon he told me to go up to the attic. He said he wanted me to help him pack some silver. It was the same silver I had packed before; for some reason he had got it back again. This time I had to pack it in the little boxes, and after I had finished I waited up there till suddenly he ran in very quickly and looking very excited. He said I had betrayed them, and should suffer for it, and he took some rope and he tied me as tightly as he could, and tied a great handkerchief over my mouth, and pushed me inside the wardrobe and locked it. I think he would have killed me then only he was afraid of Mr. Dunsmore, and very anxious to know what had happened, and why Mr. Dunsmore had come home, and if there was any danger. And I was a long time there, and I heard a great noise, and then Mr. Dunsmore opened the door and took me out.”