The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 6

“What do you mean?” Dunn asked quickly. The matted growth of hair on his face served well to hide any change of expression, but his eyes betrayed him with their look of surprise and discomfiture, and in her own clear and steady glance appeared now a kind of puzzled mockery as if she understood well that all he did was done for some purpose, though what that purpose was still perplexed her.

“I mean,” she said slowly, “well—what do I mean? I am only asking a question. Are you a burglar—or have you come here for some other reason?”

“I don't know what you're getting at,” he grumbled. “Think I'm here for fun? Not me. Come and sit on this chair and put your hands behind you and don't make a noise, or scream, or anything, not if you value your life.”

“I don't know that I do very much,” she answered with a manner of extreme bitterness, but more as if speaking to herself than to him.

She did as he ordered, and he proceeded to tie her wrists together and to fasten them to the back of the chair on which she had seated herself. He was careful not to draw the cords too tight, but at the same time he made the fastening secure.

“You won't disturb mother, will you?” she asked quietly when he had finished. “Her room's the one at the end of the passage.”

“I don't want to disturb any one,” he answered. “I only want to get off quietly. I won't gag you, but don't you try to make any noise, if you do I'll come back. Understand?”

“Oh, perfectly,” she answered. “May I ask one question? Do you feel very proud of yourself just now?”

He did not answer, but went out of the room quickly, and he had an impression that she smiled as she watched him go, and that her smile was bitter and a little contemptuous.

“What a girl,” he muttered. “She scored every time. I didn't find out a thing, she didn't do anything I expected or wanted her to. She seemed as if she spotted me right off—I wonder if she did? I wonder if she could be trusted?”

But then he thought of that photograph on the mantelpiece and his look grew stern and hard again. He was careful to avoid the room the girl had indicated as occupied by her mother, but of all the others on that floor he made a hasty search without discovering anything to interest him or anything of the least importance or at all unusual.

From the wide landing in the centre of the house a narrow stairway, hidden away behind an angle of the wall so that one did not notice it at first, led above to three large attics with steeply-sloping roofs and evidently designed more for storage purposes than for habitation.

The doors of two of these were open and within was merely a collection of such lumber as soon accumulates in any house.

The door of the third attic was locked, but by aid of the jemmy he still carried, he forced it open without difficulty.

Within was nothing but a square packing-case, standing in the middle of the floor. Otherwise the light of the electric torch he flashed around showed only the bare boarding of the floor and the bare plastered walls.

Near the packing-case a hammer and some nails lay on the floor and the lid was in position but was not fastened, as though some interruption had occurred before the task of nailing it down could be completed.

Dunn noted that one nail had been driven home, and he was on the point of leaving the attic, for he knew he had not much time and hoped that downstairs he would be able to make some discoveries of importance, when it occurred to him that it might be wise to see what was in this case, the nailing down the lid of which had not been completed.

He crossed the room to it, and without drawing the one nail, pushed back the lid which pivoted on it quite easily.

Within appeared a covering of coarse sacking. He pulled this away with a careless hand, and beneath the beam of his electric torch showed the pale and dreadful features of a dead man—of a man, the center of whose forehead showed the small round hole where a bullet had entered in; of a man whose still-recognizable features were those of the photograph on the mantel-piece of the room downstairs, the photograph that was signed:

For a long time Robert Dunn stood, looking down in silence at that dead face which was hardly more still, more rigid than his own.

He shivered, for he felt very cold. It was as though the coldness of the death in whose presence he stood had laid its chilly hand on him also.

At last he stirred and looked about him with a bewildered air, then carefully and with a reverent hand, he put back the sackcloth covering.

“So I've found you, Charley,” he whispered. “Found you at last.”

He replaced the lid, leaving everything as it had been when he entered the attic, and stood for a time, trying to collect his thoughts which the shock of this dreadful discovery had so disordered, and to decide what to do next.

“But, then, that's simple,” he thought. “I must go straight to the police and bring them here. They said they wanted proof; they said I had nothing to go on but bare suspicion. But that's evidence enough to hang Deede Dawson—the girl, too, perhaps.”

Then he wondered whether it could be that she knew nothing and was innocent of all part or share in this dreadful deed. But how could that be possible? How could it be that such a crime committed in the house in which she lived could remain unknown to her?

On the other hand, when he thought of her clear, candid eyes; when he remembered her gentle beauty, it did not seem conceivable that behind them could lie hidden the tigerish soul of a murderess.

“That's only sentiment, though,” he muttered. “Nothing more. Beautiful women have been rotten bad through and through before today. There's nothing for me to do but to go and inform the police, and get them here as soon as possible. If she's innocent, I suppose she'll be able to prove it.”

He hesitated a moment, as he thought of how he had left her, bound and a prisoner.

It seemed brutal to leave her like that while he was away, for he would probably be some time absent. But with a hard look, he told himself that whatever pain she suffered she must endure it.

His first and sole thought must be to bring to justice the murderers of his unfortunate friend; and to secure, too, thereby, the success almost certainly of his own mission.

To release her and leave her at liberty might endanger the attainment of both those ends, and so she must remain a prisoner.

“Only,” he muttered, “if she knew the attic almost over her head held such a secret, why didn't she take the chance I gave her of getting hold of my revolver? That she didn't, looks as if she knew nothing.”

But then he thought again of the photograph in her room and remembered that agony of grief to which she had been surrendering herself when he first saw her. Now those passionate tears of hers seemed to him like remorse.

“I'll leave her where she is,” he decided again. “I can't help it; I mustn't run any risks. My first duty is to get the police here and have Deede Dawson arrested.”

He went down the stairs still deep in thought, and when he reached the landing below he would not even go to make sure that his captive was still secure.

An obscure feeling that he did not wish to see her, and still more that he did not wish her to see him, prevented him.

He descended the second flight of steps to the hall, taking fewer precautions to avoid making a noise and still very deep in thought.

For some time he had had but little hope that young Charley Wright still lived.

Nevertheless, the dreadful discovery he had made in the attic above had affected him profoundly, and left his mind in a chaos of emotions so that he was for the time much less acutely watchful than usual.

They had spent their boyhood together, and he remembered a thousand incidents of their childhood. They had been at school and college together. And how brilliantly Charley had always done at work and play, surmounting every difficulty with a laugh, as if it were merely some new and specially amusing jest!

Every one had thought well of him, every one had believed that his future career would be brilliant. Now it had ended in this obscure and dreadful fashion, as ends the life of a trapped rat.

Dunn found himself hardly able to realize that it was really so, and through all the confused medley of his thoughts there danced and flickered his memory of a young and lovely face, now tear-stained, now smiling, now pale with terror, now calmly disdainful.

“Can she have known?” he muttered. “She must have known—she can't have known—it's not possible either way.”

He shuddered and as he put his foot on the lowest stair he raised his hands to cover his face as though to shut out the visions that passed before him.

Another step forward he took in the darkness, and all at once there flashed upon him the light of a strong electric torch, suddenly switched on.

“Put up your hands,” said a voice sharply. “Or you're a dead man.”

He looked bewilderedly, taken altogether by surprise, and saw he was faced by a fat little man with a smooth, chubby, smiling face and eyes that were cold and grey and deadly, and who held in one hand a revolver levelled at his heart.

“Put up your hands,” this newcomer said again, his voice level and calm, his eyes intent and deadly. “Put up your hands or I fire.”