then a hand like a steel vice gripped his wrist; he was swung from his feet and fell to the floor with a crash.
‘Ju-juishoo,’ said Mr Fane very gently.
He heard an angry exclamation and turned to face Colonel Redmayne.
‘What is the meaning of this?’
He heard his daughter’s incoherent explanation.
‘Take that man to the kitchen,’ he said. When they were gone: ‘Now, sir, what do you want?’
Her father’s tone was milder than Mary had expected.
‘Food an’ comfort for man an’ beast,’ said the younger man coolly, and with an effort the colonel restrained his temper.
‘You can’t stay here—I told you that yesterday. I’ve no room for you, and I don’t want you.’
He nodded to the door, and Mary left hurriedly. Now his voice changed.
‘Do you think I’d let you contaminate this house? A drunken beast without a sense of chivalry or decency—with nothing to do with his money but spend it in drink?’
‘I thought you might,’ said Ferdie.
A touch of the bell brought Cotton.
‘Show this—gentleman out of the house—and well off the estate,’ he said.
It looked as though his visitor would prove truculent, but to his relief Mr Fane obeyed, waving aside the butler’s escort.
He had left the house when a man stepped from the cover of a clump of bushes and barred his way. It was the tinker. For a few seconds they looked at one another in silence.
‘There’s only one man who could ever put that grip on me, and I want to have a look at you,’ said the tinker.
He peered into the immobile face of Ferdie Fane, and then stepped back.
‘God! It is you! I haven’t seen you for ten years, and I wouldn’t have known you but for that grip!’ he breathed.
‘I wear very well.’ There was no slur in the voice of Fane now. Every sentence rang like steel. ‘You’ve seen a great deal more than you ought to have seen, Mr Connor!’
‘I’m not afraid of you!’ growled the man. ‘Don’t try to scare me. The old trick, eh? Made up like a boozy mug!’
‘Connor, I’m going to give you a chance for your life.’ Fane spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘Get away from this place as quickly as you can. If you’re here tonight, you’re a dead man!’ Neither saw the girl who, from a window above, had watched—and heard.
MRS ELVERY described herself as an observant woman. Less charitable people complained bitterly of her spying. Cotton disliked her most intensely for that reason, and had a special grievance by reason of the fact that she had surprised him that afternoon when he was deeply engaged in conversation with a certain tinker who had called that morning, and who now held him fascinated by stories of immense wealth that might be stored within the cellars and vaults of Monkshall.
She came with her news to Colonel Redmayne, and found that gentleman a little dazed and certainly apathetic. He had got into the habit of retiring to his small study and locking the door. There was a cupboard there, just big enough for a bottle and two glasses, handy enough to hide them away when somebody knocked.
He was not favourably disposed towards Mrs Elvery, and this may have been the reason why he gave such scant attention to her story.
‘He’s like a bear, my dear,’ said that good lady to her daughter.
She pulled aside the blind nervously and peered out into the dark grounds.
‘I am sure we’re going to have a visitation tonight,’ she said. ‘I told Mr Goodman so. He said “Stuff and nonsense!”’
‘I wish to heaven you wouldn’t do that, mother,’ snapped the girl. ‘You give me the jumps.’
Mrs Elvery looked in the glass and patted her hair.
‘I’ve seen it twice,’ she said, with a certain uneasy complacency.
Veronica shivered.
For a little while Mrs Elvery said nothing, then, turning dramatically, she lifted her fat forefinger.
‘Cotton!’ she said mysteriously. ‘If that butler’s a butler, I’ve never seen a butler.’
Veronica stared at her aghast.
‘Good lord, Ma, what do you mean?’
‘He’s been snooping around all day. I caught him coming up those stairs from the cellars, and when he saw me he was so taken aback he didn’t know whether he was on his head or his heels.’
‘How do you know he didn’t know?’ asked the practical Veronica, and Mrs Elvery’s testy reply was perhaps justifiable.
Veronica looked at her mother thoughtfully.
‘What did you see, mother—when you squealed the other night?’
‘I wish to goodness you wouldn’t say “squeal”,’ snapped Mrs Elvery. ‘It’s not a word you should use to your mother. I screamed—so would you have. There it was, running about the lawn, waving its hands—ugh!’
‘What was it?’ asked Veronica faintly.
Mrs Elvery turned round in her chair.
‘A monk,’ she said; ‘all black; his face hidden behind a cowl or something. Hark at that!’
It was a night of wind and rain, and the rattle of the lattice had made Mrs Elvery jump.
‘Let’s go downstairs for heaven’s sake,’ she said.
The cheerful Mr Goodman was alone when they reached the lounge, and he gave a little groan at the sight of her and hoped that she had not heard him.
‘Mr Goodman’—he was not prepared for Veronica’s attack—‘did mother tell you what she saw?’
Goodman looked over his glasses with a pained expression.
‘If you’re going to talk about ghosts—’
‘Monks!’ said Veronica, in a hollow voice.
‘One monk,’ corrected Mrs Elvery. ‘I never said I saw more than one.’
Goodman’s eyebrows rose.
‘A monk?’ He began to laugh softly, and, rising from the settee which formed his invariable resting place, he walked across the room and tapped at the panelled wall. ‘If it was a monk, this is the way he should come.’
Mrs Elvery stared at him open-mouthed.
‘Which way?’ she asked.
‘This is the monk’s door,’ explained Mr Goodman with some relish. ‘It is part of the original panelling.’
Mrs Elvery fixed her glasses and looked. She saw now that what she had thought was part of the panelling was indeed a door. The oak was warped and in places worm-eaten.
‘This is the way the old monks came in,’ said Mr Goodman. ‘The legend is that it communicated with an underground chapel which was used in the days of the Reformation. This lounge was the lobby that opened on to the refectory. Of course, it’s all been altered—probably the old passage to the monks’ chapel has been bricked up. The monks used to pass through that chapel every day, two by two—part of their ritual, I suppose, to remind them that life was a very short business.’
Veronica drew a deep breath.
‘On