The Ashiel mystery

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But he could not face her, though he made an effort again to
brazen it out.

Every word she had spoken seemed to strike Julia like a blow. She shrank
quivering away, and threw herself down on to a chair, her face hidden in
her hands. Juliet went to her and touched her gently on the shoulder.

"Don't think of him any more," she said. "Presently you will hate
yourself for having cared for a murderer. Just now, I know, your love for
him makes you gloss over his crimes, but when you are yourself you will
see how odious they are. Poor Julia, I hate to hurt you so, but it is
better, isn't it, that you should know? You will forget this madness. He
is not worth your wasting another thought on. Think how shamefully he has
deceived you. Think of all his lying words, of how he told you he had
never looked at another woman."

Julia raised her head and showed a face, white as chalk, in which the
great brown eyes seemed to burn like fires of hatred.

"Yes," she said in a hard, even voice. "I am thinking of it. I shall not
forget him. No. Instead, I shall think of him day and night, be sure of
that. I shall laugh as I think of him; laugh at the thought of him in
his place in the dock, or in his prison cell. I shall laugh when I give
my evidence against him, and most of all I shall laugh on the day when he
is hanged. If his grave is to be found, I shall dance upon it. Oh, it
will be a merry day for me, that day when the cord is tightened round his
false neck!"

She went near to Mark, and hissed the last words into his face, leaning
forward, with one hand on her own throat. But he seemed to shrink less
before her vindictive passion than he had under the colder scorn of
Juliet's denunciations.

"Come, Juliet," said Julia, calming herself a little, although hate was
still blazing in her eyes, "let us leave this place. We must send for
the police."

"Julia," said Mark, stepping forward, and speaking with some of his
former assurance, "you condemn me unheard. Why should you believe this
girl before me? It is not like you, Julia. It is not like the girl I
love. For I do love you, darling, in spite of what you may think; and,
till a few moments ago, I thought you loved me too. But I see now what
your love is. One whiff of suspicion, one word of accusation, and without
proof or evidence you condemn me, and your so-called affection
disappears. Julia, I think you have broken my heart."

Juliet gave vent to a derisive sound which can only be called a snort;
but it was plain that his words, and more especially the manner of sad
yet tender reproach in which they were uttered, were not without their
effect on the other girl. Her eyes wavered uneasily; she twisted and tore
at her handkerchief.

"I have heard what you have to say," she murmured. "I saw that you could
not deny what Juliet told me."

"I did deny it. But what is the use of talking to you when you are in
such a state? You are determined beforehand to disbelieve me. And I have
no wish to justify myself to Miss Byrne, though I am willing to swallow
my pride and do so to you."

"Well," she said after a moment's hesitation, "justify yourself if you
can. No one shall say I would not listen. God knows I shall be glad
enough if you can clear yourself."

"To begin with," said Mark, "I admit that, superficially, there is truth
in what you have heard. But only superficially, for the person I deceived
was not yourself but this young lady. I certainly, as she suggests, never
had the slightest intention of marrying her. For one thing I was
absolutely certain she would refuse me, but it seemed a good
precautionary move to make what might appear a generous proposal, and at
the same time get a sort of mandate from the possible heiress herself to
stick to my uncle's fortune. You may be sure I should never have given it
up, in any case, but it is as well to keep up appearances. The business
was only a move in the game I am playing, and no more affects the
sincerity of my love for you than any of the social equivocations we all
find necessary from time to time. I love you, Julia, and you alone. How
can you doubt it? I love you so much that I am willing to overlook your
want of confidence in me, and to forgive the cruel things you said just
now. Darling, how can I tell you, before a third person, what I feel for
you? You are everything to me; and, if you no longer love me, I don't
care what happens. Give me up to the police if you like. The gallows is
as good a place as another, without your love."

Long before he had finished, all traces of resentment had vanished. When
he ceased speaking, she gave in completely, and threw herself upon his
breast, sobbing passionately, and begging his forgiveness for having
doubted him for an instant, while he soothed and comforted her in a low
tone. Juliet did not know what to do or which way to look. The two stood
between her and the door, and she felt an absurd awkwardness about trying
to pass them. Was it likely she would be allowed to go out free to
denounce them? She was afraid of trying.

At last Julia was calm again, and there came a silence, during which the
pair glanced at Juliet and then at each other.

"What's to be done?" Julia asked at length, and then suddenly, without
waiting for an answer, "I have an idea, Mark, that will save you. If her
mouth can be stopped for a time, will you be able to get clear away?"

"I shall have to try, I suppose," he replied, with a trace of his former
sulkiness. "To think that everything should miscarry because of a slip
of a girl!"

"You had better go to Glasgow and get on board some ship there which will
take you to a place of safety. I shall have to stay behind till the
matter of the list is settled one way or the other. But then, when I have
reported to my superiors, I can join you, and we can begin life together
in some far-off country. I shall be as happy in one place as in another
with you, Mark; are you sure you will be, too, with only me?"

Mark hastened to reassure her on that point, but his tone as he said it
did not carry conviction to Juliet. Julia, however, seemed satisfied.

"Miss Byrne can choose," she continued. "Either she swears not to say a
word till we are both safe away, or else we can shut her in the dungeon
of the castle. I know where it is, in the wall of this tower. She will
never be found there, and I can take her food from time to time till I am
ready to join you. Isn't that a good plan?"

Mark considered.

"I don't think we will give her the option of swearing not to tell," he
said presently.

"As if I would ever promise such a thing!" Juliet interrupted, indignant.

"But," he went on, ignoring this outburst, "otherwise I think your idea
is good. Where is this dungeon? We may be disturbed at any minute, and
enough time has been wasted already."

"I will go first and show the way," said Julia. "I have an electric
torch," and she stepped into the clock and lowered herself through the
trap-door.

Mark motioned to Juliet to follow.

"Ladies first," he said with a sneer.

Juliet turned and made a dash for the door.

"I won't go! I won't! I won't!" she cried desperately, though in her
heart she knew she could not resist if he chose to use force. Perhaps if
she screamed, some one would hear. Oh, where was Gimblet? Why did he
leave her to the mercy of these people? "Help! Help!" She lifted up her
voice and shrieked as loud as she could.

With a vicious scowl Mark sprang upon her, and clapped a hand over her
mouth. Then, as she still continued to produce muffled sounds of
distress, he stuffed his handkerchief in between her teeth and, lifting
her bodily in his arms, thrust her before him into the clock, and
pushed her roughly down the hidden stair. Half-way down she lost her
footing, and fell to the bottom, where Julia was standing with her
little lamp in her hand.

Mark was following close behind, and between them they picked her up and
hurried her, limping and bruised, along the narrow passage. She was
allowed to take the handkerchief out of her mouth, for no cry could
penetrate the immense thickness of these blocks of stone. At the point
where there was a break to right and left in the walls of the passage,
Julia came to a standstill.

"Here it is," she said, turning her light on to the opening in the wall
on the left-hand side. "The door is gone, so you will have to fetch
something to block it up with."

It seemed to be a small, cell-like chamber, built into the side of the
tower. It may have contained a dozen cubic yards of space, and had
neither door nor window.

"There are some slabs of stone at the end of the passage," said Julia.
"They are heavy, but you are strong, you will be able to bring them. We
must leave a little space at the top of the door to admit some air, and
for me to pass food through to our prisoner." She laughed with a feverish
merriment. "It will be like feeding the animals at the Zoo," she said.

Mark signified his approval by a nod.

"And is this the way?" he asked, turning round and starting off in the
opposite direction.

"No, no!" Julie cried, laying a detaining hand upon his arm. "I don't
know what there is down there. I think it is a well. See, you are on the
very edge."

She cast the light on to a round dark opening in the ground some six feet
in front of and below them. From where they stood the floor began to
slant suddenly and steeply downward, so that if Mark had taken another
step, it looked as if nothing could have prevented his sliding down into
the gaping circle of blackness at the bottom.

Julia shuddered violently.

"Oh," she cried, "if you had gone over! Come away, do come away!"

"It's a funny sort of well," he said, "Looks to me like something else.
Did you ever hear of _oubliettes_, Julia?"

Juliet, as she heard him, grew white with terror.

"Julia, Julia," she cried, "you won't let him throw me down there?"

"No, no," said Julia. "He would not. There is no reason.... Mark," she
urged, "come away from here."

But he only laughed shortly.

"Don't be so hysterical," he said, and continued to bend his gaze upon
the hole at the bottom of the slope. It seemed to have a sort of
fascination for him. Finally he picked a piece of loose mortar from the
wall and threw it down into the gap. A second later there was a dull
sound which might have been a splash. "Perhaps it is a well after all.
Did you think it sounded as if it had fallen into water?"

"Yes," said Julia, "I am sure it did. Do come away. I hate being here."

And indeed she was shivering from head to foot, and not Juliet herself
seemed more anxious to leave the place.

"Just one more shot," said Mark. "Here, Julia, stoop down, and roll that
bit of stone slowly down the slope, while I hold on to our prisoner. We
shall hear better that way. Give me your lamp."

Anxious to satisfy him, Julia picked up the fragment he had knocked
from the rough wall, and stooping down stretched out her hand to set the
stone in motion. But, as she did so, Mark loosened his grip on Juliet,
and bending quickly behind this poor girl who loved him seized her by
the shoulders and threw her forward on to her face. The steep pitch of
the floor finished what the impetus given by his onslaught had begun.
Julia shot head first down the slope, and disappeared into the black
chasm of the well.

One long agonized scream came up to them out of the darkness, and rolled
its echoes through the lonely passages.

Then the distant sound of a splash; and silence.

Back against the wall, Juliet cowered, her whole body shaken by great
sobs. She was petrified with terror of this fiendish man, but her fears
for herself gave way before the horror of what she had seen.

"Oh, what have you done, what have you done?" she wept.

Mark tried to summon up a jeering smile. The lantern threw no light upon
his white and twitching face.

"You don't suppose I meant to let her go free, after the taste she gave
me of her temper?" he asked, in a voice he could not keep from shaking a
little. "Do you suppose I like having to do these things? You women have
never the slightest sense of common justice. The whole thing is perfectly
beastly to me. But how could I live with a girl who would be ready to
threaten me with the gallows every time she got out of bed wrong foot
first? It's not fair to blame me for other people's faults."

He spoke querulously, with the air of a much-injured man. Though Juliet
was beyond any coherent reply, he seemed afraid of meeting her eyes, and
looked resolutely away from her, his glance shifting and wavering from
the walls to the floor, from the floor to the stones of the low roof; up,
down, and sideways, but never resting on her. At last, as if drawn there
irresistibly and against his will, they fell once more on the dark circle
of the mouth of the pit, and he started back, shuddering violently.

"As if I hadn't enough to bear without being saddled with hideous
memories for the rest of my life!" he cried with bitter irritability. "If
you had an ounce of common fairness in your composition you would admit I
could do no less. Why, any day she might have got jealous, or something,
and flown into a passion again, and denounced me to the police. Besides,
I have no wish to be obliged to fly the country. Why should I? She was
the only person who knew the truth; except you. That is why you must
follow her."

"No, no!" cried Juliet despairingly, but without avail, for her feeble
strength could offer him no effective opposition, and he thrust her
easily on to the slope. She felt instinctively that at that angle the
merest push would make her lose her balance, and sank quickly to her
knees, catching him round the ankle with one hand, and clinging
desperately.

He swore furiously, and bent down to unclasp her fingers from his leg.
Then he flung her hand away from him; and cut off from all assistance she
began instantly to slide backwards, slowly but irresistibly.

CHAPTER XXI

Juliet dug her nails into the cracks of the stone floor with all the
energy of despair, but in a moment her feet were over the edge of the pit
and she was falling. Her fingers gripped the edge with a fierce tenacity,
and for some minutes she hung there, minutes that seemed longer than all
the rest of her life put together.

And so she hung, her knees drawn up in a frantic effort to pull herself
out of the depths, till her muscles refused any longer to contract, and
she felt herself gradually straightening out and growing, it seemed,
heavier and heavier, till she knew that in one more second her fingers
would slip from their hold, and all would be over.

But as she dropped into a straight position, and wearily abandoned her
efforts to raise herself, one of her feet suddenly touched some firm
substance beneath it. Something narrow it was, for the other foot as
yet still hung in space, but some blessed solid thing on which it was
possible to stand. As, with a feeling of thankfulness and relief such
as she had never before experienced, she allowed her weight to rest on
it and found that it did not give, she felt a sharp blow on the
knuckles of her left hand, which made her withdraw it quickly and lean
against the wall to steady herself. Mark was throwing stones at her
fingers to make her leave go sooner. Another missed her narrowly, and
shot over her head.

She drew down her right hand, and still leaning against the wall felt
about with her other foot for a support.

She soon found it, a little farther back it seemed than the first
foothold; but more experimental investigation showed that it was really
part of the same object. There appeared, indeed, to be several of them
about, all near to the wall, so that it was plain that poor Julia, as she
shot over the brink, had fallen outside, and beyond them. What the bars
were that she seemed to be standing on, Juliet could not at first
imagine, and it was not till Mark, growing tired of waiting for a splash
that never came, reached the conclusion that his ears had deceived him,
and took himself and Julia's lantern off to other spheres of usefulness,
that she perceived that a faint light penetrated into the upper part of
the pit. When her eyes had become accustomed to it, she was able to make
out that she was perched upon a portion of the roots of a tree, which had
grown in through holes in the wall.

Three great roots there were, curling into and across the shaft of the
pit and disappearing down into the darkness below, where Juliet did not
dare to look.

She managed, with great caution, to stoop down and catch hold of the
highest of the roots, and so to settle herself in a fairly comfortable
position, sitting on the middle root of the three, with her feet on the
lowest, and her back against the top one.

"They might have been made on purpose," she told herself, her naturally
high spirits and brave young optimism coming nobly to her rescue again.

And she set herself to try and enlarge one of the holes in the wall; but
she could not make much perceptible difference there. What it had taken
centuries, and the growth of a great tree to effect, could not be much
improved on in an hour by one young girl, however strong the necessity
that urged her.

By the time she had exhausted her efforts and must needs lean back and
rest awhile, the biggest hole was just wide enough to put her hand
through, and she saw no prospect of enlarging it further.

Through it she could see a corner of the loch and the grey foot of Ben
Ghusy, but that was all. It showed, however, on which side of the tower
she was, and she remembered the great beech that clung to the precipice
below the place where the foundations of the castle sprang from the rock.
At least she had always imagined it was below the foundations, but now
she knew better.

She thrust her hand out and waved it, but did not dare leave it there.
The terror Mark had instilled in her was too recent and too real If she
put out her hand, he would see it, and perhaps shoot it off; or at least
know that he had failed to kill her as yet. Better he should think her
dead, like poor Julia. But was Julia really dead?

She leant over and called down into the darkness:

"Julia! Julia!"

But no answer came, although she waited, holding her breath, and called
again and again.

Then she had fallen into the water? She must be drowned even if the fall
did not kill her. Poor, misguided Julia. Better dead, after all, thought
Juliet, with eyes full of tears, than alive, and at the mercy of that
terrible man. What disillusionments must have come to her sooner or
later; final disillusionings that could not be explained away. How
horrible to find that the man you loved was like that. Nothing else in
the world could be so appalling. Yes, Julia was better dead. As Juliet
thought of the dreadful manner in which death had come to the unfortunate
girl, she forgot her faults, forgot her strange views upon the
justifiability of taking human life, forgot even that she had approved of
Lord Ashiel's assassination and contemplated bringing about his death
herself, and remembered only the frightful nature of her punishment.

And while she sat there, clinging precariously to the twisted roots of
the beech tree, Juliet's tears streamed down into the watery grave.

Hours passed, and darkness fell upon the world without. In the patch of
loch that was visible to her, she could see a star mirrored; it cheered
her somehow. What there was comforting about it she could not have said,
but in some way it seemed to be an emblem of her hopes. She wedged
herself tightly between the roots, laid her head down upon the uppermost
of them, and, such is the adaptability of youth and health, slept on her
dangerous perch like a bird upon a bough.

With the day she awoke, stiff and hungry. How long would it be before she
was found? She felt braver under this new stimulus of hunger and more
ready to risk detection by Mark. After all, he could hardly get at her
here, and someone else might see her if she signalled. She took off her
shoes and stockings and pushed them through the hole in the wall, then
her handkerchief, and finally the white blouse she wore was taken off and
thrust out between the stones. She kept her hold upon one of the sleeves,
and wedged it down between the wall and the beech root, so that the
blouse might hang out on the face of the rock like a flag and catch the
attention of some passer-by. From time to time, too, she squeezed her
hand through the gap and fluttered her fingers backward and forward. She
knew that the path by the burn ran below, and it was used constantly by
the ghillies and by the household. Only of course so early in the morning
there was not likely to be anyone about. And she remembered with a
sinking heart that people seldom look up as they walk.

Yet in the course of the day some one would surely see it. She sternly
refused to allow herself to expect an immediate rescue. She would not,
she told herself, begin to get really anxious about it till evening. It
would be long to wait, of course. She looked at the little watch which
Sir Arthur had given her on her last birthday. It was six o'clock. She
must be patient.

But in spite of all her forced cheerfulness the time passed terribly
slowly. She found an old letter in her pocket, and a pencil, with which
she scrawled painstaking directions for her rescue. She would push it
through the hole, she thought, if she heard any sound of voices above the
clamour of the burn. After that there remained nothing more to do, and
the hours seemed to creep along more and more slowly, till each second
seemed like a minute and each minute an hour. She tried to divert herself
by repeating poetry, and doing imaginary sums; and it was about eleven
o'clock, when she was in the middle of the dates of the Kings of England,
that she heard Gimblet's voice hailing her in a shout from below.

It was not till after her rescue, not till after she was given safely
over to the affectionate ministrations of Lady Ruth, that Juliet gave
way under the strain to which she had been subjected, and broke down
altogether.

Up till that moment, the urgency of her own danger had prevented her from
feeling as acutely as she would have in other circumstances the terrible
fate of the Russian girl; but, as soon as she herself was safe, the full
horror of it settled upon her mind till thought became an agony. She was
shaken by alternate fits of shuddering and weeping, until Lady Ruth, who
had a scathing contempt for doctors, was on the point of sending for one.

The arrival of Sir Arthur, an hour or so after her release, did much to
calm her. He had started post haste from Belgium as soon as he heard of
the tragedy, which was not till three days after it had occurred, and had
spent the long journey in incessant self-reproach that he had ever
allowed Juliet to go alone among these murderous strangers. The sight of
his familiar face was full of comfort to the distracted girl; and the
knowledge that Mark was arrested and powerless to harm her, with the
gladsome news that David was free again, combined to soothe her nerves
and restore her self-control.

The fear of one cousin began to give place insensibly to the dread lest
the other should find her red-eyed and woe-begone; and soon the
importance of looking her best when David should return occupied her mind
almost to the exclusion of the terrors she had experienced. Thus does the
emotion of love monopolize the attention of those it possesses, so that
individuals may fall thick around him and the surface of the earth be
convulsed with the strife of nations, and still your lover will walk
almost unconscious among such catastrophes, except in so much as they
affect himself or the object of his affections.

But not yet was Juliet to see David. His mother's health had broken
down under the distress and worry of the accusation brought against
him, and it was to her side that he hurried as soon as he was released
from prison.

While Lady Ruth carried Juliet off at once to the cottage, there to be
comforted, fed, made much of and put to bed, Gimblet and the men who had
assisted him in the work of rescue stayed behind in the walls of the
tower, to rig up, with ropes and buckets, an apparatus by which to
descend to that lowest depth of the _oubliette_ where poor Julia's body
must be lying.

They had little hope of finding her alive; nor did they do so. She was
floating, face downwards, in the water at the bottom of the pit.

In a grim, wrathful silence the men raised the poor lifeless body,
and with some difficulty brought it back to the light of day. When
the gruesome business was done, Gimblet returned to the cottage,
tired out with his night's work; for, like all the men on the place,
he had been scouring the moors since the previous evening, when
Mark's derisive words had first sent them, hot foot, to assure
themselves of Juliet's whereabouts. As he reached the cottage, the
daily post bag was being handed in, and among his letters was one
from the colonel of Mark's regiment:

"MY DEAR SIR," it ran, "I have sent you a wire in answer to your letter
received to-day, since in view of what you say I see that it is necessary
to disclose what I hoped, for the sake of the regiment, to continue to
keep secret. But if, as you tell me, the innocence and even the life of
Sir David Southern is involved, and you have such good reason to
consider McConachan the man guilty of his uncle's death, it becomes my
duty to put aside my private feelings and to confess to you that I am
unable to look upon Mark McConachan as entirely above suspicion. When he
was a subaltern in the regiment I have the honour to command, he was a
source of grave worry and trouble to me.

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