Читать книгу The House of Strange Secrets - A. Eric Bayly - Страница 6

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Now, whatever his enemies (if he has any) may say against James Moggin, no one can deny the fact that, for a man of his age, his behaviour on the night when his carriage was "held up" on the North Moor was meritorious. On discovering that the "impident rascal" had deliberately broken one of the coach windows with the butt of a pistol, the worthy coachman's rage knew no bounds. Leaving his well trained but trembling horses, and still clasping the whip in his hand, he scrambled down from the box and fell upon the cyclist in the rear.

To speak more accurately, the latter individual fell back into his arms, an action on his part caused by Mr. Laurence having risen in the carriage and aimed a powerful blow with his fist at the face that had a second time appeared at the cracked window.

Moggin, had he flung down his whip, might easily have held the assailant until the arrival of Laurence, who was fumbling with the catch that fastened the carriage door, and which had been in some way jammed by a piece of broken window glass. As it was, the audacious cyclist managed in the dark to wriggle himself out of the coachman's clutches and reach the spot where his bicycle lay.

Laurence alighted from the carriage with unbecoming haste, only in time to see the dusky figure of the highwayman throw his leg lightly over the saddle of his machine, and bound forward past the vehicle again with the dexterity of an accomplished rider. He noticed that his garments fluttered out behind him in a peculiar manner.

In his evening clothes and thin dancing "pumps," with the roads an inch thick in mud and puddles, young Carrington knew that pursuit was useless. Even if he requisitioned one of the terrified horses, he realised that the man would have disappeared from sight before the operation of unharnessing could be accomplished. One thing he did—that was to seize the whip from Moggin's hand, and, taking a couple of steps forward, cut sharply at the retreating form with the long lash. The blow went home, for the fellow gave utterance to a hoarse cry of pain. Even in that exclamation, both Carrington and the coachman were conscious of something unnatural and horrible.

And thus it was that the mysterious creature on the bicycle disappeared into the blackness of the night.

Laurence waited until he had the dissatisfaction of witnessing the hasty departure of the unwelcome visitor; then he turned to the open-mouthed and shivering Moggin.

"Let us now see what has happened to your master," he said abruptly.

The two men hurried back to the carriage and carefully stepped inside.

Mr. Carrington was lying in precisely the same position as when Laurence had left him.

"Mercy, mercy," moaned the coachman, "surely he isn't dead?"

"No," responded young Carrington, "he is not shot, for look at the far window. It was smashed by the bullet."

"The hexplosion might have done that, sir," old Moggin suggested, as he assisted Laurence to place the motionless body of Mr. Carrington upon the seat of the carriage.

"Good gracious me, I never thought of that. Then the poor dad may be killed—murdered. Oh, why didn't I heed his suspicions?"

He bent down to peer into the old gentleman's face, and as he did so something caught his eye. He almost yelled aloud with joy. For there, through the top of Mr. Carrington's hat, was a circular hole. The same hole was to be found on the other side, showing that the bullet from the assassin's weapon had penetrated through the hat without harming the unconscious man's head. (The bullet itself was afterwards found imbedded in a panel of the coach.)

No; Mr. Carrington had been unharmed by the attempt on his life, but the shock of seeing the repulsive face at the window had thrown him into a dead faint, from which he was released after many minutes, thanks to the chafings and attention of his son.

When he first opened his eyes Laurence was horrified at the change in his father's appearance. The terrified look on his face was indescribable. He moaned faintly, as though in pain, and clutched nervously at the strong arm of his son, who knelt at his side on the floor of the carriage.

"Come, Daddy," Laurence said encouragingly; "you're better now, and the rascal is miles away. Sit up and let us hurry on home. The horses are almost perished with cold."

His son's cheery voice seemed to convince Mr. Carrington that he was safe, for he sat up and allowed himself to be carefully laid back into his favourite corner of the large carriage. Laurence gave orders to Moggin to proceed at once homeward as fast as he could, and so well did the coachman carry out his instructions, and so ready were the horses to proceed to their stables, that Mr. Carrington found himself within his own grounds before twenty minutes had passed.

With Laurence's assistance he alighted and entered the Manse, where the aged butler, Kingsford, was dozing in the hall. He was then conducted to his chamber, and there helped into bed and dosed with a strong brandy-and-soda specially mixed for him by his son.

By this time it was nearly half-past one in the morning, and Laurence Carrington would have been quite justified in retiring to bed. Nevertheless, after leaving his father's bedroom he crept downstairs, much to the butler's astonishment, and, donning an overcoat and a strong pair of boots, made his way out of the house.

The rain had now stopped—a fact that seemed to please him much; not because he would have minded a four-mile trudge in the pouring wet, but because he would now be more likely to discover traces of the mysterious cyclist's tyre-marks in the muddy road that skirts the North Moor. For the rain, had it continued in a downpour similar to that at the time of the strange affair of an hour before, would undoubtedly have blotted out any tracks that the highwayman must have made in effecting his hasty departure.

Whistling to keep up his spirits as he went, Laurence strode on at a quick pace towards the scene of the attack. The wind was howling across the heath and the unearthly noises that accompany any storm were such as might well have unnerved a less determined man than Carrington, particularly after the weird adventures he had gone through.

By the light of the moon, which was now shining brightly, he had no difficulty in discovering the exact spot at which the carriage had stopped, while his own footprints and those of the coachman, as well as the hoof-marks of the restive horses, were distinctly visible. With ease, too, he lighted on the thin track made by the stranger's bicycle wheel, but at first was much puzzled at finding that this trail lay on both sides of the road. Then he recollected that the rider must have left these distinct traces behind him both when on his way to the place where he had "held up" the coach and when hastening away on being repulsed by Moggin and himself. Therefore he concluded that, by following the double tracks, one on either side of the lonely road, he would not only discover whence the unknown man had come, but also whither he had disappeared. For a good mile he trudged on, never taking his eyes off the pattern impressed on the surface of the road. He had now reached a village, the only one lying between the house at which the ball had been and that where he lived, and from which he had just come.

Half-way along the main street running through this village a branch road starts off to the left. To his delight, Laurence was able to trace the cycle tracks round the corner of and into this branch road, and once again did he start on, strong on the scent of his father's attempted murderer (for the idea that the cycling highwayman had fired at him never entered his head).

On and on did Laurence walk, the mud and water squelching under his feet, until the road again broke off into two lanes.

"Hallo!" he cried half aloud, "the stranger must be something of a neighbour to us," for the tracks in the mud betrayed to him the fact that his quarry had taken the lane which is one and a long way round to the Manse and the village of Northden, in which it stands. As he drew nearer and nearer to his home Laurence's amazement and excitement (if such a term may be used under the circumstances) increased correspondingly. Would the midnight stranger prove to be one of his father's own simple villagers? he asked himself. He had not even caught a glimpse of the stranger's face, so could not answer.

He was now actually in the village of Northden, yet the marks, both coming and going, remained. Was he mistaken in any way? he wondered, but the idea of such a possibility had barely been dismissed from his mind as absurd when he suddenly stopped short. And why?

Because, without the slightest swerve or mark in the slush, both tracks stopped abruptly, and, however vigilantly he searched, he could not discover any further sign or clue to the manner of the disappearance of the mysterious bicyclist.