Читать книгу The Lonely House - Arthur Gask - Страница 3

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THE detective had been watching for four days before he realised suddenly that the house was inhabited.

It was a sinister-looking house that stood alone upon a lonely shore in South Australia, and it lay by the margin of the waves in a little sandy cove between the dip of two high hills.

It was a place where few men came, for it was cut off from the distant townships by long, barren wastes of rock-strewn land.

There were no roads nor tracks within many miles of it, and its only highway was the dark and restless sea, forever teased and fretted by the winds that blew across the gulf.

And for four whole days he had watched it through his binoculars from the cliff less than two hundred yards away, and the whole time there had been no suggestion about it of any life within.

It was a silent house, as still and silent as the grave.

Its door had never opened, he had seen no faces from its window and no smoke had ever issued from its chimneys—yet in the falling light of dusk that evening it had flashed to him, as lightning flashes through the blackness of a midnight sky, that human beings were in hiding there.

And their hiding had been the closer because they had seen him watching.

Then they were evil-doers—they were creatures of crime.

Exactly a week previously, and on a beautiful summer's evening towards dusk, Gilbert Larose, the best known of all the detectives of the great Commonwealth of Australia, was crouching down behind a small bush high up upon the sides of Mount Lofty, watching with an annoyed and frowning face four men who were climbing slowly up the slope towards him.

They were only about two hundred yards away, and through his binoculars he could discern plainly the expressions upon their faces. They looked alert and eager, as if they had some particular and important business on hand.

They were sturdy, thick-set men, and were all armed with stout sticks. They walked spread out, fanwise, with about ten yards between them, and they peered intently into all the bushes as they passed.

"Now if it were not impossible," muttered the detective slowly, "if it were not impossible, I would swear that they were looking for me." He nodded his head. "Yes, and they'll find me, too. I ought never to have camped with that cliff behind me. It serves me right." He glanced round quickly in every direction.

"Ah!" he ejaculated, "but that rock might save me yet, if only I could get there first."

He dropped sharply on to his hands and knees and rapidly, but with extreme caution, began to crawl towards a small rock about a hundred yards away.

"I may be able to dodge them there," he went on, "and, another chance too, they mayn't have noticed my bicycle. But what a fool I've been!"

Suddenly then he heard a shout from one of the men. "They've seen me!" exclaimed the detective disgustedly. "I knew I'd left it until too late."

But he was mistaken.

"Hell! here's a snake," called out a voice excitedly, "a big death-adder. Look out, you fellows—it'll be the very place for them here."

"Kill him." shouted someone else. "Don't run behind, you idiot! He may spring back. Hit him from the side."

There was a lot of noise, a chorus of shouting, and then the detective heard an exultant cry.

"Got him! In the middle of the back, just as he was going to turn on me too."

The detective stopped crawling, and looked round. The four men were all close together now, and bending over the ground. There was an animated discussion for a couple of minutes, and then one of them straightened himself up and gave a long look round.

"Well. I'm tired of this," he announced emphatically, "we've come quite far enough, and I'm going back on the road. I'm thirsty, and we shall be too late to get a drink if we're not quick."

There was some talking amongst the other men, and then, apparently being all in agreement, off they went at right angles to the way they had previously come.

Smiling in his relief, Larose watched them disappear, and then, after a long scrutiny to make sure that the coast was quite clear, he walked down to where they had been standing.

He found the death-adder they had killed, all fouled over now in blood and dust. The body was still quivering, and picking it up carefully, he examined the evil-looking head. He pulled the jaws wide open, and exposed the dreadful poison fangs. "Horrible," he exclaimed with a shudder. "What agonies of death lay in those little fangs! But why had it to die?" He sat down upon a bank, and with a handful of leaves, almost reverently wiped clear the body from its stains. "Yes, it is beautiful," he went on admiringly, "beautiful in its dreadful way. Its coloring and its symmetry are perfect, but I wonder—"

He paused suddenly, for out of the corner of his eye he had seen something moving among a heap of stones close by. He kept perfectly still, and a moment later a second adder glided into the open, and, raising its head off the ground, swayed itself gently from side to side.

"Evil to evil," whispered Larose very softly—"the way of the world for all time."

He reached stealthily for a piece of rock that lay near to him, and then, rising sharply to his feet, he hurled it on to the snake. The rock dropped squarely on the reptile and broke its back. It writhed viciously, but he picked up a big stone and quickly put it out of misery by battering in its head.

"His wife probably or perhaps her husband," he remarked with a sigh, "but it was best it should be so. Violence always for the enemies of the world. A stick or a stone for those that creep and crawl and then, as we get higher up, the lash, the prison, and the rope for humankind. Mercy's a mistake with evildoers. The community must protect itself." He sighed again. "And that is why such men as I have their work."

He walked back up the slope and then a thought struck him.

"But what were those men doing here?" he asked frowningly. "They couldn't have come here after rabbits, for they had no guns. What were they looking for?" He answered his own question. "Sheep probably. They have lost some sheep." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, they won't disturb me again. I'll be off to- night. I was tired already of this place, and I feel much stronger now. Yes, I'll start for Cape Jervis, and I ought to do the seventy miles in two nights and a day."

The detective was on holiday in South Australia, but the vacation was neither of his choice nor making. It had been forced upon him by the incidence of a serious illness.

Bearing a charmed life among the desperate class in which he moved, and apparently immune always to the dangers that threatened him in pursuit of his calling, he had nevertheless fallen an easy prey to the minute typhoid bacilli, and for days had hovered between life and death. Then, convalescence supervening, he had been, ordered away for a complete rest, and Adelaide had been chosen for him as being a city least likely to remind him of his work. Adelaide was so quiet and peaceful, he had been assured. Adelaide was so law-abiding, and so rarely there did Crime lift up its baleful head.

So to South Australia, he had come, expecting to be intensely bored and wondering gloomily how he would be able to fill in his time.

Then suddenly an idea had seized him just as the train was running down through the hills into Adelaide, and he had laughed happily at the very thought of it. It was a strange and extraordinary idea, but it would provide him, he was sure, with an interesting holiday after all.

There should be no wearying hotel life for him, he told himself, no monotonous days passed in seeing the sights, no bored waiting for the holiday to end.

He knew what he would do. He would become a boy again and play at hide-and-seek. He would play a game of make-believe. He would hide himself away from everyone as if it were a matter of life or death.

He would imagine that he was an escaped convict, and would see if it were possible for him to live undiscovered and unseen in South Australia for six weeks. He would pretend that everyone was looking for him and that he himself, for once, was pitted against the law.

He would secrete himself away among the hills, in the bush upon the mountain sides, or in the lonely places on the sea-board where no one ever came.

Yes, he would creep like a phantom over South Australia, and the winning of the game would be—that no one should have set eyes on him until the time was up.

The whole adventure would be of absorbing interest, and the quietness and the solitude would be the very things that he was needing to rest his nerves.

It was typical always of Larose to make up his mind quickly, and so directly his train had drawn into the railway-station in Adelaide—he had at once set about putting his ideas into execution.

Taking only a few things from his luggage, he had left his trunk in the station cloak-room, and had then proceeded into the city to make some purchases.

He had bought a bicycle, a small camping outfit and the least quantity of provisions that he thought he would be able to make do with. A good fisherman and no mean expert in the trapping of small game, he reckoned that once well away from the city he would be easily able to provide himself with food.

He had had one good meal at the Australasian Hotel, and then in the failing light of the dusk he had slipped furtively into the Adelaide hills, and like a shadow the darkness had swallowed him up.

For seven nights and six days he had lain hidden on Mount Lofty, and, until the episode of the death-adders, no one had come near him or disturbed him.

He had made his bivouac at the base of a stretch of grey cliff near the summit. He had chosen the place there because he could light a fire and the smoke could not be seen against the color of the cliff behind him, and also because from his elevated position he could enjoy such a magnificent panorama of the wide Adelaide plains, and the miles upon miles of waving trees below.

As he had promised, he had given himself an easy restful time.

By night, he had slept the long deep slumbers of a man who was convalescing from a serious illness, and by day he had basked idly in the sun, watching a sub-conscious and disinterested sort of way the comings and goings of the great city that lay outstretched beneath him.

As the crow flies he was quite close to Adelaide, and a bare seven miles almost would have taken him into the very heart of the city itself. Through his glasses he could see plainly the trams and motors gliding through the streets and the people moving about like ants. Also, when the wind was favorable, he could hear the hourly chimes from the big clock on the Post Office opposite the Town Hall.

For four days and nights life had been quite uneventful, all peace and quiet and rest, and then on the evening of the fifth day something had happened, and henceforward a jarring note had been struck in the otherwise perfect harmony of these beautiful trees and hills.

He sensed somehow that something unusual was happening about him.

Nothing indeed that occasioned him much interest, and nothing that moved him even to speculate over-much as to its cause, but still—he felt that things were now in some subtle way different from what they had been before.

He noticed for one thing that there seemed to be more people than usual moving on the roads that led to the hills, not people in motors, but horsemen and people on foot. They seemed to hang about more, too, to be longer in view, and to be from time to time talking in groups.

Then after dark he thought the lights were kept burning much later in the scattered homes among the hills and upon two nights he had finally dropped off to sleep with some of them still shining. Also at dusk once, when he had been creeping as usual to the spring for water, a dog somewhere had heard him and barked, and immediately three men had rushed out of a nearby homestead, and for quite a long while had stood staring round in every direction. About this last episode the detective had been greatly annoyed, for it had made him about an hour late in filling his can.

So had things been up to that last night when, shortly after eleven o'clock he again took to the road.

He had provided himself with a map of South Australia, and he had a good idea of the lie of the land. It was his intention to make for a lonely stretch of coast near Cape Jervis, a part apparently untouched by roads or tracks in any direction. He reckoned he had about eighty miles to cover, and he was expecting to do it comfortably in the travelling of two nights.

But he soon found he had greatly miscalculated his chance of progress and he was hindered and delayed from the very beginning. Before even he had gone half a mile from his bivouac on Mount Lofty, he had had to lift his bicycle hurriedly off the road and hide himself in the thickets.

Two men had come by very slowly, and he was surprised to notice that, although there was a new moon, they both were carrying lanterns.

A mile farther on and a man was leaning over some fencing, for all the world as if he were waiting for someone, and it was an hour nearly before he finally turned and went into the house that lay close behind. Quite half a dozen times during the night, too, he saw people moving about, and each time he had to wait until the road was clear. Morning found him only about thirty miles from the city and he had to hide during all the day in a clump of trees not three hundred yards from the outlying houses of a small township.

The next night, however, he made a little better progress, but it was not until dawn was breaking on the third day that he found himself at the place for which he had originally set out.

He was then about seven miles off the track that led to the Cape Jervis lighthouse, and for several hours he had seen no signs of human habitation.

He was on a rugged promontory of land that jutted for about half a mile into the sea. On one side the cliff was high and sheer, but on the other side the ground sloped down gently for about three hundred yards to a little sandy cove.

The place was studded everywhere about with big rocks.

"Just what I wanted," sighed the detective wearily. "I shall be all alone here. I can bathe and fish, and there's a creek of fresh water over there." He hastily unpacked his things and then, too tired to think of preparing anything to eat, he spread his ground-sheet by the side of a big rock and, making a pillow of his arm, in a few moments was fast asleep.

He slept heavily until well past high noon, and it was then only the glaring of the hot sun that awoke him.

He stood up, and, gazing interestedly around, was more pleased than ever with his surroundings. He took out his binoculars and swept the coastline in both directions as far as he could see.

"Excellent," he remarked, "I couldn't have found a better place. I can see round everywhere for miles, except for that little dip in the cliff over there. No one will be coming here, and there should be plenty of rabbits and fish. I will have a glorious time. I will rest and sleep. I will worry about nothing. I will start writing my memoirs and the world will then know what a fine fellow I am," and he rubbed his hands gleefully and laughed happily as a boy.

Methodically he proceeded to set up his camp. He lashed his little lean-to tent securely to the rock and with his small mattock dug a deep trench all round, in case it should come on to rain. Then he made himself a neat fireplace with round stones, and gathering some dried twigs together soon had a fire going and was boiling his billy.

"But I must be careful with the water," he said, shaking his head, "until I make sure about that creek over there."

His simple meal over, he set out to explore, and a quarter of a mile away found the creek as he had anticipated.

"Not too much water," he remarked, "but still it doesn't look as if it would dry up before the time comes to leave here. Besides, we may get a shower or two any day."

He had a long bathe off the sandy cove and then, after setting a few rabbit snares, retired to his tent directly it began to get dark. The exertions of the two previous days had tired him much more than he thought.

The following day dawned bright and clear and he was early astir. He found two nice young rabbits in his snares and was very pleased with his good fortune.

"Everything here I could want," he exclaimed happily. "I couldn't wish for anything more." He looked round on every side. "Alone in the great heart of nature. Alone with the sea gulls the sea, the sun, and the sky." He drew in deep breaths of the invigorating air. "Away from the foul breath of the cities, away from the sordid struggles of competing men, away from the black haunts of crime. Why I might be the only man alive in the world now. I don't suppose, year upon year, anyone ever comes here."

He walked meditatively down to the sandy cove and then it struck him suddenly that he had not yet explored down the dip in the other cliffs, the only spot that was not in view from his little tent by the big rock.

"I must go there at once," he smiled whimsically—"it is the only part of my property that I haven't yet seen." Humming lightly to himself and pausing many times to look back and enjoy the view, he climbed up over the other side of the cove. It was a stiff climb and his legs ached when he reached the top.

He sat down upon a rock, and then, his eyes roving with interest around a startled exclamation burst from his lips.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed disappointedly, "why—there's a house, and I shall be seen and lose the game," and immediately he dropped down behind the rock exactly as if he had been shot.

Very cautiously then he peered round.

The cliff in front of him sloped down to another little bay, this time, however, only about two hundred yards distant, and upon the edge of the sands below was perched a small black house.

Viewed through his binoculars, he saw that the house was quite substantially built and was square in shape. There was one large window facing in his direction and at a good height from the ground.

By the side of the house, drawn up high above the sands, lay a good-sized rowing boat.

"Whew," exclaimed the detective disgustedly. "Fishermen! Now, I wonder if they are here now?"

For an hour and longer he lay with his eyes glued to his binoculars, alternatively watching the house and sweeping round upon the cliffs on every side.

But there was no sign of life anywhere except for about a dozen seagulls which patrolled upon the sands before the house in a lively and animated manner. Satisfied at last that at any rate for the time being there was no one near, the detective pocketed his glasses and walked down to investigate closer.

The sea-gull rose up screeching as he approached and it flew to a short distance away, to resume their previous occupation of quarrelling with each other.

The house was shut up and closed by a stout nail-studded door that was securely locked.

"Hum!—an ugly house," muttered the detective, "and built quite a while ago." He smiled to himself. "But there would be no difficulty about that lock, if I were curious. Any bit of old wire would open it."

He walked round the house. It was built solidly of stone, but had a sloping wooden roof. There were no windows to it other than the one he had noticed from the cliff and that, from its position, appeared to provide light only to some kind of upper room, for it was fully twelve feet off the ground.

He stepped back several yards, hoping that from a greater distance he would be able to look into the room, but the glass of the window was almost black with dirt, and be obtained no reward for his pains.

"Funny place," he muttered. "I wonder how often anyone comes here." He sighed. "I shall have to move off again I suppose, but I can wait, at any rate, until someone comes. I'm quite safe. They'll never notice my tent on the other cliff."

He turned round and examined the boat. There were no oars, and everything movable in it had been taken away.

"Now, more than one person comes here," he said meditatively. "One person certainly could push this boat down into the sea, but it would require more than one person of ordinary strength to haul it up on the bank where it is. It looks—hullo! it had a name on it once and it's been scraped off."

He bent down and examined carefully the side of the boat. "Yes," he went on, "and they've been at some pains to blacken the place where they scraped the name away. They had no paint so they heated a piece of iron or something, and then smeared the spot over with tar. Quite recently, too, for it is not caked hard yet." He passed his fingers along the wood. "Ah! it's quite smooth where there are no scratches. They scraped it with a piece of glass." He nodded his head. "Now that's what I should do if I had stolen the boat and had to take the name off in a hurry." He looked up and frowned thoughtfully. "Really, I should like to see inside this house."

He walked back and pushed hard against the door, but there was no movement. It did not budge the fraction of an inch.

"Good lock," he muttered, "but still I could pick it in two minutes,"—he shrugged his shoulders—"if I wanted to, which I do not."

But somehow he thought quite a lot about the house on his way back to his tent, and as a result of his cogitations he returned there again in the afternoon to have another look.

This time he had brought with him a piece of stout iron wire, which he had taken from the luggage carrier of his bicycle.

The sea-gulls were still in evidence in front of the house, and he frowned again when he caught sight of them.

"Hum!" he murmured—"it would almost seem that they were expecting to be fed. Somebody evidently comes here pretty often—I must look out."

For quite a long while he manipulated with his piece of wire upon the lock of the door, but to his disappointment he could make no impression at all. He could not get the wire to catch anywhere.

"Now I would almost swear," he muttered, "that the door is not locked at all. There seems to be no bolt to prise back."

But the door fitted too close in the jamb for him to form any certain opinion as to whether his surmise were correct or not. He gave it up at length, and sitting down, proceeded to light a cigarette. He regarded the house very thoughtfully.

"Now why does it interest me at all?" he asked, very puzzled. "It's quite an ordinary house, built, naturally, of the stone that is plentiful about here. And that high window was undoubtedly designed to give a light out to sea facing up the gulf, where the fishing grounds probably are. Yes, quite an ordinary house, and yet—yet why was that name so carefully scraped off the boat and tarred over so that the scraping should not show? It puzzles me, for of course there was a reason for it somewhere. Yes, it puzzles me."

He was a long while getting off to sleep that night, and with his last waking moments his thoughts were of the black house.

In spite of his determination to forget everything that would remind him of his normal work, his imagination would insist upon running in familiar grooves, and he kept harping upon the probable association of the house with evildoers.

It was not a house of simple fisherfolk, he told himself sleepily. It did not belong to honest men. It was a rendezvous of murderers, it was a place of crime, and it harbored breakers of the law.

He became quite annoyed with his imaginings at last and, making his mind a blank, drew in deep heavy breaths and finally hypnotised himself to sleep.

The next morning however, he found the same thoughts continually recurring to his mind, and, partly to his amusement and partly to his annoyance, the black house became the chief source of interest to him in his enforced hours of solitude and ease.

He would climb up over the far cliff and almost the whole day long, perching himself upon a big rock, watch the house below. All the time he speculated idly, weaving romantic episodes of crime, with the square black house always the storm-centre of his imaginings.

He did this almost continually for four days—four days of scorching and terrific heat, with the sun all the time like one big red blister in the sky, and then suddenly his mind seemed all at once to clear and all his thoughts to crystallise into one strange and startling fact.

It burst upon him like a thunderclap that the house below was actually inhabited and that he himself was being watched from within it all the time.

He realised it all in an instant upon the fourth evening just before dusk, but later, thinking it over, he saw that two things particularly had led him up to this final conclusion and prepared his mind to accept it irresistibly and without hesitation, as a fact.

When going for his water that morning he had noticed the imprint of a boot in the mud by the side of the creek, but without giving any thought to the matter he had taken it naturally for one he had himself made when upon the same errand the previous day. He had, however, observed idly how much larger the impression had grown, but he had attributed that to the action of the water trickling down over the sides.

Then the second thing—subconsciously he had always been curious about the seagulls. They had been so persistent in staying in front of the house as if it were quite customary for them to pick up scraps thrown outside. He knew how tame seagulls were everywhere in Australia and how rarely they were harmed, and it had struck him over and over again that these particular birds were waiting before the house in the expectation of a meal.

Then had come the climax.

Sitting perfectly motionless, as he always did in his musings, he had seen a fox come lurching down over the hill, and the animal, catching sight of the seagulls, had at once started to stalk them. Crouching low upon his stomach and taking cover of every rock and every depression in the ground, he had crept furtively forward. He had reached the back of the black house; he had crossed along the side and had progressed until he had been almost level with the door; then—he had stopped suddenly as if he had been turned to stone, and for five seconds had stood with one paw raised and his head thrust forward exactly as if he were sniffing at the door. Barely five seconds, and then—he was off back like an arrow over the hill.

Like lightning had the meaning of it come to Larose.

The fox had sensed the smell of human beings and in the vicinity of dreaded Man had flown for his very life.

The detective put up his glasses and covered the house. Then he sat perfectly still again. The sun was sinking blood-red into the sea behind him, and he knew his head and shoulders would be silhouetted in sharp outline against the sky.

He held his breath in excitement, but his brain was cold and clear. He must not betray himself; he must not give himself away. If anyone were watching him it must not be known that he had noticed anything.

He wanted time to think, to gather in his thoughts. What did it mean if the house were occupied?

If someone were there, if someone were hiding himself, then he was an evildoer and he had good reason for keeping himself hidden. He had not shown himself because he had seen there was a stranger about and was afraid.

Then quickly the detective's thoughts ran on, and his mind harked back to all the happenings since he had left the city.

Of course, he could understand everything now—the men who had killed the death-adder, the horsemen he had seen upon the roads among the hills, the lights burning in the houses late at night, and the many people he had had to avoid when travelling from the city.

It was all clear now—everything fitted in so well.

Someone was 'wanted' in the State. Some crime had been committed somewhere and everyone had been on the look-out for the perpetrator or perpetrators of the deed. They had been picketing the roads, they had been searching through the thickets round Mount Lofty, they had been beating the bush all around the hills.

And now the very criminals that were being sought for were probably here in hiding in that house below. And there must be two of them, for if they had come by sea, as seemed most likely, one alone could not have pulled up that heavy boat to where it lay. Yes, there were certainly two of them, and for four days and nights he had been the whole time within a few hundred yards of where they were concealed.

And they had seen him too.

There could be no doubt about it—they had seen him like a spy creeping about their place of refuge.

They had watched him through the window, with his binoculars glued hour after hour upon the house that sheltered them. They had heard him prowling round and manipulating, too, with his piece of wire upon their door.

Then what must they have been doing and what indeed must have been their thoughts?

Their faces must have blanched in fear, their hearts must have drummed against their ribs, and many times they must have held their breaths lest he should hear their breathing through the walls.

They must have been agog, too, with doubt as to who he was and what was his mission there. They must have felt like rats caught in a trap.

They must have suffered, too, in body as well as mind, for all the hot days long they had lain sweltering behind the heat of that closed door. No breezes from the sea had reached them, and they must have been almost suffocated for want of air.

Then one of them from dire necessity had had probably to leave the house for water, and at night he had crept like a stricken animal to the creek. All the time then his heart must have been quaking and every moment he must have been expecting the crack of a pistol and the tearing of a bullet through his loins.

The detective puckered his brow in perplexity.

But what after all, if he were mistaken? What if it were all an imagining and the fevered thoughts of a sick man's dream? He was not yet completely recovered from his illness, and might not his mind be still unsteady like his body?

He thought for a long while.

No, no, the evidence was cumulative in every way, and he understood, too, now why he had not been able to pick the lock of that door. It had not been locked at all, but simply bolted on the inside. That was why his piece of wire had not been able to engage anywhere with the catch of the lock. Oh! what a fool he had been!

Yes, things were clear now. Criminals or no criminals, crime or no crime, the house in the falling darkness there, he was sure, harbored humankind, and it was according to all the habits of his life that he should at once take steps to find out what their hiding meant.