Читать книгу The Viking's Skull - John R. Carling - Страница 9

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Ivar, with a laugh at Beatrice's indignation, turned his attention to the brougham, apparently with a view of superintending the removal of his impedimenta.

"O, never mind your luggage," said the earl, in some surprise. "Jocelyn will see to that."

But Ivar, ignoring the suggestion, was concentrating all his care upon what seemed to be a long box wrapped in a covering of coarse linen. This a footman was bringing into the hall upon his shoulders, and while giving his burden a jerk to place it in a position more easy for carrying, the cloth, by some mischance, became partly ripped open.

A half-smothered exclamation and an angry glance at the awkward footman were eloquently expressive of Ivar's annoyance.

"Eh! what have we here?" said the earl, motioning the bearer to lay down his burden.

He removed the cloth, and all crowded round to admire the richness and beauty of the object thus revealed to view. It was a chest of black wood bound at the corners with silver. The lid and sides were divided into compartments, carved with alto-relievos of a decidedly ecclesiastical character.

"This is a very fine work of art," said Lord Ormsby, who was somewhat of an authority on antiquities. Putting on his pince-nez he stooped to examine the chest more closely. "French, I should judge, of the fourteenth century. What wood is it?"

"Cypress."

Godfrey did not fail to notice Ivar's somewhat sullen intonation.

"And the cypress," remarked the earl, "is the emblem of death. This chest is evidently one of those shrines in which mediæval folk put the relics of their saints."

"Yes, it is a reliquary."

"How did you become its possessor?"

"I bought it from the sacristan of an old church in Brittany. Whence he obtained it is perhaps easy to guess. Naturally I refrained from questioning him too closely."

Lord Ormsby shot a curious glance at his son.

"O, did you extend your tour to Brittany, then?" he observed: after which he refrained from further remarks, becoming silent and thoughtful, as if his mind had been stirred by some troubling reminiscence.

"Does it still contain the bones of the saint?" asked Godfrey, jocularly.

"It contains souvenirs of my continental tour—nothing more," replied Ivar with a dark glance, as if inviting the surgeon to mind his own business.

And then, apparently impatient of further questions, he cut the matter short by motioning the man to take up the chest again, and he himself led the way up the grand staircase to his own bedroom, where, after seeing the precious reliquary locked within a wardrobe, he seemed to be more at ease.

The irritation betrayed by Ivar over this incident puzzled Beatrice, and left a somewhat disagreeable impression upon her mind.

"Master Ivar," she whispered to her brother, "was trying to smuggle that chest into Ravenhall. Why should he desire to conceal the fact that he is bringing home a reliquary? Depend upon it, the chest contains something that he does not wish his father to see. What can it be?"

During the course of the dinner that followed, Ivar was the principal speaker, rattling off various incidents of his continental tour.

There was nothing particularly edifying or brilliant in these reminiscences, but Lord Ormsby evidently thought otherwise: for, from time to time he would turn to his guests with an air of pride, as if inviting them to take note of his son's remarks.

"That is one good trait in the earl's character," thought Beatrice. "He has great affection for his son. I doubt very much whether the son deserves it."

When, at a late hour, she and her brother rose to take their departure, so heavy a storm was raging that the earl pressed them to stay for the night, and to this arrangement Godfrey and his sister assented, the former little foreseeing that his stay would have a remarkable bearing on the events of the future.

"Well, Ivar," said the earl, when the two found themselves alone. "What do you think of Beatrice?"

"She has grown devilishly handsome."

"She is a girl whom any man might be proud to marry."

Ivar was resting his head upon his hand, and his face was hidden in shadow: therefore the earl did not perceive the sudden change in his son's expression.

"Marry?" echoed the viscount.

"I want to see you married, Ivar, and to no one but Beatrice."

"The devil!" muttered Ivar uneasily; and then, aloud, he added, "Does Trixie know of this wish of yours?"

"I have occasionally hinted at it."

"Her manner towards me to-night can scarcely be called encouraging. She was decidedly cold and standoffish."

"Perseverance on your part will soon overcome her indifference."

"If I must take a wife, why must she be cousin Trixie, seeing that she hasn't a penny to bless herself with?"

"She is richer than you or I," said the earl, with a dry laugh. "Ivar, I am about to tell you a secret, the knowledge of which will soon cause you to waive your objection—if you have any—to this match."

"Richer than I," thought Ivar. "What does the old fool mean?"

The earl seemed ill at ease. He remained silent for several minutes, evidently debating within himself as to the wisdom of disclosing the secret. At last, after glancing all around the apartment, as if to make certain that no one was within hearing, he bent forward in his chair towards Ivar, and began to speak in a low tone. The communication took a long time in the telling, and when it was ended, the viscount sat in silence with a look of consternation on his face.

Recovering from his amazement he muttered hoarsely, "Why have you not told me of this before?"

"You were not of an age to hear it. You are old enough now to understand the virtues of silence and secrecy."

"And this, this son—what did you call him, Idris?—where is he now?"

For reply Lord Ormsby produced from the bookcase a copy of the Times newspaper, dated seven years previously.

One of its columns was headed, "Terrible fire at Paris. Burning of the Hôtel de l'Univers." The earl's forefinger, moving down a list of victims, stopped at the name, "Idris Marville, aged 23."

Ivar's features relaxed something of their dismay.

"Satisfactory from my point of view," he muttered.

"None but you and I know this secret, but it is perpetually open to discovery as long as that church and its records exist. You now see the necessity for this match with Beatrice. Ravenhall and the coronet are really hers. Marry her then, and you will thus secure your position as lord of Ravenhall.—What is your answer?"

"Humph! Suppose it'll have to be."

The sullen look on Ivar's face caused his father to elevate his eyebrows in surprise. It certainly did seem strange that the viscount, who had pronounced Beatrice to be "devilishly handsome," should evince dissatisfaction at the prospect of marrying her!

* * * * * *

The sleeping apartment allotted to Godfrey Rothwell contained the most luxurious bed he had ever occupied, and he speedily fell into a sound sleep, from which he was abruptly roused by a noise in the corridor outside his bedroom door.

He sat up and listened. Before stepping into bed he had switched off the electric light, but the darkness now became faintly illumined by a horizontal line of light appearing at the foot of the door. Its origin was obvious: some one was walking in the corridor and bearing a lamp or candle.

The line of light had no sooner appeared than it disappeared, showing that the person had passed by.

Moved by the thought that it might be a burglar, Godfrey stepped quietly from his bed, and cautiously opening the door to the extent of a few inches, peeped out.

There, a few feet distant, with his back towards him, was Viscount Walden moving quietly along the corridor. Evidently he had not been to bed, for he was still wearing the dress suit he had worn at dinner: to it he had added a hard felt hat, into the brim of which there was stuck a lighted candle, after the fashion of a Cornish miner.

With both hands he was half-dragging, half-carrying the cypress chest about which he had displayed so much concern. It was the accidental fall of this reliquary that had roused Godfrey from sleep.

Now, when a young man is detected in the dead of night stealing along with a reliquary that he has tried to introduce surreptitiously into his father's house, it may be inferred that he is actuated by a bad motive; such, at least, was Godfrey's inference. Accordingly, though conscious of the meanness of espionage, yet, moved by a feeling for which he could not account, he resolved to follow the viscount, and ascertain, if possible, the meaning of this strange proceeding.

Waiting till Ivar had turned a corner of the corridor, Godfrey, having hurriedly slipped into his clothes, stole forth in his stockinged feet and followed at a distance, lurking within the shadows, and exercising the utmost vigilance to prevent himself from being seen. Fortunately, there were at intervals, various pieces of furniture, as well as curtains and recesses, of all which Godfrey took prompt advantage whenever Ivar seemed on the point of giving a backward glance.

The viscount's course, after he had left the corridor in which the bedrooms were situated, conducted him down a staircase and along a second corridor, this latter terminating at the door of the Picture Gallery. Here he paused, and sat down upon the box to rest himself. He was no athlete, and the moving of this heavy chest was a tax upon his strength.

By the grim and dismal circle of light shed around by the taper in Ivar's hat Godfrey could see that the viscount's face was pale and marked by an expression of fear, and that he gave a start at the sudden coughing of the night wind among the trees without.

Some of the fear manifested by him seemed to pass over to Godfrey, who found himself becoming strangely suspicious as to the contents of the chest. The secrecy observed by the viscount was extremely suggestive of the theory of crime. Was the reliquary the receptacle of guilty evidence which Ivar, unable to dispose of elsewhere, was bringing to Ravenhall as the safest place of concealment?

The reliquary itself, apart altogether from the consideration of its contents, had something gruesome about it. Though the exterior carvings were mediæval in character, Godfrey, who was somewhat of a connoisseur on wood, had felt, when surveying the chest at the entrance-hall, that it was far more ancient than the middle ages: with that durability peculiar to cypress wood, the chest might have seen the classic days of Greece: differing little in shape from an Egyptian mummy-case, it might have held the embalmed remains of a Rameses: nay, its antiquity perhaps antedated the very Pyramids themselves!

He had ample leisure for these reflections, for the viscount, having once seated himself, seemed loth to move forward again.

At last, pulling out a spirit flask, Ivar took a deep draught, and, rising to his feet, produced a key with which he unlocked the door of the Picture Gallery.

Then, lifting the reliquary by means of a silver ring affixed to the lid, he proceeded to traverse the entire length of the hall, dragging his burden with him.

Godfrey, who was no stranger to the place, surmised that the viscount's journey was almost at an end, since the gallery terminated in a room from which Ivar would have no egress, except by the same door that he was now approaching.

The viscount's first act on entering the room was to close the door. Upon this Godfrey glided swiftly forward, and falling upon one knee, endeavoured to obtain a glimpse of the interior by applying his eye to the keyhole. In this he was thwarted by the key in the lock, and though the key was on his side of the door, he hesitated to remove it, lest the sound should attract Ivar's attention.

Godfrey could detect no light within the chamber, and therefore he assumed that Ivar must have extinguished his taper.

Why?

Godfrey placed his ear to the door. No sound came from within. If the room contained an occupant, that occupant was motionless, or, if moving, was moving silently and in the dark.

Then suddenly it occurred to him that perhaps Ivar had quitted the chamber by a secret exit known only to himself.

Godfrey grew perplexed, impatient. In standing thus inactive he was losing the chance of discovering the viscount's secret. Still, Ivar might be within, and the surgeon deemed it imprudent to push open the door.

A way of solving the difficulty presented itself. He suddenly turned the key in the lock, clicking it loudly, to the end that, if Ivar were really within, he could not fail to learn that he was now a prisoner.

Godfrey listened. There was no cry of surprise: no hasty rush of feet to the door: no movement at all. After waiting a few moments, he came to the conclusion that the room was untenanted.

He turned the key, and pushed open the door.

Aided by a subdued light, tender and dreamy, that stole through a latticed casement, he had visible proof that the chamber was devoid of anything in human shape. The cypress chest had also vanished.

No way of egress was visible save by the window; but Ivar had not made his exit by this, as the state of its fastenings clearly showed. His disappearance was obviously due to the existence of some secret passage.

Godfrey, loth to turn back now that he had come thus far, resolved to make an examination of the room, even at the risk of being discovered by the returning Ivar.

He began his search with the fireplace.

Surely some propitious fairy was directing his steps! A long slab of stone, that formed one side of the fireplace, had sunk to the level of the hearth, revealing a passage behind. This slab was worked by a pulley, since he could feel at each side the ropes by which it had been lowered; but without stopping to examine the mechanism, he entered the passage and moved forwards through the darkness, exploring the way before him both with hand and foot in order to guard against a possible precipitation down a flight of stairs. The sequel justified this precaution, for he soon found himself at the head of a flight of stone steps. He counted forty of them before he reached the level flooring of another passage. At the end of this a faint light could be seen proceeding from behind a door that stood ajar. He concluded that the viscount had at last attained his destination, and was occupied on the task, whatever it was, that had brought him there.

Godfrey, drawing near, ventured to take a peep through the partly-opened door, and caught a glimpse of a large stone chamber, octagonal in shape. From its vaulted roof hung a lighted sconce. No window was visible, and, connecting this circumstance with the number of stairs he had descended, Godfrey was of opinion that it was a subterranean chamber. The floor was devoid of carpet, and the only pieces of furniture were a table of carved oak and four antique chairs of the same material.

Of the eight sides of the chamber one was occupied by the doorway where Godfrey stood: the other seven were severally pierced by recesses, the depth of which he was unable to ascertain, since the entrance of each was hung with a curtain of black velvet of such length that the silver lace fringing its foot touched the floor. The curtains draping two of the alcoves were plain: the remaining five were adorned with lettering worked in silver thread. As he read the lettering by the light of the flame that burned in the antique sconce Godfrey, familiar though he was with death, dissection, and all that the non-medical mind regards as gruesome, could not repress some uneasy sensations. That silver lettering recorded the names and titles of the deceased Earls of Ormsby, from Lancelot Ravengar, the first peer, to Urien Ravengar, the tenth.

Godfrey knew himself to be on forbidden ground. He was standing on the threshold of the secret burial vault of the lords of Ravenhall!

Ivar was in one of the alcoves, whither he had betaken himself with the cypress chest, but as the curtain concealed him from view, it was impossible for Godfrey to see what the viscount was doing. What Godfrey heard, however, was sufficiently alarming. From the recess came a recurrence of sounds that could be attributed only to the use of a screw-driver. There could be no doubt that Ivar was engaged in the work of removing one of the coffin lids, and Godfrey felt, moreover, that this act had some connection with the contents of the reliquary.

Was Ivar about to transfer the evidences of his guilt—for of his guilt Godfrey now entertained no doubt—from the reliquary to one of the coffins? There could scarcely be a safer place of concealment than a coffin contained in a secret vault, the entrance of which was known to four persons only. Yet this theory seemed precluded by the fact that a coffin constructed to hold one body would not suffice for two. Ivar could scarcely intend to carry off from the crypt the relics of one of his ancestors, since he would have the same difficulty in disposing of a dead earl as of less distinguished remains.

Suddenly there came from Ivar a cry, or rather a yell; he dropped the screw-driver, or whatever tool he was using, and thrusting aside the black velvet curtain, staggered into the vault and tumbled into a chair, where he sat for some moments, his eyes fixed in terror upon the alcove from which he had emerged.

"Bah!" he presently muttered. "What a fool I am! Yet I could swear I heard a whisper coming from the coffin. By God! what creepy work this is!"

A long pull at the spirit flask seemed to infuse new courage into him. He arose and moved again towards the alcove, though with somewhat slow steps.

As Ivar lifted the curtain Godfrey tried to ascertain what lay behind, but succeeded only in catching a glimpse of the reliquary, which stood on the floor with the taper-lit hat resting upon it.

The viscount picked up the fallen tool and resumed the task of screw-loosing. Then, after what seemed an age to the waiting surgeon, the screw-driver was dropped, and Godfrey became aware that Ivar had removed the coffin-lid, for he had placed it on the floor in such a manner that one end of it projected beneath the curtain and appeared in the vault.

Godfrey was unable to tell what followed. Ivar's work, whatever its character, was performed in silence, and lasted a considerable time.

More than once Godfrey stole into the vault for the purpose of peering behind the curtain, but on each occasion he did not get beyond the table, the fear of detection restraining him from proceeding farther.

Then, moved by a sudden impulse, he took out his penknife, and turning to the alcove nearest the door, he quickly and silently cut off a corner from the velvet drapery.

"This may be of service," he thought, thrusting the fragment inside his pocket, "if at any time it should become necessary to prove that I have stood in the secret funeral vault of the Ravengars."

Ivar's task was evidently coming to an end, for the coffin-lid was now drawn from beneath the curtain into the alcove, and the peculiar sounds caused by the application of the screw-driver recommenced.

With their cessation Ivar reappeared from behind the curtain, wearing his taper-lit hat again, and dragging the chest, which, judged by the effort required for its removal, was in no way diminished from its former weight—a circumstance which puzzled Godfrey not a little.

He was preparing for flight, but as Ivar had seated himself in the chair again, he was tempted to linger a moment.

"Thank the devil that's over," said the viscount in a tone of satisfaction, "and I hope Lorelie will be satisfied."

"Lorelie!" murmured Godfrey with a start. "Lorelie! Surely he does not mean Mademoiselle Rivière?"

He had no time just then to consider this question, for Ivar, having drained the few drops that remained in the flask, was now extinguishing the flame in the sconce, preparatory to leaving the crypt.

Godfrey immediately stole off, and succeeded in reaching his room without detection. He went to bed again and slept soundly.

He awoke to find the sun glinting pleasantly through the diamond panes. The brightness of the morning had so cheering an effect on his spirits that he felt disposed at first to regard the event of the preceding night as the result of a dream.

Then, his memory quickening, he thrust his hand beneath his pillow and drew forth a piece of black velvet edged with silver lace.

"It was no dream," he muttered, gazing at the relic. "I have really stood in the secret burial vault of the Ravengars. What a story this will be for Beatrice!"

Godfrey was accustomed to make his sister his confidante in all things; but, somehow, upon reflection, he resolved, for the present at least, to maintain secrecy respecting Ivar's strange doings.