Читать книгу A Terrible Secret - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 31

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"Early on the morning of Tuesday the under jailer, going to Miss Catheron's cell with her breakfast, found, to his astonishment and dismay, that it was empty and his prisoner flown.

"A moment's investigation showed him the bars of the window cleanly filed through and removed. A rope ladder and a friend without, it is quite evident, did the rest. The man instantly gave the alarm and aid came. The head jailer appears to be as much at a loss as his underling, but he is suspected. He lived in his youth in the Powyss family, and was suspected of a strong attachment to the prisoner. He says he visited Miss Catheron last night as usual when on his rounds, and saw nothing wrong or suspicious then, either about the filed bars or the young lady. It was a very dark night, and no doubt her escape was easily enough effected. If any proof of the prisoner's guilt were needed, her flight from justice surely renders it. Miss Catheron's friends have been permitted from the first to visit her at their pleasure and bring her what they chose—the result is to be seen to-day. The police, both of our town and the metropolis, are diligently at work. It is hoped their labors will be more productive of success in the case of the sister than they have been in that of the brother.

"The head jailer, it is said, will be dismissed from his post. No doubt, pecuniarily, this is a matter of indifference to him now. He made his appearance once in the street this morning, and came near being mobbed. Let this escape be rigidly investigated, and let all implicated be punished."

The escape created even more intense and angry excitement than the murder. The rabble were furious. It is not every day that a young lady of the upper ten thousand comes before the lower ten million in the popular character of a murderess. They had been lately favored with such rich and sensational disclosures in high life, love, jealousy, quarrels, assassination. Their victim was safely in their hands; they would try her, condemn her, hang her, and teach the aristocracy, law was a game two could play at. And lo! in the hour of their triumph, she slips from between their hands, and, like her guilty brother and abettor, makes good her escape.

The town of Chesholm was furious. If the jailer had shown his face he stood in danger of being torn to pieces. They understood thoroughly how it was—that he had been bribed. In the dead of night, the man and his family shook the dust of Chesholm off their feet, and went to hide themselves in the busy world of London.

Three weeks passed. October, with its mellow days and frosty nights, was gone. And still no trace of the fugitive. All the skill of the officials of the town and country had been baffled by the cunning of a woman. Inez Catheron might have flown with the dead summer's swallows for all the trace she had left behind.

The first week of November brought still another revelation. Sir Victor Catheron had left the Royals; Lady Helena, the squire, the baby, the nurse, Powyss Place. They were all going to the south of France for the young baronet's spirits and health. Catheron Royals, in charge of Mrs. Marsh and Mr. Hooper, and two servants, on board wages, was left to silence and gloom, rats and evil repute, autumnal rain and wind. The room of the tragedy was shut up, a doomed room, "under the ban" forever.

And so for the present the "tragedy of Catheron Royals" had ended. Brother and sister had fled in their guilt, alike from justice and vengeance. Ethel, Lady Catheron, lay with folded hands and sealed lips in the grim old vaults, and a parchment and a monument in Chesholm Church recorded her name and age—no more. So for the present it had ended.