CHAPTER VII
CRUFT'S FOLLY
Looking over my cousin's shoulders were two other faces, one coveredwith rough hair, and evidently belonging to a game-keeper, the otherthe beautiful face of my cousin, Lady Ethel Vanborough, St. Nivel'ssister.
"Poor fellow!" she remarked sympathetically. "What have they beendoing to you?"
I could hardly believe my eyes, and passed my hand wearily across myforehead.
St. Nivel turned to the keeper.
"Give me the brandy flask," he said.
The man produced it, and my cousin poured some out in the little silvercup attached to it.
"It's a lucky thing for you, Bill," he observed, while I greedily drankthe brandy down, "that I thought of bringing this flask with me thismorning. Ethel was against it; she's a total abstainer."
"Except when alcohol is needed medicinally," she interposed in anexplanatory tone, "then it is another matter."
I now took a good look at her; she was wearing a short, tweed,tailor-made shooting costume, and carried in her hand a light sixteenbore shot gun.
"You look just about done," continued her brother. "Whatever hashappened to you?"
"You would look bad," I answered, "if you had had nothing to eat sincelunch yesterday."
St. Nivel was a soldier and man of action.
"Botley," he said to the keeper, "the sandwiches."
"Now," said the guardsman invitingly, when I had ravenously disposed ofmy second sandwich, "tell us something about it."
I had just opened my lips to speak, when there came a great cry fromthe roof of the tower above, and a black body shot past the littlewindow near which I was sitting.
We all ran to the window but could see nothing.
Then St. Nivel made a suggestion.
"Let us mount up to the roof," he said, "and see what is to be seen.You, Botley, had better go down to the foot of the tower."
The keeper touched his forelock and commenced his descent of the spiralstaircase. Meanwhile, Lady Ethel, her brother and I mounted up to thetop.
We passed the room in which I had been imprisoned, and went up a verymuch narrower flight of steps to the roof, coming out at a little doorwhich was standing open. The roof was flat and covered with lead.
"Take care how you tread," cried St. Nivel. "I expect it is all prettyrotten. In fact, Ethel, I think you had better go inside."
Ethel, however, was not of that way of thinking; she was a thoroughsportswoman and wanted to see all the fun.
"All right, Jack," she rejoined cheerily. "You go on, I'll look aftermyself without troubling you."
It was very evident at the first glance that there had been anaccident, a piece of the low stone wall which surrounded the roof wasgone. It looked as if it had recently tumbled over. St. Nivel wasevidently right when he said the place was rotten. Rotten it certainlywas.
Stepping very gingerly we all approached the embattled wall, and,selecting the firmest part, looked over, one at a time. I had thesecond peep and was just in time to see two men, one limping verymuch--this I am sure was Saumarez--disappear into a neighbouring wood.A countrified-looking boy was running up from the opposite direction.
At the foot of the tower, however, was another matter; huddled up in aheap was the body of a man, with a coil of rope and some shatteredmasonry lying all around it.
By the body stood Botley, the game-keeper, scratching his head.
It was now very evident what had occurred.
The three miscreants who had tried to torture me had endeavoured toescape by letting themselves down by a rope from the top of the tower.Two had succeeded and one had been killed. The reason of this wasobvious, the rope had been fixed round one of the battlements and ithad not been sufficiently strong to maintain the weight of the threemen. The two lowest had probably got off with a shaking, the man whohad got on the rope last had lost his life. All this was perfectlyevident.
"Who is it?" shouted Lord St. Nivel to the keeper below.
"Doan't know, me lord," came back the answer, "he's a stranger to me."
The keeper had now been joined by the countrified boy, and the twoturned the body over on to its face. I could see that it was thefairer of the two men who had acted under Saumarez' orders.
"I think we had better go down," suggested my cousin, the Guardsman;"we may be of some service there."
On the way down the winding staircase, a thought struck me.
"What has become of that body," I asked, "that was found on Lansdownyesterday morning?"
"What body?" replied my two cousins together.
"The body of an old lady."
"We have heard nothing of it," replied St. Nivel, "and we ought to havedone so. But you have not told us what happened to _you_."
Going down the old stone staircase, I gave them a brief account of myarrest in London and journey down there, with my imprisonment duringthe night in the tower.
"Well," remarked St. Nivel, while his sister murmured a few words ofsympathy, "I haven't quite got the hang of the thing yet, but you musttell us more at lunch."
We found that the man lying at the foot of the tower was certainlydead; his neck was broken.
We could therefore do nothing but leave the gamekeeper in charge of thebody while we despatched the boy to warn the police and fetch a doctor.
With a shilling in his pocket to get his dinner, the young yokel setoff on his journey, and we strolled away.
"I don't think we'll shoot any more this morning, Jack," Ethel said,"this affair has made me feel a bit shaky."
"Then you had better come up to the house with us, Bill," said herbrother, slapping me on the back, "and have some lunch. Then you cantell us all your adventures."
I readily agreed, and we had walked some little distance when I heardfootsteps running behind us; we stopped and turned. It was the countryboy we had sent to the police.
"I forgot to show you this yere sir," he said, opening his hand, inwhich he held something carefully clasped.
"What is it?" I asked as he addressed me.
"It's this yere _heye_, sir," he answered. "It don't belong to thedead 'un; he's got two."
I glanced into his open palm and beheld two halves of a brownartificial eye, made of glass, and much shot with imitation blood!
* * * * *
"No," observed my friend, Inspector Bull, "there's been no body foundon Lansdown, and I should have heard of it if there had been without adoubt."
The inspector finished a liberal tumbler of Lord St. Nivel's Scotchwhisky and soda, and set the tumbler carefully down on the table as ifit were a piece of very rare china.
My cousin, who was standing on the hearthrug, laughed heartily.
"That was only another piece of the rogue's plot," he said. "They musthave had a clever head to direct them."
"Yes," I put in, "a clever head with only one eye in it, if I'm notmuch mistaken."
The inspector gave me a doubtful look; then his eye reverted to thewhisky decanter upon which it had been fondly fixed. St. Nivelobserved it and pushed the whisky towards him.
"Thank you, my lord," said the police officer, helping himself with alook of intense satisfaction; he did not often get such whisky. "It'sa curious thing, however, that this man with one eye should ha' beendoing all these pranks right under my nose as it were, and I never evenheard of him before."
Being aware of his methods, I was not at all surprised.
Even now, knowing that I was respectably connected, he even suspectedme, and regarded me as an impostor with rich relatives.
This story of the finding of the body on Lansdown only confirmed hisviews of my powers of invention.
"As a matter of fact," observed Lord St. Nivel, "I am only a strangerin these parts, having borrowed a friend's house for a week's shooting;but no doubt you can tell me what this tower is, where my cousin waskept a prisoner, and which my sister and I came across by the merestchance."
"Cruft's F
olly," replied the beaming inspector, with his whisky glassin his hand. "Cruft's Folly has stood where it does nearly a hundredyears. It was built by some gentleman, I believe, a long while ago, toimprove the landscape, just like Sham Castle over yonder."
"But does nobody live in it?"
"No, I've always understood it was quite empty and nearly a ruin."
"Then I have little doubt," said my cousin with a chuckle, "that yourfriends, Bill, simply appropriated it for their own uses."
"I suppose you'll have the place thoroughly searched, Mr. Bull, won'tyou?" I asked. "There may be something hidden there which will giveyou a clue to my assailants."
"You may rely upon that, Mr. Anstruther," replied the inspector, risingand slapping his chest, "but we shall have to communicate with theowner first."
Thus through the red-tapism of the law the chance was lost. Had theold tower of Cruft's Folly been searched at that moment the remainderof this history most certainly would never have been written.