text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 17

EAN walked on, Harry Garlett's letter, still unopened, in her hand, till she came to a little wood which she knew would be almost certainly deserted.

Once in the now leafless wilderness, she began walking slowly, her feet sinking into the sodden, fallen leaves, longing and yet dreading to know what Harry had written to her.

At last she slowly opened the square, official-looking envelope. Written across the top were the words: “Read and passed by J. C. Brackbury, Governor of H. M. Prison, Grendon.”

She was used to that sentence, but somehow to-day the pain and shame that such a letter as she supposed she was going to read, an intimate love-letter, should have been seen by any other eyes than her own, brought a new anguish.

She unfolded the big, plain sheet of notepaper, and at once she saw that there was no beginning or end to the letter. The fact that this was so gave her a quick, frightened feeling of foreboding.

Jean Bower put the letter back in its envelope and thrust it in her bosom. She walked through the wood on to the now deserted stretch of downland that had been turned into a golf course by the enterprising municipality of Grendon.

Beyond the course there were a few pretty houses which now, in the deepening twilight, were being lighted up, and all at once Jean, in the midst of her agonized and bewildered questionings, remembered that in one of these houses lived Mr. and Mrs. Toogood and their only daughter. She remembered having gone there last August with her aunt to call on Mrs. Toogood.

She quickened her steps, and striking across the links, soon reached Mr. Toogood's house.

In answer to her ring, a maid opened the door.

“Is Mr. Toogood back yet from his office? Could I see him?” asked Jean. “I won't keep him five minutes, but it's very urgent!”

“The master never sees any one on business out of office hours.”

Then, suddenly, the young woman realized who the visitor was, and a thrill of joyful excitement ran through her.

“Why, it's Miss Bower, isn't it? I'm sure Mr. Toogood will see you, miss.”

She led the way to a comfortable-looking library. A big fire was burning, and gratefully Jean sank into an easy chair.

Burning with curiosity and excitement, the girl hurried off to the dining room, where her master, while enjoying his tea, had been telling his wife and daughter every detail of Harry Garlett's appearance before the magistrates and his committal for trial.

The maid was not lacking in a certain dramatic instinct, so when she came into the dining room she shut the door and said demurely:

“A young lady to see you, sir.”

Mr. Toogood looked up sharply. “No one on business, I hope?”

“It's Miss Jean Bower,” announced the girl in a hissing whisper. “She do look miserable! I though you'd see her, sir. She only wants to see you for five minutes, and says it's very urgent.”

“Jean Bower!” exclaimed Mrs. Toogood. “And all by herself? You're sure the doctor's not with her?”

“Of course I'm sure, ma'am.”

And then Miss Toogood broke in: “I wonder what she's come to say! I wonder whether she poisoned Mrs. Garlett, and whether she's come to confess it to Father? Jimmy Danetree says that they ought to have called her as a witness this morning”

“I forbid you to discuss Harry Garlett's affair with young men,” interposed her father sharply.

He was on his way to the door, and though he too felt excited, he thought he knew what Jean Bower had come to tell him. Indeed he was sure that she had come to say that her engagement was at an end, and to ask him to make that fact known as widely as possible.

He walked into his study and held out his hand.

“Well, Miss Bower? I'm glad that you've come here to-night, instead of to my office to-morrow morning. Now that's the very first time I've ever said that to any client of mine—and I feel quite sure I shall never say it again! Sit down, my dear young lady; I think I know the business that has brought you,” and his voice became very kindly.

“I don't think you can know why I have come,” she said in a low voice.

“I think I do, for I had a talk with Mr. Garlett just before we went into the police court this morning. He told me he'd written you a letter which he was going to ask your uncle to deliver in case he was committed for trial. He did not show me the letter, but he told me what was in it.”

“Eve come to ask you a very important question,” said Jean in a firm tone. She fixed her eyes on the shrewd face of the man standing before her.

“I ask you—and I want you to answer as if you were on oath, Mr. Toogood—will it do Harry good, or will it do him harm, if I break my engagement now?”

The lawyer felt annoyed, as well as very much taken aback. For one thing, he could not tell by her manner whether she wished his answer to be “yes” or “no.” So he answered her evasively:

“I know that Mr. Garlett strongly wishes the engagement to be broken off, Miss Bower. He spoke very frankly to me this morning, and he said he hoped with all his heart that you would do as he wished.”

“I realize all that,” she answered, with what was for her a curious and most unusual touch of irritation in her voice. “But I am not thinking of what he wishes me to do. What I want you to tell me is what will be best for him.”

And then suddenly she saw into Mr. Toogood's mind.

“Surely,” she exclaimed, “you don't think that I wish to break our engagement?”

With a pitiful little smile she added slowly: “To do that would break my heart, but I will, if you tell me that's it's honestly the best thing for Harry.”

He was so touched, so surprised at her woods, that he felt he would like to take her in his arms and hug her.

What a splendid girl she was, and that even if she had allowed her employer, the husband of poor ailing Emily Garlett, to make love to her in his wife's lifetime! She deserved to know the truth—the real truth.

“About that,” he said decidedly, “I can set your mind at rest. Though I should not like to be quoted as having said it, I haven't a doubt that, in as far as public opinion plays any part in a great law case, the fact that you have remained faithful to Mr. Garlett can do him nothing but good.”

Jean sighed convulsively, and tears of relief began running down her face.

“We take our stand on Garlett's absolute innocence,” continued the lawyer. “We wish to prove that he hardly realized your existence till some months after his wife's death. That is the point on which you will have to try and convince judge, jury, and the very clever gentleman who will lead the Prosecution for the Crown. Now it is obvious to me that if you set out to do that as the woman who loves the prisoner in the dock, and absolutely believes in his innocence, that fact will give your words far more weight than if you come into court admitting that you have broken off your engagement.”

“Then why,” she whispered, “did he write me this letter? In spite of the loving things he said in it toward the end, I felt a sort of dreadful doubt, as if he no longer cared for me”

“No longer cared for you?” exclaimed Mr. Toogood, wiping his spectacles. “Why, my dear young lady, it's entirely for your sake that he wrote that letter. Didn't you understand that? He won't be allowed to see any of the newspapers after to-day, but up to to-day the Governor stretched a point. But it was no kindness, for some of the things the papers printed made him feel simply frantic. He was awfully upset at some article which said that you thought his wife had committed suicide. He wanted to have it contradicted!”

“I never saw any statement of that sort,” said Jean astonished. “I can hardly believe they can have dared to say such a thing. Of course I feel sure that Mrs. Garlett did not commit suicide.”

“Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. Quite frequently it happens that a man takes his own life when every one round him would have sworn him utterly incapable of doing such a thing. If that is often true of a man, it is truer of a woman, for your sex is far more sensitive than mine, Miss Bower.”

“May I write an answer to Harry here?” said Jean.

He put a sheet of paper before her on his writing table, and taking up a pencil she wrote quickly:

“And now,” observed Mr. Toogood, “I'll just put my boots on again, and see you home.”

“Indeed, you'll do nothing of the kind!” exclaimed Jean, and this time she really smiled. “I'm not a bit afraid. Besides, it isn't really dark.”

She took his hand and squeezed it.

“You've never made anybody happier than you've made me to-day,” she said.

When Jean Bower slipped quietly back into Bonnie Doon, she amazed them all—those three kind folk who felt so unhappy and anxious about her, her uncle, her aunt, and Elsie—by being bright, cheerful, and full of courage and hope.

After a few minutes she went up to her bedroom. The writing table there was one of the few things she had brought from her old home. She went over it, and taking up an envelope, slipped Harry Garlett's letter inside it. Then she wrote outside: “In case of my death I wish this envelope to be put in my coffin, over my heart”—and then she placed it in a drawer where she knew it would be found at once, should she die while still an inmate of the house where she had known such intense joy and such bitter sorrow.

After the first burst of excitement following the day of Harry Garlett's appearance before the magistrates and his being committed for trial, all mention of the Terriford Mystery dropped gradually out of the newspapers; for weeks, sometimes even months, elapse between the committal of a man charged with murder and the actual opening of the legal drama which is to decide whether he is to enjoy life and freedom, or suffer a hideous and shameful death.

But though from the point of view of the public the case temporarily disappeared, there were still innumerable men and women all over England who seemed to find it impossible to banish the story from their minds. Many of the people with whom Jean had drifted into acquaintance during her life, and especially during the course of her war work, wrote to her with either strong interest or sympathy. But she received other letters of a very different character, and terrible letters some of them were, so venomous and cruel in their wording that they seemed as if inspired by personal hatred. A typical example ran as follows:

Of the letters written to her by people known to her there was only one that seemed to bring a touch of comfort to her sore heart.

It came from a girl, Rachel North by name, with whom she had worked for eight months in a war hospital. They had drifted into something very like close friendship during that time, but, as so often happens in life, though they had each made an effort to keep up their friendship by correspondence, the letters had become fewer and fewer on either side, and had now ceased for nearly a year. Thus Jean was the more touched when she received the following letter from her friend:

This was the only letter that Jean had cared to keep, and after answering it she had put it carefully away. It had comforted her, if only because it had been written by some one who had gone through in a smaller measure the anxiety, the anguish, and the suspense she was going through now.

Though the world at large had suspended its interest in the Terriford Mystery, that was not the case in this neighbourhood. There the excitement was kept alive by all sorts of happenings. The chief of these was the occasional appearance of James Kentworthy, and his eager attempts to get hold of any shred of evidence that would help his client. But in spite of his efforts he found no one who could throw even a glimmer of light on the apparently unsolvable problem of Emily Garlett's death. The one weak link in the evidence against Harry Garlett, from the point of view of the prosecution, continued to be that up to the present no arsenic had been traced in any form to his possession. Inquiries were still being made all over England, and especially where Garlett had been either playing cricket or acting as a glorified commercial traveller to the Etna China factory. But so far these inquiries had yielded nothing.

Mr. Kentworthy had built great hopes on an interview with Agatha Cheale; but though on two occasions he had managed to force himself into her presence, she had, while coldly civil, replied to his questions: “I have been subpoenæd by the prosecution, and I understand that it would be quite out of order to give you any information. Besides, I could only tell you exactly what I told them.”

With Miss Prince he had again become on surprisingly friendly terms. They often discussed the case, and to him she always professed she kept an open mind. Yet Mr. Kentworthy felt sure that she knew something not to Harry Garlett's credit. Once or twice he had thought her on the point of confiding to him what this was. But at the last moment she always quickly drew back, and made up her mind to be silent.

But if on friendly terms with Miss Prince, the inquiry agent was not on friendly terms with Lucy Warren. Again and again he tried to make the girl amplify her former statement to him. But all she would say now was: “Pm very sorry I said anything to you about it! Maybe it was not Mr. Garlett at all that was in the wood. It's easy enough to make a mistake at night.”

She looked unhappy, scornful, and embittered with life, and one day he casually received a hint as to why that was so, from the village postmistress:

“There be some as says Miss Cheale's brother, the gentleman who was Mrs. Warren's lodger at the Thatched Farm made up to Lucy. If that's so, he's gone and left her high and dry! Mind you, I don't say that it's true, but there be some as says so.”

He decided that there must be something in it. The girl looked as if she had been crossed in love.

At last it seemed as if Mr. Kentworthy had left the village for good. He had done everything that could be done there in the way of inquiry and suggestion, and he made up his mind to investigate the whole case from the angle of Harry Garlett's life as a popular cricketer, welcome in many a great country house, and indeed everywhere where the national game has its experts and devotees.

But he had been gone only some ten days when there arrived for Jean Bower the following letter:

Jean made up her mind at once that she would act on Kentworthy's second thoughts. She decided, therefore, to go by herself to London, and, without giving him any notice, call at the famous barrister's chambers on the chance of seeing him.

So the two people, whose anxious loving scrutiny of her day by day was sometimes more than she could bear, were disturbed and surprised when she suddenly observed:

“I want to go to London next Monday by myself. I've got a friend who will put me up for the night. I don't want to tell you why I'm going, so please don't ask me. But you will be glad to know that it is something I'm doing with the full approval of Mr. Kentworthy.” And then suddenly she grew very red. “I ought not to have said that,” she exclaimed in a distressed tone. “Will you try and forget it, and never, never tell any one?”

She looked from one to the other.

“Very well, my dear. But be careful. Mr. Toogood told me the other day that he had a great horror of anything like amateur”—the doctor hesitated a moment and then said, “spying.”

“I'm not going to spy,” said Jean, and she looked hurt.

“Well, well, my dear, forgive me for saying that! But you know what I mean? I don't want you mixed up with any of Kentworthy's dirty, if necessary, work”

“Not if it helped Harry, Uncle Jock?”

“Not even if it helped Garlett, my dear.”

She turned away, and he knew that she would stick at nothing that would help the man she loved.

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 17


text: Page:กม ร ๗ - ๒๔๗๖.pdf/5

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text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 18

IR HAROLD ANSTEY came bustling into his pleasant chambers. He had only just come back from a long week-end, there was a bright fire burning in the attractive, wasteful, eighteenth-century grate, and the famous Old Bailey barrister felt not only fresh and keen, but on the happiest terms with himself and the world.

The great advocate was a big, florid, good-looking man, and so popular a bachelor that it was no wonder he had never made up his mind to become true to one lady.

Like most successful men, he attached great importance to the Press of his country, and he paid considerable court to those newspaper men with whom he came in contact. So of the pile of letters, opened and unopened, on his writing-table, Sir Harold first turned to a bulky envelope from his press-cutting agency.

The enveloped contained a page cut from a popular picture paper, and across the top of the sheet ran: “The Terriford Mystery: Exclusive Photographs.”

Sir Harold smiled when he saw that the pictures were grouped round his own comely, bewigged visage. He noted that a delightful-looking country house was flanked by two portraits, the one being that of a pleasant-faced man in a cricketing cap, while the other was a charming-looking girl in V. A. D. uniform. In somewhat painful contrast below, was a large photograph, evidently taken a great many years ago, of a plain-looking woman in an old-fashioned wedding dress.

The barrister had mastered enough of the story to realize that the handsome cricketer was Harry Garlett, the man about to be tried for his life, and the sweet-faced young nurse Jean Bower, the girl to whom Garlett was now engaged, and who was supposed to have provided the motive for his having poisoned his unattractive-looking wife.

As for the central portrait—the counterfeit presentment of himself—the caption which declared him to be “the most famous criminal lawyer of our day” gave Sir Harold pleasure, though it no longer bore the delicious thrill of novelty.

As he laid the sheet down on his writing table, the door opened and his clerk came in: “A young lady to see you, Sir Harold. She says she would rather not give her name.”

The great advocate looked sharply at his faithful henchman.

“I suppose you told her that I only see people by appointment?”

“I did tell her that, Sir Harold, but she said she did hope you would break your rule this time.”

“A nice young lady—a pretty young lady, Fulford?” asked Sir Harold.

He was fiddling about the papers which were on his table, and he did not look at his clerk as he put the question.

“Well, yes, Sir Harold, a very pretty young lady, quite young, too, if you'll excuse my mentioning it.”

“All right. Show her in.”

While awaiting his visitor he idly opened a letter marked “Urgent and confidential” which lay on the top of the pile of envelopes.

It contained the following words:

Another tribute to his marvellous gift of advocacy! He read the ill-written sentence again, and it was with a broad smile that he greeted the very charming-looking girl who advanced nervously into the big, comfortably furnished room.

“Sit down,” he said with a kindly smile; and timidly his visitor accepted his invitation.

“I hope you will not mind telling me your name? Remember, my dear young lady, that wise people tell everything to their doctor and their lawyer!”

“My name,” she said quietly, “is Jean Bower, and I am engaged to be married to Mr. Henry Garlett.”

As she uttered these words, there was no trace of a smile on her face, and it was then—for perhaps his knowledge of human nature had not gone as far as he thought it had—that Sir Harold Anstey realized for the first time that his visitor looked untterably [sic] sad. Had she not been so young, and, yes, so attractive, he would have seen at once that she was spent with anxiety and suffering.

It must be admitted, though the fact did not redound to his credit, that Sir Harold's manner underwent a quick and subtle change. It became, in place of deferential, familiar.

“Although your coming to see me like this is not at all in order, Miss Bower, I shall not be sorry to have a little talk with you!” he exclaimed, moving his chair just a little forward.

As he did this, Jean Bower, unaware that she was doing it, moved her chair just a little back.

“And so,” he went on, in a jocular tone, “you are the pretty young lady who has brought all this trouble about?”

Poor Jean! She felt as if this man, whom she had thought of as a friend, had struck her straight between the eyes. She made no answer to the half-question, and only gazed at him affrightedly.

“You are by profession a nurse, are you not?” he asked abruptly. He felt annoyed that she had not “played up.”

“No, I am not a nurse,” she spoke in a very low tone.

“But I have seen a picture of you, a very delightful picture, it is, too!—in a nurse's dress.”

Jean Bower looked bewildered; then a painful flush came over her face. She also, for her misfortune, had seen the page now lying on Sir Harold's table.

“The papers have published a head of me taken out of a group of V. A. D.'s,” she said quickly. “I acted as secretary for a while at a war hospital.”

“That's why you were in France at the hospital to which Harry Garlett was taken when wounded in 1917.”

He thought he was on the right track at last.

“No,” she said again, “I was never in France. I was in a Manchester hospital in the later part of the war. I became secretary to the Etna China Company last April, and as I have not resigned my post, I am that now.”

She spoke with a certain simple directness.

“Then you were secretary to Mr. Garlett's company, and you also took care of his wife?” said the famous advocate, again with a curious, not very pleasant, smile on his face.

“You are confusing me with Miss Cheale, who was Mrs. Garlett's housekeeper and companion,” said Jean.

There had now come over her a terrible feeling of anxious despondency, and of bitter, bitter disappointment. She had expected the great man—he had been described to her as a very great man by Mr. Toogood—to have the whole story at his fingers' ends, and to be, even in everyday life, an ardent, as well as an eloquent, believer in his client's innocence.

Something of what was passing in her mind became apparent to Sir Harold Anstey, and he felt sharply vexed with himself. Vexed for having got the threads of the story so wrong, and vexed, too, that he had broken through his rule of never seeing, excepting at his own request, any one connected with a forthcoming case.

In his happy, prosperous everyday life Sir Harold rarely came across many girls who seemed to him as prudish as the girl now sitting facing him. Besides, with regard to this girl, who had actually driven a man to commit murder for love of her, such a pose was not only absurd, but very hypocritical.

Still, as he had been foolish enough to see her, he told himself that he might as well make the best of it, and improve his own chances of winning what he was beginning to see was going to be a very important case.

His manner changed; it became, if not exactly more pleas ant, then shrewd and business-like—what his visitor vaguely described to herself as “sensible.”

“I want you to tell me in your own words,” he said impressively, “the story of your acquaintance with Henry Garlett, and what led up to your engagement.”

Quietly, straightforwardly, and, he began almost to believe, quite truthfully, Jean told the simple story of that which had come to her to mean everything in the world.

After she had finished Sir Harold leaned forward.

“If I accept all this as true, I must ask you a most important question, Miss Bower. Who can have had the smallest motive for wishing this lady out of the way? Remember that in such a case as this, it is not enough to say, 'This man did not do it.' You must, if you can in any way bring it about, be able to declare, 'But that man did!' I suppose we may put aside the idea that Mrs. Garlett committed suicide?”

“I suppose we may,” said Jean Bower, but she spoke with a certain hesitation which he was quick to detect.

“Have you any doubt of it?” he asked eagerly. “Did the poor woman suffer great pain? What was her mental state? Can we rely on her doctor to give evidence favourable to Mr. Garlett?”

“Dr. Maclean, who attended Mrs. Garlett, is my uncle,” said the girl slowly. “I know that he believes, as does Mr. Garlett himself, that such an idea as suicide never even crossed her mind.”

Sir Harold Anstey felt both perplexed and irritated. He told himself that there is after all such a thing as being too truthful, too scrupulous.

“That's a great pity,” he said dryly. “If you could persuade your uncle, Miss Bower, to given even a slight hint that his patient was sometimes very depressed and, if not suffering actual pain, was yet in constant discomfort, it might be a very great help to me in saving Mr. Garlett's life.”

He was still absolutely convinced that his client was guilty, but somehow he was beginning to feel very, very sorry for this pretty young creature with whom he was holding this curiously unemotional conversation. While she had been telling him the story of her acquaintanceship with the man she now loved, he had suddenly realized that it was pent-up passion, not lack of feeling, that made her speak in so still and quiet a voice.

“So far no arsenic has been traced to Henry Garlett's possession, and of course that is a point in his favour,” he said musingly.

“I suppose that it is quite impossible that sugar and arsenic can be substituted by accident the one for the other?” asked Jean. “I mean at a grocer's, for instance?”

“Quite impossible,” he said firmly. “But tell me why you ask the question?”

“Because Mrs. Garlett seems to have had some strawberries smothered in white sugar just before her suppers”

“Did she say the strawberries had made her ill?”

Jean knitted her white forehead.

“Not that I know of. But Miss Cheale, the lady who was her companion-nurse, at first put down her illness to her having eaten them.”

“Your uncle, I take it, lives close to the Thatched House. Does he make up his own medicines?”

Jean Bower shook her head.

“He did so, I believe, when he first bought the practice, but he gave up doing it years ago.”

“And I take it that everything connected with the dispensary was swept away?”

“A garage has been put up in the place where he used to make up the medicines.”

“Is there a chemist's shop near by?”

“No,” said Jean quickly. “But the daughter of my uncle's predecessor, a lady called Miss Prince, keeps certain simple medicines in her house, which she gives to the village people.”

Sir Harold made a note of the name on his blotting paper.

“I suppose we may take it,” he observed, “that that lady had no arsenic in her possession?”

“If she had, I feel sure she would have said so,” said Jean. “As a matter of fact, she is Mr. Garlett's tenant.”

“How old is Miss Prince?” he asked abruptly.

“I should think she must be about sixty”

“I see. Now, Miss Bower, I must ask you a delicate question. Can you think of any young woman, apart from yourself, who was on friendly terms with Mr. Garlett at the time of his wife's death?”

To his surprise the girl became first distressingly red and then very pale. A struggle was going on in her mind. Had the big, florid man sitting opposite to her been just a little other than he was, she would have forced herself to tell him of the curious, as she believed utterly untrue, gossip, concerning her lover's meeting with some mysterious young woman in the wood. But somehow she could not bring her self to mention the sordid story to Sir Harold Anstey.

“No,” she said at last. “I can think of nobody; indeed I'm quite sure there was nobody.”

He looked at his watch.

“I should like you to wait while I glance over the brief. It contains a précis of the Garlett case.”

He handed her an unopened daily paper.

“Try to forget what I am doing,” he said kindly. “Switch your mind right off it! We shall get along much better when I have mastered the principal points of the story.”

Deliberately he turned his back on her, and she did her best to follow his advice.

It seemed an eternity to Jean Bower, but it was not more than twenty minutes before Sir Harold Anstey put the wad of sheets he had been holding down on the table and turned toward her, an ugly, sneering frown on his broad, shrewd face.

How extraordinary that this simple country chit should have so bamboozled him! If angry with her, he was also angry with himself, and so, though he did not wish to frighten her, it was in a very cold cutting voice that he observed:

“I see, Miss Bower, that a witness, Lucy Warren by name, will be called by the Crown to prove that before his wife's death you were in the habit of meeting Henry Garlett secretly at night in a wood close to his house.”

“Lucy Warren!” exclaimed Jean Bower, in a tone of utter surprise, as well as of dismayed horror.

She went on excitedly: “We used to wonder who could have told that wicked lie. No one would tell me, not even Mr. Kentworthy!”

Her eyes filled with tears; instinctively she covered her face with her hands.

The great advocate told himself that he was not in the least moved by this display of emotion. Your unsuccessful liar, especially if she be a woman, often covers up her confusion at being found out by shedding quite genuine tears.

“I am sure you understand,” he said firmly, “that this fact, which you very foolishly and dishonourably—if you will forgive my saying so—concealed from me just now, puts a far more serious complexion on our side of the case.”

“I see what you mean,” she said in a low voice; and she looked so unutterably miserable that, in spite of himself, the man's heart softened.

After all, she was a very pretty little girl—far more pitiful and appealing, now that she was showing distress and emotion, than she had appeared when so coldly restrained. He told himself that it was rather beastly that he, Harold Anstey, who was so fortunate, so prosperous, and, as a rule, such a lucky dog with women, should allow himself to be vexed that he had been taken in—for once!

He suddenly began to feel kindly, protective, generous, as well as again shrewdly alive to the importance of winning what was evidently going to be a very big case.

He got up and came and put his big right hand on her slender shoulder: “Now, look here, my dear?”

She shrank back a little, then drying her eyes, she looked up at him, fearlessly and bravely.

“I am going to do my very best to save your lover's life. But you, on your side, must make up your mind to be absolutely truthful with me—eh?”

“I will be, Sir Harold—indeed I will be!”

“Well, we may take it, I suppose, that it was a case of love at first sight; that Mr. Garlett was taken with you from the first (as well he might be!) and then he did persuade you, wrongly I admit, to meet him at night in this wood? When I say night, I am well aware that it was not really night. From what this young servant says, she had to be in by ten, so that fixes the time. Can you give me any kind of reason why you should have met him? Any reason you can think of, or even—hum!—invent, will be of value. I realize that you were working with Mr. Garlett, and that you had plenty to talk about of a—well! ordinary, straightforward kind.”

Jean Bower got up from her chair so suddenly that he felt startled.

“I don't know if anything I say will convince you that I am telling the truth,” she said desperately. “But I swear to you most solemnly before God that I never met Mr. Garlett, either before his wife's death or since, secretly at night, in that wood or anywhere else. What is more, I am convinced that he never did such a thing, and I can't believe that Lucy Warren thinks that he did!”

He was impressed in spite of himself.

“What sort of a girl is Lucy Warren? Do you know her?” he asked abruptly.

“I know her quite well. In fact, the day before Mrs. Garlett's death I was actually present when, as a result of something she had done, she was given notice to leave the Thatched House.”

“I admit,” said Sir Harold slowly, “that that does provide from our point of view a useful complication. The evidence of a dismissed servant is always regarded as tainted.”

He looked, for the first time, really puzzled and ill at ease.

“Let me see,” he said. “Kentworthy, who was for so many years employed by the Home Office, is the detective we are employing, isn't he?”

Jean Bower came up closer to him. Somehow she no longer felt afraid of this big, to her singularly unattractive-looking, man.

“We all like Mr. Kentworthy, and I am sure he is honest. But oh! he is not a clever man, Sir Harold. The only thing that makes me happy to be with him”—tears came into her voice—“is that even now he does believe Harry to be innocent. He really does—I do wish you believed it too!”

He was taken aback, touched, and rather amused, by her frankness.

“How dare you accuse me of not believing in the innocence of a man I'm going to defend?” he exclaimed half jokingly. “Of course I believe my client to be innocent until he is proved guilty!”

“Sir Harold,” she said piteously, “tell me if I can help Harry in any way? Is there nothing—nothing that I can do? I would do anything.”

“Sit down,” he said briefly.

She sat down, and he began walking up and down the room. Though she did not know it, that was a good sign. It showed that he was becoming really interested, putting his powerful mind to the solution of a problem that was not, after all, as simple as he had believed it to be.

If this girl told the truth—if her relations with this man she now passionately loved had been what she had just sworn them to have been before his wife's death—then what could have been Garlett's motive in poisoning the poor woman? He was also impressed by the detective Kentworthy's belief in Garlett's innocence.

Sir Harold Anstey had had a great deal to do with Kentworthy in another murder mystery case and it had been Kentworthy's passionless, honest, clear evidence in the box which had hanged Anstey's guilty client. Kentworthy might not be a clever man—not the Sherlock Holmes every young lady expects a detective to be—but his opinion, especially when it was in favour of a man actually under arrest on a charge of murder, was of great value in the famous barrister's eyes.

“This is going to be a very difficult, complicated, and anxious case,” he said at last. “All the more difficult because it appears so absolutely simple.”

He saw a look of astonishment flash across Jean Bower's flushed face.

“To you,” he exclaimed, “who believe this man to be innocent, the case is perfectly simple. But if we can produce nothing better than what we have now got, Miss Bower, judge, jury, in fact” he hesitated and then went on firmly, “everyone in the case will believe that Harry Garlett undoubtedly poisoned his late wife.”

She answered in a low voice: “I do understand that,” and though she did not flinch, a sensation of numb despair took possession of her heart.

“It follows that we must produce something, anything, that will shake the belief of those. on whose opinion, Miss Bower, your lover's life will hang as by a thread.”

She stared at him, fascinated. The real power of the man was beginning to impress her, to make her feel a kind of confidence in him.

He stopped in his pacing and gazed fixedly down into her troubled, quivering, upturned face.

“Will you give me your word of honour that you will never reveal to anybody the fact that I gave you, personally, any advice concerning your own association with the case?”

“I give you my word of honour,” she said quietly.

“It is because I believe you will keep it,” he said seriously, “that I am going to tell you how I think you can help your lover.”

She waited silently till he spoke again.

“I am one of the few people in my line of life who believe in the amateur detective—and especially in the woman amateur detective. Not for nothing were the most dangerous spies in the great war—women.”

A look of pain came into Jean Bower's face. Unheeding of that, he went on, weighing his words:

“Kentworthy can be trusted thoroughly to get up a case of the straightforward, normal kind. But for this sort of delicate, difficult, dangerous work, I fear he is of little use.”

He wheeled round, and once more began walking up and down the long room.

“And now I'm going to assume that you are right, Miss Bower—that Henry Garlett is absolutely innocent.”

He turned and cast a quick, measuring glance at his visitor.

He was wondering, deep in his heart, if she really did absolutely believe in Garlett's innocence? If not, he was not only wasting valuable time, but they two were playing at a tiresome game of make-believe.

And then she said so humbly, so touchingly, “Thank you, Sir Harold,” that he felt his question answered.

He went on speaking, swaying slightly as he did so, wholly absorbed in the problem before him. “If this man is innocent, then we must concentrate on the fact that some one else is guilty of the crime of which he is accused. Some human being—man or woman—gave Mrs. Emily Garlett a large dose of arsenic with intent to kill her.” He looked at her fixedly. “Now who was that person? It is up to you, Miss Bower, to find that out, and you have only a month and a few days to do it in, so there's no time to lose.”

“Tell me how to set about it,” exclaimed Jean Bower, “and I'll do exactly what you tell me to do!”

“I wonder if you will?” he exclaimed. “I know you mean now to do what I advise, but the worst of amateurs is that they are prone to act from the heart rather than from the head. You won't like the first job I'm going to put you to.”

“I will do anything,” she said firmly.

“Wait till you hear what it is! The moment you get back to Terriford get an order to see Mr. Garlett alone, or within sight, but not within hearing, of a warder. And then, however disagreeable the job, you must get out of him whether or not this Lucy Warren told the truth concerning his mysterious interviews with some woman in the wood near his house.”

“I am absolutely sure it is a lie!”

Sir Harold shook his head.

“This won't do at all. If you begin by assuring him that you are sure he never did such a thing—then he will find it impossible to admit that he did do it. What you must say is that you can see no reason in the world why he shouldn't have met and walked with some young lady.”

“How can I do that when I feel sure he never did do it?”

He looked at her kindly.

“Forgive me, Miss Bower! I was a fool to think that you could bring yourself to act the part of even the most amateur of detectives. Put the idea out of your mind, and rest asured [sic] that I will do everything in my power to save your lover's life.”

Jean rose from her chair.

“No, no, no!” she cried, “of course I'll do exactly what you advise. I'll tell Harry that his meeting a girl in that way and in that place was not so very strange—nay, more, I'll try and force myself to believe it!”

“That's right,” he said heartily, “now you're acting like a brave, sensible girl, and not like a foolish, obstinate woman.”

“But supposing he says it was all an invention of Lucy Warren's?” She looked at him anxiously. “Then I suppose I must get Lucy Warren to say she told a lie?”

“Yes, that will be the next step, and if you fail I shall succeed when I have got her in the witness-box,” he said grimly. “That is supposing she did tell a lie. But, Miss Bower?”

“Yes?”

“Suppose that Garlett admits that he did meet a lady in the wood—what then?”

He answered his own question.

“You have then what we are looking for—a second human being with an interest in Mrs. Garlett's death. I suppose,” he said suddenly, “that it has not occurred to you that the young woman may have been no other than Lucy Warren herself?”

“There are things, Sir Harold, which I suppose even you would admit are impossible,” she said quietly.

He looked at her, and remained silent. How make this girl understand that innumerable men of a superior social caste have made love, will make love, are making love all the time, to girls like Lucy Warren? From the moment he had read the notes made by Kentworthy, he had asked himself whether after all, Lucy Warren, in her obstinate determination not to reveal the name of the woman with whom she said she had seen her master, might not have had the very best of reasons for her obstinacy.

“We will suppose,” he went on, measuring his words, “that Mr. Garlett, while admitting he was in the wood, refuses to give up the name of his companion. Well, if you fail to extract that information from Lucy Warren you must try and think of some other way of discovering who the woman was. To do that, you must, if you will forgive the expression, stick at nothing.”

She said timidly: “I suppose you've seen the anonymous letters—the letters which started the whole trouble?”

“The anonymous letters?” he exclaimed. “There isn't a word about them here!”

Sir Harold Anstey went over to his writing table and sat down.

“Have you copies of these letters in your possession?” he asked.

“Yes, I have them here,” she said in a low voice, “but I don't want to get Mr. Kentworthy into trouble, Sir Harold. I'm afraid he ought not to have kept these facsimiles.”

“Thank God, he did! Show them to me at once.”

He spoke in a peremptory tone.

Jean Bower opened her bag and silently laid the three sheets of paper before him.

He bent over them for what seemed to her a very long time, but at last he looked up.

“It's a monstrous thing,” he exclaimed, “that these were not put in among the exhibits connected with the case.”

“So Mr. Kentworthy says,” observed Jean. “He thinks them an integral part of the story—that was his expression.”

“Miss Bower?”

He turned, and faced her squarely.

“Find the human being who wrote these three dastardly letters—and I will undertake to save your lover's life!”

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 18


text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 19

S SHE walked away from the great advocate's chambers Jean Bower felt happier than she had felt since the terrible morning when Harry Garlett had been arrested in her presence on the charge of murder.

Though she felt certain that her forthcoming interview with Garlett would not bring the result Sir Harold evidently expected it to do, yet, deep in her heart, she was full of joy at the thought of seeing the man she loved. Her heart had hungered for him, and nothing but the knowledge that he shrank from seeing her in the shameful place where he was now strictly confined had prevented her making an effort to see him. It was an infinite comfort to feel that it was now her duty to do so.

She had deliberately sent no word of her approaching return to Bonnie Doon, and when she went out of Grendon station, where she had always been met by either her uncle or her aunt, even by Elsie if neither of them could come, there swept over her a curious feeling that henceforth she must live her life alone, if only because of her promise to the man on whose instructions she was now acting.

Quickly she walked away from the station, intent on seeing Mr. Toogood, so that her interview with Harry Garlett should be arranged as soon as possible.

But when she turned into the High Street of the busy country town she became aware that she had been recognized by certain of the people who had passed her, and by the time she had reached the lawyer's office some ten to twenty men and women were dogging her footsteps.

She began to feel like a hunted thing, and oh, the relief of finding herself in the hall of the house where she had come with her uncle on the day her lover had been arrested.

This time Jean was shown straight into the room where Mr. Toogood, the last time she was here, had remained closeted with her uncle for so long.

She went, as was her nature, straight to the point.

“I have made up my mind to ask for an order to see Mr. Garlett,” she said quietly. “And I should be grateful if you would tell him, Mr. Toogood, that it is because I have to speak to him on a matter of importance that I'm doing what I know he does not wish me to do.”

“I've always thought his attitude as to that quite unreasonable,” said the lawyer in a decided tone.

“How would you like Mrs. Toogood or your daughter to see you in prison?” asked Jean in a low voice.

“There's something in that—especially as I suppose you realize, Miss Bower, that you won't see Mr. Garlett alone?”

“I thought perhaps that as I want to see him on private business, I would be granted the privilege of seeing him alone.”

He shook his head.

“There is no country in the world, Miss Bower, where such privileges are extended to a prisoner under remand. I, as Mr. Garlett's legal adviser, have free private access to him. But you cannot expect the same privilege. Whatever you have to say to him will be said in the presence of two warders.

He saw that this was a great surprise to her, and she looked deeply troubled.

“I'll tell you what I'll do,” he exclaimed. “I'll put the case to the Governor. I suppose you've met him?”

“I remember that he was in the cricket pavilion at that big match last May, and I even had a talk with him. But I don't suppose he'll remember me.”

“You do yourself an injustice!” exclaimed the old lawyer gallantly. “I expect Colonel Brackbury remembers you very well indeed. In any case I will put the matter to him personally. I take it, Miss Bower,” he looked at her hard, “that you really require to see Mr. Garlett on business?”

“I would willingly tell you why I wish to see him, but I have given my word to tell no one.” She hesitated, and then, “I have been asked to put a certain question to him.”

“Kentworthy making the poor girl do his dirty work,” thought Mr. Toogood. Aloud he observed:

“Well, my dear young lady, I'll see what can be done. I know the Governor will stretch a point if he can. He is on very cordial terms with your uncle, and I seem to remember that he's a regular cricket maniac. Funny, isn't it, that such things should make any difference? But they do! I've found out that the lawyer who doesn't allow for the oddities of human nature makes a great mistake—I mean professionally. I hope you've left every one quite well at home, eh?—I mean at Bonnie Doon?”

“I've been in London,” she answered, “so I haven't seen them since the day before yesterday.”

“That fixes it!” said the lawyer to himself. “I wonder what Kentworthy wants that poor girl to get out of Garlett? Surely he's never told her to find out who was in the wood with him? That would be hard on her. Yet he may be beginning to see what I've always seen, that Garlett's one hope is to bring some other woman into the case.”

They both got up; he strolled across to his window, and saw with dismay that a crowd had gathered below on the broad pavement, waiting for the heroine of the Terriford Mystery to appear.

“Haven't you got a car?” he asked, surprised.

“I thought of walking home.”

“No need to do that,” he said kindly. “I'll telephone and ask my daughter to bring our car along. She'll get you to Bonnie Doon in no time! Meanwhile, will you go into the other room for a minute? I have a private message to give her.”

Slightly surprised, Jean did as he asked her. Then, when he had got through to his house, he said: “Is that you, Kitty?”

“Yes, Father.”

“I want you to run the car along here. Are you listening?”

“Listening hard, Father!”

“Good! Now don't come through the High Street. You've got to make your way somehow into Juniper Alley, to the back of this house. There's a crowd gathered at the front door waiting for that poor child, Jean Bower, to come out. I want to get her away without any one seeing her. You'll only have to drive her to Bonnie Doon. It won't take you long.”

Then he brought his young visitor back to his room.

“Now, look here, my dear, we've got about ten minutes before my daughter can be here, and I haven't had an opportunity of seeing you alone since we met—you remember when? I want to tell you to be of good heart! It's a tremendously important point on your side—I wonder if you realize how important?—that no arsenic has been traced to Harry Garlett's possession. What's more, poor Mrs. Garlett was poisoned with white arsenic. We've got one of the biggest poison experts in the world ready to go into the box and swear that Mrs. Garlett was poisoned with pure arsenic, not arsenic extracted from some article in common use.”

She looked at him gratefully, but remained silent.

“Then there's another point,” he went on. “A great deal has been made of those strawberries which were eaten by Mrs. Garlett on the fatal evening. As a matter of fact, no one saw her eat them, and no one has the slightest idea who brought them into her room. It's very unfortunate that your uncle conveyed the impression, as he certainly did, that he knew as a fact that Mrs. Garlett received those strawberries from her husband's hand. He knew nothing of the kind.”

“I've never been able to understand the question of the strawberries, and why so much importance has been attached to them,” said Jean Bower in a low voice.

“Importance has been attached to them,” said the lawyer decidedly, “because they seem to have been the only vehicle by which the poison could have been administered. The Prosecution have two witnesses ready to swear that they saw the small dish of strawberries, sprinkled thickly with powdered sugar, outside Mrs. Garlett's door at five o'clock, and that at seven o'clock the dish was no longer there.”

“How strange,” said Jean in an oppressed tone.

“Mr. Garlett denies having even seen the strawberries. The lawyer who took Miss Cheale's evidence on commission received from her the assurance that she did not know who had given Mrs. Garlett the fruit—she simply assumed that it must have been Mr. Garlett. Sir Harold Anstey—you will remember I told you about him last time you were in this room—will certainly make the most of the fact that no one knows what happened to those strawberries! Not only the fruit, but the dish, one of a set of four, disappeared from the top of the chest of drawers where it was known to have been that afternoon. The apparent obliteration of the dish is a very curious circumstance.”

“I suppose it is,” said Jean doubtfully.

“That odd occurrence, coupled with the fact that no purchase of arsenic has been traced to our friend, will certainly be an important point in his favour, so you must keep up heart.”

“I try to,” said Jean. “I'm feeling happier”

She stopped short. She had nearly said “now that I have seen Sir Harold Anstey.”

Mr. Toogood looked at his watch.

“Kitty will be waiting for you now.” He opened the door, and then, to her surprise, said a little hurriedly: “No, not downstairs, but upstairs, Miss Bower! My daughter prefers driving up to the back of the house.”

As he uttered these lying words, he was leading her up the staircase, she bewildered but obedient. When they reached the top story he led her down a passage, and then they walked silently down what had been the back stairs of the old mansion when it was a dwelling-house. Once on the ground floor, he took her rapidly through a small paved court into a kind of little alley, where the car stood waiting.

“Good-bye, Miss Jean! I'll see if I can catch the Governor to-day, and then your interview will take place, if it can be managed, to-morrow morning.”

It was not often that Mr. Toogood felt a pang of curiosity. As a rule, lawyers know too much, not too little, of their clients' affairs. But he did wonder very much what it was that Kentworthy had asked Jean Bower to find out. He felt sure that she would fail in her task. Harry Garlett was the last man to be persuaded to say anything he did not wish to say, and if he had indeed been holding clandestine meetings in the wood with some woman whose name he alone knew, he would certainly not “give the lady away.”

Mr. Toogood chuckled a little as he found his way back to his room, remembering that his good friend, Colonel Brackbury, Governor of His Majesty's Prison at Grendon, had said to him only two days before:

“I feel interested in Jean Bower. I thought her a most attractive girl! We had quite a talk at that cricket match last spring. I should very much like to see her again.”

Late that same afternoon Elsie put her head through the door of the dining room of Bonnie Doon.

“Ye're wanted on the telephone, Miss Jean.”

“Would you rather I went, my dear?” asked her aunt kindly.

“I'll go,” said the girl quickly. “I think I know who it is.”

And, sure enough, it was Mr. Toogood.

“It's all right, Miss Bower. If you will be at the prison at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, the Governor will himself be present at your interview with Mr. Garlett. He says he will keep out of earshot. I hope you are pleased.”

“I am indeed,” she called back, “and very grateful to you!”

And then she walked back slowly to the room where her uncle and aunt were sitting. She was sorry, now, that she had not confided to them her intention of seeing Harry Garlett, but she had shrunk from doing so, for she knew they were hurt with her for concealing the reason of her visit to London.

As she opened the door she said abruptly: “I am going to see Harry to-morrow morning. I called at Mr. Toogood's office on my way home and arranged it.”

As neither of them spoke, she went on, catching her breath a little:

“Try not to mind my not being able to tell you why I want to see him. I've promised not to do so—but it is important. It may make a difference at the trial.”

There was a pause, and then Mrs. Maclean said a little coldly:

“Neither your uncle nor I wish to interfere in your private affairs, my dear. You are grown up, and you have a right to do as you please. But your uncle has a very wide knowledge of life, and I think you would probably find that, in the long run, it would be worth your while to take him into your confidence.”

Jean burst into bitter sobs, and her aunt got up from her chair and put her arms around her.

“Come, come, don't be offended, childie! It's only that we're so anxious—that's all. The matter's so terribly important, not only to you but to your uncle—perhaps you don't quite realize that, eh?”

“How d'you mean?” exclaimed Jean, glancing from the one to the other.

“Well,” said Dr. Maclean slowly, “I've not said anything about it, for I've known that your trouble, my dear, has been much, much greater than mine. But of course this terrible affair is a fearful blow to my professional reputation. And though for a little while people will be eager to see me—after I've been badgered and worried like a rat worried by a terrier, in the witness-box—the better class of my patients are sure to say: 'Better not send for old Maclean. D'you remember that stupid mistake he made over the death certificate of that patient of his who was poisoned?'”

“I didn't realize all that. Oh, how sorry I am that Fve brought all this awful trouble on you!” exclaimed Jean, looking from the one to the other of them with unhappy, haunted eyes.

For the first time since this great trouble had come on them all, they separated that evening not on their usual affectionate, open terms, the one with the other. And it was after a night spent wide awake in bitter self-communing that Jean got up early the next morning.

“I'll breakfast with you in the kitchen,” she said to Elsie. “I've got to be at the prison by ten o'clock, and I should like to get out of the house before my uncle and aunt come downstairs.”

The modern prison of Grendon was built at a time in the nineteenth century when there was still but small reverence for historic buildings. Within the vast enclosure surrounded by walls five feet thick still stands the mound crowned by the ruins of a Norman keep known to antiquaries as Grendon Castle. And close to that high mound rises the mediæval mass of brick and stone locally called the Old Prison. To the imaginative historian that house of woe, long emptied though it be of suffering humanity, is of far greater interest than are the remains of the castle.

Last, but, from the point of view of the townspeople, by far the most important, within the same vast enceinte is the eighteenth-century pillared building where the county assizes are always held, and where many a famous trial has taken place. But the public doors to the Assize Court are reached from without the great walls, some way from the jealously guarded entrance to the modern prison, and to the vast space in which it stands.

Till comparatively lately, the public were freely admitted to what is still called the Castle yard, and public meetings of deep import to the state were held there. But now it is difficult to obtain even permission to visit the Castle ruins and the Old Prison.

Jean Bower had walked quickly through the keen morning air, and so, being full half an hour early, she paced up and down for what seemed a long time under the stout walls; at last, when her watch told her it was a quarter to ten, she rang the bell of the small postern door cut into the great gate.

There came the sound of footsteps on stone flags, the clanking of big keys, and then the door was opened by a gray-haired man in uniform.

Taking the admission order from her hand, he glanced over it, and looked at her with quickened interest.

“You're a bit early, if I may say so,” he said kindly, “but you follow me, miss, and I'll see what I can do.”

As she walked under the vaulted gateway, past the quaint little opening which evidently led into her guide's home, Jean found herself on the edge of a vast paved enclosure.

To her left rose the huge mound, and in front of the mound, as if cut out of the paving stones, was a round lawn of closely cropped turf.

Then, gradually, she became aware that behind a row of tall, now leafless, plane trees was a strange-looking building of dark red brick and gray stone. There was something stark and desolate about the irregular outline which showed sharply clear against the pale blue of the winter sky.

Her companion followed the direction of her eyes.

“Ay, that's the Old Prison,” he observed. “Folk used to come from a long way to go over that place, but now it isn't shown—ever. But as you've got a few minutes to spare, miss, maybe you'd like to have a look at it?”

He took her assent for granted, and slowly they began walking straight toward what Jean now knew to be a very famous place—famous if only because it had been the first prison visited by Elizabeth Fry.

“Where is the real prison?” she asked hesitatingly.

“You turn yourself right around-about and you'll see it clear enough.”

She turned quickly, and beyond the Castle mound, far to the right, she saw a large, commonplace-looking yellow brick building which reminded her of a modern factory. The knowledge that Harry Garlett was there gave her a stab of pain. Quickly she turned away and once more stared at the sinister-looking Old Prison, and it was with a thrill of surprise that she saw that the low doors giving access to the dark, grimy-looking building were all wide open.

“I should be afraid to come here at night,” she exclaimed. “That place looks as if it were haunted.”

“You're not the only one to say that. My wife wouldn't go in the Old Prison not after dark—for a hundred pounds! It's said that on All-Hallows Eve one 'ears groans and awful moanings agoing on the whole night. However, I've never been there to see, and bless you! people are sure to say them sort of things about that sort of place. Now you come along—and I'll show you what many a lady in Grendon would give a good bit to see.”

He moved on, his bunch of keys clanging in his big hands as he walked, till they came right up to the widest of the low entrances to the deserted building.

The black oak iron bound door had been champed back to the wall, leaving the way in clear.

“I'd best go in first,” said the porter; and Jean, following him, found herself almost at once in pitch-darkness, groping along a narrow passage. Suddenly he took out of his pocket and turned on an electric torch. But that only seemed to make more dense the thick-feeling blackness, though it enabled Jean to see that on each side of the passage were tiny, windowless cells. Was it possible that human beings had ever been confined in such holes as that?

They walked on and on along the lightless, airless burrows, and once the girl stumbled badly on the uneven earthen floor.

At last the porter stayed his steps and held up his hand; she saw it gleaming redly against the bright white light cast by his torch.

“This is the place folk most wants to come and gloat over,” he observed in a half joking tone.

They were on the threshold of a low vaulted chamber, and a moment later he and Jean were standing in the middle of the otherwise empty, windowless crypt-like room, by what looked like an enormous kitchen table, excepting that it was made of stone. Jean's guide threw the light of his torch right on to the gray, stained surface, and she saw that into the stone two deep ruts had been cut, one each way.

“Folk were drawn and quartered on this 'ere table,” he explained, “and not so very long ago, missie! The last lot done 'ere was a batch of what they called 'the rebels,' those Scotchies who reckoned they wanted another king. Just before my time they used to keep 'ere, careless-like on the table, the big knife and fork with which they quartered the poor wretches. But now they're put away in what's called Grendon Museum.”

As if talking to himself, he went on musingly: “'Anging's a sight more merciful than the old ways they 'ad of doing men and women to death. That I always will maintain. But a 'anging's a gruesome sight. Maybe we'll have time for me to take you just round to see the gallows. Leastways you won't see much! Only a kind of platform, you know—that's where they're turned off. It's just off the new prison.”

And then the good man felt considerably startled, for the girl he had supposed to be by his side staring down at the stone table had disappeared!

He flashed his torchlight round the stone walls, and with relief perceived that she was leaning up against the side of the arched entrance which gave into the black passage way.

Her face was drawn, and very pale, and all at once he remembered her relation with the man who, it was confidently expected by most of the people connected with Grendon Prison, would be the next poor wretch to be “turned off.”

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, “I oughtn't to have said that. I clean forgot about your friend, missie. What a fool I am to be sure!”

There was a tone of deep dismay and regret in the voice in which he uttered these words.

“I'm all right now,” Jean said faintly. “I suddenly felt queer. I think the air must be very bad in this place.”

“Of course it is,” he agreed, “no draught through.”

And then he went on, this time in a very serious voice, “As I've said so much, miss, I'll say just one thing more to ye”

“Yes?” she said questioningly, standing away from the door. She had no idea what he was going to say, and yet somehow she felt horribly afraid.

“'Anging, as now practised,” he observed, “is a very merciful form of death. It isn't 'anging at all, so to speak—they just breaks the poor chap's neck and it's all over in a second! 'E don't know it's 'appening till it 'as 'appened—if you take my meaning?”

She “took his meaning” only too well, and, with a wild wish to escape from her now torturing thoughts, she turned out of that awful room of death, and almost ran along the cavernous way and so out into the fresh air.

Her guide followed, uncertain whether he had been right or wrong in saying what he had last said to her. “But there!” he said to himself, “the poor little missie may be glad to remember it some March morning.”

But when he saw her face in the daylight, he exclaimed, “Dang me! The wife's right! I do talk too much—that I do.” And then, shamefacedly, he added: “Best say nothing of my having shown you a bit of the Old Prison, eh? I mean to the Governor?”

“Of course I won't,” she murmured.

Soon they reached the great gate, and then the man took hold of Jean Bower's arm.

“Mary Ann,” he called out.

A tall thin woman came out: “Yes?” she said acidly, “what d'you want, John?”

“Give this young lady a drop o' that brandy I've got in the cupboard. Give it her neat—no water, Mary Ann! That Old Prison of ours 'as turned 'er over queer.”

The woman gave a quick look at Jean, and then she ran indoors. A moment later she came back, a small glass in her hand.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, the girl gulped down the brandy. Almost at once she felt better, and the colour came back into her face.

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 19