The Crowned Skull Page 21

  ‘What are you thinking of, Oswald?’ asked Miss Trevick.

  ‘I’m wondering if Polwin had a finger in this pie. He might have hid the will in the desk and then sent Mrs. Krent to find it.’

  ‘You fancy that it may be a forgery?’

  ‘Well, yes! Of course, I don’t know Mr. Bowring’s signature, but—’

  ‘Oh, it’s Bowring’s name right enough,’ said Mrs. Krent wiping her inflamed face; ‘but I hope it is a forgery. I’d rather have the two thousand a year that young lady promised me and have done with the whole business. Anything rather than be persecuted by Polwin.’

  ‘Well,’ said Forde, after a pause, ‘I must see Mr. Gratton, who knows Bowring’s writing better than anyone else, and learn if the will is genuine. I’ll get him to come down here and see the two witnesses.’

  ‘They’re servants in the house,’ said Mrs. Krent, ‘but both of them gave notice a week ago. One was a man, and the other a woman, and they’ve got married since leaving the Grange.’

  ‘Humph! that looks dicky,’ said Forde, nodding. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that Polwin had a finger in this pie.’ He paused, then turned to Mrs. Krent solemnly: ‘Have you any reason to believe that your husband shot Bowring?’

  ‘Lord save and preserve us!’ cried Mrs. Krent aghast, ‘how can I say, sir? Polwin’s fit for anything, but I’m bound to say that he seemed as puzzled as anyone else over the death.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘As sure as I’m sitting here wishing that I was a widow,’ cried the woman earnestly. ‘I’m not a wicked person: live and let live say I; but if I could put a rope round the neck of that wicked man I’d do it, cost what it might. Oh, Lord!’—Mrs. Krent again placed her hands on her knees and rocked—‘to think of all that money coming to Morgan, who’s got no more sense than a babe of a month old. Polwin would get hold of him, and lead him to the Pit of Tophet. Mr. Forde, sir,’ she went on hysterically, ‘put that will in the fire and let me have the two thousand a year; I’ll say nothing.’

  ‘No, no, Mrs. Krent! I cannot commit a crime like that.’

  ‘If you don’t, there’s worse crimes will be committed,’ said the old woman bitterly; ‘you’re dealing with Satan himself, Mr. Forde, mark my words if you ain’t.’

  There was silence for a few minutes, while Mrs. Krent rocked and moaned and shook her head, weeping the while like a very Niobe. Plainly she was terrified to death by Polwin, alias Krent, and would stick at nothing to get rid of him.

  But the mystery was far from being unravelled, and to destroy the second will would only be to make things more complicated. Therefore Forde made up his mind to see Gratton and ask his opinion. If Sir Hannibal, or, rather, Dericka, was to lose the sixty thousand a year the loss would have to be borne. All Forde wished to do at the present moment was to establish the good name of Sir Hannibal Trevick and save him from the gallows—no easy task, owing to the difficulties of the case and the shady doings of the baronet in South Africa while a member of the firm.

  Oswald felt that he would require time to think out things, and so spoke on this point to Mrs. Krent:

  ‘Go home,’ said he quietly; ‘go home and say nothing.’

  ‘But if Polwin asks about the will?’

  ‘If he hid the will he is too clever to do that,’ said Forde, quickly; ‘he’ll wait until it is proved. Knowing that you would find the will is contented to bide his time. Of course, I may be wrong about the man—’

  Mrs. Krent rose, shaking her head half-blinded with tears.

  ‘It’s just the sort of thing he’d do, sir,’ she moaned, ‘and then when the money came to me for Morgan he’d ruin that poor lad and worry me into my grave. Oh, I’ll hold my tongue, sir, but will you speak to Polwin?’

  ‘No, no!’ said Dericka quickly; ‘that would put him on his guard. We must be silent until we can see our way. All Mrs. Krent has to do is to go home and say nothing.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Miss—I’ll be as dumb as a fish. But I know my health will give way with all this worry. I wish I’d the laundry again.’

  ‘By the way,’ asked Dericka, ‘did Morgan come home?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he came home, Miss; I knew that he would. He takes fits of wandering, but he always comes back. But I’ll get back to Jenny and hope for the best, expecting the worst. I’ll not sleep a wink this night. Oh, why didn’t I stick by the laundry and keep a quiet heart? Money don’t bring happiness. Oh, dear me!’

  While Mrs. Krent was thus maundering on, Forde had an idea. It would be just as well, he thought, to see the desk in which the will had been found. Also, Polwin might come to the Grange on that night, and if confronted might give himself away. He whispered this to Dericka, who nodded assent, and then addressed himself to the crying housekeeper.

  ‘I’ll take you home, Mrs. Krent,’ said he in a kindly tone, ‘and if Polwin comes on the scene I’ll protect you.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, sir, a thousand times, but if he knows that you know—’

  ‘I’ll keep him in the dark as much as possible, Mrs. Krent. But if he does learn that we are acquainted with his little games, why we must beat him, that’s all.’

  Mrs. Krent moaned and nodded, being too far gone to argue. She submitted to be led out of the room, and was hoisted into the trap a mere bundle of clothes. Knowing that Polwin was often at the Dower House, she shook and quaked at every shadow, and not until she and Forde, with the driver, were well on the way to the Grange did she recover sufficiently to speak. Then Forde stopped her, as she spoke too freely for safety, and the driver was all ears. For all both of them knew, he might be a creature of Polwin’s. Therefore they drove through the night in silence—and a very bad night it was, cold and with a gusty wind that almost tore them from their seats when they reached the high moors. However, Mrs. Krent was too bulky to be easily moved, and Oswald held on to the woodwork of the trap, so they managed to get along pretty well. But there was no moon, and the darkness was of the pit.

  Suddenly they heard a rattle of horse’s hoofs, and past them tore a wild steed with a man on its back riding under whip and spur.

  ‘Save us,’ cried Mrs. Krent hysterically; ‘what’s wrong?’

  There was no reply, and the rattling hoofs of the horse died away.

  Forde thought that the man was probably on his way for a doctor, and was one of the dwellers in Penrith’s village. This explanation reassured Mrs. Krent, and she subsided into a kind of doze. On and on they crawled into the darkness for the horse was not very quick. At last they rounded the curve and came within view of the ancient Grange nestling amidst the gloom of the moors.

  But these were not gloomy now. The old house was a mass of flames, and flared in the windy night, a gorgeous bonfire, telling of destruction and terror.

  Chapter XX A Terrible Night

  Forde had a hard time to keep Mrs. Krent from throwing herself out of the trap when she saw the flaming Grange. Screaming out that Jenny would be burnt to death, that Polwin—only she used his name of Samuel—had fired the house, that she had lost her dear daughter, she strove again and again to hurl herself to the ground as the horse literally galloped up the avenue. By main force the young lawyer held her to her seat, and the driver whipped the animal hard, so as to arrive on the scene of disaster the sooner. The vehicle rocked from side to side as the maddened animal tore up towards the blazing mass and stopped short on the brilliantly-illuminated lawn so abruptly that Mrs. Krent and Forde with her was hurled to the ground.

  The stout woman with wonderful agility picked herself up, and with outstretched arms ran open-mouthed and gasping towards the burning house.

  ‘Jenny; oh, my Jenny, where are you?’ she panted wildly.

  ‘Mother! mother!’ and Jenny, holding Morgan by the hand, ran out of the crowd of servants and quarrymen and labourers who were watching the fire. ‘I’m all right. The man has gone to St. Ewalds for the fire-engines.’ And then Forde recollected the racing horseman.

&nbs
p; ‘How did it happen—how did it happen?’ yelled Mrs. Krent.

  ‘I don’t know,’ faltered Jenny, who was white and trembling. ‘I was getting ready for dinner, and it was quite dark. Then I heard Morgan crying out that the place was on fire, and met him coming up the stairs.’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ danced the idiot; ‘I saw the red fire, I saw it.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Mrs. Krent anxiously.

  The man looked at her cunningly and continued to caper on the fire-lighted lawn. ‘I saw the red fire,’ he chaunted; ‘I saw it, I saw it burning—burning.’ And not another word could they get out of him.

  In the meantime more and more people were gathered together in the grounds of the Grange. The mansion, being of granite, could not burn wholly to the ground, but it was being gutted as fast as possible by the fierce fire. The high wind still continuing fanned the blaze into roaring vigour, and sheets of flame stormed the darkness of the sky. From Penrith, from the quarries, from hamlets and solitary houses flocked the sparse dwellers of the moorland. Far and near the blaze reddened the gloomy heath, and seabirds screamed, hovering round the glare, apparently thinking it was a lighthouse on a gigantic scale.

  Mrs. Krent stood helplessly on the lawn, wringing her fat hands.

  ‘Not a thing will be saved,’ she sobbed; ‘not a thing.’

  But everybody, both men and women, and indeed children were trying their best to carry out articles from the burning house. The lawn was littered with chairs and tables, and couches, and draperies, and china, and glass, and pictures, and many other objects too numerous to mention.

  Mrs. Krent, still sobbing, dropped on to a dainty Louis Quinze sofa with gilded framework, and sat there bemoaning the loss of all her worldly belongings. Nothing could be done to stop the flames until the arrival of the St. Ewalds brigade for there was no means of getting water rapidly enough on to the flaming mass. It is true that a line of labourers with buckets had been formed between a moorland stream near at hand and the terrace, but although the buckets passed rapidly from hand to hand, those who were trying to put out the fire by this means might as well have used a squirt.

  ‘Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!’ groaned Mrs. Krent, rocking on the sofa; ‘I was always afraid of fire. Jenny, you careless girl, why didn’t you see that the lamps and things were safe?

  ‘They were all right when I went up to get dressed, mother.’

  ‘Where did the fire begin?’

  ‘In the drawing-room, I think. At least, that was in flames when I came down.’

  ‘The lamp might have upset, Jenny.’

  ‘Where was Morgan while you were dressing?’ asked Forde, who was standing by the housekeeper’s side regretting the loss of Dericka’s ancestral home.

  ‘In the drawing-room,’ said Jenny with hesitation.

  ‘Then he must have set it on fire,’ cried Forde promptly.

  Mrs. Krent raised her voice to a scream. ‘Morgan! Did you light the fire?’ she asked coaxingly; ‘come tell nursey.’

  ‘I saw it blaze, I saw it red,’ chaunted the idiot, waving his hands over his head; ‘it was red, red—Polwin with the matches; oh, Polwin with the matches.’

  ‘What!’ cried Mrs. Krent, rising tremulously, ‘that wretch here? Oh, then I know that he did it—he did it.’

  ‘That is not true, ma’am,’ and the steward emerged from the crowd where he had been helping. He looked as meek and respectable as ever, and Forde found it hard to believe that he was the terrible person Mrs. Krent asserted him to be. ‘If you want to know the truth, ma’am,’ he continued, addressing the housekeeper respectfully, ‘it was that young man,’ and he pointed to Morgan, who was dancing fantastically to his shadow in the red light.

  ‘How can you tell that?’ whimpered Mrs. Krent, a bit reassured when she saw that Polwin had no intention of asserting himself in public.

  ‘I came to see you, ma’am’—he cast a side look at Forde—‘with a message from my young mistress, Miss Trevick. I rang and rang, but no one came to the door, so I went to the window of the drawing-room. I saw the lamps lighted, and also that young man,’ he again pointed to Morgan Bowring, ‘lighting matches and throwing them about. The better part of the room was already in a blaze. I broke in through the window and snatched the box out of his hand. That is why he keeps repeating “Polwin with the matches”. Then I gave the alarm.’

  ‘Morgan did that,’ cried Jenny, shrinking from the man.

  Polwin turned on her like lightning. ‘Morgan ran up to tell you of the blaze,’ said he quietly, with a suspicion of a snarl in his voice, ‘but I gave the alarm to the servants—too late, however.’

  ‘Yes, that is right,’ said a respectable woman at Mrs. Krent’s elbow. ‘Mr. Polwin came running into the kitchen saying the drawing-room was afire. We all rushed in, but it was too late.’

  ‘Jane Trubby,’ cried Mrs. Krent, indignantly, ‘I gave you notice a few weeks ago. Why aren’t you with your wedded husband instead of coming into the house unbeknown to me?’

  ‘I came with my husband, ma’am,’ said Jane respectfully, and she introduced an elderly, shifty-eyed man, who rubbed his hands and cringed. At this moment the crash of a floor drew everyone forward, Mr. and Mrs. Trubby amongst the rest.

  Polwin had slipped back again amidst the crowd and could be seen urging the bucket bearers to fresh exertions. Forde caught Mrs. Krent’s elbow as she lunged forward.

  ‘Who are Mr. and Mrs. Trubby?’ he asked, then, receiving no reply from the dazed woman, shook her; ‘are they the witnesses to the will?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Krent in a kind of parrot-screech and ramped forward into the thick of the mob.

  ‘Humph!’ said Forde to himself, and retiring a step before the fiery furnace which faced him, ‘the witnesses of the will stand up for Mr. Polwin. That looks bad. I believe it’s forged after all.’

  Unexpectedly, while watching the frantic throng, he turned and saw Anne Stretton at his elbow. She looked very pale and ill. Beside her stood the sulky squire of Penrith Manor, who nodded gruffly to the young barrister.

  ‘How are you, Mr. Forde?’ said Miss Stretton calmly. ‘This is very terrible, is it not? Can nothing be saved?’

  ‘I fear not until the brigade arrives,’ said Forde, taken aback; ‘but pardon me, Miss Stretton, I thought you were in St. Ewalds.’

  ‘I came to Penrith Manor this evening to dinner and to stop the night at the request of Mrs. Penrith,’ said Anne quietly. ‘We saw the blaze, and came up to see what assistance we could give. Ralph, will you not help?’

  ‘I’m going to,’ said the squire sullenly, and loafed forward with his hands in his pockets. He was in evening dress, and a fine figure of a man, yet he looked like a veritable yokel as he stumbled into the midst of the helpers. When he was out of earshot Miss Stretton hurriedly whispered to the barrister:

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to see Mrs. Krent on business.’

  ‘Does she know that Sir Hannibal is hiding—’

  ‘No. That is all safe. Hush! Miss Stretton, don’t say too much, there are eyes and ears everywhere,’ and he cast a significant look upon Polwin, who, mean and frowning, was slinking at the edge of the crowd, casting furtive glances at the pair. ‘Do you see that man? I believe he set fire to the place.’

  ‘Polwin? I know him; Sir Hannibal’s steward. He first started the rumour that Sir Hannibal was guilty.’

  ‘I rather think Mrs. Krent did that in her folly. However we must keep Sir Hannibal where he is until we can prove his innocence.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Yes, and so has Dericka.’

  ‘He told you everything?’

  ‘About what?’ asked Forde, on his guard.

  Miss Stretton laughed. ‘Oh, you need not be suspicious of me,’ said she in an easy manner. ‘Sir Hannibal told me of all his dealing in Africa with Mr. Bowring and Mr. Krent.’

  Forde started. ‘What do you know—’

  ‘I know that
Polwin is Krent, masquerading as an angel. I know about the Death’s Head also.’

  ‘Sir Hannibal could not have told you that,’ cried Forde suddenly, ‘as he did not know it himself.’

  ‘I learned it from another source,’ said Anne quickly. ‘Do you see that man?’ She pointed to a gigantic figure looming against the flames. ‘He knows about the Death’s Head, and about Polwin also.’

  ‘Why, that’s Anak.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And Anak led the mob who wished to destroy the Dower House?’

  ‘Of course he did. Now, can you put two and two together?’

  ‘Ah,’ Forde looked quickly into Miss Stretton’s mocking face, ‘then you think that Anak has something to do with Polwin, and that Polwin is mixed up in this murder?’