How he reached the heart of the Hag's Nook he could never afterwards remember. A steep slippery meadow, grass that twisted the feet like wires, then brambles and underbrush tearing through his shirt; he could see nothing except that he was bumping into fir trees with a gutted precipice looming up ahead. Breath hurt his lungs, and he stumbled against sodden bark to clear the water from his eyes. But he knew he was there. All around in the dark was a sort of unholy stirring and buzzing, muffled splashes, a sense of things that crawled or crept, but, worst of all, an odour.
Things were flicking against his face, too. Throwing out his hand, he encountered a low wall. of rough stone, and felt the rust of a spike. There must be something in the feel of this place that made your head pound, and your blood turn thin, and your, legs feel weak. Then the lightning came with broken illumination through the trees… He was staring across the wide well, on a level with his chest, and hearing water splash below.
Nothing there.
Nothing hanging head down across the edge of the well, impaled on a spike. In the dark he began groping his way round the side of the well, holding to the spikes, in a frenzy to know. It was not until he was just beneath the edge of the cliff, and beginning to gasp with relief, that his foot kicked something soft.
He started groping in the dark, so numb that he groped with hideous care. He felt a chilly face, open eyes, and wet hair, but the neck seemed as loose as rubber, because it was broken. It did not need the lightning-flare immediately afterwards to tell him it was Martin Starberth.
His legs gave, and he stumbled back against the cliff fifty feet below the governor's balcony, which had stood out black against the lightning a moment before. He shuddered, feeling drenched and lost, with only one sick thought — that he had failed Dorothy Starberth. Everywhere the rain ran down him, the mud thickened under his hands, and the roar of the shower deepened. When he lifted stupid eyes, he suddenly saw far across the meadow, at Dr. Fell's cottage, the yellow lamp in the window of his room. There it was, plain through a gap in the fir trees; and the only images that stuck in his mind, wildly enough, were the scattered music sheets across the bed-and the fragments of a brittle clay pipe, lying broken on the floor.
Chapter 6
Mr. Budge, the butler, was making his customary rounds at the Hall to see that all the windows were fastened before he retired to his respectable bachelor bed. Mr. Budge was aware that all the windows were fastened, had been fastened every night during the fifteen years of his officiation, and would continue so until the great red-brick house should fall or Get Took By Americans — which latter fate Mrs. Bundle, the housekeeper, always uttered in a direful voice, as though she were telling a terrible ghost story. None the less, Mr. Budge was darkly suspicious of housemaids. He felt that, when his back was turned, every housemaid had an overpowering desire to sneak about, opening windows, so that tramps could get in. His imagination never got so far as burglars, which was just as well.
Traversing the long upstairs gallery with a lamp in his hand, he was especially careful. There would be rain before long, and much weighed on his mind. He was not worried about the young master's vigil in the Governor's Room. That was a tradition, a foregone conclusion, like serving your country in time of war, which you accepted stoically; like war, it had its dangers, but there it was. Mr. Budge was a reasonable man. He knew that there were such things as evil spirits, just as he knew there were toads, bats, and other unpleasant things. But he suspected that even spooks were growing mild and weak-voiced in these degenerate days when housemaids had so much time off. It wasn't like the old times of his father's service. His chief concern now was to see to it that there was a good fire in the library, against the young master's return; a plate of sandwiches, and a decanter of whisky.
No, there were more serious concerns on his mind. When he reached the middle of the oaken gallery, where the portraits hung, he paused as usual to hold up his lamp briefly before the picture of old Anthony. An eighteenth-century artist had depicted Anthony all in black, and the decorations on his chest, sitting at a table with a skull under his hand. Budge had kept his hair and was a fine figure of a man. He liked to imagine a resemblance to himself in the pale, reserved, clerical countenance of the first governor, despite Anthony's history; and Budge always walked with even a more dignified gait when he left off looking at the portrait. Nobody would have suspected his guilty secret — that he wept during the sad parts at the motion pictures, to which he was addicted; and that he had once tossed sleepless for many nights in the horrible fear that Mrs. Tarpon, the chemist's wife, had seen him in this condition during a performance of an American film called "Way Down East" at Lincoln.
Which reminded him. Having finished with the upstairs, he went in his dignified Guardsman's walk down the great staircase. Gas burning properly in the front hall-bit of a sputter in that third mantle to the left, though; they'd be having in electricity one of these days, he shouldn't wonder! Another American thing. Here was Mr. Martin already corrupted by the Yankees; always a wild one, but a real gentleman until he began talking in this loud gibberish you couldn't understand, nothing but bars and drinks named after pirates — made with gin, too, which was fit for nobody but old women and drunkards; yes, and carrying a revolver, for all he knew! "Tom Collins"; that was the pirate one, wasn't it, or was the pirate called John Silver? And something called a "sidecar Sidecar. That suggested Mr. Herbert's motorbike. Budge felt uneasy.
"Budge!" a voice said from the library.
Habit cleared Budge's mind as it cleared his face. Setting down his lamp carefully on the table in the hall, he went into the library with just the proper expression of being uncertain he had heard.
"You called, Miss Dorothy?" said the public face of Mr. Budge.
Even though his mind was a sponged slate, he could not help noticing a startling (almost shocking) fact. The wall safe was open. He knew its position, behind the portrait of Mr. Timothy, his late master; but in fifteen years he had never seen it indecently naked and open. This he observed even before his automatic glance at the fireplace, to see that the wood was drawing well. Miss Dorothy sat in one of the big hard chairs, with a paper in her hands.
"Budge," she said, "will you ask Mr. Herbert to step downstairs?"
A hesitation. "Mr. Herbert is not in his room, Miss Dorothy."
"Will you find him, then, please?"
"I believe Mr. Herbert is not in the house," said Budge, as though he had given some problem deep consideration and were arriving at a decision.
She dropped the paper into her lap. "Budge, what on earth do you mean?"
"He — er — mentioned no prospective departure, Miss Dorothy? Thank you."
"Good Heavens, no! Where would he be going?"
"I mentioned the matter, Miss Dorothy, because I had occasion to go to his room shortly after dinner on an errand. He appeared to be packing a small bag."