CHAPTER I. A WEIRD DISCOVERY

"Adventures are to the adventurous," said Cannington, with the air of a man who believes that he is saying something undeniably smart.

"Good Lord!" I retorted, twisting the motor car round a corner. "Since when has the British subaltern given up his leisure to reading Beaconsfield's novels?"

Cannington serenely puffed his cigarette into a brighter glow. "I don't know what you're talking about, old chap," said he indifferently.

"I talk of 'Ixion in Heaven,' or--if you prefer it--of 'Coningsby.' Beaconsfield was so enamoured of his apothegm that he inserted it in both tales."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Cannington again, and his puzzled look proved that he spoke the truth. "A chap called Marr wrote that in my sister's album, and told her it was his own."

"I daresay; more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs, according to Balzac. And, after all, Beaconsfield may have cribbed the saying."

"Oh! I see what you are driving at: Marr copied it out of a book."

"Undoubtedly, unless he lived before 'Coningsby' and 'Ixion' were written--somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century."

"Oh! Marr isn't so old as that," protested the boy, chuckling; "although he isn't a spring chicken, by any means. What Mabel sees in him, I can't for the life of me imagine."

"Humph! You were never renowned for imagination, Cannington," I said kindly, "and in your particular case it doesn't much matter. You're the man behind the gun, and all you have to do is to fire against the seen enemy."

"Huh! Why, half the firing is against the unseen enemy. If I haven't got your rotten imagination, Vance, I've got common-sense, and that's what you jolly well need."

"Rash youth, to speak thus to the man at the wheel. Don't you know that, with a little dexterity, I could shoot you into yonder ditch?"

"You'd travel with me," he sniggered.

"Why not? It would be an excellent advertisement for a popular playwright."

"Playwright be hanged! You only write beastly melodramas."

"Precisely; that is why I am popular. And if I'm not a playwright, what am I?"

"A carpenter. You collar other people's ideas----"

"Like your friend Marr," I interpolated.

"And knock them into weird shapes for second-rate theatres."

"Not at all," I rejoined tartly, for the criticism piqued me. "I scour the country in search of flesh and blood tragedies, and improve them into moral lessons for the British Public. But you're talking all round the shop, my lad. Who is this Marr, of whom your sister approves, and why does he write down other people's ideas in her album?"

"Wentworth Marr." Cannington lighted another cigarette, and explained: "He's a well-preserved old buck of--I should say--fifty, and looks forty. Unmarried, with heaps of tin and no family. Mabel likes him."

"And he likes Lady Mabel, or loves her. Which is it?"

"Well"--Cannington drawled this out reluctantly--"he's in love with her, sure enough. And, of course, Mabel is as poor as I am, and Marr having no end of shekels, you see----"

"What about Dick Weston?" I broke in abruptly.

"Oh, he's too much taken up with his inventions to bother about love. Poor Mab feels it," sighed Cannington, "so she flirts with Marr."

"To keep her hand in, I suppose. She'll burn her fingers. Tell me all about it, boy, if it will relieve your mind."

"I have told you all. Mabel wants to marry Dick Weston, and I think he wants to marry her, only he's too much taken up with his airship to trouble about proposing. Wentworth Marr is wealthy and a gentleman and all that, and wants to make Mabel his wife. She likes him, but she doesn't love him. Still there's the money, you see, Vance."

"Weston is also rich," I suggested.

"Well, I know that," snapped Cannington testily, "but he's an absent-minded beggar, who lives in the clouds along with his bally airship, and won't come up to the scratch. I say," he broke off, "don't secure a paragraph for your confounded transpontine plays by running over that child."

"Little beast!" The child in question was playing "Who's across first," and I had considerable difficulty in dodging him. However, I just managed to avoid a Coroner's Inquest and swung the machine along the straight Roman road, while the escaped infant shouted insultingly behind.

Cannington giggled, but I was too much taken up with steering the Rippler through a somewhat crowded village street to tell him that he was several kinds of ass. I had known the boy since he was a forward brat at Eton, and we were intimate friends, as can be judged from the way in which he confided in me. At the present moment I was conveying him from Gattlingsands to Murchester, as he had been stopping at the former place for some days and now sought his own Mess. Previously I had motored from London to remain the night at Tarhaven, which is four miles from Gattlingsands, and thus was enabled to save Cannington a train fare. Considering that he and Lady Mabel Watton had about sixpence between them, he was duly grateful, although pointedly saucy. I was always sorry for Cannington's poverty, as he was a thoroughly healthy-minded sporting boy, who keenly enjoyed such good things of this life as he could lay hands on. A pauper commoner is an object to be met with everywhere; but a pauper lord is a more unusual spectacle. Certainly the boy was not yet knocking at the workhouse door, but, for his position, he was assuredly desperately hard-up. And thinking of these things, I made a remark when clear of the village.

"You must marry a dollar heiress, Cannington."

"O Lord! what rot. Who'd marry a pauper with a tumbledown family mansion, next to nothing a year, and several hundred waste acres?"

"You have forgotten one asset," I said dryly; "your title."

"Huh! Who cares for that in these democratic days?"

"Heaps of rich spinsters, American, Colonial, and otherwise. Besides, you're not altogether as ugly as sin, though you might be better-looking."

"Thanks, awfully. But would you mind being less personal?"

I kicked his ankles. "If I am to advise you I must quote your looks, your title, your qualities, and all the rest of it. You've got precious little money, and as a gunner subaltern it will be ages before you get promotion. Why not use what advantages you have and exchange them for an income? A rich wife--"

"Not much," interrupted the boy, with a flush. "I fancy I see myself living on a woman. Besides, I'm having a jolly time now, and see no reason to tie myself up. When I do, it will be a girl I can love, no end."

"Didn't know you had got that far."

"Well, I haven't. But one never knows."

"I agree. At four and twenty one never knows."

"Oh, stop your rotting, Vance," said he crossly. "I haven't been through the Shop and out in the cold world for nothing. One would think I was an idiot, which I certainly am not. Don't you bother your silly head about me. It's Mab I'm thinking about. She wants money, as I do; but I should hate to see her marry a fellow old enough to be her grandfather, just because he's rich. I wish you'd see her and drop a hint," he ended hesitatingly.

"My dear Cannington, I know you better than I do your sister. She might resent my hints. If you really don't want her to marry this man Marr--I never heard of him, for my part--shake Dick Weston into a proposal and he can take his wife in his new airship for the honeymoon."

"It would end in a funeral," grinned Cannington cheerfully. "Dicky's always having smashes. I don't want him to experiment with Mabel, you know, old chap. Hi! Here's Murchester, and yonder's a policeman. Slow down, Vance, you can't romp up the High Street at thirty miles an hour."

"I don't see why not," I retorted, obeying orders, for the policeman really looked a suspicious character. "There! We're crawling along like a condemned snail, if that's what you want."

"I want my tea," said Cannington irrelevantly, "don't you?"

"No! I'll drop you at the Barracks and travel on to Clankton. There I put up for the night, and go up Norfolk way to-morrow."

"What's your objective?"

"I haven't got one. That is, I am simply looking round to see if I can poach on real life for a melodramatic plot. 'Adventures to the adventurous.'"

Cannington nodded. "I thought old Marr wasn't clever enough to have made that up out of his own blessed head. But, I say, how do you expect to find your plot in a motor car?"

"The latter-day vehicle of romance, my boy. Formerly your knight rode a horse, and went into the Unknown in search of the unexpected. Now he--that's me, you know--takes out his machine and looks for the expected in the Known. You understand?"

"No, confound you. What do you hope to run across?"

"An adventure."

"What sort of one?"

"How the Charles Dickens can I tell?"

"Yet you said that the Known--"

"Cannington, you wish me to spoil my epigrams by explanation. I decline to satisfy your morbid curiosity. All I know is, that the fountains of my imagination are dried up, and that I can't write a play which ought to be written if I am to earn enough to keep this car in petrol. I am, therefore--like Balzac--chasing my genius, and who knows upon what glorious adventure I may stumble."

Cannington laughed scornfully. "All the adventure you'll drop across will be in running over some old woman, or in exceeding the speed-limit."

"I care not," was my reckless reply. "I am prepared for anything."

"Don't be an ass," urged the boy politely, as we spun through the Barrack gates. "Stop here for the night, and I'll put you up. Then we can go to London to-morrow and have a ripping time. . . . What?"

"It's good of you, Cannington, and if I hadn't an income to earn I should accept with pleasure. As things are"--I stopped the car before the Mess door--"you can get down and send out a man to carry in your portmanteau."

"Have a cup of tea, anyhow," said Cannington, slipping to the ground.

I looked at my watch. "No, thanks. It's nearing six, and I have some distance to go. Don't delay me, boy."

"Oh, very well, confound you. Wait till I get my baggage and then you can buzz off. When am I to see you again?"

"The Fates will arrange that. I'll turn up sooner or later."

"If you aren't smashed up, or locked up, meanwhile," said the boy, swinging his portmanteau off the back of the car. "I'll keep an eye on the police news for the next few days. I daresay I'll have to bail you out. Well," he gave my hand a grip, "thanks awfully, old son, for bringing me over."

"Only too pleased," I muttered, beginning to move away. "Good-bye."

I had been to Murchester before, and knew the locality moderately well. Therefore, after leaving Cannington I spun through the Barrack grounds and emerged on to a somewhat suburban road, which led towards the outskirts of the town. A dampish August twilight filled the air with rapidly darkening shadows, and a marked chill in the warmth hinted at the coming night. The sun had already withdrawn behind a bank of western clouds, before vanishing over the verge of the world. I drove the machine at half speed, as there were many country carts about, and ran down a lengthy sloping hill towards a distant glimpse of green. Clankton, which is a fishing village rapidly rising into notoriety as a seaside resort, was over thirty miles away, so if I wished to be seated at my dinner by seven o'clock, it behooved me to use all the power of which the Rippler was capable. Hunger forced me to increase the pace.

Motoring was the one form of amusement which I truly enjoyed, and which a somewhat limited income earned by hard brain-work enabled me to indulge in. But the indulgence precluded my partaking in many other pleasures of this luxurious age, for the Rippler had cost much to buy and cost a considerable sum monthly to keep going. But motoring is less expensive than horse-racing and doctors' bills; and the fresh air, after enforced sedentary deskwork, swept away possible illness. As a moderately popular playwright I made a tolerably good income, although less than I was credited with earning. Still by devoting myself to two machines, a motor and a type-writer, one for play and the other for work, I managed to keep out of debt and keep my Rippler at the same time. But because the machine was a smart one, and because I was constantly on the move between whiles of manufacturing melodramas, people declared that I was a literary millionaire. As though any writer ever became a Cr?sus.

I must say that I had greater ambitions than to write cheap sensational plays, and that I did write them at all was due--as it would seem--to mere chance. After I left Oxford my parents died, and--owing to their extravagances--everything was sold. I came to London with an income of fifty pounds a year. I could not exactly starve on one pound a week, but I had a sufficiently bad time, and tried to supplement my income by writing for the papers. An old actor, boarding at a house wherein I had taken up my abode, suggested that I should attempt a melodrama. I did so with his assistance, and between us we managed to get it staged at a small theatre in the East End. To my surprise, the play was a great success, being sufficiently lurid to capture the tastes of the somewhat rough audience. Since that time I had been committed to this particular form of entertainment, and try as I might I could not escape from the memory of my first hit.

But I did not surrender my earlier ambitions, as I have before stated. I worked hard at the cheap sensational plays, which were produced at second-class theatres, and saved all the money I could, in the hope of gathering together sufficient principal to give me an assured income of five hundred a year. When independent, I determined to devote myself to writing really good plays--high-class comedies and poetic dramas for choice--but meanwhile served my apprenticeship to the writing craft under the eye of the public. On the whole, I had very little to complain about, and my portion of the viands at Life's Banquet was moderately tempting, if not superlatively delicate.

I do not think there is anything more to explain about myself, save that I was not handsome, that I had never been in love, and that I occupied a tiny flat in West Kensington, where the rents are moderate. As a rule I wrote furiously every day until a play was completed, then attended to the rehearsing and saw the production. Afterwards I took to my motor, and scoured the country, partly to get fresh air, and partly because I had a chance of stumbling across incidents in real life which afforded me material for plots, situations, scenes, and characters.

At the present moment I was in search of the new and the real, intending to weave actual facts into the sort of melodrama for which Cyrus Vance was famous, or shall we say notorious, as the penny-dreadful success I had won could scarcely be dignified by an adjective applicable only to the career of Napoleon or C?sar. But I little thought when leaving Murchester, that I was also leaving the long lane of petty success down which I had plodded so soberly, and that the new road opening out before me was one which led to--but I really cannot say just now what it led to. And in this last sentence you will see the cunning of the story-teller, who desires to keep the solution of his mystery until the last chapter. But I am a playwright and not a novelist--two very different beings. Destiny is writing this tale, and I am simply the amanuensis. Therefore you will see how infinitely more ingenious is the goddess than the mere mortal, in constructing an intricate scheme of life and in dealing with the puppets entangled therein.

So in this life-story, which starts in the middle, as it were, and travels both ways to beginning and end, blame Destiny for whatever does not please. I merely recount what happened--simply describe the various scenic backgrounds and rough out the characters. But Destiny weaves the happenings, brings about the unexpected, and solves the mystery, which is of her ingenious contrivance. And throughout I am only the clay which she, the potter, moulds at her will.

In a motor car it is much easier to go wrong on the outskirts of a town than amidst any other surroundings that I know of. When in the open, one can rise in the car and see one's way; but bewildered by streets and houses and traffic and wary policemen, and misled by those who do not know their own locality over-well, one finds a town somewhat perplexing. Making for the west, you get twisted round and emerge into open country towards the east. A single wrong road in the suburbs will lead the complete motorist astray, and will introduce him to a new country of whose geography he is entirely ignorant. Therefore some miles beyond perplexing Murchester I became aware, by questioning an intelligent rustic, that I was going away from Clankton. After some swearing and a close examination of the map, I lighted the lamps and turned on my tracks. Having gone so far out of my way, I had unnecessarily used up a lot of power, and then the inevitable happened--I discovered, to my dismay, that I was short of petrol in the tank. I had no further supply, worse luck! and unless I could obtain some, I began to see that I should have to camp in the fields, or at all events in the nearest village. But, thanks to motoring, petrol is fairly plentiful in unexpected places. If I could discover some village, I made sure of chancing upon a shop wherein to purchase petrol, and therefore was hopeful.

But as I drove the machine slowly on--for the motive power was dwindling rapidly--I found that the necessary village was conspicuous by its absence. I crawled up narrow lanes, the twists and turns of which necessitated careful steering; I dropped down the inclines of wide roads; I skirted stagnant ponds, weedy under dank boughs; and worked my slow way past mouldering brick walls, which shut in lordly parks. It grew darker every minute and was long after six o'clock, so I soon became unpleasantly aware that I needed food as much as the Rippler needed petrol. I seemed to be in for some kind of adventure, and as I had come out to look for one in the interests of the British Public, I had no reason to be dissatisfied. But I sincerely trusted that it would be a romantic one, out of which I could weave a sufficiently good plot to recompense me for the damnable circumstances in which I found myself.

The Rippler feeling hungry, as I did, groaned complainingly up a gentle ascent, topped the rise, and stopped dead after proceeding a few yards. And now mark the cunning of Destiny. If she had not brought me to my goal, she had at least led me to a place where I could obtain motive power, for in front of me I beheld a tiny old-fashioned house of weather-board walls shaded by a mellow red-tiled roof. It stood directly on the road, and was backed by a circle of high trees--elms, I fancy they were; a quaint, odd, dreary-looking cottage, which had been awkwardly converted into a shop. Taking one of the lamps I flashed the light on to a narrow door, which stood open, on to a small window to the left of the door, and on to a right-handed wider one, behind the glass of which were displayed the various goods which one usually finds in these village stores. But the sight amazed me, especially when I saw the name of Anne Caldershaw inscribed on a broad board over the window, for I could espy no village. Why did Anne Caldershaw set up her stall here, where there was no one to buy; and why was her shop not lighted up, seeing that the door was open for any chance customer? I could not answer these questions, and became aware that here was the start of a promising adventure. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, for such a shop in such a lonely woody locality was just such a thing as Alice would have chanced upon.

However I had no time to bother over the romance of things, for I wanted petrol, and luckily saw a red board on which it was announced in black lettering that petrol was for sale. Stepping into the dark shop with my brilliant lamp, I rapped on the mean little counter. No one came. Although I called out as loudly as I could, there was still an eerie silence, so I walked towards a small door set in the inside wall and knocked. As there was still no answer I tried to open the door, and found that it was locked. A flight of steps, narrow and rude, ran up the side of the wall to some upstairs rooms, and I sang up the stairs. As this final shout produced no better result than the others, I made up my mind to waste no further time, but to fill my tank with petrol and leave the money on the counter. But even as I searched for the liquid, I kept marvelling at the strange silence of Anne Caldershaw's shop. There was not only no one to buy, but there was not even anyone to sell. The circumstances were odd in the extreme, and I scented the unexpected in the damp air.

My part of the adventure--as it seemed--was to fill my tank and get the Rippler ready to start. Whether Destiny, who was arranging details, would permit her to get under way, or me to reach Clankton in time for dinner, was quite another matter. However I was actor and not author, so I fulfilled my part--my appointed part, I presumed--by searching for the petrol. I soon discovered the orthodox red case, and having unscrewed it with some difficulty, I walked back to the car, which stood, some little distance away, directly in front of Anne Caldershaw's shop. It took me some minutes to fill up, but during that time I did not hear a single sound. And yet, as I conjectured, while replacing the cap of the tank, there must be some house or houses about, since the shop argued customers. Perhaps when I turned the corner--for the shop stood just on the angle of the road--I would find a collection of cottages, not likely to be so deserted as Anne Caldershaw's emporium.

Shortly the tank was filled, and after seeing that all was ready to start, I took the empty can back to the dark house and placed the necessary money on the counter. I would have shouted again, but that it seemed useless, as apparently no one was about, for my former cries would have awakened the dead. For one or two minutes I stood in the darkness listening for some sound in the house, and stared through the open door at the streams of light from the acetylene lamps of the Rippler. There was something very weird about the situation.

Suddenly I heard a soft faint moan, which seemed to come from behind the locked door at the back of the shop. On the impulse of the moment and with rather a grue--as the Scotch call it, for the sound was sinister and unexpected--I sprang forward and gripped the handle of the door. To my surprise, the moment I twisted it the door opened at once, and yet I swear that it was locked when I had last tried it. I looked into a dark room, and could see faintly to the right a barred window, which showed against the fast darkening evening sky. No further moan could I hear, although I listened with all my ears. Wondering if I had been mistaken, and yet uneasy about the now unlocked door, I stepped into the back room, holding on to the inside handle. As it afterwards turned out the floor of the room was lower than that of the shop, and reached by three shallow steps. I therefore stumbled, and pulling the door after me with some violence, so that it clicked to, I fell sprawling, and bruised my elbow somewhat painfully.

Still I heard no sound, but seated on the floor to collect my senses--somewhat dazed by the unexpected fall--I put out my hand to explore the darkness. It fell on soft flesh, warm to the touch, and on rough tangled hair. Thoroughly startled, and with every excuse, I withdrew my hand, and fumbled in my pockets for a match, regretting that I had not brought one of the lamps. I had half a mind to go out and fetch it, but my curiosity was so great and--to be plain--my nerves were so unstrung, that I struck the lucifer, anxious to know the best or the worst at once.

As the pale tiny light grew stronger, I beheld the form of a woman lying on the stone floor, face uppermost. And that face--I shuddered as I looked, for it was distorted into an expression of pain, with a twisted mouth and glassy, expressionless eyes. Framed in loose masses of iron-grey hair, it glimmered milky white, and bore the stamp of death on every feature. The woman was dead, and judging from the moan I had heard and the still warm flesh, she had just died. While I stared the match-light went out, and I fancied that I heard a faint click. I lighted another match hastily looking towards the door leading to the shop. It was still closed, and I turned again to gaze at the dead woman, who was old, ill-favoured, and eminently plebeian.

At that moment I heard the buzz of the Rippler. At once, in astonishment and alarm, I sprang towards the door. It was locked, and I was a prisoner. While I was still trying to grasp this astounding fact, the drone of my motor car died away in the distance.