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The door swung open a trifle and the pale face of Borkins appeared around it. His eyes were wide with fright, his mouth hung open. "Sir Nigel, sir. I 'eard a dreadful noise like a pistol shot it was, comin' from this room! Anythink the matter, sir?" "Nothing, you ass!" broke out Merriton, fretfully, as the butler began to show other parts of his anatomy round the corner of the door.
One never knows, and although one cannot always believe the silly things which the villagers prattle about, it is as well to be on the safe side. As you say, these things sometimes lack a rational explanation. I should be sorry to think you were likely to run into any unnecessary danger." He bent his head and Merriton could see that his fingers twitched.
Dacre Wynne had vanished, leaving behind him no trace of mortal remains, and only a patch of charred grass in the middle of the uninhabited Fens to mark the spot. And Nigel Merriton, whose guest the man was, must of necessity be told the fruitlessness of the searchers' self-appointed task. The doctor volunteered to do it.
Two men, in ill-fitting corduroys and soiled blue jerseys, their swarthy necks girt about by vivid handkerchiefs, and their big-peaked caps pulled well down over their eyes, made their way along the narrow lane that led from Merriton Towers to Saltfleet Bay.
Merriton was out of bed now, still staring sleepily at them. Something in the boyishness of him struck a chord of sympathy in the doctor's heart. He alone of all of them had guessed at the genuineness of Nigel's fear for Wynne, he alone had seen into the man's heart, and discovered the half-belief that lurked there.
Much that he told them of his family history was already known to Cleek, whose uncanny knowledge of men and affairs was a by-word, but as that part of the story itself was not without romance, it must be told too, and to do so takes the reader back to a few months before his present visit to the precincts of the Law, when Sir Nigel Merriton returned to England after twelve years of army life in India.
It might make things easier for you in the long run." Merriton, thus addressed, threw up his head suddenly and showed a face marked with mental anguish, dry-eyed, deathly white. He got slowly to his feet and went over to the table, leaning his hand upon it as though for support. "Oh, well," he said, listlessly, "you might as well hear it first as last. Doctor Bartholomew's right, Mr. Headland.
The premonition, to one who was not used to such things, carried all the more conviction. With Cleek on the track anything might happen. Cleek was a man for whom things never stood still, and his amazing brain was concentrated upon this problem as it had been concentrated successfully upon others. Merriton had a feeling that it was only a matter of time.
There was a worried furrow between his brows. Merriton laughed, and at the sound, 'Toinette, who had sat perfectly still during the discussion of the mystery, gave a little cry of alarm and covered her ears with her hands. "I beg of you," she broke out excitedly, "please, please do not talk about it! The whole affair frightens me!
Instantly Cleek was serious. He reached out a hand and laid it upon the young man's shoulder. Merriton was trembling, but he steadied under the grip, just as it was meant that he should. "See here," Cleek said, bluntly, "you oughtn't to work yourself up into such a state. It's not good for you; you'll go all to pieces one of these days. Those flames, eh?
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