exultation of confronting that person in the Governor's Room began to leave him. This wasn't a joke. It was ugly, dangerous work. He turned in the dimness.
'Look here,' he said, 'seriously, you'd better go back. This isn't any lark, and I won't have you taking chances.'
There was a silence while he heard the rain beating on his hat. Only that lonely light shone over the rainsheets flickering white across the meadows. When she answered, her voice was small and cool and firm.
'I know it as well as you do. But I've got to know. And you've got to take me, because you don't know how to get to the Governor's Room unless I show you the way. - Checkmate, dear.
She began to splash ahead of him up the slope of the meadow. He followed, slashing at the soggy grass with his cane.
They were both silent, and the girl was panting, when they reached the gates of the prison. Away from firelight, you needed to deny to yourself several times that there could be nothing supernatural about this old house of whips and hangings. Rampole pressed the button of his flashlight. The white beam ran along that green-fouled tunnel; probed it, hesitated, and moved forward.
'Do you suppose,' the girl whispered, 'it's really the man who-?'
'Better go back, I tell you!'
'It's worn off,' she said in a small voice. 'I'm afraid.
But I'd be more afraid to go back. Let me get a grip on your arm and I'll show you the way. Careful.-What do you suppose he's doing up there? He must be crazy to risk it.'
'Do you suppose he can hear us coming?'
'Oh no. Not yet; it's miles and miles.'
Their footfalls made sounds like the squish of oozing water. Rampole's light darted. Small eyes regarded them, scuttling away as the beam pried open dark corners. There were gnats flicking round their faces, and somewhere close there must have been water, for the croaking of frogs beat harshly in guttural chorus. Again that interminable journey wound Rampole through corridors, past rusty gates, down stone stairs and twisting up again. As the flashlight's beam found the face of the Iron Maiden, something whirred in the darkness.
Bats. The girl ducked, and Rampole struck viciously with his stick. He had miscalculated, and the cane clanged against iron, sending a din of echoes along the roof. From a flapping cloud, the squeaks of the bats shrilled in reply. Rampole felt her hand shaking on his arm.
'We've warned him,' she whispered. 'I'm afraid. We've warned him… No, no, don't leave me here! I've got to stay with you. If that light goes out… Those ghastly things; I can almost feel them in my hair….'
Though he reassured her, he felt the thick knocking of his own heart. If there were dead men walking in the stone house where they had died, he thought, they must have faces just like that big, empty, spider-hung countenance of the Iron Maiden. The sweat of the old torture room seemed to linger. He tightened his jaws as though he were biting on a bullet, as soldiers did to stifle the pain of an amputation in Anthony's day.
Anthony…
There was a light ahead. They could see it dimly, just at the top of a flight of stairs leading to the passage which ran outside the Governor's Room. Somebody was carrying a candle.
Rampole snapped off his light. He could feel Dorothy shaking in the dark as he put her behind him and began to edge up the stairs along the left-hand wall, the stick free in his right hand. He knew with cold clarity that he was not afraid of a murderer. He would even have liked to swing the heavy cane against a murderer's skull. But what made the small wires jerk and jump in his legs, what made his stomach feel cold as a squeezed rag, was the fear that this might be somebody else.
For a moment he was afraid the girl behind him was going to cry out. And he knew that he, too, would have cried out if there had been a shadow across that candlelight, and the shadow had worn a three-cornered hat…. Up there he heard footsteps. Evidently the other person had heard them coming, and then believed he must have been mistaken, for the sounds were going back in, the direction of the Governor's Room.
Somewhere there was the tapping of a cane…
Silence.
Slowly, during interminable minutes, Rampole moved up the staircase. A dim glow shone from the open door of the Governor's Room. Putting the electric torch in his pocket, he took Dorothy's cold and wet hand. His shoes squeaked a trifle, but the rats were squeaking, too. He moved down the corridor and peered round the edge of the door.
A candle in a holder was burning on the centre table. At the table, Dr. Fell sat motionless, his chin in his hand, his stick propped against his leg. On the wall behind him the candlelight reared a shadow which was curiously like that of the Rodin statue. And, sitting up on its haunches beneath the canopy of old Anthony's bed, a great grey rat was looking at Dr. Fell with shiny, sardonic eyes.
'Come in, children,' Dr. Fell said, scarcely glancing at the door. 'I confess I was reassured when I knew it was you.'
Chapter 13
Rampole let the stick slide through his hand until its ferrule clanged on the floor; then he leaned on it. He said, 'Dr. — ' and found that his voice had gone into a crazy key,
The girl was laughing, pressing her hand to her mouth.
'We thought?' Rampole said, swallowing.
'Yes,' nodded the doctor, 'you thought I was the murderer, or a ghost. I was afraid you might see my candle from Yew Cottage and come over to investigate, but there was no way to block the window. Look here, my dear girl, you'd better sit down. I admire your nerve in coming up here. As for me?'
From his pocket he took an old-style derringer revolver and weighed the heavy weapon in his palm reflectively. He wheezed, nodding again.
'Because, children, I rather think we're up against a very dangerous man. Here, sit down.'
'But what are you doing here, sir?' Rampole asked.
Dr. Fell laid the pistol on the table beside the candle. He pointed to what looked like a stack of manuscript ledgers, rotten and mildewed, and to a bundle of brown dry letters; with a large handkerchief he tried to mop the dust from his hands.
'Since you're here,' he rumbled, 'we might as well go into it. I was ransacking…. No, my lad, don't sit on the edge of that bed; it's full of unpleasant things. Here, on the edge of the table. You, my dear,' to Dorothy, 'may have the straight chair; the others are full of spiders.
'Anthony kept accounts, of course,' he continued. 'I fancied I should find 'em if I poked about…. The question is, what was Anthony hiding from his family. I must tell you, I think we're in for mother old, old story about buried treasure.'
Dorothy, sitting very quiet in her wet raincoat, turned slowly to look at Rampole. She only observed:
'I knew it. I said so. And after I found those verses?'
'Ah, the verses!' grunted Dr. Fell. 'Yes. I shall want to look at those. My young friend mentioned 'em. But all you have to do is read Anthony's diary to get a hint about what he did. He hated his family; he said they'd suffer for ridiculing his verse. So he turned his verse into a means to taunt them. I'm no very good accountant, but I can see from these,' he tapped the ledgers, 'that he left 'em precious little cash out of a large fortune. He couldn't beggar them, of course, because the lands — the biggest source of revenue-were entailed. But I rather think he put a gigantic sum beyond their reach. Bullion? Plate? Jewels? I don't know. You'll remember, he keeps referring in the diary to `the things one can buy to defeat them,' meaning his relatives; and again he says, `I have the beauties safe.' Have you forgotten his signet, `All that I have I carry with me?' — 'Omnia mea mecum porto.''
'And left the clue in the verses?' asked Rampole. 'Telling where the hiding-place is?'
Dr. Fell threw back his ancient box-pleated cape and drew out pipe and tobacco-pouch. Reeling out the black ribbon, he adjusted his glasses more firmly.
'There are other clues,' he said, meditatively.
'In the diary?'
