notice her perturbation.
"No. But--"
She looked genuinely distressed, worse still--genuinely frightened. Shealmost pushed past him in her anxiety to get into the full light, and henoticed a quick movement of half turning the head as though to lookbehind her.
"But--what? I think it's that bit of fried plum pudding; still, thetouch of burnt brandy on it should have counteracted its effects," hewent on, keeping up the role. "Nightmare of course. And our solemndiscussion before you turned in would make that way."
"No, no," and she shook her head, decisively. "I wish it was. As sureas I sit here, Uncle Seward, there was a Something in the room. I heardit--first--heard it moving, but for the life of me I dared not movemyself, not even to light the candle. It was the sound of steps--oflight steps--coming towards the bed. Oh, it was horrible--awful?" shebroke off, with a quick, scared glance around as though still expectingto see something. "And then--wait a bit," seizing him by the wrists."Something cold and clammy touched my face, just touched it--like thefeel of dead fingers. I could see something shadowy too in the light ofthe fire--and then I just dashed out of bed and came straight downhere."
"Melian, pull yourself together child," he said gently. "You've had abad dream, coming on top of what we were talking about." But the lookon her face was that of one who had had a very bad scare indeed, andsomehow Mervyn had been under the impression that his niece was the sortof girl who would take a great deal of scaring. "Here, put this down.It'll pull you together."
"This" was a glass of port, which he had got out of the sideboard. Shesipped a little, and looked as if she didn't like it, then a littlemore, and felt better.
"That's right," he went on. "Now, look here, you've been using thatroom for over a fortnight, and have never thought of bothering aboutanything of the kind. Why I slept in it myself for several nightsbefore you came."
He had meant the assurance to be reassuring, but hardly had he made itthan Mervyn saw he had made a false step.
"But why did you sleep in it, Uncle Seward?" said the girl, quickly.
"Eh? Why to see that it was comfortable--not damp and all that sort ofthing."
He wondered if she accepted this explanation. In his heart he doubtedit.
"The cold touch on your face was probably a bat," he went on. "Do yousleep with your window open?"
"Oh yes, always."
"There you are then. I think we've got at the solution. Now let's gostraight up and look for the bat."
He had as yet not gauged the extent of his niece's knowledge of naturalhistory, and would have given much to have had a real live bat in hispossession at that moment, that he might privily have set it loose whenthey gained the room. She, however, seemed not inclined to question theprobability of bats hawking around at large in what was nearlymid-winter!
"Now," he said, holding up the light, and making a careful inspection ofthe room, "we'll find him probably, hanging on somewhere in the corner.No," after an exhaustive search. "Oh well, he's probably gone out bythe way he came. Better keep the window nearly up to the top--then hecan't get back again."
"Do you think it was really that, Uncle Seward?" Melian asked.
"Why of course," he answered with the uneasy consciousness of skating onthin ice. "Unless it was a common or house mouse which had found itsway in through somewhere. But now you go to bed again, child, and I'llcome up and turn in too. Then you'll know there's some one right nearyou, and all you've got to do is to knock on the partition in case youget another scare. It's not a very thick one, and I shall hear at once.But you mustn't get another scare, if only that there's nothing onearth to get scared at. Look--you can see all over the room now. It'sjust an ordinary room--old, but with no secret panels or anything ofthat kind, and I'm only just the other side of that partition. You'llsleep like a humming top now, I should think."
"I believe I will," she answered, feeling more reassured by his tone ofdecisive confidence, the recent glass of port, to one unaccustomed,contributing largely to that end. "Tell me, Uncle Seward, do you thinkme an awful fool? I wouldn't like that?"
"My dear child, of course I don't. All women get nervy at times--notonly women either--for the rest the plum pudding, _and_ the subject ofconversation. Now good-night, darling, you'll be as jolly as Punch inthe morning. And remember, there's only the partition between us."
Even as her uncle had predicted, the girl laid her head on the pillowperfectly reassured and calmed, and in no time was breathing softly andevenly in a dreamless sleep. But this did not fall to Mervyn's lot.The incident had banished all sleep from his mind. He had laughed offthe situation, and effectually soothed Melian--in fact he was surprisedto think how completely he had succeeded. But what if something of thesort recurred, and he found that it got too much upon the girl's nerves,and that, too, just as he flattered himself that everything was going onso well? There were reasons why he did not want to leave Heath Hover;reasons over and above his undoubted attachment to the place--and theywere very vital reasons indeed; perhaps not wholly unconnected withInspector Nashby.
He put up the window sash and leaned out. The night, was wild andrather heavy, and a moist earthy odour came up from the saturation ofthe fallen leaves in the wet woodland. Away on the bank, up towards thehead of the long pond, a fox barked several times. He liked the sound,he liked all the sounds of the lonely night, and when an owl floated outon noiseless pinions and hooted beneath the murky sky--he could justmake out its shadowy shape--that too, fitted in with his mood. Therewas a moon, a feeble one, and concealed behind the prevailing mistiness,but in such light as it afforded he could pick out the boardings whichheld up the steps of the footpath leading up to the sluice. And on oneof these the round stone stood out just discernible.
Just discernible! To his gaze--to his then mood--it seemed the onething discernible--it and the thing that it held--the thing that itentombed. And the pointed roundness of that thing seemed to rise fromthe earth and gleam dull white in the lack-lustre of the night.
There it had lain for weeks, and for weeks, almost nightly, as now, hehad gazed out upon the tomb of it--just as he was doing now--with astrange, uneasy, but wholly compelling fascination. Why had he left itthere all this time? Any chance movement, on anybody's part, mightdislodge the stone. Why, his niece had slipped on it, the first day shehad been at Heath Hover! The time had come to bury this thing--thisaccursed thing--far away from any possibility of it being unearthed--atany rate in his lifetime. After that it would not matter.
A stout bag, a stone or two, and the deepest centre of Plane Pond wouldcustody it until the crack of doom. And yet--and yet--somehow he hadnever been able to bring himself to touch it again. Was it that someinstinct moved him to decide that the best hiding place for anything--oranybody--was the least likely hiding place? If so, the middle of thatpath stairway assuredly was that.
The observation, of which he had spoken laughingly, contemptuously tohis niece, was another factor in the situation. All shut in as theplace was, Mervyn knew that he could never absolutely count upon asingle moment when he could safely declare himself free from suchobservation. In the day time he certainly could not. In the hangingwoods, on the road, anywhere, there was always the possibility of thepresence of those who could see him while he could not see them.
But what about the dark--the night time?
Simple enough--doesn't it seem? But there was that about the thing thathe wanted--or might have wanted--to remove--that rendered the effectingof that process in the dark out of the question. Yet, all thingsconsidered, as he told himself here, to-night, not for the first time--why should he trouble his head about it at all? Why should he not letwell alone?
A life of solitude and self-concentration breeds a--well, a notaltogether satisfactory state of mind; which for present purposes may betaken to mean that this thing had got upon Mervyn's mind. It was tooclose--too near to him altogether. He would fain have known it fartheraway. Furthermore, there
were all sorts of possibilities shroudingaround the fateful thing which were wholly outside of suchconsiderations as Inspector Nashby, and other people--up to date. Andsince the advent of his niece, with her youth and brightness, and aboveall, affection--which he had seen growing day by day to irradiate hislife--the necessity of getting rid entirely and completely of thisfateful horror had been growing upon him more and more.
He listened. No sound came from the other side of the partition. Thegirl had gone to sleep then, comfortably, calmly, as he thought shewould. Some impulse now drew him to effect what he had long beencontemplating, to remove that sinister thing beyond all chance of humaneye ever falling upon