The Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK™ (119 page)

“Mr. Henry Bannerworth,” said Marchdale, “I am your guest, and but for the duty I feel in assisting in the search for Mr. Charles Holland, I should at once leave your house.”

“You need not trouble yourself on my account,” said the admiral; “if I find no clue to him in the neighbourhood for two or three days, I shall be off myself.”

“I am going,” said Henry, rising, “to search the garden and adjoining meadows; if you two gentlemen choose to come with me, I shall of course be happy of your company; if, however, you prefer remaining here to wrangle, you can do so.”

This had the effect, at all events, of putting a stop to the dispute for the present, and both the admiral and Mr. Marchdale accompanied Henry on his search. That search was commenced immediately under the balcony of Charles Holland’s window, from which the admiral had seen him emerge.

There was nothing particular found there, or in the garden. Admiral Bell pointed out accurately the route he had seen Charles take across the grass plot just before he himself left his chamber to seek Henry.

Accordingly, this route was now taken, and it led to a low part of the garden wall, which any one of ordinary vigour could easily have surmounted.

“My impression is,” said the admiral, “that he got over here.”

“The ivy appears to be disturbed,” remarked Henry.

“Suppose we mark the spot, and then go round to it on the outer side?” suggested George.

This was agreed to; for, although the young man might have chosen rather to clamber over the wall than go round, it was doubtful if the old admiral could accomplish such a feat.

The distance round, however, was not great, and as they had cast over the wall a handful of flowers from the garden to mark the precise spot, it was easily discoverable.

The moment they reached it, they were panic-stricken by the appearances which it presented. The grass was for some yards round about completely trodden up, and converted into mud. There were deep indentations of feet-marks in all directions, and such abundance of evidence that some most desperate struggle had recently taken place there, that the most sceptical person in the world could not have entertained any doubt upon the subject.

Henry was the first to break the silence with which they each regarded the broken ground.

“This is conclusive to my mind,” he said, with a deep sigh. “Here has poor Charles been attacked.”

“God keep him!” exclaimed Marchdale, “and pardon me my doubts—I am now convinced.”

The old admiral gazed about him like one distracted. Suddenly he cried—

“They have murdered him. Some fiends in the shape of men have murdered him, and Heaven only knows for what.”

“It seems but too probable,” said Henry. “Let us endeavour to trace the footsteps. Oh! Flora, Flora, what terrible news this will be to you.”

“A horrible supposition comes across my mind,” said George. “What if he met the vampire?”

“It may have been so,” said Marchdale, with a shudder. “It is a point which we should endeavour to ascertain, and I think we may do so.”

“How!”

“By some inquiry as to whether Sir Francis Varney was from home at midnight last night.”

“True; that might be done.”

“The question, suddenly put to one of his servants, would, most probably, be answered as a thing of course.”

“It would.”

“Then that shall be decided upon. And now, my friends, since you have some of you thought me luke-warm in this business, I pledge myself that, should it be ascertained that Varney was from home at midnight last evening, I will defy him personally, and meet him hand to hand.”

“Nay, nay,” said Henry, “leave that course to younger hands.”

“Why so?”

“It more befits me to be his challenger.”

“No, Henry. You are differently situated to what I am.”

“How so?”

“Remember, that I am in the world a lone man; without ties or connexions. If I lose my life, I compromise no one by my death; but you have a mother and a bereaved sister to look to who will deserve your care.”

“Hilloa,” cried the admiral, “what’s this?”

“What?” cried each, eagerly, and they pressed forward to where the admiral was stooping to the ground to pick up something which was nearly completely trodden into the grass.

He with some difficulty raised it. It was a small slip of paper, on which was some writing, but it was so much covered with mud as not to be legible.

“If this be washed,” said Henry, “I think we shall be able to read it clearly.”

“We can soon try that experiment,” said George. “And as the footsteps, by some mysterious means, show themselves nowhere else but in this one particular spot, any further pursuit of inquiry about here appears useless.”

“Then we will return to the house,” said Henry, “and wash the mud from this paper.”

“There is one important point,” remarked Marchdale, “which it appears to me we have all overlooked.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes.”

“What may that be?”

“It is this. Is any one here sufficiently acquainted with the handwriting of Mr. Charles Holland to come to an opinion upon the letters?”

“I have some letters from him,” said Henry, “which we received while on the continent, and I dare say Flora has likewise.”

“Then they should be compared with the alleged forgeries.”

“I know his handwriting well,” said the admiral. “The letters bear so strong a resemblance to it that they would deceive anybody.”

“Then you may depend,” remarked Henry, “some most deep-laid and desperate plot is going on.”

“I begin,” added Marchdale, “to dread that such must be the case. What say you to claiming the assistance of the authorities, as well as offering a large reward for any information regarding Mr. Charles Holland?”

“No plan shall be left untried, you may depend.”

They had now reached the house, and Henry having procured some clean water, carefully washed the paper which had been found among the trodden grass. When freed from the mixture of clay and mud which had obscured it, they made out the following words—

“—it be so well. At the next full moon seek a convenient spot, and it can be done. The signature is, to my apprehension, perfect. The money which I hold, in my opinion, is much more in amount than you imagine, must be ours; and as for—”

Here the paper was torn across, and no further words were visible upon it.

Mystery seemed now to be accumulating upon mystery; each one, as it showed itself darkly, seeming to bear some remote relation to what preceded it; and yet only confusing it the more.

That this apparent scrap of a letter had dropped from some one’s pocket during the fearful struggle, of which there were such ample evidences, was extremely probable; but what it related to, by whom it was written, or by whom dropped, were unfathomable mysteries.

In fact, no one could give an opinion upon these matters at all; and after a further series of conjectures, it could only be decided, that unimportant as the scrap of paper appeared now to be, it should be preserved, in case it should, as there was a dim possibility that it might become a connecting link in some chain of evidence at another time.

“And here we are,” said Henry, “completely at fault, and knowing not what to do.”

“Well, it is a hard case,” said the admiral, “that, with all the will in the world to be up and doing something, we are lying here like a fleet of ships in a calm, as idle as possible.”

“You perceive we have no evidence to connect Sir Francis Varney with this affair, either nearly or remotely,” said Marchdale.

“Certainly not,” replied Henry.

“But yet, I hope you will not lose sight of the suggestion I proposed, to the effect of ascertaining if he were from home last night.”

“But how is that to be carried out?”

“Boldly.”

“How boldly?”

“By going at once, I should advise, to his house, and asking the first one of his domestics you may happen to see.”

“I will go over,” cried George; “on such occasions as these one cannot act upon ceremony.”

He seized his hat, and without waiting for a word from any one approving or condemning his going, off he went.

“If,” said Henry, “we find that Varney has nothing to do with the matter, we are completely at fault.”

“Completely,” echoed Marchdale.

“In that case, admiral, I think we ought to defer to your feelings upon the subject, and do whatever you suggest should be done.”

“I shall offer a hundred pounds reward to any one who can and will bring any news of Charles.”

“A hundred pounds is too much,” said Marchdale.

“Not at all; and while I am about it, since the amount is made a subject of discussion, I shall make it two hundred, and that may benefit some rascal who is not so well paid for keeping the secret as I will pay him for disclosing it.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Marchdale.

“I know I am, as I always am.”

Marchdale could not forbear a smile at the opinionated old man, who thought no one’s opinion upon any subject at all equal to his own; but he made no remark, and only waited, as did Henry, with evident anxiety for the return of George.

The distance was not great, and George certainly performed his errand quickly, for he was back in less time than they had thought he could return in. The moment he came into the room, he said, without waiting for any inquiry to be made of him—

“We are at fault again. I am assured that Sir Francis Varney never stirred from home after eight o’clock last evening.”

“Damn it, then,” said the admiral, “let us give the devil his due. He could not have had any hand in this business.”

“Certainly not.”

“From whom, George, did you get your information?” asked Henry, in a desponding tone.

“From, first of all, one of his servants, whom I met away from the house, and then from one whom I saw at the house.”

“There can be no mistake, then?”

“Certainly none. The servants answered me at once, and so frankly that I cannot doubt it.”

The door of the room was slowly opened, and Flora came in. She looked almost the shadow of what she had been but a few weeks before. She was beautiful, but she almost realised the poet’s description of one who had suffered much, and was sinking into an early grave, the victim of a broken heart:—

“She was more beautiful than death,

And yet as sad to look upon.”

Her face was of a marble paleness, and as she clasped her hands, and glanced from face to face, to see if she could gather hope and consolation from the expression of any one, she might have been taken for some exquisite statue of despair.

“Have you found him?” she said. Have you found Charles?”

“Flora, Flora,” said Henry, as he approached her.

“Nay, answer me; have you found him? You went to seek him. Dead or alive, have you found him?”

“We have not, Flora.”

“Then I must seek him myself. None will search for him as I will search; I must myself seek him. ‘Tis true affection that can alone be successful in such a search.”

“Believe me, dear Flora, that all has been done which the shortness of the time that has elapsed would permit. Further measures will now immediately be taken. Rest assured, dear sister, that all will be done that the utmost zeal can suggest.”

“They have killed him! they have killed him!” she said, mournfully. “Oh, God, they have killed him! I am not now mad, but the time will come when I must surely be maddened. The vampire has killed Charles Holland—the dreadful vampire!”

“Nay, now, Flora, this is frenzy.”

“Because he loved me has he been destroyed. I know it, I know it. The vampire has doomed me to destruction. I am lost, and all who loved me will be involved in one common ruin on my account. Leave me all of you to perish. If, for iniquities done in our family, some one must suffer to appease the divine vengeance, let that one be me, and only me.”

“Hush, sister, hush!” cried Henry. “I expected not this from you. The expressions you use are not your expressions. I know you better. There is abundance of divine mercy, but no divine vengeance. Be calm, I pray you.”

“Calm! calm!”

“Yes. Make an exertion of that intellect we all know you to possess. It is too common a thing with human nature, when misfortune overtakes it, to imagine that such a state of things is specially arranged. We quarrel with Providence because it does not interfere with some special miracle in our favour; forgetting that, being denizens of this earth, and members of a great social system; We must be subject occasionally to the accidents which will disturb its efficient working.”

“Oh, brother, brother!” she exclaimed, as she dropped into a seat, “you have never loved.”

“Indeed!”

“No; you have never felt what it was to hold your being upon the breath of another. You can reason calmly, because you cannot know the extent of feeling you are vainly endeavouring to combat.”

“Flora, you do me less than justice. All I wish to impress upon your mind is, that you are not in any way picked out by Providence to be specially unhappy—that there is no perversion of nature on your account.”

“Call you that hideous vampire form that haunts me no perversion of ordinary nature?”

“What is is natural,” said Marchdale.

“Cold reasoning to one who suffers as I suffer. I cannot argue with you; I can only know that I am most unhappy—most miserable.”

“But that will pass away, sister, and the sun of your happiness may smile again.”

“Oh, if I could but hope!”

“And wherefore should you deprive yourself of that poorest privilege of the most unhappy?”

“Because my heart tells me to despair.”

“Tell it you won’t, then,” cried Admiral Bell. “If you had been at sea as long as I have, Miss Bannerworth, you would never despair of anything at all.”

“Providence guarded you,” said Marchdale.

“Yes, that’s true enough, I dare say, I was in a storm once off Cape Ushant, and it was only through Providence, and cutting away the mainmast myself, that we succeeded in getting into port.”

“You have one hope,” said Marchdale to Flora, as he looked in her wan face.

“One hope?”