"I may as well have my money again," she thought to herself. "I need not be in a hurry to get away. No one ever comes here, I am sure."

She placed the last coin in the purse and paused to look around her. Old Peter's ghastly dead face met her view. The wicked eyes, wide open and staring, seemed to threaten her as in life. A shiver of deadly fear thrilled along her veins, seeming to freeze them.

"Great G.o.d!" she exclaimed. "What if my sins should find me out!"

She lifted her slender, white hands and regarded them fixedly.

"There is blood upon my hands," she said with an irrepressible shudder.

"They look fair and white, but they have sent three human souls into the presence of their Creator. Pshaw! why do I pause to reflect here? Let me cover up the traces of my crime and go."

She took up the shovel, and opening the door of the stove, pulled out a quant.i.ty of blazing fire-brands and scattered them recklessly upon the bare floor, tossing one so close to the body of old Peter that his shock of red hair was ignited and burned with a disagreeable stench.

Mrs. Vance turned away with such a laugh as a fiend might have loved to hear, and hurried from the house, leaving the door, which she hastily unlocked, partly ajar.

"It does not matter," she thought to herself. "No one will discover them. The old sh.e.l.l of a house will ignite from the brands directly and burn down to the ground."

Drawing her veil tightly over her face she hurried away over the lonely road. About half a mile from the old house she met a man riding on horseback towards the route she was leaving. He scrutinized the solitary woman keenly, but could make nothing of her thickly shrouded features, and rode onward.

"Some wayfarer," she thought carelessly, and hurried on, eager to leave the hated vicinity of her double crime.

CHAPTER XXV.

Mr. Shelton's first impulse, after his interesting interview with Mrs.

Mason, had been to rush into town, secure a squad of police, and make an immediate raid upon the house of which he had heard such suspicious tales.

Had he obeyed this hasty prompting of his mind, all would have gone well, and this story of mine might have been concluded in a very few more chapters.

But the famous detective in his eventful career had usually found it advantageous to think twice before he acted.

He did so in this case, and his second thought resulted briefly in this: He did not consider that he had as yet sufficient to warrant him in taking the step he at first proposed to himself.

He had no actual grounds for suspicion except the fact that Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville had entered the house, and remained there a seemingly rather long time for a professional call from a busy physician whose time was limited.

Mrs. Mason's information was all gained from the oftentimes worthless gossip of a country neighborhood, and could scarcely be depended on as reliable evidence. The mysterious case of the young girl who had been befriended by the worthy woman might have no connection with the old house and its inhabitants as he had hastily concluded at first.

Considering all the circ.u.mstances, the cautious detective determined to wait before taking any decided step, and in the meantime to learn more of the mysterious house if possible.

His pursuit of Pratt and Colville in the next few days took him in entirely different directions, but resulted in nothing satisfactory.

In the meantime Mrs. Mason's gossip about the old house and its wicked inhabitants haunted him persistently. He could not rid himself of the thought. It abode with him by day, and in his sleep a.s.sumed the guise of night-mare. The old house actually preyed upon him. After a few days of this troubled thinking he came to a firm determination.

"I will go out there and make some plausible excuse for entering, if I can possibly do so," he said, to himself, "and once inside, I will try to find out whether there is ready ground for suspicion and inquiry."

His mind was relieved when he had resolved upon his course. Accordingly, he mounted his black horse and set out that very evening on his quest.

He felt disappointed when he pa.s.sed the tiny cottage of Mrs. Mason and saw the door closed. He missed the pleasant face from the doorway, but the evening was quite cool, and the good soul was, no doubt, knitting inside by her lonely hearthstone.

Within half a mile of his destination he encountered a lady walking rapidly in the dusty road. She was graceful in figure, fashionable in dress, but her thickly-veiled face gave no hint of her ident.i.ty. The detective looked after her with no little curiosity.

"That is not the sort of woman one expects to see walking alone in this vicinity," he thought. "She has the proud air and step of a fashionable New York lady. And she does not wish to be recognized, else why that thick veil?"

He turned in the saddle and looked after her again. The tall figure of the graceful lady was rapidly receding from sight around the bend in the road.

"Some intrigue is on foot," he laughed to himself, as he rode on. "These fashionable ladies sometimes find time hanging heavy on their hands, and--well, 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.'"

Thus soliloquizing, he found himself in front of the old house which had lately occupied so many of his leisure moments of thought.

He dismounted, fastened his horse, and laid his hand on the heavy gate, peering cautiously inside before entering, being mindful of Mrs. Mason's report of the bloodhound.

"The hound is probably chained up," he thought, after a careful reconnoissance. "Of course they would not allow such a dangerous beast to run at large in the daytime. Now, I must bethink me of my excuse, for I am about to storm the castle of the formidable ogres."

He advanced up the path to the door which, greatly to his surprise, stood slightly ajar.

"I should have thought these reputed misers would keep a locked door to their house," he said to himself, with unconscious disappointment. "I dare say they will prove to be quite ordinary people after all."

He proceeded to rap lightly on the door, then waited a little for a response from within.

No one came to answer his knock. He repeated it once or twice loudly with a like result.

"Are they all dead or asleep, or gone away?" said he, jestingly to himself, as he pushed the door boldly open and looked into the hall.

He saw nothing in the hall but a thin, blue volume of smoke that was pouring out of an open doorway on the right. With a bound he sprang inside and looked into the room.

A horrible sight met his startled eyes as soon as they became accustomed to the cloud of smoke that slowly rose over every thing.

Inside the doorway, at his feet, lay the dead body of an old woman, her aged features distorted and drawn as if by her dying agonies. Near the stove lay another horrible corpse, that of an old and deformed man.

The flooring in front of the stove had become ignited from the brands scattered over it, and was slowly burning through. The clothing of the man had caught fire and every shred was burned off of him, while his charred and frying flesh sent forth a sickening smell. The table with its unfinished repast stood in the center of the room. Several dishes had been knocked off in the furious fight of the old couple, and lay shattered in fragments on the floor. Chairs were overturned and gave silent evidence of the struggle that had gone on so lately in the now silent and deserted room. The detective stood as if rooted to the spot in a trance of horror.

He roused himself at last as he saw what headway the flames were making, like one starting from a dreadful dream.

"Heavens!" he cried out, "this is terrible. Murder and arson have both been committed here!"

He looked about him. Two buckets of water stood on a rude plank shelf.

He took them down and poured the water over the burning body of the man, then dashed out into the yard where he remembered he had seen a well as he came in.

He filled the two buckets, carried them in, and poured the contents over the fire. Again and again he repeated this operation till the smoldering fire was quite extinguished, and he stood, weary and perspiring, looking at the dismal scene.

"Well, what next?" he asked himself. "I suppose I ought to go into town and bring the coroner; but first I believe I will explore this horrible den. What if the body I have sought so long should lie hidden in this dreadful lazar house."

He went out into the hall and looked down its narrow length. Three doorways opened into as many rooms. The handles yielded to his touch, and the door of each swung open readily, but the rooms were empty, dark and cobwebbed.

Dust lay thick upon the floor, showing that they had long been untenanted. With a sigh of disappointment he closed them again, and stood contemplating the stairway.

"Better luck in the upper regions, perhaps," he thought. "I wonder if I dare venture up there? Surely I can encounter nothing more fearful than I have seen below."