CHAPTER VII

CONTAINS A SURPRISE

The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface, was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed, proved to be part of a woman's skirt.

With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.

A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men had dug.

Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married Olinto. Both had been a.s.sa.s.sinated!

When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person she had expected to find.

"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Not a lady, evidently, by her dress and hands."

"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife; of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.

Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired, black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.

"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret and concealed the evidence of this second crime."

"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."

Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had disappeared in the darkness of the wood.

I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident, familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.

We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.

But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.

We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had so secretly concealed the body of their victim.

"I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt," I said. "And then I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be arrested."

"Yes, do," she urged. "I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for they must not see me in this terrible plight."

It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as she did so I felt that she was shivering.

"You are very wet," I remarked. "I hope you won't take cold."

"Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and very often get drenched," was her reply. Then after a pause she said: "We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man."

"Yes, I think so," was my reply. "I will tell the police all that we have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body."

"If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,"

she declared. "One of them--the one in brown--was unusually broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop."

"You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?"

I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.

"Yes," she answered. "I expected to find an entirely different person."

"And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with whom you are acquainted?"

She nodded in the affirmative.

"Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the ident.i.ty of the a.s.sa.s.sins?"

"No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter in the hands of the police."

"But if the ident.i.ty of the dead woman is established?" I asked.

"It might furnish me with a clue," she exclaimed quickly. "Yes, try and discover who she is."

"Who was the woman you expected to find?"

"A friend--a very dear friend."

"Will you not tell me her name?" I inquired.

"No, it would be unfair to her," she responded decisively, an answer which to me was particularly tantalizing.

On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from Scotland, but away to the Continent?

Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?

It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who, tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good fortune in my investigations.

"I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything, won't you?"

I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across the open fields to my uncle's house.

At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the previous day.

When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related my adventure and the result of my investigation.

"What?" he cried, jumping up. "You've unearthed another body--a woman's?"

"I have. And what is more, I can identify her," I replied. "Her name is Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini."

"Then both husband and wife were killed?"

"Without a doubt--a double tragedy."

"But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?"