"He left us at the top of the Black Copse, sir," the man answered. "He was coming round by the other side--shot a woodc.o.c.k there once, sir," he said.

They glanced across the moor toward Falcon's Nest. There was no one in sight.

"He's had plenty of time to get round," remarked Lord Lathon, throwing down his gun. "Perhaps he's resting."

Mr. Thurwell shook his head.

"No; he wouldn't do that," he said. "He was as keen about getting here as any of us. Hark! what was that?"

A faint sound was borne across the moor on the lazily stirring breeze.

Helen, whose hearing was very keen, started, and the little party exchanged uneasy glances.

"It must have been a sea-gull," remarked Lord Lathon, who wanted his luncheon very badly indeed. "We'd better not wait for him. He'll turn up all right; Geoffrey always does. Come----"

He broke off suddenly in his speech and listened. There was another sound, and this time there was no mistake about it. It was the low, prolonged howl of a spaniel--a mournful sound which struck a strange note in the afternoon stillness. There was breathless silence for a moment amongst the little group, and the becoming glow died out of Helen's cheek.

Rachel Kynaston was the first to recover herself.

"Had Sir Geoffrey a dog with him, Heggs?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, miss," the man answered. "His favorite spaniel had got unchained somehow, and found us on the moor. I saw her at heel when he left us.

She was very quiet, and Sir Geoffrey wouldn't have her sent back."

"Then something has happened to him!" she cried. "That was Fido's howl."

"Has anyone heard his gun?" Mr. Thurwell asked.

There was no one left to answer him. They had all started across the moor toward the black patch of spinneys around which Sir Geoffrey should have come. Mr. Thurwell, forgetting his fatigue, hurried after them; and Helen, after a moment's hesitation, followed too, some distance behind.

She ran swiftly, but her dress caught often in the p.r.i.c.kly gorse, and she had to pause each time to release herself. Soon she found herself alone, for the others had all turned the corner of the plantation before she reached it. There was a strong, sickly sense of coming disaster swelling in her heart, and her knees were tottering. Still she held on her way bravely. A few yards before she reached the corner of the plantation, she almost ran into the arms of Lord Lathon, who was hurrying back to meet her. There was a ghastly shade in his pale face, and his voice trembled.

"Miss Thurwell," he exclaimed in an agitated tone, "you must not come!

Let me take you back. Something--has happened! I am going to Rachel.

Come with me."

She drew away from him, and threw off his restraining arm.

"No; I must see for myself. Let me pa.s.s, please--at once."

He tried again to prevent her, but she eluded him. A few rapid steps and she had gained the corner. There they all were in a little group scarcely a dozen yards away. A mist floated before her eyes, but she would see; she was determined that she would see this thing for herself.

She struggled on a few steps nearer. There was something lying on the gra.s.s around which they were all gathered; something very much like a human shape. Ah! she could see more plainly now. It was Sir Geoffrey--Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. He was lying half on the gra.s.s and half in the dry ditch. His white face was upturned to the cloudless sky; by his side, and discoloring his brown tweed shooting coat, was a dark wet stain. In the midst of it something bright was flashing in the sunlight.

She stood still, rooted to the spot with a great horror. Her pulses had ceased to beat. The warm summer day seemed suddenly to have closed in around her. There was a singing in her ears, and she found herself battling hard with a deadly faintness. Yet she found words.

"Has he--shot himself?" she cried. "Is it an accident?"

Her father turned round with a little cry, and hastened to her side.

"Helen!" he gasped. "You should not be here! Come away, child! I sent Lathon----"

"I will know--what it is. Is it an accident? Is he--dead?"

He shook his head. The healthy sunburnt tan had left his face, and he was white to the lips.

"He has been murdered!" he faltered. "Foully, brutally murdered!"

CHAPTER III

MR. BERNARD BROWN

Murder is generally a.s.sociated in one's mind with darkness, the still hours of night, and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. It is the outcome of the fierce animal l.u.s.t for blood, provoked by low pa.s.sions working in low minds. De Quincey's brilliant attempt to elevate it to a place among the fine arts has only enriched its horrors as an abstract idea. Even detached from its usual environment of darkness, and ignorance, and vice, it is an ugly thing.

But here was something quite different. Such a tragedy as this which had just occurred was possessed of a peculiar hideousness of its own. It seemed to have completely laid hold of the little group of men gathered round the body of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston; to have bereft them of all reasoning power and thought, to have numbed even their limbs and physical instincts. It was only a few minutes ago since they had left him, careless and debonair, with his thoughts intent upon the business, or rather the sport, of the hour. His laugh had been the loudest, his enjoyment the keenest, and his gun the most deadly of them all. But now he lay there cold and lifeless, with his heart's blood staining the green turf, and his sightless eyes dull and glazed. It was an awful thing!

Physically, he had been the very model of an English country gentleman, tall and powerful, with great broad shoulders, and strikingly upright carriage, full of vigorous animal life, with the slight restlessness of the constant traveler banished by his sudden pa.s.sion for the girl who had so lately promised to be his wife.

She drew a little nearer--they were all too much overcome by the shock of this thing to prevent her--and stood with glazed eyes looking down upon him. Everything, even the minutest article of his dress, seemed to appeal to her with a strange vividness. She found herself even studying the large check of his shooting-coat and the stockings which she had once laughingly admired, and which he had ever since worn. Her eyes rested upon the sprig of heliotrope which, with her own fingers, she had arranged in his b.u.t.ton hole, as they had strolled down the garden together just before the start; and the faint perfume which reached her where she stood, helped her to realize that she was in the thrall of no nightmare, but that this thing had really happened. She had never loved him, she had never even pretended to love him, and it was less any sense of personal loss than the hideous sin of it which swept in upon her as she stood there looking down upon him. She recognized, as she could never have done had he been personally dear to her, the ethical horror of the thing. The faintness which had almost numbed her senses pa.s.sed away. In that swift battle of many sensations it was anger which survived.

Her voice first broke the deep, awed stillness.

"Who has done this?" she cried, pointing downward.

Her words were like a sudden awakening to them all. They had been standing like figures in a silent tableau, stricken dumb and motionless.

Now there was a stir. The fire in her tone had dissolved their torpor.

She was standing on rising ground a little above the rest of them, and her att.i.tude, together with the gesture by which she enforced her words, was full of intense dramatic force. The slim undulating beauty of her form was enhanced by the slight disorder of her dress, and her red-gold hair--she had lost her hat--shone and glistened in the sunlight till every thread was shining like burnished gold. They themselves were in the shade of the dark pine trees, and she standing upon the margin of the moor with the warm sunlight glowing around her, seemed like a being of another world. Afterwards when they recalled that scene--and there was no one there who ever forgot it--they could scarcely tell which seemed the most terrible part to them--the lifeless body of the murdered man with the terrible writing of death in his white face, or the tragic figure of Helen Thurwell, the squire's cold, graceful daughter, with her placid features and whole being suddenly transformed with this wave of pa.s.sion.

Mr. Thurwell drew a few steps backward, and his keen gray eyes swept the open country round.

"There was no one in sight when we got here; but the blackguard can't be far away!" he said. "Heggs, and you, Smith, and you, Cook, go through the spinney as fast as you can, one in the middle and one on each side, mind! I will go up Falcon's Hill and look round. Jem, run to Mallory as fast as you can for Dr. Holmes, and on to the police station. Quick! all of you. There's not a moment to lose!"

The desire for action was as strong in them now as had been their former torpor. Mr. Thurwell and his daughter were alone in less than a minute.

"Helen, I forgot you!" he exclaimed. "I can't leave you alone, and some one must stay here. Where is Lathon?"

"He has gone on to take Rachel home," she answered. "I will stay here. I am not afraid. Quick! you can see for miles from the top of the hill and you have your field gla.s.s. Oh, do go. Go!"

He hesitated, but she was evidently very much in earnest.

"I will just climb the hill and hurry down again," he said. "I cannot leave you here for more than a few minutes. If only we had more men with us!"

He turned away, and walked swiftly across the moor toward the hill. For a minute or two she stood watching his departing figure. Then she turned round with a shudder and buried her face in her clasped hands. Her appearance was less hard now and more natural, for a sickly sense of horror at the sight of his body was commencing to a.s.sert itself over that first strange instinct of pa.s.sionate anger. It was none the less dreadful to her because in a certain way his removal was a release. She had promised to marry this man, but there had been scarcely a moment since when she had not found herself regretting it. Now the sense of freedom, which she could not altogether evade, was like torture to her.

She dropped on her knees by his side, and took his cold hand in hers. A few hours ago she dared not have done this, knowing very well that at the caressing touch of her fingers, she would have felt his strong arms around her in a pa.s.sionate and distasteful embrace. But there was no fear of this now. She would never have to shrink away from him again. He was dead!

The warm sunlight was glancing among the thickly growing pine trees in the plantation by her side, casting quaint shadows on the cone-strewn ground, across the little piece of broken paling in the bottom of the dry ditch, and upon the mossy bank where his head was resting upon a sweet-smelling tuft of heather. Most of all it flashed and glittered upon the inch or two of steel which still lay buried in his side--a curiously shaped little dagger which, although she strove to keep her eyes away from it, seemed to have a sort of fascination for her. Every time her eyes fell upon it, she turned away quickly with a little shudder; but, nevertheless, she looked at it more than once--and she remembered it.