"I hope we shall find them yet," said Thomas G.o.dolphin.

"Does Lord Averil----"

What Janet might be about to inquire was never known. The words were stopped by a strange noise, an appalling noise, apparently at the very door of the room they were in. A loud, prolonged, discordant noise, unlike anything they had ever heard. Some might have compared it to the shrieks of a strong giant in his agony; some to the hoa.r.s.e screams of a bird of prey. But it was unlike either: it was unlike anything earthly.

With one bound, they flew to the hall, on to which the room opened, Maria, white with terror. The servants came rushing from their apartments, and stood in consternation.

What was the noise? What had caused it? The questions were pouring forth from all. The hall was perfectly empty, except for its startled gazers; doors and windows had been closed. Thomas walked to the entrance and looked beyond, beyond the porch, but nothing was there. The s.p.a.ce was empty; the evening was calm and still. At a distance, borne on the evening air, could be heard the merry laughter of Meta, playing with Bessy and Cecil. Thomas came in and closed the door again.

"I cannot think what it could have been!" he observed, speaking generally.

The servants were ready with answering remarks. One had thought this; one had thought that; another something else. Maria had seized upon Janet: glad, perhaps, that it was too dark for her white face to be discerned. It was the _sound_ which had so terrified her: no a.s.sociation in her mind was connected with it; and it was the sound which had terrified the servants. They had never heard a sound like unto it in all their lives.

"It must have been a night-bird, shrieking as he flew over the house,"

observed Mr. G.o.dolphin.

But, in truth, he so spoke only in the absence of any other possible a.s.sumption, and against his own belief. No bird of prey, known to ornithology, could have made that noise, even had it been within the hall to do it. A dozen birds of prey could not have made it. Thomas, like the rest, felt bewildered.

The servants began to move away. Nothing more than usual was to be seen in the darkened hall nothing to be heard. As the last one disappeared, Thomas turned to the drawing-room door, and held it open for his sister and Maria.

At that very moment when they had gone in, and Thomas was following, the noise came again. Loud, prolonged, shrill, unearthly! WHAT was it? Were the rafters of the house loosening? the walls rending asunder? Were the skies opening for the crack of doom? They gathered in the hall again: master, ladies, servants; and stood there, motionless, appalled, bewildered, their faces whiter than before.

Its echoes died away in shrieks. Human cries this time, and not unfamiliar. One of the women-servants, excited beyond repression, had fallen into hysterics.

But whence had proceeded that noise? Where had been its centre? Without the house, or within the house?--in its walls, its pa.s.sages, its hall?--where? Its sound had been everywhere. In short, what had caused it? what had it been?

They could not tell. It was a problem beyond human philosophy to solve.

They could not tell then; they could not tell afterwards. It has been no ideal scene that I have described, as living witnesses could testify.

Witnesses who can no more account for those unearthly sounds now, than they could account for them then.

CHAPTER XIV.

ISAAC HASTINGS TURNS TO THINKING.

The revelation to Isaac Hastings, that the deeds, missing, belonged to Lord Averil, set that young gentleman thinking. Like his father, like his sister Grace, he was an exceedingly accurate observer, given to taking note of pa.s.sing events. He had keen perception, a retentive memory for trifles, great powers of comparison and concentration. What with one thing and another, he had been a little puzzled lately by Mr.

George G.o.dolphin. There had been sundry odds and ends out of the common to be detected in Mr. George's manner: not patent to the generality of people, who are for the most part un.o.bservant, but sufficiently conspicuous to Isaac Hastings. Anxiety about letters; trifles in the everyday ordering of the Bank; one little circ.u.mstance, touching a delay in paying out some money, which Isaac, and he alone, had become accidentally cognizant of; all formed food for speculation. There had been the somewhat doubtful affair of George G.o.dolphin's secret journey to London, leaving false word with his wife that he was accompanying Captain St. Aubyn on the road to Portsmouth, which had travelled to the knowledge of Isaac through want of reticence in Charlotte Pain. More than all, making more impression upon Isaac, had been the strange, shrinking fear displayed by George, that Sat.u.r.day when he had announced Lord Averil: a fear succeeded by a confusion of manner that proved his master must for the moment have lost his presence of mind. Isaac Hastings had announced the names of other gentlemen that day, and the announcement, equally with themselves, had been received with the most perfect equanimity. Isaac had often thought of that little episode since, and wondered; wondered what there could be in Lord Averil's visit to scare Mr. George G.o.dolphin. It recurred to him now with double distinctness. The few words he had overheard, between Lord Averil and Mr. G.o.dolphin, recurred to him--the former saying that George must have known of the loss of the deeds when he had asked for them a month ago, that he judged so by his manner, which was peculiar, hesitating, uncertain, "as though he had known of the loss then, and did not like to tell of it."

To the strange manner Isaac himself could have borne witness. Had this strangeness been caused by the knowledge of the loss of the deeds?--if so, why did not George G.o.dolphin make a stir about them then? Only on the previous day, when Lord Averil had again made his appearance, Isaac had been further struck with George's startled hesitation, and with his refusal to see him. He had sent out word as the excuse, that he was particularly engaged. Isaac had believed at the time that George was no more engaged than he himself was. And now, this morning, when it could not be concealed any longer, came the commotion. The deeds were gone: they had disappeared in the most unaccountable manner, no one knowing how or when.

What did it all mean? Isaac Hastings asked himself the question as he pursued his business in the Bank, amidst the other clerks. _He could not help asking it._ A mind, const.i.tuted as was that of Isaac Hastings, thoughtful, foreseeing, penetrating, cannot help entering upon these speculations, when surrounding circ.u.mstances call them forth. Could it be that George G.o.dolphin had fallen into secret embarra.s.sment?--that he had abstracted the deeds himself and _used_ them? Isaac felt his cheek flush with shame at the thought; with shame that he should allow himself to think such a thing of a G.o.dolphin: and yet, he could not help it. No.

Do as he would, he could not drive the thought away: it remained to haunt him. And, the longer it remained, the more vivid it grew.

Ought he to give a hint of this to his father? He did not know. On the one hand there was sober reason, which told him George G.o.dolphin was not likely to be guilty of such a thing on the other lay his fancy, whispering that it _might_ be so. Things as strange had been enacted lately; as the public knew. Men, in an equally good position with George G.o.dolphin, were proved to have been living upon fraud for years. Isaac was fond of newspapers, and knew all they could tell him. What if anything came wrong to _this_ Bank? Why then, Mr. Hastings would be a ruined man. It was not only the loss of his own life's savings, that were in the hands of G.o.dolphin, Crosse, and G.o.dolphin, but there was the larger sum he had placed there as trustee to the little Chisholms.

Isaac Hastings lingered in the Bank till the last that evening. All had gone, except Mr. Hurde. The latter was preparing to leave, when Isaac went up to him, leaning his arms upon the desk.

"It is a strange thing about those deeds, Mr. Hurde!" cried he, in a low tone.

Mr. Hurde nodded.

"It is troubling me amazingly," went on Isaac.

This seemed to arouse the old clerk, and he looked up, speaking curtly.

"Why should it trouble you? You didn't take them, I suppose?"

"No, I didn't," said Isaac.

"Very well, then. The loss won't fall upon you. There's no need for _your_ troubling."

Isaac was silent. In truth, he was unable to give any reason for the "troubling," except on general grounds: he could not say that a doubt was haunting his mind as to the good faith of Mr. George G.o.dolphin.

"It is a loss which I suppose Mr. George will have to make good, as they were in his custody," he resumed. "My sister won't like it, I fear."

The observation recalled Mr. Hurde's memory to the fact that Mrs. George G.o.dolphin was the sister of Isaac Hastings. It afforded a sufficient excuse for the remarks in the mind of the clerk, and somewhat pacified him.

"It is to be hoped they'll be found," said he. "_I_ don't see how they could have gone."

"Nor I," returned Isaac. "The worst is, if they _have_ gone----"

"What?" asked Mr. Hurde, for Isaac had stopped.

"That perhaps money has been made of them."

Mr. Hurde groaned. "They have not been taken for nothing, you may be sure."

"If they have been taken," persisted Isaac.

"If they have been taken," a.s.sented Mr. Hurde. "I don't believe they have. From the sheer impossibility of anybody's getting to them, I don't believe it. And I shan't believe it, until every nook and corner between the four walls have been hunted over."

"How do you account for their disappearance, then?"

"I think they must have been moved inadvertently."

"No one could so move them except Mr. G.o.dolphin or Mr. George," rejoined Isaac.

"Mr. G.o.dolphin has not moved them," returned the clerk in a testy tone of reproof. "Mr. G.o.dolphin is too accurate a man of business to move deeds inadvertently, or to move them and forget it the next moment. Mr.

George may have done it. In searching for anything in the strong-room, if he has had more than one case open at once, he may have put these deeds back in their wrong place, or even brought them upstairs."

Isaac considered for a minute, and then shook his head. "I should not think it," he answered.

"Well, it is the only supposition I can come to," was the concluding remark of Mr. Hurde. "It is next to an impossibility, Mr. G.o.dolphin excepted, that any one else can have got to the deeds."

He was drawing on his gloves as he spoke, to depart. Isaac went out with him, but their roads lay different ways. Isaac turned towards All Souls'