The Ashiel Mystery, Mrs. Charles Bryce [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

upon her lips. For the manner of Julia's advance struck

her as very odd. The girl was bending nearly double, and moving with a

caution that seemed very strange and unnecessary. What was the matter?

Was she stalking something? Crouching as she was in the bushes, she would

not be seen by anyone on the path below. Did she not want to be seen? It

looked more and more like it. But why in the world should Julia creep

along as if she feared to be observed? Where was she going, and why?

 

Suddenly Juliet came to a quick decision: she would find out what Julia

Romaninov was doing.

 

She backed hurriedly into the bracken, and made her way slowly and

cautiously around the clearing under the beech-tree to the edge of the

hill again, keeping under cover of the fern and heather. When she peered

over, Julia had disappeared from view beneath the rhododendrons.

 

For a minute Juliet's eyes searched the side of the slope below. Then she

drew back her head quickly, for she had caught sight of another bush

shaking uneasily a little way beyond the gap in which she had had her

first glimpse of the cause of the disturbance. Cowering low in the

bracken she crept along the top, keeping a foot or two from the edge,

where the rock fell nearly perpendicularly for a few yards before its

angle changed to the comparatively gradual, though actually steep slope

of the hill which Julia was climbing.

 

From time to time she looked cautiously between clumps of fern or heath,

to make sure that she was keeping level with her unconscious quarry.

 

The front of the hill swung round in a bold curve till it reached the

castle; and it soon became evident that, if both girls continued to

advance along the lines they were following, they would converge at a

point where the end of the battlemented wall met the great holly hedge

that formed two sides of the garden enclosure.

 

Juliet perceived this when she was not more than a dozen yards from the

corner, and dropped at full length to the soft ground, at a spot where

she could see between the stalks and under the leaves, and yet herself

remain concealed. She had not long to wait. In a minute, Julia's face

appeared over the brow of the hill. She pulled herself up by a young fir

sapling that hung over the brink, and stood for a moment, flushed and

panting after her long climb. She was dressed in a greenish tweed, which

blended with the woodland surroundings, and her shoulder was turned to

the place where Juliet lay wondering whether she would be discovered.

 

Fronting them, the end of the little turret, with which the wall of the

old fortress now came to a sudden termination, could be seen rearing its

grey stones above the dark glossy foliage of the hedge, which grew here

with peculiar vigour and continued to the extreme edge of the cliff, and

even farther.

 

What was Juliet's surprise to see Julia, when she had found her breath,

and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was

unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth,

and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves,

begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared

under it. What in the world could she be doing?

 

Minutes passed, and she did not reappear. Juliet waited, her nerves

stretched in expectation, but nothing happened. Overhead little birds,

tomtits and creepers, played about the bark of the fir-trees; a robin

came and looked at her consideringly, with a bright sensible eye; from

two hundred feet below, the murmur of the burn rose constant and

insistent; but no other sound broke the stillness, nor was there any sign

of human life upon the top of the cliff.

 

At last the girl could stand it no longer. Her patience was exhausted.

Curiosity urged her like a goad; and, if she had not much expectation of

making any important discovery, she was at least determined to solve the

mystery that now perplexed her.

 

Without more ado she got to her feet, and ran to the holly hedge. There,

throwing herself down once more, she parted the leaves with a cautious

hand, and followed the path taken by the Russian.

 

The hedge was old and very thick, more than three yards in width at this

end of it. In the middle, the trunks of the trees that formed it rose in

a close-growing, impassable barrier; but just opposite the place where

Julia had vanished Juliet found that there was a gap, caused, perhaps, by

the death in earlier days of one of the trees, or, as she afterwards

thought more likely, by the intentional omission or destruction of one of

the young plants. It was a narrow opening, but she managed to wriggle

through it.

 

On the other side, progress was bounded by the wall, whose massive

granite blocks presented a smooth unbroken surface. Where, then, had

Julia gone? The branches did not grow low on this, as on the outer side

of the hedge, and there was room to stand, though not to stand upright.

Stooping uncomfortably, the girl looked about her, and saw in the soft

brown earth the plain print of many footsteps, both going and coming,

between the place where she crouched and the end of the wall. She looked

behind her, and there were no marks. Clearly, Julia had gone to the end;

but what then? The corner of the wall was at the very edge of the

precipice; from what she remembered to have seen from below, the rock

was too sheer to offer any foothold; besides why, having just climbed to

the summit should anyone immediately descend again, and by such an

extraordinary route? While these thoughts followed one another in her

mind, Juliet had advanced along the track of the footsteps, and clinging

tightly to the trunk of the last holly bush she leant forward and looked

down.

 

As she thought, the descent was impossible: the rock fell away at her

feet, sheer and smooth; there was no path there that a cat could take. It

made her giddy to look, and she drew back hurriedly.

 

Where, then, could Julia have gone? Not to the left, that was certain,

for then she would have emerged again into view. To the right? That

seemed impossible. Still, Juliet leant forward again, and peered round

the corner of the wall.

 

There, not more than a couple of feet away, was a small opening, less

than eighteen inches wide by about a yard in height. Hidden by the

overhanging end of the hedge, it would be invisible from below. Here was

the road Julia had taken.

 

Juliet did not hesitate. She could reach the aperture easily, and it

would have been the simplest thing in the world to climb into it, but

for the yawning chasm beneath. Holding firmly to the friendly holly, and

resisting, with an effort, the temptation to look down, she swung

herself bravely over the edge and scrambled into the hole with a gasp of

relief. It was, after all, not very difficult. She found herself

standing within the entrance of a narrow passage built into the

thickness of the wall. Beside the opening through which she had come, a

little door of oak, grey with age and strengthened with rusty bars and

cross-pieces of iron, drooped upon its one remaining hinge. Two huge

slabs of stone leaning near it, against the wall, showed how it had

been the custom in former centuries to fortify the entrance still more

effectively in time of danger.

 

Juliet did not wait to examine these fragments, interesting though they

might be to archaeologists, but hurried down the passage as quickly as

she could in the darkness that filled it, feeling her way with an

outstretched hand upon the stones on either side. As her eyes became

accustomed to the obscurity, she saw that though the way was dark it was

yet not entirely so: a gloomy light penetrated at intervals through

ivy-covered loopholes pierced in the thickness of the outer wall; and she

imagined bygone McConachans pouring boiling oil or other hospitable

greeting through those slits on to the heads of their neighbours. But

surely, she reflected, no one would ever have attacked the castle from

that side, where the precipice already offered an impregnable defence;

the passage must have been used as a means of communication with the

outer world, or, perhaps, as a last resort, for the purpose of escape by

the beleaguered forces.

 

After fifty yards or so of comparatively easy progress, the shafts of

twilight from the loopholes ceased to permeate the murky darkness in

which she walked, and she was obliged to go more slowly, and to feel her

way dubiously by the touch of hands and feet.

 

The floor appeared to her to be sloping away beneath her, and as she

advanced the descent became more and more rapid, till she could hardly

keep her feet. She went very gingerly, with a vague fear lest the path

should stop unexpectedly, and she herself step into space.

 

Presently she found herself once more upon level ground, when another

difficulty confronted her: the walls came suddenly to an end. Feeling

cautiously about her in the darkness, she made out that she had come to a

point where another passage crossed the one she was following, a sort of

cross-road in this unknown country of shade and stone. Here, then, were

three possible routes to take, and no means of knowing which of them

Julia Romaninov had gone by.

 

After a little hesitation, she decided to keep straight on. It would at

all events be easier to return if she did, and she would be less likely

to make a mistake and lose her way. So on she stumbled; and who shall say

that Fate had not a hand in this chance decision?

 

Though the distance she had traversed was inconsiderable, the darkness

and uncertainty made it appear to her immense, and each moment she

expected to come upon the Russian girl. At every other step she paused

and listened, but no sound met her ears except a slight, regular,

thudding noise, which she presently discovered, with something of a

shock, to be the beating of her own heart. The sound of her progress was

almost inaudible. As the day was damp, she was wearing goloshes, and her

small, rubber-shod feet fell upon the stone floor with a gentle patter

that was scarcely perceptible.

 

At last she nearly fell over the first step of a flight of stairs.

 

She mounted them one by one with every precaution her fears could

suggest. For by now the first enthusiasm of the chase had worn off, and

the solitude and darkness of this strange place had worked upon her

nerves till she was terrified of she knew not what, and ready to scream

at a touch.

 

Already she bitterly regretted having started out upon this enterprise

of spying. Why had she not gone and reported what she had seen to Mr.

Gimblet? That surely would have been the obvious, the sensible course. It

was, she reflected, a course still open to her; and in another moment she

would have turned and taken it, but even as the thought crossed her mind

she was aware that the darkness was sensibly decreased, and in another

second she had risen into comparative daylight. As she stood still,

debating what she should do, and taking in all that could now be

distinguished of her surroundings, she saw that the stairs ended in an

open trap-door, leading to a high, black-lined shaft like the inside of a

chimney, in which, some two feet above the trap, an odd, narrow curve of

glass acted as a window, and admitted a very small quantity of light. A

streak of light seemed to come also from the wall beside it.

 

Juliet drew herself cautiously up, till her head was in the chimney, and

her eyes level with the slip of glass.

 

With a sudden shock of surprise she saw that she was looking into the

room which, above all others, she had so much cause to remember ever

having entered.

 

It was, indeed, the library of the castle, and she was looking at it from

the inside of that clock into which Gimblet had once before seen Julia

Romaninov vanish.

 

The curtains were drawn in the room, but after the absolute blackness of

the stone corridors the semi-dusk looked nearly as bright as full

daylight to Juliet, and she had no difficulty in distinguishing that

there was but one person in the library, and that person Julia.

 

She was standing by a bookshelf at the far end, near the window, and

seemed to be methodically engaged in an examination of the books. Juliet

saw her take out first one, then another, musty,