The Borough Treasurer, J. S. Fletcher [learn to read books TXT] 📗

you to be seen," he said. "I think our best plan'll be for me to knock at the front door and ask for the woman. You other two go round—quietly—to the back door, and take care that nobody gets out that way to the[Pg 300] moors at the back—if anybody once escapes to those moors they're as good as lost for ever on a dark night. Go round—and when you hear me knock at the front, you knock at the back."

The two men slipped away round the corner of the garden and through the adjacent belt of trees, and the superintendent gently lifted the latch of the garden gate.

"You keep back, Mr. Cotherstone, when I go to the door," he said. "You never know—hullo, what's this?"

Men were coming up the wood behind them, quietly but quickly. One of them, ahead of the others, carried a bull's-eye lamp and in swinging it about revealed himself as one of the superintendent's own officers. He caught sight of his superior and came forward.

"Mr. Brereton's here, sir, and some gentlemen from Norcaster," he said. "They want to see you particularly—something about this place, so I brought them——"

It was at that moment that the sound of the two revolver shots rang out in the silence from the stillness of the cottage. And at that the superintendent dashed forward, with a cry to the others, and began to beat on the front door, and while his men responded with similar knockings at the back he called loudly on Miss Pett to open.

It was Mallalieu who at last flung the door open and confronted the amazed and wondering group clustered thickly without. Every man there shrank back affrighted at the desperation on the cornered man's[Pg 301] face. But Mallalieu did not shrink, and his hand was strangely steady as he singled out his partner and shot him dead—and just as steady as he stepped back and turned the revolver on himself.

A moment later the superintendent snatched the bull's-eye lamp from his man, and stepped over Mallalieu's dead body and went into the cottage—to come back on the instant shivering and sick with shock at the sight his startled eyes had met.

[Pg 302]

CHAPTER XXXI THE BARRISTER'S FEE

Six months later, on a fine evening which came as the fitting close of a perfect May afternoon, Brereton got out of a London express at Norcaster and entered the little train which made its way by a branch line to the very heart of the hills. He had never been back to these northern regions since the tragedies of which he had been an unwilling witness, and when the little train came to a point in its winding career amongst the fell-sides and valleys from whence Highmarket could be seen, with the tree-crowned Shawl above it, he resolutely turned his face and looked in the opposite direction. He had no wish to see the town again; he would have been glad to cut that chapter out of his book of memories. Nevertheless, being so near to it, he could not avoid the recollections which came crowding on him because of his knowledge that Highmarket's old gables and red roofs were there, within a mile or two, had he cared to look at them in the glint of the westering sun. No—he would never willingly set foot in that town again!—there was nobody there now that he had any desire to see. Bent, when the worst was over, and the strange and sordid story had come to its end, had sold his business,[Pg 303] quietly married Lettie and taken her away for a long residence abroad, before returning to settle down in London. Brereton had seen them for an hour or two as they passed through London on their way to Paris and Italy, and had been more than ever struck by young Mrs. Bent's philosophical acceptance of facts. Her father, in Lettie's opinion, had always been a deeply-wronged and much injured man, and it was his fate to have suffered by his life-long connexion with that very wicked person, Mallalieu: he had unfortunately paid the penalty at last—and there was no more to be said about it. It might be well, thought Brereton, that Bent's wife should be so calm and equable of temperament, for Bent, on his return to England, meant to go in for politics, and Lettie would doubtless make an ideal help-meet for a public man. She would face situations with a cool head and a well-balanced judgment—and so, in that respect, all was well. All the same, Brereton had a strong notion that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bent would ever revisit Highmarket.

As for himself, his thoughts went beyond Highmarket—to the place amongst the hills which he had never seen. After Harborough's due acquittal Brereton, having discharged his task, had gone back to London. But ever since then he had kept up a regular correspondence with Avice, and he knew all the details of the new life which had opened up for her and her father with the coming of Mr. Wraythwaite of Wraye. Her letters were full of vivid descriptions of Wraye itself, and of the steward's house in which she and Harborough—now appointed steward and agent to his[Pg 304] foster-brother's estate—had taken up their residence. She had a gift of description, and Brereton had gained a good notion of Wraye from her letters—an ancient and romantic place, set amongst the wild hills of the Border, lonely amidst the moors, and commanding wide views of river and sea. It was evidently the sort of place in which a lover of open spaces, such as he knew Avice to be, could live an ideal life. But Brereton had travelled down from London on purpose to ask her to leave it.

He had come at last on a sudden impulse, unknown to any one, and therefore unexpected. Leaving his bag at the little station in the valley at which he left the train just as the sun was setting behind the surrounding hills, he walked quickly up a winding road between groves of fir and pine towards the great grey house which he knew must be the place into which the man from Australia had so recently come under romantic circumstances. At the top of a low hill he paused and looked about him, recognizing the scenes from the descriptions which Avice had given him in her letters. There was Wraye itself—a big, old-world place, set amongst trees at the top of a long park-like expanse of falling ground; hills at the back, the sea in the far distance. The ruins of an ancient tower stood near the house; still nearer to Brereton, in an old-fashioned flower garden, formed by cutting out a plateau on the hillside, stood a smaller house which he knew—also from previous description—to be the steward's. He looked long at this before he went nearer to it, hoping to catch the flutter of a gown amongst the rose-trees already bright with bloom.[Pg 305] And at last, passing through the rose-trees he went to the stone porch and knocked—and was half-afraid lest Avice herself should open the door to him. Instead, came; a strapping, redcheeked North-country lass who stared at this evident traveller from far-off parts before she found her tongue. No—Miss Avice wasn't in, she was down the garden, at the far end.

Brereton hastened down the garden; turned a corner; they met unexpectedly. Equally unexpected, too, was the manner of their meeting. For these two had been in love with each other from an early stage of their acquaintance, and it seemed only natural now that when at last they touched hands, hand should stay in hand. And when two young people hold each other's hands, especially on a Springtide evening, and under the most romantic circumstances and surroundings, lips are apt to say more than tongues—which is as much as to say that without further preface these two expressed all they had to say in their first kiss.

Nevertheless, Brereton found his tongue at last. For when he had taken a long and searching look at the girl and had found in her eyes what he sought, he turned and looked at wood, hill, sky, and sea.

"This is all as you described it" he said, with his arm round her, "and yet the first real thing I have to say to you now that I am here is—to ask you to leave it!"

She smiled at that and again put her hand in his.

"But—we shall come back to it now and then—together!" she said.

 

THE END

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