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

I won't! I won't!" she cried desperately, though in her

heart she knew she could not resist if he chose to use force. Perhaps if

she screamed, some one would hear. Oh, where was Gimblet? Why did he

leave her to the mercy of these people? "Help! Help!" She lifted up her

voice and shrieked as loud as she could.

 

With a vicious scowl Mark sprang upon her, and clapped a hand over her

mouth. Then, as she still continued to produce muffled sounds of

distress, he stuffed his handkerchief in between her teeth and, lifting

her bodily in his arms, thrust her before him into the clock, and

pushed her roughly down the hidden stair. Half-way down she lost her

footing, and fell to the bottom, where Julia was standing with her

little lamp in her hand.

 

Mark was following close behind, and between them they picked her up and

hurried her, limping and bruised, along the narrow passage. She was

allowed to take the handkerchief out of her mouth, for no cry could

penetrate the immense thickness of these blocks of stone. At the point

where there was a break to right and left in the walls of the passage,

Julia came to a standstill.

 

"Here it is," she said, turning her light on to the opening in the wall

on the left-hand side. "The door is gone, so you will have to fetch

something to block it up with."

 

It seemed to be a small, cell-like chamber, built into the side of the

tower. It may have contained a dozen cubic yards of space, and had

neither door nor window.

 

"There are some slabs of stone at the end of the passage," said Julia.

"They are heavy, but you are strong, you will be able to bring them. We

must leave a little space at the top of the door to admit some air, and

for me to pass food through to our prisoner." She laughed with a feverish

merriment. "It will be like feeding the animals at the Zoo," she said.

 

Mark signified his approval by a nod.

 

"And is this the way?" he asked, turning round and starting off in the

opposite direction.

 

"No, no!" Julie cried, laying a detaining hand upon his arm. "I don't

know what there is down there. I think it is a well. See, you are on the

very edge."

 

She cast the light on to a round dark opening in the ground some six feet

in front of and below them. From where they stood the floor began to

slant suddenly and steeply downward, so that if Mark had taken another

step, it looked as if nothing could have prevented his sliding down into

the gaping circle of blackness at the bottom.

 

Julia shuddered violently.

 

"Oh," she cried, "if you had gone over! Come away, do come away!"

 

"It's a funny sort of well," he said, "Looks to me like something else.

Did you ever hear of _oubliettes_, Julia?"

 

Juliet, as she heard him, grew white with terror.

 

"Julia, Julia," she cried, "you won't let him throw me down there?"

 

"No, no," said Julia. "He would not. There is no reason.... Mark," she

urged, "come away from here."

 

But he only laughed shortly.

 

"Don't be so hysterical," he said, and continued to bend his gaze upon

the hole at the bottom of the slope. It seemed to have a sort of

fascination for him. Finally he picked a piece of loose mortar from the

wall and threw it down into the gap. A second later there was a dull

sound which might have been a splash. "Perhaps it is a well after all.

Did you think it sounded as if it had fallen into water?"

 

"Yes," said Julia, "I am sure it did. Do come away. I hate being here."

 

And indeed she was shivering from head to foot, and not Juliet herself

seemed more anxious to leave the place.

 

"Just one more shot," said Mark. "Here, Julia, stoop down, and roll that

bit of stone slowly down the slope, while I hold on to our prisoner. We

shall hear better that way. Give me your lamp."

 

Anxious to satisfy him, Julia picked up the fragment he had knocked

from the rough wall, and stooping down stretched out her hand to set the

stone in motion. But, as she did so, Mark loosened his grip on Juliet,

and bending quickly behind this poor girl who loved him seized her by

the shoulders and threw her forward on to her face. The steep pitch of

the floor finished what the impetus given by his onslaught had begun.

Julia shot head first down the slope, and disappeared into the black

chasm of the well.

 

One long agonized scream came up to them out of the darkness, and rolled

its echoes through the lonely passages.

 

Then the distant sound of a splash; and silence.

 

Back against the wall, Juliet cowered, her whole body shaken by great

sobs. She was petrified with terror of this fiendish man, but her fears

for herself gave way before the horror of what she had seen.

 

"Oh, what have you done, what have you done?" she wept.

 

Mark tried to summon up a jeering smile. The lantern threw no light upon

his white and twitching face.

 

"You don't suppose I meant to let her go free, after the taste she gave

me of her temper?" he asked, in a voice he could not keep from shaking a

little. "Do you suppose I like having to do these things? You women have

never the slightest sense of common justice. The whole thing is perfectly

beastly to me. But how could I live with a girl who would be ready to

threaten me with the gallows every time she got out of bed wrong foot

first? It's not fair to blame me for other people's faults."

 

He spoke querulously, with the air of a much-injured man. Though Juliet

was beyond any coherent reply, he seemed afraid of meeting her eyes, and

looked resolutely away from her, his glance shifting and wavering from

the walls to the floor, from the floor to the stones of the low roof; up,

down, and sideways, but never resting on her. At last, as if drawn there

irresistibly and against his will, they fell once more on the dark circle

of the mouth of the pit, and he started back, shuddering violently.

 

"As if I hadn't enough to bear without being saddled with hideous

memories for the rest of my life!" he cried with bitter irritability. "If

you had an ounce of common fairness in your composition you would admit I

could do no less. Why, any day she might have got jealous, or something,

and flown into a passion again, and denounced me to the police. Besides,

I have no wish to be obliged to fly the country. Why should I? She was

the only person who knew the truth; except you. That is why you must

follow her."

 

"No, no!" cried Juliet despairingly, but without avail, for her feeble

strength could offer him no effective opposition, and he thrust her

easily on to the slope. She felt instinctively that at that angle the

merest push would make her lose her balance, and sank quickly to her

knees, catching him round the ankle with one hand, and clinging

desperately.

 

He swore furiously, and bent down to unclasp her fingers from his leg.

Then he flung her hand away from him; and cut off from all assistance she

began instantly to slide backwards, slowly but irresistibly.

CHAPTER XXI

 

Juliet dug her nails into the cracks of the stone floor with all the

energy of despair, but in a moment her feet were over the edge of the pit

and she was falling. Her fingers gripped the edge with a fierce tenacity,

and for some minutes she hung there, minutes that seemed longer than all

the rest of her life put together.

 

And so she hung, her knees drawn up in a frantic effort to pull herself

out of the depths, till her muscles refused any longer to contract, and

she felt herself gradually straightening out and growing, it seemed,

heavier and heavier, till she knew that in one more second her fingers

would slip from their hold, and all would be over.

 

But as she dropped into a straight position, and wearily abandoned her

efforts to raise herself, one of her feet suddenly touched some firm

substance beneath it. Something narrow it was, for the other foot as

yet still hung in space, but some blessed solid thing on which it was

possible to stand. As, with a feeling of thankfulness and relief such

as she had never before experienced, she allowed her weight to rest on

it and found that it did not give, she felt a sharp blow on the

knuckles of her left hand, which made her withdraw it quickly and lean

against the wall to steady herself. Mark was throwing stones at her

fingers to make her leave go sooner. Another missed her narrowly, and

shot over her head.

 

She drew down her right hand, and still leaning against the wall felt

about with her other foot for a support.

 

She soon found it, a little farther back it seemed than the first

foothold; but more experimental investigation showed that it was really

part of the same object. There appeared, indeed, to be several of them

about, all near to the wall, so that it was plain that poor Julia, as she

shot over the brink, had fallen outside, and beyond them. What the bars

were that she seemed to be standing on, Juliet could not at first

imagine, and it was not till Mark, growing tired of waiting for a splash

that never came, reached the conclusion that his ears had deceived him,

and took himself and Julia's lantern off to other spheres of usefulness,

that she perceived that a faint light penetrated into the upper part of

the pit. When her eyes had become accustomed to it, she was able to make

out that she was perched upon a portion of the roots of a tree, which had

grown in through holes in the wall.

 

Three great roots there were, curling into and across the shaft of the

pit and disappearing down into the darkness below, where Juliet did not

dare to look.

 

She managed, with great caution, to stoop down and catch hold of the

highest of the roots, and so to settle herself in a fairly comfortable

position, sitting on the middle root of the three, with her feet on the

lowest, and her back against the top one.

 

"They might have been made on purpose," she told herself, her naturally

high spirits and brave young optimism coming nobly to her rescue again.

 

And she set herself to try and enlarge one of the holes in the wall; but

she could not make much perceptible difference there. What it had taken

centuries, and the growth of a great tree to effect, could not be much

improved on in an hour by one young girl, however strong the necessity

that urged her.

 

By the time she had exhausted her efforts and must needs lean back and

rest awhile, the biggest hole was just wide enough to put her hand

through, and she saw no prospect of enlarging it further.

 

Through it she could see a corner of the loch and the grey foot of Ben

Ghusy, but that was all. It showed, however, on which side of the tower

she was, and she remembered the great beech that clung to the precipice

below the place where the foundations of the castle sprang from the rock.

At least she had always imagined it was below the foundations, but now

she knew better.

 

She thrust her hand out and waved it, but did not dare leave it there.

The terror Mark had instilled in her was too recent and too real. If she

put out her hand, he would see it, and perhaps shoot it off; or at least

know that he had failed to kill her as yet. Better he should think her

dead, like poor