The Riddle of the Frozen Flame, Mary E. Hanshew and Thomas W. Hanshew [reading fiction .txt] 📗

the house dropped once more into stillness. In ten minutes Merriton tumbled into bed. He slept like a log.... He hadn't seen the doctor drop that sleeping draught into that last whisky while Tony West kept him talking. That was why he slept.

Later on, however, his shame at his own foolishness in firing his pistol at mere flames of the night was the cause of grave difficulty. For when he related the story of the whole affair to Cleek's master mind he left that out! And very nearly was it his own undoing, for strange was to be the outcome of that shot in the night.

CHAPTER VII THE WATCHER IN THE SHADOW

But if Merriton slept, the others of the little party did not. After his door had closed upon him they appeared from their rooms, and met by arrangement once more in the study. Doctor Bartholomew—a little late at having waited and listened for the outward result of his drug in Nigel's comforting snore—joined the group with an anxious face. There was no laughter now in the pleasant, heated smoking room. Every face there wore a look that bordered closely upon fear.

"Well, Doctor," said Tony West, as he entered the room, "what's the plan? I don't like Wynne's absence, I swear I don't. It—it looks fishy, somehow. And he was in no mood to play boyish pranks on us by turnin' in at the Brelliers' place. There's somethin' else afoot. What's your idea, now?"

The doctor considered a moment.

"Better be getting out and form a search party," he said quietly. "If nothing turns up—well, Nigel needn't know we've been out. But—there's more in this than meets the eye, boys. Frankly, I don't like it. Wynne's a brute, but he never liked practical joking. It's my private opinion that he would have returned by now—if something hadn't happened to him. We'll wait till dawn, and then we'll go. Nigel is good for some hours yet. Wynne always had a bad effect on him. Ever noticed it, West? Or you, Stark?"

The two men nodded.

"Yes," said Tony, "I have. Many times. Nigel's never the same fellow when that man's about. He's—he's got some sort of devilish influence over him, I believe. And how he hates Nigel! See his eyes to-night? He could have killed him, I believe—specially as Nigel's taken his girl."

"Yes." The doctor's voice was rather grave. "Wynne's a queer chap and a revengeful one. And he was as drunk as a beast to-night.... Well, boys we'll sit down and wait awhile."

Pipes were got out and cigarettes lighted. For an hour in the hot smoking-room the men sat, talking in undertones and smoking, or dropping off into long silences. Finally the doctor drew out his watch. He sighed as he looked at it.

"Three o'clock, and no sign of Wynne yet. We'll be getting our things on, boys."

Instantly every man rose to his feet. The tension slackened with movement. In comparative silence they stole out into the hall, threw on their coats and hats, and then Tony West nervously slid the bolts of the big front door. It creaked once or twice, but no sound from the still house answered it. West swung it open, and on the whitened step they quietly put on their shoes.

The doctor switched on an electric torch and threw a blob of light upon the gravelled pathway for them to see the descent. Then one by one they went quietly down the steps, and West shut the door behind them.

"Excellent! Excellent!" exclaimed Doctor Bartholomew, as the gate was reached with no untoward happenings. "Not a soul knows we're gone, boys. That's pretty certain. Now, then, out of the gate and turn to the right up that lane. It'll take us to the very edge of the Fens, I believe, and then our search will commence."

He spoke with assurance, and they followed him instinctively. Unconsciously they had made him captain of the expedition. But—no one had heard them, he had said? If he had looked back once when the big gate shut, he might have changed his mind upon that score. With white face pressed close against the glass of the smoking-room window, which looked directly out upon the front path, stood Borkins, watching them as though he were watching a line of ghosts on their nightly prowl.

"Good Gawd!" he ejaculated, as he discerned their dark figures and the light of the doctor's torch. "Every one of 'em gone—every one!" And then, trembling, he went back to bed.

But the doctor did not look back, and so the little party proceeded upon its way in comparative silence until the edge of the Fens was reached. Here, with one accord, they stopped for further instructions. Three torches made the spot upon which they stood like daylight. The doctor bent his eyes downward.

"Now, boys," he said briskly. "Keep your eyes sharp for footprints. Wynne must have struck off here into the Fens, it's the most direct course. He wouldn't have been such a duffer as to walk too far out of his way—if he was bent upon going there at all.... Hello! Here's the squelchy mark of a man's boot, and here's another!"

They followed the track onward, with perfect ease, for the marshy ground was sodden and took every footprint deeply. That some man had crossed this way, and recently, too, was perfectly plain. The footprints wavered a little that was all, showing that the man who made them was uncertain upon his feet. And Wynne had left the house by no means sober!

"It looks as though he had come here after all!" broke out Tony West, excitedly. "Why the track's as plain as the nose on your face."

They zig-zagged their tedious way out across the marshy grassland, their thin shoes squelching in the bogs, their trousers unmercifully spattered with the thick, treacley mud. They spoke little, their eyes bent upon the ground, their foreheads wrinkled. On and on and on they went, while the sky above them lightened and grew murky with the soft cloudiness of breaking dawn. The flames in the distance began to pale, and the vast stretch of Fen district before them was shrouded in a light fog, misty, unutterably ghostlike and with the chill lonesomeness of death.

"Whew! Eeriest task I've ever come across!" ejaculated Stark with a grimace as he looked up for a moment into the dull mist ahead. "If we're not all down with pneumonia to-morrow, it won't be our own faults!... Some distance, isn't it, Doctor?"

"It is," returned the doctor grimly. "What a fool the man was to attempt it!... Here's a footprint, and another."

Yes, and many another after that. They staggered on, wet, cold, uncomfortable, anxious. The doctor was a little ahead of the rest of them, Tony West came second, the others straggled a pace or two behind. Suddenly the doctor stopped and gave a hasty exclamation:

"Good Heavens above!"

They ran up to him clustering around him in their eagerness, and their torches lent their rays to make the thing he gazed at more distinguishable, while another mile away at least, the flames twinkled dimly, and slowly went out one by one as though the finger of dawn had snuffed them like candle-ends.

"What the devil is it?" demanded Tony West, getting to his knees and peering at the spot with narrowed eyes.

"Charred grass. And the end of the footprints!" It was the doctor who spoke—in a queer voice sharp with excitement. "There has been a fire here or something. And—Wynne went no farther, apparently. The ground about it is as marshy as ever, and my own footprint is perfectly clear.... What the dickens do you make of it, eh?"

But there was no answer forthcoming. Every man stood still staring down at this strange thing with wide eyes. For what the doctor said was absolute truth. The footsteps certainly did end here, and in a patch of charred grass as big round as a small table. What did it mean? What could it mean, but one thing? Somehow, somewhere, Wynne had vanished. It was incredible, unbelievable, and yet—there was the evidence of their own eyes. From that spot onward the ground was wholly free of the footprints of any man, woman, or child. No mark disturbed the sodden mud of it. And yet—right here, where the grasses seemed to grow tallest, this patch was burnt off and withered as though with sudden heat.

Tony West straightened himself.

"If I didn't think the whole business was a pack of lies spun into a bigger one by a lot of village gossips, I'd—I'd begin to imagine there was something in the story after all!" he said, getting to his feet and looking at the white faces about him. "It's—it's devilish uncanny, Doctor!"

"It is that." The doctor drew a long breath and stroked his beard agitatedly. "It's so devilish uncanny that one hardly knows what to believe. If this thing had happened in the East one might have looked at it with a more fatalistic eye. But here—in England, no man in his senses could believe such a fool's tale as that which Nigel told us to-night. And yet—Wynne has gone, vanished! Never a trace of him, though we'll search still farther for a while, to make sure!"

They separated at once, radiating out from that sinister spot and searched and searched and searched. Not a footprint was to be found beyond the spot, not a trace of any living thing. There was nothing for it but to go back to Merriton Towers and tell their tale to Nigel.

"Old Wynne has gone, and no mistake," said Tony West, as the men began slowly to retrace their steps across the marshlands, their faces in the pale light of the early morning looking white and drawn with the excitement and strain of the night. "What to make of it all, I don't know. Apparently old Wynne went out to see the Frozen Flames and—the Frozen Flames have swallowed him up, or burnt him up, one or the other."

"And yet I can't hold any credence in the thing, no matter how hard I try!" said the doctor, shaking his head gravely, as they trudged on through the mud and mire. "And if Wynne isn't found—well, there'll be the deuce to pay with the authorities. We'll have to report to the police first thing in the morning."

"Yes, the village constable will take the matter up, and knowing the story, will put entire faith in it, and that's all the help we'll get from him!" supplemented West with a harsh laugh. "I know the sort.... Here's the Towers at last, and if I don't make a mistake, there's the face of old Borkins pressed against the window!"

He ran ahead of the others and took the great stone steps two at a time. But Borkins had opened the door before he reached it. His eyes stared, his mouth sagged open.

"Mr. Wynne, sir? You found 'im?" he asked hoarsely.

"No. No trace whatever, Borkins. Where's your master?"

"Sir Nigel, sir? 'E's asleep, and snorin' like a grampus. This'll be a shock to 'im sir, for sure. Mr. Wynne—gone? 'T ain't possible!"

But Tony had pushed by him and thrown open the smoking-room door. The warm, heated atmosphere came to them comfortingly. He crossed to the table, picked up a decanter and slopped out a peg of whisky. This he drank off neat. After that he felt better. The other men straggled in after him. He faced them with set lips.

"Now," said he, "to tell Nigel."

CHAPTER VIII THE VICTIM

Dacre Wynne had vanished, leaving behind him no trace of mortal remains, and only a patch of charred grass in the middle of the uninhabited Fens to mark the spot. And Nigel Merriton, whose guest the man was, must of necessity be told the fruitlessness of the searchers' self-appointed task. The doctor volunteered to do it.

Tony West accompanied him as far as Nigel's, and then he suddenly recollected that Merriton had locked it the night before. There was nothing for it but to hammer upon the panels, or—pick the lock.

"And he'll be sleeping like a dead man, if I know anything of sleeping draughts," said the doctor, shaking his head. "Got a penknife, West?"

West nodded. He whipped the knife out of his pocket and began methodically to work at the worn lock with all the precision of an experienced burglar. But the action brought no smile to his lips, no little mocking jest to help on the job. There was something grim in the set of West's lips, and in the tension of the doctor's slight figure. Tragedy had stalked unnoticed into the Towers that evening and they had become enmeshed in the folds of its cloak. They felt it in the cold clamminess of the atmosphere, in the quiet peace of the long corridors.

Finally the thing was done. West