Scarhaven Keep, J. S. Fletcher [best romantic novels to read .TXT] 📗

in his dressing-room, or on the stage. That's my notion."

"I wish I could think it the correct one," replied Copplestone. "But we can soon find out if it is—there's a telephone in the hall. Yet—I'm so sure that you're wrong, that I'm not even going to ring Norcaster up. Mr. Bassett Oliver has—disappeared here!"

"Are you a member of his company?" asked Addie, again looking Copplestone over with speculative glances.

"Not at all! I'm a humble person whose play Mr. Oliver was about to produce next month, in consequence of which I came down to see him, and to find this state of affairs. And—having nothing else to do—I'm now here to help to find him—alive or dead."

"Oh!" said Addie. "So—you're a writer?"

"I understand that you are an actress?" responded Copplestone. "I wonder if I've ever seen you anywhere?"

Addie bowed her head and gave him a sharp glance.

"Evidently not!" she retorted. "Or you wouldn't wonder! As if anybody could forget me, once they'd seen me! I believe you're pulling my leg, though. Do you live in town?"

"I live," replied Copplestone slowly and with affected solemnity, "in chambers in Jermyn Street."

"And do you mean to tell me that you didn't see me last year in The
Clever Lady Hartletop?" she exclaimed.

Copplestone put the tips of his fingers together and his head on one side and regarded her critically.

"What part did you play?" he asked innocently.

"Part? Why, the part, of course!" she retorted. "Goodness! Why, I created it! And played it to crowded houses for nearly two hundred nights, too!"

"Ah!" said Copplestone. "But I'll make a confession to you. I rarely visit the theatre. I never saw Lady Hartletop. I haven't been in a theatre of any sort for two years. So you must forgive me. I congratulate you on your success."

Addie received this tribute with a mollified smile, which changed to a glance of surprised curiosity.

"You never go to the theatre?—and yet you write plays!" she exclaimed. "That's queer, isn't it? But I believe writing people are queer—they look it, anyhow. All the same, you don't look like a writer—what does he look like, Mrs. Wooler? Oh, I know—a sort of nice little officer boy, just washed and tidied up!"

The landlady, who had evidently enjoyed this passage at arms, laughed as she gave Copplestone a significant glance.

"And when did you come down home, Addie?" she asked quietly. "I didn't know you were here again."

"Came down Saturday night," said Addie. "I'm on my way to Edinburgh—business there on Wednesday. So I broke the journey here—just to pay my respects to my worshipful parent."

"I think I heard you say that you knew Mr. Bassett Oliver?" asked
Copplestone. "You've met him?"

"Met him in this country and in America," replied Addie, calmly. "He was on tour over there when I was—three years ago. We were in two or three towns together at the same time—different houses, of course. I never saw much of him in London, though."

"You didn't see anything of him yesterday, here?" suggested Copplestone.

Addie stared and glanced at the landlady.

"Here?" she exclaimed. "Goodness, no! When I'm here of a Sunday, I lie in bed all day, or most of it. Otherwise, I'd have to walk with my parent to the family pew. No—my Sundays are days of rest! You really think this disappearance is serious?"

"Oliver's managers—who know him best, of course—think it most serious," replied Copplestone. "They say that nothing but an accident of a really serious nature would have kept him from his engagements."

"Then that settles it!" said Addie. "He's fallen down the Devil's Spout. Plain as plain can be, that! He's made his way there, been a bit too daring, and slipped over the edge. And whoever falls in there never comes out again!—isn't that it, Mrs. Wooler?"

"That's what they say," answered the landlady.

"But I don't remember any accident at the Devil's Spout in my time."

"Well, there's been one now, anyway—that's flat," remarked Addie. "Poor old Bassett—I'm sorry for him! Well, I'm off. Good-night, Mr. Copplestone—and perhaps you'll so far overcome your repugnance to the theatre as to come and see me in one some day?"

"Supposing I escort you homeward instead—now?" suggested Copplestone.
"That will at least show that I am ready to become your devoted—"

"Admirer, I suppose," said Addie. "I'm afraid he's not quite as innocent as he looks, Mrs. Wooler. Well—you can escort me as far as the gates of the park, then—I daren't take you further, because it's so dark in there that you'd surely lose your way, and then there'd be a second disappearance and all sorts of complications."

She went out of the inn, laughing and chattering, but once outside she suddenly became serious, and she involuntarily laid her hand on Copplestone's arm as they turned down the hillside towards the quay.

"I say!" she said in a low voice. "I wasn't going to ask questions in there, but—what's going to be done about this Oliver affair? Of course you're stopping here to do something. What?"

Copplestone hesitated before answering this direct question. He had not seen anything which would lead him to suppose that Miss Adela Chatfield was a disingenuous and designing young woman, but she was certainly Peeping Peter's daughter, and the old man, having failed to get anything out of Copplestone himself, might possibly have sent her to see what she could accomplish. He replied noncommittally.

"I'm not in a position to do anything," he said. "I'm not a relative—not even a personal friend. I daresay you know that Bassett Oliver was—one's already talking of him in the past tense!—the brother of Rear-Admiral Sir Cresswell Oliver, the famous seaman?"

"I knew he was a man of what they call family, but I didn't know that," she answered. "What of it?"

"Stafford's wired to Sir Cresswell," replied Copplestone. "He'll be down here some time tomorrow, no doubt. And of course he'll take everything into his own hands."

"And he'll do—what?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Copplestone. "Set the police to work, I should think. They'll want to find out where Bassett Oliver went, where he got to, when he turned up to the Keep, saying he'd go and call on the Squire, as he'd met some man of that name in America. By-the-bye, you said you'd been in America. Did you meet anybody of the Squire's name there?"

They were passing along the quay by that time, and in the light of one of its feeble gas-lamps he turned and looked narrowly at his companion. He fancied that he saw her face change in expression at his question; if there was any change, however, it was so quick that it was gone in a second. She shook her head with emphatic decision.

"I?" she exclaimed. "Never! It's a most uncommon name, that. I never heard of anybody called Greyle except at Scarhaven."

"The present Mr. Greyle came from America," said Copplestone.

"I know, of course," she answered. "But I never met any Greyles out there. Bassett Oliver may have done, though. I know he toured in a lot of American towns—I only went to three—New York, Chicago, St. Louis. I suppose," she continued, turning to Copplestone with a suggestion of confidence in her manner, "I suppose you consider it a very damning thing that Bassett Oliver should disappear, after saying what he did to Ewbank."

It was very evident to Copplestone that whether Miss Chatfield had spoken the truth or not when she said that her father had not told her of his visit to the "Admiral's Arms," she was thoroughly conversant with all the facts relating to the Oliver mystery, and he was still doubtful as to whether she was not seeking information.

"Does it matter at all what I think," he answered evasively. "I've no part in this affair—I'm a mere spectator. I don't know how what you refer to might be considered by people who are accustomed to size things up. They might say all that was a mere coincidence."

"But what do you think?" she said with feminine persistence. "Come, now, between ourselves?"

Copplestone laughed. They had come to the edge of the wooded park in which the estate agent's house stood, and at a gate which led into it, he paused.

"Between ourselves, then, I don't think at all—yet," he answered. "I haven't sized anything up. All I should say at present is that if—or as, for I'm sure the fisherman repeated accurately what he heard—as Oliver said he met somebody called Marston Greyle in America, why—I conclude he did. That's all. Now, won't you please let me see you through these dark woods?"

But Addie said her farewell, and left him somewhat abruptly, and he watched her until she had passed out of the circle of light from the lamp which swung over the gate. She passed on into the shadows—and Copplestone, who had already memorized the chief geographical points of his new surroundings, noticed what she probably thought no stranger would notice—that instead of going towards her father's house, she turned up the drive to the Squire's.

CHAPTER VII LEFT ON GUARD

Stafford was back at Scarhaven before breakfast time next morning, bringing with him a roll of copies of the Norcaster Daily Chronicle, one of which he immediately displayed to Copplestone and Mrs. Wooler, who met him at the inn door. He pointed with great pride to certain staring headlines.

"I engineered that!" he exclaimed. "Went round to the newspaper office last night and put them up to everything. Nothing like publicity in these cases. There you are!

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF FAMOUS ACTOR! BASSETT OLIVER MISSING! INTERVIEW WITH MAN WHO SAW HIM LAST!

That's the style, Copplestone!—every human being along this coast'll be reading that by now!"

"So there was no news of him last night?" asked Copplestone.

"Neither last night nor this morning, my boy," replied Stafford. "Of course not! No—he never left here, not he! Now then, let Mrs. Wooler serve us that nice breakfast which I'm sure she has in readiness, and then we're going to plunge into business, hot and strong. There's a couple of detectives coming on by the nine o'clock train, and we're going to do the whole thing thoroughly."

"What about his brother?" inquired Copplestone.

"I wired him last night to his London address, and got a reply first thing this morning," said Stafford. "He's coming along by the 5:15 A.M. from King's Cross—he'll be here before noon. I want to get things to work before he arrives, though. And the first thing to do, of course, is to make sympathetic inquiry, and to search the shore, and the cliffs, and these woods—and that Keep. All that we'll attend to at once."

But on going round to the village police-station they found that Stafford's ideas had already been largely anticipated. The news of the strange gentleman's mysterious disappearance had spread like wild-fire through Scarhaven and the immediate district during the previous evening, and at daybreak parties of fisher-folk had begun a systematic search. These parties kept coming in to report progress all the morning: by noon they had all returned. They had searched the famous rocks, the woods, the park, the Keep, and its adjacent ruins, and the cliffs and shore for some considerable distance north and south of the bay, and there was no result. Not a trace, not a sign of the missing man was to be found anywhere. And when, at one o'clock, Stafford and Copplestone walked up to the little station to meet Sir Cresswell Oliver, it was with the disappointing consciousness that they had no news to give him.

Copplestone, who nourished a natural taste for celebrities of any sort, born of his artistic leanings and tendencies, had looked forward with interest to meeting Sir Cresswell Oliver, who, only a few months previously, had made himself famous by a remarkable feat of seamanship in which great personal bravery and courage had been displayed. He had a vague expectation of seeing a bluff, stalwart, sea-dog type of man; instead, he presently found himself shaking hands with a very quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, who might have been a barrister or a doctor, of pleasant and kindly manners. With him was another gentleman of a similar type, and of about the same age, whom he introduced as the family solicitor, Mr. Petherton. And to these two, in a private sitting-room at the "Admiral's Arms," Stafford, as Bassett Oliver's business representative, and Copplestone, as having remained on the spot since the day before, told all and every detail of what had transpired since it was definitely established that the famous actor was