The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

through from top to bottom, stood in one corner. These few relics of the furnishing and fitting-up of the room were all carefully examined, but nothing of the smallest importance⁠—nothing tending in the most remote degree to clear up the mystery of the Myrtle Room⁠—was discovered.

“Shall we have the other doors opened?” inquired Rosamond when they came out on the landing again.

“I think it will be useless,” replied her husband. “Our only hope of finding out the mystery of the Myrtle Room⁠—if it is as deeply hidden from us as I believe it to be⁠—is by searching for it in that room, and no other. The search, to be effectual, must extend, if we find it necessary, to the pulling up of the floor and wainscots⁠—perhaps even to the dismantling of the walls. We may do that with one room when we know where it is, but we can not, by any process short of pulling the whole side of the house down, do it with the sixteen rooms, through which our present ignorance condemns us to wander without guide or clue. It is hopeless enough to be looking for we know not what; but let us discover, if we can, where the four walls are within which that unpromising search must begin and end. Surely the floor of the landing must be dusty? Are there no footmarks on it, after Mrs. Jazeph’s visit, that might lead us to the right door?”

This suggestion led to a search for footsteps on the dusty floor of the landing, but nothing of the sort could be found. Matting had been laid down over the floor at some former period, and the surface, torn, ragged, and rotten with age, was too uneven in every part to allow the dust to lie smoothly on it. Here and there, where there was a hole through to the boards of the landing, Mr. Frankland’s servant thought he detected marks in the dust which might have been produced by the toe or the heel of a shoe; but these faint and doubtful indications lay yards and yards apart from each other, and to draw any conclusion of the slightest importance from them was simply and plainly impossible. After spending more than an hour in examining the north side of the house, Rosamond was obliged to confess that the servants were right when they predicted, on first opening the door in the hall, that she would discover nothing.

“The letter must go, Lenny,” she said, when they returned to the breakfast-room.

“There is no help for it,” answered her husband. “Send away the postbag, and let us say no more about it.”

The letter was dispatched by that day’s post. In the remote position of Porthgenna, and in the unfinished state of the railroad at that time, two days would elapse before an answer from London could be reasonably hoped for. Feeling that it would be better for Rosamond if this period of suspense was passed out of the house, Mr. Frankland proposed to fill up the time by a little excursion along the coast to some places famous for their scenery, which would be likely to interest his wife, and which she might occupy herself pleasantly in describing on the spot for the benefit of her husband. This suggestion was immediately acted on. The young couple left Porthgenna, and only returned on the evening of the second day.

On the morning of the third day the longed-for letter from the vicar’s man of business lay on the table when Leonard and Rosamond entered the breakfast-room. Shrowl had decided to accept Mr. Frankland’s condition⁠—first, because he held that any man must be out of his senses who refused a five-pound note when it was offered to him; secondly, because he believed that his master was too absolutely dependent on him to turn him away for any cause whatever; thirdly, because, if Mr. Treverton did part with him, he was not sufficiently attached to his place to care at all about losing it. Accordingly the bargain had been struck in five minutes⁠—and there was the copy of the plan, enclosed with the letter of explanation to attest the fact!

Rosamond spread the all-important document out on the table with trembling hands, looked it over eagerly for a few moments, and laid her finger on the square that represented the position of the Myrtle Room.

“Here it is!” she cried. “Oh, Lenny, how my heart beats! One, two, three, four⁠—the fourth door on the first-floor landing is the door of the Myrtle Room!”

She would have called at once for the keys of the north rooms; but her husband insisted on her waiting until she had composed herself a little, and until she had taken some breakfast. In spite of all he could say, the meal was hurried over so rapidly that in ten minutes more his wife’s arm was in his, and she was leading him to the staircase.

The gardener’s prognostication about the weather had been verified: it had turned to heat⁠—heavy, misty, vaporous, dull heat. One white quivering fog-cloud spread thinly over all the heaven, rolled down seaward on the horizon line, and dulled the sharp edges of the distant moorland view. The sunlight shone pale and trembling; the lightest, highest leaves of flowers at open windows were still; the domestic animals lay about sleepily in dark corners. Chance household noises sounded heavy and loud in the languid, airless stillness which the heat seemed to hold over the earth. Down in the servants’ hall, the usual bustle of morning work was suspended. When Rosamond looked in, on her way to the housekeeper’s room to get the keys, the women were fanning themselves, and the men were sitting with their coats off. They were all talking peevishly about the heat, and all agreeing that such a day as that, in the month of June, they had never known and never heard of before.

Rosamond took the keys, declined the housekeeper’s offer to accompany her, and leading her husband along the passages, unlocked the