Part 16 (1/2)

His white hair was wind-tossed and disarranged.

”Bad night,” Dominey remarked.

”It's to save its being a worse one that I'm here, Squire,” the old man replied hoa.r.s.ely. ”I've come to ask you a favour and to beg you to grant it for your own sake. You'll not sleep in the oak room to-night?”

”And why not?” Dominey asked.

”It's next her ladys.h.i.+p's.”

”Well?”

The old man was obviously perturbed, but his master, as though of a purpose, refused to help him. He glanced at Mangan and mumbled to himself.

”Say exactly what you wish to, Middleton,” Dominey invited. ”Mr. Mangan and his father and grandfather have been solicitors to the estate for a great many years. They know all our family history.”

”I can't get rightly into touch with you, Squire, and that's a fact,”

Middleton went on despairingly. ”The shape of you seems larger and your voice harder. I don't seem to be so near to you as I'd wished, to say what's in my heart.”

”I have had a rough time Middleton,” Dominey reminded him. ”No wonder I have changed! Never mind, speak to me just as man to man.”

”It was I who first met you, Squire,” the old man went on, ”when you tottered home that night across the park, with your arm hanging helplessly by your side, and the blood streaming down your face and clothes, and the red light in your eyes--murderous fire, they called it.

I heard her ladys.h.i.+p go into hysterics. I saw her laugh and sob like a maniac, and, G.o.d help us! that's what she's been ever since.”

The two men were silent. Middleton had raised his voice, speaking with fierce excitement. It was obvious that he had only paused for breath. He had more to say.

”I was by your side, Squire,” he went on, ”when her ladys.h.i.+p caught up the knife and ran at you, and, as you well know, it was I, seizing her from behind, that saved a double tragedy that night, and it was I who went for the doctor the next morning, when she'd stolen into your room in the night and missed your throat by a bare inch. I heard her call to you, heard her threat. It was a madwoman's threat, Squire, but her ladys.h.i.+p is a madwoman at this moment, and with a knife in her hand you'll never be safe in this house.”

”We must see,” Dominey said quietly, ”that she is not allowed to get possession of any weapon.”

”Aye! Make sure of that,” Middleton scoffed, ”with Mother Unthank by her side! Her ladys.h.i.+p's mad because of the horror of that night, but Mother Unthank is mad with hate, and there isn't a week pa.s.ses,” the old man went on, his voice dropping lower and his eyes burning, ”that Roger Unthank's spirit don't come and howl for your blood beneath their window. If you stay here this night, Squire, come over and sleep in the little room they've got ready for you on the other side of the house.”

Mr. Mangan had lost his smooth, after-dinner appearance. His face was rumpled, and his coffee was growing cold. This was a very different thing from the vague letters and rumours which had reached him from time to time and which he had put out of his mind with all the contempt of the materialist.

”It is very good of you to warn me, Middleton,” Dominey said, ”but I can lock my door, can I not?”

”Lock the door of the oak room!” was the scornful reply. ”And what good would that do? You know well enough that the wall's double on three sides, and there are more secret entrances than even I know of. The oak room's not for you this night, Squire. It's hoping to get you there that's keeping them quiet.”

”Tell us what you mean, Middleton,” the lawyer asked, with ill-a.s.sumed indifference, ”when you spoke of the howling of Roger Unthank's spirit?”

The old man turned patiently around.

”Just that, sir,” he replied. ”It's round the house most weeks. Except for me odd nights, and Mrs. Unthank, there's been scarcely a servant would sleep in the Hall for years. Some of the maids they do come up from the village, but back they go before nightfall, and until morning there isn't a living soul would cross the path--no, not for a hundred pounds.”

”A howl, you call it?” Mr. Mangan observed.

”That's mostly like a dog that's hurt itself,” Middleton explained equably, ”like a dog, that is, with a touch of human in its throat, as we've all heard in our time, sir. You'll hear it yourself, sir, maybe to-night or to-morrow night.”

”You've heard it then, Middleton?” his master asked.