The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie's Part 29

Slowly, and with some apprehension, he mounted the stairs, not knowing what to expect, and thinking it possible that he might encounter some further dreadful spectacle.

At the top of the stairs he found himself in a narrow pa.s.sage-way on which three doors opened. He advanced to the first door and tried it.

It yielded easily to his touch, and swung open. He entered and looked about him.

There was nothing suspicious here. It was evidently the sleeping apartment of the two dead people below who would never need it more.

A bed and two chairs const.i.tuted the sole furnis.h.i.+ng. Some cheap articles of feminine apparel hung upon pegs against the wall, together with one or two rusty old coats and a pair of pants that doubtless belonged to the man he had seen below.

"There is nothing hidden here," thought Mr. Shelton, leaving it and entering the next room.

This room was similar to the first one. A bed and several chairs were all it contained. A single article of feminine apparel hung against the wall.

It was a dress of summer blue, and made in a more fas.h.i.+onable style than the one which he had seen in the adjoining room.

Like a flash he remembered that Mrs. Mason had told him, when describing the appearance of the girl she had befriended, that she wore a "morning dress of a light-blue color, and fas.h.i.+onably made."

"Great Heavens!" he thought, "is it possible that the poor creature escaped from this very house? If so, then she was recaptured and brought back, for here hangs the dress that Mrs. Mason described. My G.o.d! what has become of the wearer! Has some fearful fate befallen her?"

Echo only answered him as he sat down trembling with excitement.

He was here in the room where sweet Lily Lawrence had dragged out weary months of captivity, sickness and sorrow; where her pure cheeks had burned at insult and wrong, where she had suffered the pangs of hunger and cold until her weakened frame had almost succ.u.mbed to the grim destroyer, death.

But it was silent and deserted now. The dead ashes strewed the hearth, the empty robe hung against the wall, and the cold October wind sighing past the iron-barred window did not whisper of the tender heart that had ached so drearily within.

"This has been a prison for some poor soul," Mr. Shelton said aloud as he noticed the iron bars that guarded the window.

He went out shuddering as if with cold, and advanced to the next room.

The door was locked, but the key had been left upon the outside.

He turned it hastily and stepped over the threshold, half-expecting to find some poor creature incarcerated within.

But silence and gloom greeted him here also.

The room was bare and dreary as the ones he had quitted. A bed and a chair comprised its furniture, and heavy bars of iron secured the solitary window.

"What a horrible prison house," he exclaimed. "And what dreadful deeds of darkness have perhaps been committed within these old walls."

He went to the window and peered out through the heavy bars at the tangled garden. It was faded and dying now, and the russet leaves of autumn strewed the deserted paths.

"My G.o.d, what was that?" he exclaimed with a violent start.

A strange sound had grated upon his ears--the distinct clank of a heavy chain and the smothered moan of a human voice.

Involuntarily he looked downward and saw a trap-door in the middle of the room.

"Now some new discovery of human misery," thought the detective as he advanced and pushed the sliding door backward.

A dark and narrow stairway was disclosed. He descended it quickly and entered the empty room beyond.

A feeling of disappointment struck him as he entered the deserted, cobwebbed dungeon, but guided by the sound of faint, low moans he advanced across the floor and opened the opposite door to the one by which he had entered.

Here he paused and swept his hand across his brow, as though to dispel a mist that had risen before his shrinking vision.

There before his eyes, extended on her low cot bed, with the horrible strap and chain about her waist fastened to the iron staple in the floor, with her hungry black eyes glaring on him from her skeleton face, lay poor f.a.n.n.y Colville in all her abject wretchedness.

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Mr. Shelton, "horrors upon horrors acc.u.mulate!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Who are you?" asked the poor, wasted creature, looking up into the strange face of the new-comer.

"I am a friend, poor creature--one who will deliver you from your dungeon, and give you liberty," said the detective, advancing into the room.

Joy beamed on the pale, shrunken features of the prisoner. For a moment she could not speak, then she murmured brokenly:

"Thank G.o.d for those words! I am starving and dying here. I have not tasted food for two days!"

Mr. Shelton in his frequent excursions had contracted a habit of carrying a flask of wine and paper of crackers in his pocket for his own occasional refreshment.

He took a silver cup from his pocket, and pouring a small portion of wine into it held it silently to the lips of the poor, famis.h.i.+ng woman.

She drank it thirstily. He then began to dip crackers into the wine and fed her slowly and carefully.

"You feel better now?" he inquired, after she had consumed a generous portion of the food.

"Oh! so much better," said she, fervently, laying her head back on its hard pillow while the hungry, famished look died out of her eyes and a softer light beamed in them. "I thank you very much, sir. I was on the verge of expiring when you came to my relief!"

"Perhaps you feel well enough to tell me your name now," said he, smiling kindly.

"My name is f.a.n.n.y Colville," she answered, feebly.

The detective started.

"Are you any relation of Harold Colville, of New York?" he inquired.

"I am his wife," said poor f.a.n.n.y, simply.

"His wife!" repeated the detective, a gleam of light breaking in on his mind regarding Mr. Colville's visit to this place. "Then why does he keep you chained up here like a dog?" he inquired indignantly.

"He does not know of it," said Mrs. Colville.

"He does not know of it," repeated Mr. Shelton in surprise; "you amaze me, madam. Surely he visited you a few days ago. I saw him leaving the house."