The Mandarin's Fan Part 38

"Oh," cried Olivia in disgust, "go away you miserable creature, and think of the hereafter."

Miss Pewsey gave a shrill laugh. "You can't help me, and your husband can't help me, so I'll go. But when I come back here, it shall be as mistress. I hate you Olivia--I have always hated you--I--I--oh you--"

she could utter no more, but gasping, shook her fist and ran out of the window and down the avenue with an activity surprising in a women of her years.

After dinner and while they were seated in the library, Olivia told Rupert of Miss Pewsey's visit and accusation. He declined to believe the tale. "If Burgh was guilty he wouldn't have brought an accusation against Forge," he said, "as the doctor, if this is true, knows the truth. And Forge, if innocent, would not have cleared--"

While Ainsleigh was thus explaining, the door was burst open and Mrs.

Petley, white as chalk, rushed in. "The ghost--the ghost," said she dropping into a chair, "the monk--in the Abbey."

Anxious to learn if there was any truth in these frequent apparitions reported by Mrs. Petley, Rupert left the swooning woman to the care of his wife and departed hastily from the room. Calling old Petley, he went out of the front door across the lawn and into the cloisters. Petley, hobbled almost on his heels with a lantern. The young man stopped at the entrance to the cloisters, and listened. It was raining hard and the ground was sopping wet. But beyond the drip of the rain, and the sighing of the trees, no sound could be heard. s.n.a.t.c.hing the lantern from Petley, Rupert advanced boldly into the open, and swung the light to and fro and round about. He could see no ghost, nor any dark figure suggestive of Abbot Raoul.

"Try the black square," piped the feeble voice of Petley, behind.

With a shrug Rupert did so. He thought that the housekeeper was mistaken as usual, and that the ghost was the outcome of her too vivid imagination. Walking deliberately to the black square where Abbot Raoul had been burnt three hundred years before, he swung the light over its bare surface. In the centre he saw something sparkle, and stooped. Then he rose with a cry. It was a fan. Rupert picked it up, opened it, and looked at it in the lantern light. There were the four beads and half a bead and the green jade leaves. The very fan itself.

CHAPTER XIX

A VISITOR

How came the fan there--and on the accursed square of ground where no gra.s.s would grow? Rupert was not superst.i.tious, yet his heart gave a bound, and for the moment he felt sick. This fan was the cause of much trouble in the past, it had cost one woman her life, and it might yet claim another victim. With the fan in his hand, and the yellow light of the guttering candle in the lantern gleaming on its beauty, he stood stupidly staring, unheeding the feeble piping of Petley's voice, as he peered in at the ruined archway.

"What's the matter, Master Rupert?" questioned the old butler with a s.h.i.+ver, "have you seen _It_?"

"No," said Rupert at length, and he hardly knew his own voice so heavy and thick it was, "there's nothing to be seen."

A cry came from the old man. "Don't stand on that accursed ground, Master Rupert," he said, almost whimpering, "and to-night, of all times."

"Why to-night," said Rupert, retreating back to the arch.

"Any night," s.h.i.+vered Petley putting his hand on his young master's arm and drawing him out of the cloisters, "it's not a good place for an Ainsleigh to be in at night. The Abbot--"

"John, I don't believe in the Abbot."

"But Anne saw him--or It. She's not the one to tell a lie."

"Mrs. Petley is deceived in some way." Rupert considered a moment, and thrust the fan into his pocket. In the darkness, and because he turned aside the lantern light, old Petley had not seen that anything had been picked up. "I'm going to search round," said Rupert.

The butler gave a long wail as Ainsleigh broke from his grasp. "No! no!"

he cried, lifting his long hands, "not at night."

But Rupert, now quite himself, did not heed the superst.i.tious cry. He disbelieved in ghosts more than ever. Some flesh and blood person had brought the fan, and recollecting Burgh's story, and what Olivia had reported of Miss Pewsey's talk that afternoon, he quite expected to find Dr. Forge lurking in the cloisters. He would search for him, and when face to face, he would demand an explanation. So Rupert swiftly and lightly, walked round, holding the light high and low in the hope of discovering some crouching form. And all the time Petley waited, trembling at the door.

The rain fell softly and there was a gentle wind swinging the heavy boughs of the pines, so that a murmurous sound echoed through the cloisters like the breaking of league-long waves on a pebbly beach. For at least half an hour Rupert searched: but he could see no one: he could not even find the impression of feet, sodden as was the ground. After looking everywhere within the cloister, and in the Abbey itself, he brushed past the old butler and walked down the avenue. Here also, he was at fault as he could see no one. The gates were closed: but there was a light in the small house near at hand. Ainsleigh knocked at the door, and shortly old Payne, holding a candle, above his head, appeared, expressing surprise.

"Has anyone entered the gates to-night?" asked his master.

"No sir. I closed them at five as usual. No one has come in."

There were no signs of the gates having been climbed, and the wall which ran round the estate was so high and the top was p.r.i.c.ked with such cruel spikes, that no one could possibly have entered that way. Old Payne insisted that no one had entered: he had heard no voices, no footsteps, and seemed much perplexed by the insistence of his young master. At length Rupert desisted from making inquiries, being perfectly a.s.sured that he would learn nothing. He returned up the avenue slowly to the mansion, wondering how it came about, that Forge had entered the ground and left the fan on the very spot where Abbot Raoul had been burnt.

Mrs. Petley had recovered from her swoon and, with her husband, had retreated to the kitchen. So, Rupert learned from Olivia, and he then gave her a description of his finding of the fan. She was very amazed and curious. "Show it to me," she said.

"Not just now, dear," replied Rupert walking to the door. "I must ask Mrs. Petley first to explain what she saw."

"She declares it was Abbot Raoul."

"Pooh. Forge masquerading as the monk I expect. Though why he should come here and bring this infernal fan I cannot understand. What is the time, Olivia?"

"Nine o'clock," she replied, "we had dinner early."

"Yes. Well, I'll see Mrs. Petley. You need not say anything about the fan, and as old John didn't see me pick it up, there will be no difficulty with him."

"Why should there be any difficulty with him?" asked Mrs. Ainsleigh.

"Your aunt was killed for the sake of the fan, and the person who killed her must have been within these grounds to-night. I want to keep the matter quiet, until I see Rodgers to-morrow. Then I'll explain all, and place the fan in his hands."

"Then you think Dr. Forge has been here?"

"Yes--or Clarence Burgh. But, as they have left Marport, I don't see what they have to gain by remaining in a place fraught with so much danger to both."

"They can't both be guilty, Rupert."

"No. But Burgh declares that Forge strangled your aunt, and Miss Pewsey lays the blame on her nephew. But I don't believe either one of them. I shouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the a.s.sa.s.sin is Major Tidman after all. He wanted the fan badly, so as to get the money."

"But you were with him on the beach, between eleven and twelve."

"I was, and the evidence of Dr. Forge went to show that Miss Wharf was killed between those hours. But suppose, Olivia," Rupert sank his voice and drew nearer. "Suppose Forge knew from the condition of the body that your aunt had been killed _before_ eleven, and had procured the fan from Tidman by threatening to say so, in which case the Major could not have proved an alibi."

"It might be so," replied Mrs. Ainsleigh, "but then the body would have been found earlier."

"No. There was not a single person, so far as I know, who went down those steps. Tung-yu certainly did,--but that was after the crime was committed, and we know he did not carry the fan with him. It is a very strange case. Perhaps after all, Tidman had already killed the woman when he joined me on the beach to smoke."

"Oh Rupert, how horrid. Was he disturbed?"

"He certainly seemed rather alarmed but I put that down to the circ.u.mstances. He never shook off his fear of that adventure he had in Canton, and of course the mere presence of Chinamen would make him uneasy. But he kept his own council. However, we can talk of this later.

I must see Mrs. Petley," and Rupert disappeared.

The housekeeper stuck to her story. She had gone into the cloisters to gather mushrooms which grew therein, and had the lantern with her. While stooping at the archway to see what she could pick she heard, even through the moaning of the wind the swish of a long garment. The sound brought her to her feet, and--as she phrased it--with her heart in her mouth. The place was uncanny and she had seen the Abbot before. "But never so plain--oh never so plain," wailed Mrs. Petley, throwing her ap.r.o.n over her white hair and rocking. "I held the light over my head and dropped it with a screech, for, there, not a yard away, Master Rupert, I saw it, with a long gown and a hood over its wicked white face--"

"Did you see the face?"

"I did, just as I dropped the lantern. White and wicked and evil. I dropped on my knees and said a prayer with closed eyes and then it went.

I took the lantern and ran for the house for dear life, till I burst in on you and the mistress. Oh, Master Rupert dear, what did you see?"

"Nothing! And I believe, Mrs. Petley, you beheld some rascal masquerading."