Chapter Sixteen. The Story of Mr Thomas Hayes.

By half-past four we had covered the eleven miles that lay between the old-world village of Sibberton and that point beyond Brigstock on the Oundle road which skirts that dense wood called Cherry Lap.

Both of us were well-mounted, the doctor on his bay hunter, while I rode my own cob, and our pace had all along been a pretty hard one. Being both followers of hounds we knew all the bridle-roads across Geddington Chase, and over the rich pastures between them and the road at Cat’s Head. Beyond Brigstock, however, we never hunted, for at that point our country joined that of the Fitzwilliam Hunt. Therefore, beyond Cherry Lap the neighbourhood was unfamiliar to both of us.

We hacked along on the grass by the side of the broad highway for a couple of miles or so, but the doctor failed to recognise the field by which he had turned off on the previous night. By-roads are deceptive in the moonlight.

“The gate was open when I passed through,” he remarked. “And if it’s closed now it’ll be difficult to find it again. The country is so level here, and all the fields are so much alike. I recollect at the time looking around for some landmark and finding nothing until I got to the top end of the field, over the brow of the hill.”

“We’ll go on slowly,” I said. “You’ll recognise it presently.”

We passed half a dozen fields with rough cart-roads running through each of them. Indeed, after harvest each field generally bears marks of carts in its gateway. In the darkness my companion had not been able to see what had been grown, except that the crop had been cut and carried.

For another couple of miles we rode forward, the doctor examining every field but failing to recognise the gateway into which he had turned, until at length we came to the junction of the road from Weldon, when he pulled up, saying—

“I didn’t come as far as this. We’d better turn back.”

This we did, slowly retracing our way in the sunset, the doctor now and then expressing disgust at his own failure to recognise the path.

Presently we encountered an old labourer plodding home from work with bag and scythe across his shoulder, and pulling up, the doctor asked, pointing over the hill—

“Which is the way to the farm across there?”

“What farm?” asked the man blankly, in his broad Northamptonshire dialect.

“I don’t know the name, but there’s a road goes in across one of these fields.”

“Oh! you mean Hayes’s, sir! Why, there’s a way across that there next field. ’Bout ’arf a mile oop.”

“Who lives there?” I asked.

“Why, ole Tom Hayes an’ his missus.”

“Anybody else?”

“Not as I knows of. Bill used to live with the ole man, but ’e’s gone away this twelvemonth. Ole Tom don’t make much of a thing out o’ the farm nowadays, for ’e’s nearly blind.”

We thanked him, and rode eagerly onward, Pink opening the gate with his hunting-crop. Up the hill we cantered, skirting a broad stretch of pasture land and presently coming into sight of a small old redbrick house with tall square chimneys and quaint gable ends, while at a little distance were several barns and cow-houses.

Pink recognised the place in an instant, and we resolved that while I dismounted, tied my horse to a tree and walked on to the house, he should approach boldly and inquire after his patient of the previous night.

I had found a convenient tree and was walking in the direction of the farm when I saw a decrepit blear-eyed old man leaning on a stick, emerge from the door and hold a conversation with Pink, who had not dismounted.

A moment later my friend beckoned to me, and as I hurried forward he cried dismayed—“They’ve gone. We’re too late.”

“Gone!” I cried in disappointment, turning to the old farmer for explanation.

“Yes, sir,” the old fellow answered. “I’ve just been telling this ’ere gentleman. They were a funny lot, an’ I was glad to get rid of ’em out o’ my house.”

“Tell us all about them,” exclaimed Pink dismounting, tying his horse to a ring in the wall, and entering the house with us. It was a poor, neglected, old-fashioned place, not over-clean, for it appeared that both Hayes and his wife were very infirm and kept no woman-servant.

“Well, gentlemen, it happened just like this,” explained the decrepit old fellow, when we were in his stone-floored living room, with its great open hearth and big chimney corner. “One evening, back in last month, a gentleman called here. He’d walked a long way, and was very tired, so the missus, she gives ’im a mug o’ milk. He would insist on me ’avin a shillin’ for it, and then ’e sat here smoking ’is cigar—an’ a good un it wor. After we’d been talking some time and he got to know we were livin’ alone ’e asked whether we wouldn’t care to let four of our rooms to some friends of ’is up in London, who wanted to come and stay in a farm-’ouse for a month. What people wanted to come and stay in this ’ere place in preference to their own ’omes I couldn’t quite understand. Still, as ’e offered us five poun’ a week, I an’ the missus agreed. ’E stayed with us that night, ’ad a bit o’ supper, and went to bed. Next morning ’e went away, and in the afternoon ’e came back with one of his friends, a young man who was called Ben, while the older man they called Dick.”

“Dick what?” I inquired breathlessly.

“I don’t know. I never ’eered his other name.” Was it possible that the stranger who had walked so far was none other than Richard Keene? I inquired what day of August he had arrived.

“It wor the night of the sixteenth,” was old Hayes’s reply.

The very night of the tragedy in Sibberton Park! I asked him to describe the man known as Dick, but his description was somewhat hazy on account of his defective sight. Having, however, no doubt that the man who had arranged for apartments for the others was really the mysterious wayfarer, I allowed him to proceed with his highly-interesting narrative:

“The two stayed ’ere about a week, but ’ardly went out. I’d got some old fishin’ tackle, so they spent their time mostly down at the river yonder. They were very pleasant gentlemen, both on ’em, and at the end o’ the week they gave me a five-poun’ note. Then they went away sayin’ that their friends were comin’ soon to occupy the rooms. At the end o’ the next week there arrived, without any notice, a young lady—the one you saw last night, Doctor—the big man with a beard, named Logan, two other younger men, and an old woman-servant. The two men were foreigners, as well as the woman-servant, but Logan seemed to be head of the household, and the young lady was ’is daughter. At least ’e said so, but I don’t think they were related at all. Well, from the very first ’our they were in the ’ouse they puzzled me: Logan took me aside, and explained that he and his friends wanted perfect quiet, and they didn’t want a lot o’ gossipin’ about what they did, and where they went. He told me to open my mouth to nobody, and if he found I kept my own counsel he’d make me a present o’ an extra five poun’. They seemed to ’ave plenty o’ money,” remarked old Hayes in parenthesis:

“So it seems,” I observed. “Well, and what then?”

“Well, they occupied the four upstairs rooms, the two younger men occupying one room. They were thin-faced, dark-eyed fellows, whom I never liked at all, they seemed so sly and cunnin’, always whispering to themselves in their own language. If anybody chanced to come up ’ere I saw how alarmed they all were. That’s what first aroused my suspicions.”

“Why didn’t you speak to the constable at Brigstock?”

“And lose my five poun’? Not likely! They did me no harm, even if they were forriners. Well,” he went on, “they all five of ’em remained ’ere, and like the men Dick and Ben, hardly ever went out in the day-time. The servant, an ugly old woman, did their cookin’ an’ looked after ’em while the three men amused themselves very often by playin’ cards for ’ours and readin’ their forrin’ papers. I’ve kept some of ’em—’ere they are,” and he took from a chair several well-thumbed newspapers, which I saw were the Italian Avanti, and other Continental journals of advanced socialistic policy.

“They had no letters?”

“Only one. The man Logan received it about four days ago.”

“But the young lady. Was she English?” I asked.

“I suppose so. But she would talk with the forriners just like one o’ themselves. I rather liked ’er. She was very kind to my missus, and seemed quite a lady, much more refined than that big bullyin’ fellow who said he was her father.”

“They gambled, you said, merely to kill time—or for money?” inquired Pink.

“I never saw ’em play for money. They used to play a forrin’ game and I could never make anythin’ out of it. After some little time the young lady went back to London for a day or two. While she was absent the man Dick called. He was differently dressed and took Logan out for a walk in the wood, in order to talk, I suppose. Logan came back alone, and I saw from his face that ’e was in a vile temper, so I suppose the two ’ad quarrelled. Howsomever, next day the young lady, who was known as Miss Alice, rejoined her friends, and that night they sat talkin’ together till very late. I listened at the door, and ’eard ’em one by one a-arguin’, it seemed, in their forrin language. It was just as though they were ’olding a council about something, but the tone of their voices showed that something alarmin’ had happened. What it was, of course, I didn’t know. But when I went up, I told my old woman that there was something unusual in the wind. Nothin’ happened, however, till last night.”

“And what happened last night?” I asked quickly.

“Well, as you’ll remember, it was a beautiful evening, and after supper they all four went out for a walk, leaving the servant at home with us. When they’d been gone nearly two hours, I saw Logan return in the moonlight across the grass-field from the wood, smoking ’is pipe leisurely. When he saw me sittin’ in the shadow outside the door, ’e said ’e’d missed the others and been wandering about the wood in the dark for more’n ’arf a hour. This struck me as rather peculiar, but I went inside with ’im, and presently went up to bed. I ’adn’t been there long afore I ’eard a great scufflin’ and whisperin’, and on lookin’ out o’ my door saw the two forriners a carryin’ Miss Alice upstairs to her room! I inquired what was the matter, but they said she’d only fainted and ’ud be better presently. So I went back to bed. Logan, howsomever, seems to ’ave gone out to old Jim Pywell’s cottage down the hill and sent him for a doctor, telling ’im not to get one close at hand, but from a distance. Pywell called you, sir,” he added turning to Pink, “and the first time I knew that anythin’ was wrong was after you’d gone and the poor thing began to cry out and say that an attempt had been made to kill ’er. Both me and my ole woman are a bit ’ard o’ hearin’, an’ they brought you very quietly up the stairs that I’d no idea you were in the ’ouse.”

“And what occurred afterwards?” Pink inquired eagerly.

“They were evidently frightened lest what the poor girl had said in ’er ravings might arouse your curiosity a bit too much, for they were early astir this mornin’, and by eleven they paid me and all of ’em left, walkin’ by separate ways over to Oundle station, Jim Pywell a-takin’ in their trunks on a wagon.”

“But the young lady?” the doctor exclaimed. “Was she well enough to walk?”

“Yes. She was bandaged, of course, but she ’ad one o’ them big feather ruffles that ’id her throat an’ the lower part of ’er face. When she said ‘good-bye’ to me she looked like a corpse—poor thing.”

“Then she said nothing about Logan’s attack upon her?” I asked. “She appeared anxious to get away with the others?”

“Very,” replied the old farmer. “She seemed to fear that she had said somethin’ which would reveal what they were all tryin’ to keep secret.”

“Now tell me, Mr Hayes,” I said, facing him very seriously. “Tell me one thing. Have you ever heard any of your mysterious visitors mention the name of Lejeune?”

The old fellow leaned heavily on his stick, scratched his white head and thought hard a moment.

“Ler—june,—Ler—june,” he repeated. “Why, I believe that’s the name by which the gentleman called Dick addressed the young lady when he came to see Mister Logan the other day! I recollect quite distinctly now. I’ve been a-tryin’ an’ a-tryin’ to remember it—an’ couldn’t. Yes. It wor Ler—june—I’m certain. Do you happen to know her, sir?”