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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
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RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
DERRY BAINES and Grace Anson stood together in the centre of the grass-grown gravel ring in front of Gorse Hall, looking at at the big, beautiful, but dilapidated old house in front of them.
"Good heavens, Grace!" said Derry plaintively. "You don't mean to tell me you are going to live in this huge barn of a place!"
Grace made a little impatient movement.
"We have to, Derry. The property is entailed, so we can't sell, and as for letting it—who is going to take a house in that condition?"
"And you can't repair it?" said Derry.
"We can't begin to afford to, Derry. And even if we could—"
She paused.
"Even then we might not be able to let. The house is so big and so old-fashioned, and so far from anywhere, and—"
"And there's the ghost," suggested Derry, quietly.
Grace gave him a quick glance.
"The ghost—what do you know about the ghost, Derry?"
"Only what Coll has told me, dear."
"Coll had no business to mention it, even to you, Derry."
Derry had a hand softly on her arm. Grace was as tall as he, but then Derry Baines could only boast of 5ft. 6in. in his neat brown boots.
"Don't be cross, dear. I'm interested in ghosts."
"I don't believe in them," declared Grace, but there was no conviction in her tone.
"What's this one supposed to be?" asked Derry. "A green lady or a grey friar!"
"No. It's mad Annesley," replied Grace, reluctantly. "He was my great-great grandfather, I believe. He became a miser, and is supposed to have hidden money somewhere about the place, then lost his memory, and been unable to find it."
"Hard luck!" said Derry sympathetically. "So he trots about hunting for it?"
"That is what they say. But I believe it's all nonsense myself."
"Sounds as if it might be. Misers don't seem to quite fit in with the Anson family."
Grace laughed ruefully.
"I'm afraid they don't, Derry—more's the pity. If Uncle Richard had only been a little more careful we shouldn't be so dreadfully hard-up now."
"I suppose he blued everything," said Derry sympathetically.
"Oh, he was not exactly extravagant. It was his mania for buying jewels that proved the last straw. He ended by selling the whole of the Gorse Hall land to buy the Lygatt emeralds."
Derry gave a low whistle.
"The Lygatt emeralds! Why, they must have been worth a fortune. Didn't he leave them to your father?"
"He left everything to dad," Grace answered. "But when the case came to be examined after his death the emeralds had disappeared."
Derry whistled again.
"So that was it?" He paused a moment. "I say, Grace, I wonder what he did with them."
"Sold them. I suppose, to pay some of his debts."
"He might have hidden them," suggested Derry, shrewdly. "I say, Grace, did it ever occur to you that he might have got a touch of your great-grandfather's mania in his old age, and hidden the stones away somewhere about the place?"
Grace shook her head.
"I don't think it is likely, Derry, dear. Uncle Richard was not like that. It is much more probable that someone robbed him when he was old."
"Who could have robbed him—servants?"
"They might. He was very helpless during the last two or three years."
"Well, I believe he hid them," declared Derry stoutly. "Anyhow, I mean to have a look. A few of those emeralds would be jolly useful to you and me just now."
"They would, Derry," said Grace earnestly. "They would mean everything."
Derry clipped his arm through hers.
"Come on," he said. "Let's start this search at once."
Grace smiled, but shook her head.
"It is too late now, Derry. We must get back. But when we have moved in, then you shall come and stay with us and search as much as you please."
Derry glanced at his watch.
"All right, darling: we'll do as you say. But when I do come I'll find those emeralds You see if I don't."
THE dancing flames of a great log fire flung flickering shadows across the panelled walls of the big hall, and made Grace Anson's hair like burnished gold.
Grace, seated by the fire doing nothing in particular, heard a door open and looked round to see the tall figure of her brother, Collingwood.
"I say, Grace," he began as he came up, "this is beyond a joke. Do you know what I found that lad of yours doing?"
Grace stiffened.
"Do you mean Derry, Coll?"
"Of course I mean Derry."
"Then please call him so."
Collingwood laughed.
"Sorry, Grace. Didn't mean to put your back up. But really it's beyond a joke when a chap takes to digging trenches in your wine cellar. Next thing you know he'll be shifting the floors with dynamite."
"He is looking for the emeralds, Coll," protested Grace.
There was a touch of contempt in Coll's great laugh.
"My dear, he has as much chance of finding them as I have of seeing great-granfer's ghost."
Grace gave a little shiver.
"Don't, Coll," she said.
Collingwood's scornful laugh echoed through the hall.
"What, has Derry been infecting you with his belief in spooks?"
Grace sprang up.
"Coll, I won't have you sneering at Derry."
"All right, dear. Though what you can see in a little whipper-snapper like that—"
"Be quiet!" whispered Grace. " Here he is!"
The door at the inner end of the hall opened again, and Derry appeared, grime all over, but entirely cheerful.
"Look what I've found, Grace!" he said, exhibiting a small disc of blackened metal.
"Looks like a bad halfpenny," grinned Collingwood.
"It's a Spade Guinea," retorted Derry.
"The deuce it is!" said Collingwood, with sudden interest. "Where did you get it?"
"Between the bricks, in the cellar."
"Better give it me to pay for the damage you've done," chuckled the big man. "But sit down, Derry, and I'll get you a whisky and soda. You look as if you needed it."
"Thanks, Coll. I could do with a drink," said Derry, as he dropped into a chair.
"I'll bet this belonged to your miser ancestor, Grace," he said, examining the coin with interest. "One he's been looking for ever since."
"I wish you wouldn't, Derry," said Grace.
"What's the matter, darling?"
"I don't know, Derry. I used to laugh at such things, but—but since we came here—"
"Yes," said Derry, quietly.
"You will think I am silly, Derry, dear, but I have had the oddest feeling that someone was watching me. I can't explain it, but I have had the feeling off and on for the past two days.
"I suppose it's just nerves," she went on, trying to smile.
Derry sat up straight.
"I don't think so at all, dearest. Fact is, I've had the same feeling myself; what's more—"
A deep sigh, a sound that was almost a groan, stirred the still air of the great, quiet room.
Grace went white as paper.
"Oh, what is that?" she gasped, in a strangled voice.
Derry did not answer. He was dashing across the hall.
At that moment in came Collingwood Anson with a tall glass in his hand. He pulled up short. Then he saw Grace lying back in her chair, pale as death and almost fainting.
"What's up?" he demanded. "Derry, you idiot, what have you done to Grace?"
Derry was fossicking frantically behind a huge carved oaken screen at the far end of the hall.
"Quick, Coll!" he cried. "Come and help. It's the ghost."
"Ghost—confound you!" cried Collingwood, suddenly losing his temper. "You infernal young fool! Can't you see you've frightened Grace out of her wits?"
Grace pulled herself together.
"He didn't, Coll. It was not he. There was a dreadful groan. We both heard it!"
"Stuff and nonsense!" Collingwood was really angry. "Derry's got ghosts on the brain, and and he has infected you with his foolish panic. If he cannot behave like a reasonable being the sooner he leaves Gorse Hall the better."
Grace rose to her feet. She was deadly pale, but her grey eyes flashed as she faced her brother.
"If he leaves, I leave, too," she cried.
Derry stepped in between the brother and sister.
"Collingwood, you did not mean what you said?" he asked quietly.
But Collingwood was too angry to be pacified.
"Certainly I meant it! A man who sees ghosts in every corner is not the sort I should choose for a brother-in-law."
With that he swung round and marched out of the hall.
"He is horrid, wicked, hateful!" exclaimed Grace, her eyes full of tears.
Derry slipped an arm round her waist.
"He is only angry, dearest. After I have been gone a day or two he will come round. You see if he doesn't."
"You are not going, Derry!"
"I must, dearest. This is your brother's house, remember."
"Then if you leave I'll go, too."
"No, dearest, no. It would only mean a complete break." Derry's usually chaffing voice had become suddenly serious.
Grace pushed his arm aside.
"You, too, Derry! Are you backing up Collingwood?"
"No, Grace—no. All I want is to keep the peace, he protested.
Grace had the quick Anson temper. Two spots of colour flamed in her pale cheeks.
"If that is the way in which you want to keep it, you cannot keep me, too," she flung at him.
"Grace, be reasonable," he begged.
But she would not hear him. She pushed past and ran out of the room.
Derry stared moodily after her.
"Curse the ghost!" he said slowly. "Oh, curse everything."
He dropped into a chair and, propping his chin on his hands. stared moodily into the fire.
THE tall grandfather clock in the corner gave a preliminary burr and began to strike. Derry roused with a shiver. It was midnight. The fire had gone out and the great dim room had grown very cold. He got up, lit a candle, turned out the lamp, and went slowly upstairs.
Arrived in his room, he dragged out his portmanteau, and with a sigh set himself to pack.
He had almost finished before he found that he had left his writing-case in the hall. He decided to fetch it. There would not be much time in the morning.
His bedroom candle had burnt down almost to the socket, so, instead, he took the little electric torch which lay on his dressing table and switched this on as he went out. The light was so tiny it seemed only to intensify the great space of gloom that was the hall.
It was a very still night, and the silence struck him as almost uncanny. His slippered feet did nothing to break it as he passed quickly down the broad, narrow staircase.
Half way down he stopped short, at the same moment switching off his light.
A groan, the self-same sound which he had heard some hours previously, made his very skin tingle.
He stood perfectly still. Indeed, the shock had been so great he could hardly breathe for the moment.
The silence that followed could almost be felt. But Derry had a sort of conviction that if he could only stick it out he would hear something.
He was right. At the end of what seemed an hour but was probably only three or four minutes, a sound came.
A board creaked.
The effect upon Derry was electrical. Ghosts are not ponderable, and so far as material dangers went Derry had pluck and to spare.
Again a creak. Derry began to steal forward. He reached the bottom of the stairs and moved softly across the hall. In the velvet darkness his outstretched hand touched a table, and he knew just where he was.
He was facing the tall carved oak screen, the same from behind which he had fancied that the first groan had come.
Silence once more, and Derry began to have misgivings.
But patience had its reward. This time it was a soft, gentle, but regular sound; the steady bite of a drill through wood.
Derry's pulses tingled as he realized that the sound did actually come from behind the screen. What was more he was now near enough to hear a man's deep breathing.
He peeped round the edge of the screen.
The first thing he saw was two tiny rays of light which shone through a pair of small circular holes in the panelling. As he watched the point of an augur suddenly appeared through the dry old oak and a third hole gaped close to the other two.
Derry watched breathlessly while the unseen hands behind the wall cut hole after hole. They worked in a circle until at last a disc of wood some four inches across came bodily away.
Then a hand appeared. A large grimy fist with short square fingers and broken nails. Derry thrilled all over as the stubby fingers groped about the wall along the junction of the panel.
Presently they pressed against the carved beading, and in a trice the whole panel slipped down disclosing a dark opening and, framed in it, the head and shoulders of the owner of the hands.
Not a pleasant-looking person. With his broad shoulders, short neck enveloped in a dirty muffler, his low forehead, small cunning eyes, blunt nose and close cropped hair, he might very well have stood as a model for the original Bill Sykes.
In his hand he grasped an electric torch of a much more powerful type than Derry's, and this he held up so that its light fell full on the screen, behind which Derry had beaten a rapid retreat.
Derry heard the fellow give a grunt of satisfaction. Then there was a scrambling sound.
Derry's heart beat furiously. His first impulse was to dash forward and catch the man at a disadvantage as he was in the act of climbing out of his hidden retreat. But this impulse he checked. He had already realized that the nocturnal visitor must have some definite object in view, and this it was necessary to discover before attempting to curb his activities.
There was a silence lasting perhaps half a minute. Then Mr. Sykes, convinced apparently that the household was asleep, began to creep across the hall in the direction of the fire-place.
Derry, well hidden, watched him eagerly.
The fire-place, wide and deep and provided with great fire-dogs, was built out into the hall.
The bull-necked man reached it, and stepped gingerly into the hearth, stooping as he did so. When he straightened himself again, only half of his squat body was visible. The rest was hidden by the brick arch over the hearth.
Derry's interest increased to an almost painful pitch. Leaving his hiding place, he came swiftly across the hall. There was a great old leather arm-chair at one side, and he dropped behind it. He could not see what the man was doing, but a scraping sound made it pretty clear that he was removing a brick somewhere at the back of the chimney.
It seemed an age before the scraping ceased, and suddenly the burglar stooped. Little puffs of gray ash rose under his feet as he stepped backwards out of the grate.
Derry saw that he was holding in his left hand a small parcel rolled up in grimy wash-leather. He watched him lay it on the hearth-rug, squat down, and deliberately proceed to open it.
Motionless as the solid old chair behind which he was crouching, Derry watched with absorbed attention.
The burglar opened out the parcel and turned the light of his electric torch full upon its contents.
"The emeralds!" Derry muttered. "The Lygatt emeralds!"
He must have made some sound, for all of a sudden the burglar stiffened. Perry saw that there was not a moment to lose.
He sprang.
If small, Derry was no weakling, and big as his opponent was, he caught him unawares and bowled him over. The man fell backwards right into the grate, Derry on top of him. In the scuffle the burglar's lamp flew out of his hand, and striking the hearthstone was smashed.
Like a wise man Perry went for the big fellow's throat, and got a hold. But here his lack of weight told against him.
Up shot the burglar's great arms and his fingers closed around Derry's wrists with a grip that almost paralyzed his muscles.
"Help!" shouted Derry at the top of his voice.
"Leave go, or I'll finish you," growled the big fellow savagely. "Leave go, or s'welp me I'll swing for you."
"Help, Coll! Help! Burglars!" yelled Derry undauntedly.
The burglar put out all his strength. He tore himself free from Derry's grip, and rolling sideways, scrambled to his feet.
"What's up? Where are you?" came Collingwood's great roaring voice from the stairs, and at the same time the lamp he carried sent a flash through the darkness.
By its light Derry saw the burglar stoop swiftly for the jewels which still lay upon the floor.
"Drop that!" he cried, and once more rushed at his big opponent.
There was a gleam of blued metal; a deafening bang. Then Derry spun round and collapsed limply on the hearth-rug.
"COLL, some water. Quickly!"
A sponge was dabbed softly against his forehead.
He's bleeding dreadfully, Coll," came Grace's voice again.
"It's all right, dear. It's only a flesh wound," replied Collingwood. "Honestly it's nothing to be frightened about. It wasn't the bullet at all, but just a piece of metal which cut him across the forehead."
Derry opened his eyes. He found himself flat on the floor, with his head pillowed on Grace's lap.
"What's happened" he asked, weakly.
"The beggar's pistol exploded," explained Collingwood. "Must have got choked with ashes, I suppose. It damaged him pretty badly, and you had a close call, old man."
"But who was he?" asked Derry eagerly. "How could he have known where to find the emeralds? By the way you've got them, I suppose, Coll?"
"I've got them all right, thanks to you, Derry. They are in my pocket this minute. The man is Dowling, the male nurse who came on here about a year before Uncle Richard died. I spotted him at once."
"Phew! So I suppose he stole the emeralds and hid them."
"Not a doubt of it. I remember that he got the sack and left in a hurry. Since then, by the look of him, he's been in quod. Probably just out."
"I see, and came up through the cellar and through the secret panel. Cute dodge, wasn't it?"
"It was precious lucky you heard him," said Coll, with unusual gravity.
Derry looked up and there was the old twinkle in his eyes.
"Even whipper-snappers have their uses, Coll," he remarked slily.
Coll shook a huge fist at him.
"You needn't rub it in, Derry," he said.
Then suddenly he stooped and picked Derry up bodily.
"Time for little boys to be in bed," he said, and, carrying Derry as easily as a child, he stalked away with him upstairs.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.