Run to Earth by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

the lights in the bar, and shut the back-door.”

Mr. Milsom then returned to the apartment where his sleeping guest

reposed.

The coachman’s capacious overcoat hung on a chair near where its owner

slept.

Mr. Milsom deliberately put on this coat, and the hat which Mr. Brook

had worn with it. There was a thick woollen scarf of the coachman’s

lying on the floor near the chair, and this Black Milsom also put on,

twisting it several times round his neck, so as to completely muffle

the lower part of his face.

He was of about the same height as Matthew, and the thick coat gave him

bulk.

Thus attired he might, in an uncertain light, have been very easily

mistaken for the man whose clothes he wore.

Mr. Milsom gave one last scrutinizing look at the sleeping coachman,

and then extinguished the candle.

The fire he had allowed to die out while he sat smoking: the room was,

therefore, now in perfect darkness.

He paused by the door to look about him. All was alike still and

lonely. The village street could have been no more silent and empty if

the two rows of houses had been so many vaults in a cemetery.

Black Milsom walked rapidly up the village street, and entered the

gardens of the castle by a little iron gate, of which Matthew Brook,

the reprobate and offender, had a key. This key Black Milsom had often

heard of, and knew that it was always carried by Brook in a small

breast-pocket of his overcoat.

From the garden he made his way quickly, silently, to the quadrangle on

which Stephen Plumpton’s bedchamber opened.

Here all was dark and silent.

Milsom went straight to the little half-glass door which served both as

door and window for the small sleeping-chamber of Stephen Plumpton.

He opened this door with a cautious hand, and stepped softly into the

room. Stephen lay with his head half covered with the bed-clothes, and

his loud snoring resounded through the chamber.

“The rum-punch has done the trick for you, my friend,” Mr. Milsom said

to himself.

He crossed the room with slow and stealthy footsteps, opened the door

communicating with the rest of the house, and went along the passage

leading to the hall.

With cautious steps he groped his way to the door opening on the

secondary staircase, and ascended the thickly carpeted staircase

within.

Here a lamp was left dimly burning all night, and this lamp showed him

another cloth-covered door at the top of the first flight of stairs.

Black Milsom tried this door, and found it also unfastened.

This door, which Black Milsom opened, communicated with the little

passage that had been made across the room usually tenanted by Captain

Copplestone. Within this room there was a still smaller chamber—little

more, indeed, than a spacious closet—in which slept the faithful old

servant, Solomon Grundy.

Both the doors were open, and Black Milsom heard the heavy breathing of

the old man—the breathing of a sound sleeper.

Beyond the short passage was the door opening into the sitting-room

used by the young heiress of Raynham.

Black Milsom had only to push it open. The intruder crept softly across

the room, drew aside a curtain, and opened the massive oak door which

divided the sitting-room from the bedroom.

Mr. Milsom had taken care to make himself familiar with the smallest

details of the castle household, and he had even heard of Mrs. Morden’s

habit of sleeping within closely drawn curtains, from his general

informant, James Harwood, the groom, who had received his information

from one of the housemaids, in that temple of gossip—the servants’

hall.

Gertrude Eversleigh slept in a white-curtained cot, by the side of Mrs.

Morden’s bed.

Black Milsom lifted the coverlet, threw it over the face of the

sleeping child, and with one strong hand lifted her from her cot, her

face still shrouded by the thick down coverlet, which must effectually

prevent her cries. With the other hand he snatched up a blanket, and

threw it round the struggling form, and then, bundled in coverlet and

blanket, he carried the little girl away.

Only when his feet were on the turf, and the castle stood up black

behind him, did he withdraw the coverlet from the mouth of the half-suffocated child.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CAUGHT IN THE TOILS.

Captain Copplestone did not waste half an hour on the road between

London and Raynham.

No words can paint his agony of terror, the torture of mind which he

endured, as he sat in the post-chaise, watching every landmark of the

journey, counting every minute of the tedious hours, and continually

putting his head out of the front window, and urging the postillions to

greater speed.

He hated himself for having been duped by that forged letter.

“I had no business to leave the child,” he kept repeating to himself;

“not even to obey her mother. My place was by little Gertrude, and I

have been a fool to desert my post. If any harm has come to her in my

absence, by the heaven above me, I think I shall be tempted to blow out

my brains.”

Once having decided that the letter, purporting to be written by Lady

Eversleigh, was a forgery, he could not doubt that it formed part of

some plot against the household of Raynham Castle.

To Captain Copplestone, who knew that the life of his friend had been

sacrificed to the dark plottings of a traitor, this idea was terrible.

“I knew the wretches I had to deal with; I was forewarned that

treachery and cunning would be on the watch to do that child wrong,” he

said to himself, during those hours of self-reproach; “and yet I

allowed myself to be duped by the first trick of those hidden foes. Oh,

great heaven! grant that I may reach Raynham before they can have taken

any fatal advantage of my absence.”

It was daybreak when the captain’s post-chaise dashed into the village

street of Raynham. He murmured a thanksgiving and a prayer, almost in

the same breath, as he saw the castle-turrets dark against the chill

gray sky.

The vehicle ascended the hill, and stopped before the arched entrance

to the castle. An old woman, who acted as portress, opened the carved

iron gates. He glanced at her, but did not stop to question her. One

word from her would have put an end to all suspense; but in this last

moment the soldier had not courage to utter the question which he so

dreaded to have answered—Was Gertrude safe?

In another moment that question was answered for Captain Copplestone—

answered completely, without the utterance of a word.

The principal door of the castle was open, and in the doorway stood two

men.

One was Mr. Ashburne, the magistrate; the other was Christopher Dimond,

the constable of Raynham.

The sight of these two men told Captain Copplestone that his fears were

but too surely realized. Something had happened amiss—something of

importance—or Gilbert Ashburne, the magistrate, would not be there.

“The child!” gasped the captain; “is she dead—murdered?”

“No, no, not dead,” answered Mr. Ashburne.

“Not dead! Thank God!” exclaimed the soldier, in a devout whisper.

“What then? What has happened?” he asked, scarcely able to command

himself so far as to utter these few words with distinctness. “For

pity’s sake speak plainly. Can’t you see that you are keeping me in

torture? What has happened to the child?”

“She has disappeared.”

“She has disappeared!” echoed the captain. “I left strict orders that

she should not be permitted to stir beyond the castle walls. Who dared

to disobey those orders?”

“No one,” answered Mr. Ashburne. “Miss Eversleigh was not allowed to

quit her own apartments. She disappeared in the night from her own cot,

while that cot was in its usual place, beside Mrs. Morden’s bed.”

“But who could penetrate into that room in the night, when the castle

doors are secured against every one? Where is Mrs. Morden? Let me see

her; and let every servant of the house be assembled in the great

dining-room.”

Captain Copplestone gave this order to the butler, who had come out to

the hall on hearing the arrival of the post-chaise. The man bowed, and

departed on his errand.

“I fear you will gain nothing by questioning the household,” said Mr.

Ashburne. “I have already made all possible inquiries, assisted by

Christopher Dimond here, but can obtain no information that throws the

smallest ray of light upon this most mysterious business.”

“I thank you,” replied the captain; “I am sure you have done all that

friendship could suggest; but I should like to question those people

myself. This business is a matter of life and death for me.”

He went into the great dining-room—the room in which the inquiry had

been held respecting the cause of Sir Oswald’s death. Mr. Ashburne and

Christopher Dimond accompanied him, and the servants of the household

came in quietly, two and three at a time, until the lower end of the

room was full. Mrs. Morden was the last to come. She made no

protestations of her grief—her self-reproach—for she never for a

moment imagined that any one could doubt the intensity of her feelings.

She stood before the captain, calm, collected, ready to answer his

questions promptly and conscientiously.

He questioned the servants one by one, beginning with Mrs. Smithson,

the housekeeper, who was ready to declare that no living creature,

except the members of the household, could have been within the castle

walls on the night of Gertrude Eversleigh’s disappearance.

“That anybody could have come into this house and gone out of it in a

night, unknown to me, is a moral impossibility,” said the housekeeper;

“the doors were locked at half-past ten, and the keys were brought in a

basket to my room. So, you see it’s quite impossible that any one could

have come in or gone out before the doors were open in the morning.”

“What time was the child’s disappearance discovered?”

“At a quarter to five in the morning,” answered Mrs. Morden; “before

any one in the house was a-stir. My darling has always been in the

habit of waking at that hour, to take a little milk, which is left in a

glass by her bedside. I woke at the usual time, and rose, in order to

give her the milk, and when I looked at her cot, I saw that it was

empty. The child was gone. The silk coverlet and one blanket had

disappeared with her. I gave the alarm immediately, and in a quarter of

an hour the whole household was a-stir.”

“And did you hear nothing during that night?” asked the captain,

turning suddenly to address Solomon Grundy, who had entered amongst the

rest of the servants.

“Nothing, captain.”

“Humph,” muttered the old soldier, “a sorry watch-dog.”

“There is only one entrance to the castle which is at all weakly

guarded,” said the magistrate, presently; “and that is a small door

belonging to the bedroom occupied by one of the footmen. But this man

tells me that he was in his room that night at his usual hour, and that

the door was locked and bolted in the usual way.”

As he said this, the magistrate looked towards the end of the

apartment, where Stephen Plumpton stood amongst his fellow servants.

The young man had been weak enough, or guilty enough, to commit himself

to a false statement; first, because he did not want to betray the

misdoings of